There is an article at Value Walk that reports on chinese researchers using CRISPR gene editing to extend the lives of mice by 25%. Matthew Bacher, the writer of the Value Walk article then discussed a Lancet article from 2018 that forecasted life expectancy in 35 industrial countries would increase by 4 years by 2030. Matthew Bacher did not link to the Lancet article. The likely article is Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories”.
Matthew then makes two points of commentary.
Existing in a world where individuals are able to receive treatment to live longer borders dystopian science fiction. The treatment can reduce the need for medical attention by potentially reducing injuries, heart attacks, and organ failures.
So Matthew is saying everyone living longer is a really bad thing.
Matthew then describes people hating remote work under COVID and hating working in the office.
How do we find rest and recuperation when we are living within the office space? Time on the job stretches on forever as we receive work emails while watching Netflix with our families. If life expectancy in humans gets extended by using CRISPR/Cas 9 are we just creating our own version of purgatory?
So it seems that Matthew hates his life and his work and thinks that everyone else does as well.
Simple Fix For Matthew – Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll
Everyone who is like Matthew can follow the sixties rock star or current WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) wrestler lifestyle. Most WWE wrestlers die before the age of 65. They have 5 times the mortality at every age. Five times more die in their 30s, 40s, and 50s than the regular public.
The mortality rate of Rock star performers shoots up to three times that of the rest of us. Living fast as a rock megastar does make you die young – of the 100 performers in the sample who died early, the average age was 42 for North American stars and just 35 for those in Europe.
Matt could smoke a pack (20 cigarettes) per day and take ten years off his life. But cigarette smoke only makes you look a little cooler and gives a mild addictive boost.
Matt really needs cocaine and heroin.
Matthew could use cocaine once per day starting from age 18 and he will likely be dead by the time he is 66. He could do three cocaine lines per day and likely be dead by 51.
Matthew could do heroin once per day starting at age 18 and he could be dead by the time he is 48.
Woo Hoo!! Exciting.
Four drinks a day as an alcoholic can also kill Matt in 30 years.
In Mid-October, 2020 (when the US had 215000 COVID deaths), COVID had caused a reduction in US life expectancy at birth of 1.13 y to 77.48 y, lower than any year since 2003. There was a 0.87-y reduction in life expectancy at age 65 y. The Black and Latino populations are estimated to experience declines in life expectancy at birth of 2.10 and 3.05 y, respectively, both of which are several times the 0.68-y reduction for Whites.
Black life expectancy would shorten by 2.10 years to 72.78 years, and for Latinos, by 3.05 years to 78.77 years.
Whites are also impacted, but their projected decline is much smaller — 0.68 years — to a life expectancy of 77.84 years.
US COVID deaths are now passing 500,000 in the USA and are on track to over 700k and possibly 1 million by the summer.
Life expectancy will likely have dropped by 3 years overall in the US and as much as 5-6 years for Black and Latinos.
The bad news from Matt is that the life-extension trend has been trending from about 150 years. It started with better sanitation, clean water, and then with antibiotics and vaccines and now new medical treatment.
The increase in life expectancy for mice has been achieved many times and in many different ways for the last thirty years. The extension of life in mice has not been successfully adapted to humans other than people who followed adjusted dietary and exercise and lifestyle choices.
Longevity does not just happen most of the time. You have to want it and work at it. You could get some genes that protect you despite a bad lifestyle. This can be seen with Keith Richards. He abused alcohol and drugs but is still alive at 77.
The Keith Richards example is rare. If you follow the Keith Richards lifestyle, then 95% of the time you will succeed in dying before 50. Keith was a bit of a slacker. I am sure two or three more doses of cocaine and heroin very day or an added two drink binges each week and Keith would have died by the time he was 50. Matt does not have to give up hope for fast life and quick death.
My Plan is the Opposite
I enjoy living life now without abusing substances. I diet and exercise and indulge in gourmet meals and dishes.
I adopt some but not all aspects of the Seventh Day Adventists lifestyle.
On average, Adventist men live 7.3 years longer and Adventist women live 4.4 years longer than other Californians.
Five simple health behaviors promoted by the Seventh-day Adventist Church for more than 100 years including not smoking, eating a plant-based diet, eating nuts several times per week, regular exercise, and maintaining normal body weight, can increase life span up to 10 years.
Eating legumes was protective for colon cancer.
Eating nuts several times a week reduces the risk of heart attack by up to 50%.
Eating whole meal bread instead of white bread reduced non-fatal heart attack risk by 45%.
Drinking 5 or more glasses of water a day may reduce heart disease by 50%.
Men who had a high consumption of tomatoes reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 40%.
Drinking soy milk more than once daily may reduce prostate cancer by 70%.
I do not smoke. I do not take any drugs. I drink alcohol in moderation and only once every week or two. I exercise regularly. I have been maintaining a mostly stable weight. I eat nuts and try to increase vegetable consumption. I do drink lots of water.
I will research and will use life extension procedures with strong scientific proof.
I have started taking metformin and fish oil.
SOURCES – Lancet, PNAS, ValueWalk
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Never try to win a head-butting contest with a fool.
Perhaps, this crowd is a little different from the masses I see each and every day. Frankly, all the information of mankind is at their fingertips, yet 90% of the populace are buried in 4” screens, developing neck problems from gaming and texting their paramours… What a wast!
And you geniuses want to make all of them live 30 or 40 years longer??? Most of them can’t compose a coherent sentence!
I say there should be an achievement standard for life extension. And by the way, I am a professional, and I have worked at clinics working on the problem.
However, as Liz Parrish would say, “It’s about health-span not lifespan…” Allowing us to grow old with dignity is a far more honorable goal than extending the time productive people have to endure millions of morons!
Finally, there is a God, and He does have a counterpart. Before anyone mocks God – it would pay to consider the consequences. No one will ever be immortal but eternity is a horrifying thing.
The right question is not do you want to live for 1000 years but:
Do you want to die today?
Make the kids ride their own bike.
If we reach stage, that through genetic manipulations, artificial super organs, or engineering full super body, we will be strong, safe enough to be able to live without special suits not only on Earth like planets but on harsh planets like Mars or even survive insterstellar vacuum(like Thor) then I will be ready, but not before that stage in our evolution is reached 🙂
For most people(who do not take time to try to understand concept of exponential growth, progress and predict events using this law) this sounds incredibly far away, probably thousands/millions of years into the future. But if we will reach AGI, and soon after it Artificial Super Intelligence(hard takeoff), some kind of Singularity, I think it will be possible to have such tech. Many people believe that we are very close to AGI and model with 100trillion parameters(us much as human brain has) with flexible learning ability could be built this, next year. We will see what capabilities it will have.
It will give us glimpse into how close or far away AGI is.
I am not thinking much about children at the moment, I will become interested and start planning when/if I will find a woman 🙂
I'd rather actually be traveling to other planets, rather than pretending to be.
Are you children going to be fantasies as well?
That has a big change of "leaving" other people from this world too. Who may probably not want to leave yet. Including children.
Hmmm… how much of all that life expectancy increase is due to LIFE EXTENSION and how much is due to reduced infant mortality rates, less women dying in childbirth and to less men dying in wars?
Wealth, physical things, possessions in my opinion will become irrelevant soon for a lot of people if not for all of us. As soon as we will get realistic VR(we're very close), you will be able to literally own your own cities, even planets, whatever you want. All this will be almost if not fully indistinguishable from reality. Who would care about some 100-200m2 house if in this "second life" you will own house the size of a city with beautiful decorations, art. Want gold floors? no problems, 10m hight walls? just tell it to AI interface, it will generate photorealistic stuff in real time.
This is how it looks right now (2019 to be precise) – link below
Next year apple will release 8K vr device, you won't see individual pixels, it will be already lifelike. Realife graphics is becoming cheap thanks to Unreal Engine etc, neural nets trained on trillions of photos, videos will be able to learn and create new original places super fast and cheap
and from now it will only get better, exponentially
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8kS5HWaGbM
Love the article, since this is pretty much what I do 🙂 I've been into health & transhumanism for a long time. I eat healthily, exercise every day and take copious supplements, BUT I also smoke, eat bacon and, while I rarely drink, when I do, I drink to excess (curse these Danish genes :p ). Would love to live past 200, so much interesting stuff is happening, but should death find me tomorrow, then so be it (I do fear the pain of dying, but death itself holds no terror).
When I first got into transhumanism, I did try to quit smoking, but after repeatedly trying and failing for 5 years or so, realised that "eternal" life without bad habits, was not a life I would want to live. So I started lifting and taking supplements that somewhat alleviate the downsides of my hedonistic lifestyle. Now I'm in the best shape I've ever been and enjoy my life to the fullest. I guess my point is that no one should feel shame about how they live their life, as long as they can live with the consequences.
Also, I've got no retirement savings, so if I'm still alive by the time I'm no longer able to work, I'm definitely gonna try smack or whatever amazing drugs they'll have come up with by then 😀
You want to leave this world? Apply 1000 cc of Kawasaki.
Yeah, that struck me too. It isn't anything to do with lifespan, he just doesn't know how to structure his life.
When I had major pulmonary oedema about a decade ago, they put me on some opiate. (I can't remember which, because I was on opiates at the time.)
It really didn't do anything for me. Ibuprofen was at least as effective, and that costs $1.50 for a box of 24.
And then I realized that even codeine never worked for me either. I guess I'm an opiate non-responder.
My sister too. She was quite sick for a while. I remember watching some TV documentary where someone said something like "We shot him full of 20 mg of somethingdine, that will put a big man out like a light for hours." And she says "I take twice that every evening and still need a couple of ciders to get to sleep."
Time spent in youtube comments is time that could be spent doing something, anything, that might have a positive outcome.
Or their finances are dwindling…or home crumbling. I think people need slightly less conservative investments. Keep the REITs, but have some forward looking tech stuff too. Maintain the things you need, or replace them with better things. Homes are built somewhat poorly now. They are built large, and up to code, but often the materials are pathetic. The house I live in has nice plaster walls. Buy anything new and you get wimpy drywall.
I think if I build a house…and I want to…I will use concrete board then drywall maybe a layer of wet joint compound in between or just plaster over the cement board. And using wood that is termite resistant like borate treated wood, just seems like a good plan. I want a roof that will last hundreds of years, but you can still walk on it without breaking tiles or whatever. Options? Even the stainless steel they sell for the purpose is not intended to last and is very thin. 3/32" (~2.4mm) stainless seems about right to me 🙂 Maybe a mild acid etch to prevent it from glaring in the eyes of interstellar drone pilots. People just don't make things to last. If we are going to last, it makes sense to make our homes to last as well.
The 117 year old nun who just got over Covid, has been saying for years that she is hoping God will take her home soon. Of course, she is blind and in a wheelchair.
Would she still be saying that if she could see clearly and walk wherever at will? I don't think so.
I remember asking how long people live when I was about 5. They said, "Maybe 100 years, if you are careful". That seemed OK. But then, I started to think…No…that is not good enough. This is why I am only hearing stories about my great grandparents and have never seen them. I dearly loved all my grandparents…why wouldn't I like my great grandparents?
I still think that is a big thing we are missing. We get history from a history book, but anything a hundred years ago, and you can't really ask anyone about it. No one to contrast today with some earlier time. There is what people thought was important enough to write down…mostly reporters…not much else.
Keef actually gave up the cancer sticks a few years back . . . never thought I'd see that.
Yeah. Not convinced of the 'stop having kids' thing (at least by personal choice – gov't regulation? who knows?). My middle-class friends in their 30s have less but lower-mids and upper-mids having more than 2. Typically, rich and abundance seems to encourage 'spread the seed' – even with heavy-career/ ambitious people. Onboard with the denser living and ubiquitous food – very likely – but its the Malthusian race. I know we will find away, but… 2-5x the population by mid-next century with anti-ageing at 10% of people in 2050 to 50% of people in 2080… I suppose if people can embrace wearing a mask in their single-driver car, I guess they can keep it to 1 kid per 50 years of life or so…
A bit of a bizarre article – comic relief/ sour grapes?
I am certainly an Individualist who prizes choice and opportunity and being surrounded with ambitious dream-realizers in a pro-tech world – which is not the same as a libertarian or conservative in the Pew/ Khan-like world.
To be fair, balanced, and somewhat analytical, we should probably consider what the world would be like if life extension was ubiquitous:
So, say the death-rate halved in rich countries (because not everyone does it/ affords it/ finds other ways to die) with the birth rate dropping a bit consistent with ideas of 'putting stuff off' with a net population increase likely at under 2%/yr of the 1+B richies – so that's doubling every 30 – 35 years -AND- maybe 20% of everyone else so that's just under 4% overall – very broad-brush, so every 15 – 20 years doubling. So, just say earth population doubles every 20 years, starting 2060… yeah, we're many, many 10^10s in mid 2100s. How many 'big and better' Starships leaving the earth to handle that to keep us under the likely 'livable' holding capacity of the earth at somewhere between 20Bs and 50+Bs.
Just saying. Manage the Malthusian!
are u happy ?
best article ever. we need more educational sarc posts
Personally, I love working from home. Primarily because I hate the commute.
That said, I simply cannot imagine a day where, if were still feeling healthy and hail, that I would get out of bed and say: "Damn, I'm old, time to call it quits." Then cancel my tennis match and lunch with my friends afterwards, turn in all the library books I had checked out, say goodbye to my spouse and descendants, and then jaunt off to the euthanasia clinic.
It's not that I want to live forever, it's just that I can't imagine wanting to die just for the sake of not living another healthy and pain-free day.
If the life extension tech is good, it will reverse any damage done by the Keith Richards plan. You'll be young, strong, and healthy regardless.
In that case, an option is to take up free solo climbing or BASE jumping. It might make you enjoy life again, and if you keep it up it'll get you sooner or later.
If anyone knows Matt, tell him I said to stop reading his work emails while watching Netflix with the kids. He can read them when the movie is over and the kids are doing their homework. It is called boundaries. Sometimes they are physical (office/home), other times it is nothing more than planning accompanied by mental discipline. Wow, problem solved.
On a a side note, I find the switch to synthetic opiates undesirable, they seem to have more side effects. I have no problem with codeine when I occasionally use it for cough suppression, but dextromethorphan, which is "right handed codeine" sometimes gives me night terrors. When I told my physician this, he looked at me as if he suspected me of lying, and dismissed my complaint. Bad dreams as a side effect is not remarkable, since large dosages may result in dissociative hallucinations, as I later learned.
After bruising my ribs in an accident, I was prescribed oxycodone for pain. It did an amazing job of relieving my pain, in fact perfect, but left me weak, and sick. It was like having influenza, except instead of diarrhea, I was constipated. As soon as I could sit still, and breath without agony, I stopped taking it. I've never used morphine, but I've never heard of such side effects, other than the constipation. If I ever need to use a powerful analgesic again, I will insist on something else, preferably oral morphine.
Most early deaths associated with illegal drug use are due to the black market created by laws, not the drugs themselves. Overdoses due to varying purity, and clandestine use. HIV, and other infections due to inability to legally buy new syringes, or prostitution to pay black market prices. Homicide, or violence due to involvement in black market. Deaths in prison due to incarceration. Lack of medical care because of unemployment due to failed drug tests. Bad nutrition due to lack of funds after paying black market prices.
Chronic pain victims live decades taking large dosages of opiates. My uncle received a severe back injury while a pilot during WW2 by falling out of his DC-10(on the runway). He was treated by the USAF, and then the VA for chronic back pain over a 60 year period(the rest of his life) with taxpayer funded oral morphine. He continued as an air force officer until the 1970s retiring as a Major, owned a pawn shop, and lived into his 80s.
The morphine relieved his pain, with no undesirable side effects other than sleepiness. Dude loved his naps!
Morphine made my parent's deaths much less painful, both for them, and their loved ones. Rather than a curse, morphine is a blessing from the creator, and chemists. It is a tool like any other, and can be used to make life bearable, or to destroy life. The choice is up to us. The use of opiates should be wholly decided by the patient, with advice from his physician.
People think that when we solve aging all other so called "problems" will remain – overpopulation, environment etc. When our tech will reach stage to be able to stop, reverse aging I am sure we will also figure out how suck up carbon from athmosphere, manipulate weather( we already can do that, but we will have even more sophisticated, efficient, fast, cheap, advanced methods in near future) cheap spaceflight(SpaceX is just the beginning), poverty, scarcity in general, more advanced engineering so we will be able to build comfortable super high buildings, safe buildings underground, undewater and easily fit trillion people, "boredom problem"(full dive VR, erasing memories) etc. and it won't take long time, we may have all this in 2020's.
Returning to overpopulation(fakest problem of them all), more advanced we are, less children we will have, we may even stop at 10B.
Progress is exponential, those things that you think will happen in 100, will happen in 10 years, capabilities which you think we could have in 20 years, we will have in next 3 years.
Fools like this Matt guy, and those saying that they do not want to live more than 100 years cause they will be bored, it's against nature, religion or other nonsense…
I bet, most if not all of them will be first in line when anti aging/reversing aging therapies will become available and they will see how their 70-80 year old friend suddenly looks and have strenght and health of healthy 25 year old.
The rest(minority) who are serious and saying stuff like ''I do not wanna live past x years'', ''I wanna die'', they are depressed, suicidal people, and those are serious illnesses, we should treat them
Yeah, I think I was about 12, back in '71, when I figured out that I'd never live to be an engineer aboard a star ship without some kind of life extension technology. Helped, I suppose, that people in my family tend to marry late in life, (I figure the Howard Foundation owes us some big bucks.) so the kids get acquainted early in life with the concepts of "growing old" and "dying".
If the idea of a much longer healthy life sounds horrible to you, then, life, you're doing it wrong.
Yeah, people tend to forget that humans have been obsessed with immorality and age reversal ever since humanity was able to understand aging.
Nobody has the right to tell people not to enjoy this life as long as possible before moving on to the next one, nor not to enjoy that life until the one after that.
YES! Accuracy for the win!
Right there with you. I'm almost forty and I've had an unhealthy obsession with age reversal and immortality from am early age. Like, eight years old. No joke. So, that's probably a mental issue, but it's GREAT fun!
Y'all seriously made me choke on this shot of whiskey. xD
Apparently Keith has actually contributed to scientific research by providing first hand accounts of the subjective experience of drug overdose near death experiences.
I suppose that he is a combination of someone who has the experience, is articulate and able to write, and has the status to admit to such events without risking legal repercussions.
I spent like 30 minutes in the YouTube comments trying to get some teens to understand that life extension doesn't mean environmental collapse or loss of biodiversity. It's surprisingly difficult for some people to grasp.
Well that was succinct.
I notice that you wrote in a prior comment – "I hope I'm around when all the trillions of dollars of federal debt become unsustainable and our economy collapses. The mass panic that will result will be most interesting to watch." So you are pretty uncivil and uncool talking about economic collapse and panic and suffering as being interesting to watch.
Life extension will not be the main driver of habitat destruction and pollution
Heroin.
I'm still waiting on the Keith Richards exercise and workout video.
Life extension has been happening for over 100 years. It doubled in the UK from 40 years to 80 years from 1850 to 2015. It has almost tripled in India from 24 to 69 from 1920 to 2015. Possibly adding 4 years to life expectancy from 2018-2030 is nothing and is a 5% boost over 12 years. This is slower than the pace of improvement in life expectancy from 1880-1980.
It is uncivil and not cool for Bacher to tell others not to live longer and not to be happy with their lives and work. Adding four years from now to 2030 would be countering the impact of the pandemic. Not increasing the life expectancy is letting a pandemic occur by default and inaction.
Compare 1700-1850 with 1850 to 2000. Which had more pollution? What had more habitat destruction? which had more starvation?
Ironically, hating your work is probably a smart move if you hate life.
Personally, I like my work, and my life, and see no reason to suppose I'd regret a few hundred more years of life.
If you don’t want to work at home you just have to avoid having any marketable skills. I find that it’s easier than you might think.
As for living longer, I’m not going to be lining up for that but if others want to they should be free to do so. That way they can live under statist rulers who will be living longer also.
Probably the later. They tend to hate human life in general and wish death/extinction upon others (specially the poor and differently colored), but they also very much appreciate and love their dearly invaluable self.
I find it snarky and funny.
The only appropriate response for anyone wishing death upon others, because you all filthy humans are damaging Earth by living is "well, you first!".
Matt is welcome to his oblivion!
I have lots to live for.
Honestly sounds like he hasn't found something enjoyable to do with his life. Maybe he needs a hobby?
Alternately he could be yet another anti-humanist- there are plenty of them.
Umm, I don't get the impression that Matt Bacher hates his life. He simply seems to be saying that radical life extension may cause severe problems for society in general, i.e overpopulation, destruction of habitat, pollution, etc.
But regardless of how Mr. Bacher feels, I don't the appropriate response by NBF is to encourage him to die young. Very uncivil and not cool at all.
Chris68