
The Future of Aging Just Might Be in Margaritaville - elorant
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/14/magazine/tech-design-longevity-margaritaville.html
======
dawhizkid
I wonder how many people think about longevity...for me that is less so about
living to 100+ but more about doing as much as I can now to make sure old age
is not filled with chronic illness. I’m a “millennial” and already very
mindful of lifestyle choices that I hope help maximize my longevity i.e.
fasting, low carb, exercise, no drugs, no smoking, less alcohol.

~~~
qnsi
Low carb connected with longevity? I heard the opposite - vegan diet is good
for longevity. Am I wrong?

Edit: One article that supports my view (I found it in my bookmarks, there
might be better) [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/the-
optima...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/the-optimal-
diet.html?ref=opinion&_r=0moc.semityn.www)

~~~
andrey-g
Vegan studies don't control for a lot of conflating factors.

------
coldcode
I may be in that demographic, but I prefer to be around young people (I
volunteer a lot with youth). Being around nothing but old people all day would
make me old and depressed. I prefer to be around the future not the past.

~~~
nubbins
I would think most peoples ideal is to live in healthy natural commmunities
with a diverse age range to get wisdom and tradition from the old and energy
and new ideas from the young.

~~~
syedkarim
What's so special about tradition? Just because something has been done many
times in the past doesn't mean that it's useful, worthwhile, or right.

~~~
BurningFrog
Well, tradition is typically things that have been _successful_ many times in
the past!

The hard part is to recognize if the reasons for the previous success still
apply in the modern world. See "Chesterton's Fence".

~~~
Kalium
The tricky part is distinguishing between things that are _successful_ and
things that just haven't _obviously failed_. Tradition might not always be the
best of all possible guides here, as it tends to be a collection of things
whose primary commendation is that they didn't immediately cause a society to
fail.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> [tradition] tends to be a collection of things whose primary commendation is
> that they didn't immediately cause a society to fail.

Not at all. Traditions become traditions over long periods of time. Thus, they
tend to be collections of things that haven't caused a societal failure in the
last several hundred years, which is a much better record than not causing
immediate failure.

~~~
Kalium
I have a friend who rarely uses crosswalks. He tends to walk into traffic
while shouting "Plot armor!". He has yet to be run over, so this has an
excellent track record. Yet I suspect it just might be other than the greatest
of all possible ideas, despite the lack of demonstrated failures.

(Yes, this is absurd. Yes, I've told him this is clearly a bad idea. Yes, it's
actually true.)

Which is to say one should be cautious of survivorship biases and the role of
context. Judging traditions as successful based on a limited context where
they haven't obviously failed both ignores the situation upon which they may
depend and other scenarios where precisely those might have failed. Like the
other people who have tried what my friend has and been rendered into chunky
salsa for it.

~~~
gear54rus
this story is hilarious and infuriating at the same time, I hope no other
people will get hurt because of that bs.

------
reasonattlm
If a even a small fraction of the effort spent on trying and failing to cope
with the realities of degenerative aging was spent on the current crop of
plausible approaches to build medical biotechnologies that can reverse
degenerative aging, then the world would be a much better place.

Aging has an monstrously high economic cost, and is probably the only area of
medicine in which the ratio of that cost to the amount spent on R&D to try to
reduce that cost is vanishingly small.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Probably assume it will simply delay the inevitable.

~~~
adrianN
Death is inevitable, senescence is not. There is not reason to believe that
humans can't live in the bodies of healthy twenty year olds until they're
killed in an accident or the universe runs out of usable negentropy.

~~~
mixmastamyk
That would change everything. We’d no longer be able to have kids. Otherwise,
have to deal with severe overpopulation.

------
cm2012
Being old for our generation will be awesome. I'll just play Starcraft all day
with other geezers.

~~~
taurath
When your apm dips under 100 though, it probably won’t be as fun. Think chess
blitz matches

~~~
ekun
But you'll be fine on NA servers.

------
yters
Another thing we should try is learning to not be afraid of death. If we
aren't afraid of death, then getting old is not such a big deal.

Atheists have no reason to fear death, because then there is nothing.

Religious people only have to fear death if they are living in a way they know
is wrong.

So, best bet is to live consistent with the majority of lasting world
religions, and either there is nothing or there is blissful afterlife. Plus,
the present life will be better, too. Win, win!

~~~
ryukafalz
>Atheists have no reason to fear death, because then there is nothing.

Well, I'm not afraid of being dead. I sure do like being alive though, and
would prefer that to continue!

~~~
yters
Once you are dead you won't be aware life is no longer continuing. The only
sticking point is the time leading up to death when one's fear of death makes
them miserable. If the person can do away with the fear then they'll maximize
their happy moments in the short time we have in this world.

Since death is inevitable due to the eventual heat death of the universe, then
from an operations research perspective it makes much more sense to focus
effort on getting rid of the fear of death than trying to end death itself.

~~~
gxigzigxigxi
> Since death is inevitable due to the eventual heat death of the universe,
> then from an operations research perspective it makes much more sense to
> focus effort on getting rid of the fear of death than trying to end death
> itself.

I don’t think that’s true from a global optimization perspective. If you’re
trying to maximize contented moments, it makes sense to spend time thinking
about how to extend life (assuming you’re talking about the number of happy
moments for people who are currently alive), even if those moments still must
eventually cease. Because trillions of years of happy moments is a lot more
than 80-100 years of happy moments. Only if you’re trying to minimize unhappy
moments does removing fear of death become a better goal.

However, from a local optimization perspective, since there is little anyone
can individually do about their medium term probability of death, I agree that
figuring out how to cope with and minimize that fear is probably the best
strategy.

~~~
yters
Right, I mean from the individual's perspective, since why should the
individual care about optimizing an aggregate the individual will never
experience?

------
raverbashing
I might consider such a community, but 55 is way too early for me. More like
70 or later.

Lack of focused activities are also a factor in wasting away

------
zzo38computer
Is good to be learn avoiding a disease, but humans immortality is bad. Lets my
body is then later the energy, food, scientific experiment, whatever, rather
than being locked in one room all the time. Human is not an endangered
species.

