Do you think we'll be living until we're 150 or even 200 years old?

Pretty sure I won’t. What insurance company is going to want to cover my bills for another century or so?

And health is the key, isn’t it? If you’re not in good shape, why would you want to last so long in a diminished condition?

I think it’s entirely possible with all of the advances in science. It wouldn’t necessarily be good overall, simply because of population size. If I could live that long and still manage to be healthy, I would absolutely love to live that long.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I wouldn’t want to. We all have to die some day

Yeah..I know people that live like 9? and don’t use any medications.

I don’t think any of the currently living humans will, but those who come after them might be able to. The questions is are you willing to live another half or entire century as of your whole skeleton could turn to dust any second? I think I wouldn’t

The potential for this has been around for quite some time already,apparently.
I recall watching a programme called ‘Viewpoint 92’ in 1992 on uk tv that was about this sort of thing. If I remember rightly, the claim of the show was that the children with the potential to live to such great lengths had already been born.
I suspect that it will be limited to elites as things stand though.

@lloydbird Well, I didn’t know about that but I hope you’re right! I was born in 1991 :)

No. We’ll live shorter lives than our parents due to stuff like Halo 3 and burger king that’s making us fat. Also, I imagine the increased pollution and toxic chemicals aren’t doing our bodies much good either.

What’s this “we” stuff. I plan on outliving all of you.

I kinda think that’s a scary thought. Sometimes I wonder if all the new science and medical/health improvements are nothing but “death prevention” and a way to cheat death and the natural way of life. I am not sure this is a good thing…. in the long run…

How old are you now? If you are young enough, say teens or twenties, you are very likely to have a longer life.

The question will be the quality of it. Length for no reason does not seem like a good tradeoff.

I hope not.

Good god, I hope not.

Some of the genetic triggers for aging are already known and experimentation is underway to learn how to control or slow aging. In experiments with earth worms, altering one gene more than doubled their life span. That gene is related to how well we get nutrition from our food. Part of aging, then, is not being able to get the nutrition you need, even though you are eating properly.

I am guessing sometime in the next 25–40 years there will be big changes in controlling aging (and big ethical challenges).

When I told my wife this, I said, Think how much money I could make in the stock market if I could live to be 150. To which she replied, Think how much you could lose.

I certainly hope not. I am watching my mother, at 94, be perfectly miserable and without any short-term memory. Her days are joyless. When she was in a rehab center in March due to a broken wrist, my sister or I went daily. Seeing all the residents was extremely disheartening.

Count me in with everyone who’s said “I hope not.”

I’d only want to live that long if I could do so without the assistance of a nurse and still have enjoyable sex.

@Facade
i shudder at the thought

I’m now 28 and I’m pretty confident that by the time I get to the age where I need a new kidney, heart or other vital organ, they’ll be able clone me a new one. They’ll probably have some awesome nanobots or a genetically engineered virus to kill off any cancer cells in my body.

This means that the problems I’ll have to deal with will be new “old people” diseases we haven’t encountered yet with our short life spans. That and them figuring out how to give me a cloned skin transplant to get rid of all the wrinkles and liver spots.

150 years just the tip of the iceberg. with medical advances occuring at an ever increasing rate I think soon the most common cause of death will be trauma due to birthday spankings

The human body has so much planned obsolecence, we will never hit 200.
Can you imagine the government changing the Social Security retirement age to, say, 140?

this makes me wonder how all the fundamentalists will react when we finally get twice as old as methusalem and thus surpass god’s abilities in age giving

Future generations, perhaps many many many 100’s of years from now.

I plan on having by brain installed into a robot so I’ll live forever and have the strength of four gorillas!

edit: my brain…

@AstroChuck: Cancel that robot.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least 34 more good years in me, so I’ll definitely see the century mark, but beyond that, I don’t see much improvements in longevity yet.

I really don’t think I want to live that long, so I’ll probably decline any anti-aging treatments.

I think it’s possible in theory.

I think much of the effect of age is actually from the ideas people tend to have about what age means and causes, and thinking about and being that, instead of being how we want to be and ignoring how many years have passed.

It seems that the absolute maximum is about 120. Every year a couple of the world’s oldest in the range of 114–117 die. Some of the things they have in common is that they have relative stress-free lives, they live all their lives in small communities surrounded by friends and family and they usually outlive their children and grandchildren. Most of the men report they had a shot of whiskey every day and most of the women were teetotallers.

Ray Kurzweil thinks we may well do that. If we have little nanobots running around in our bloodstream, fixing the damage of age, and lengthening telomeres, we could well live much longer. Whether that would be advisable is another issue altogether.

I would love this! Right now I think many people are able to live into their teens (hundreds) but obesity and other preventable health issues are monkeying up the potential.

If you consider zombies as living, then yeah.

Living a very long time is not always a good thing. Particularly when your diaper keeps getting in the way of things.