The opposite effect has often been observed too. People with a mission will often managed to survive much longer than expected but then suddenly die as soon as they perceive to have accomplished that mission.
An example that comes to my mind is that of Marcel Proust, who was sickly and suffered declining health for years. In the last three years of his life, we worked relentlessly on La Recherche, his life work. He managed to finish the last volume and died shortly after.
I have seen the opposite effect in my grandmother. She is definitely not on a mission. She just wants to live as long as she could, despite outliving pretty much everyone her age group and also her children. She's never been saying "when I'm gone..." or stuff like that, like it was not a possibility. But she often liked to say to other people something along "don't do this or you will die" - i.e. "don't work too hard because you will die". People much younger than her. Never said something like that in context of herself. The only exception is recently, after my father's death she asked my mother: "will you take care of my funeral?" but then she shortly added "if you live long enough that is" or something like that. My mom is 58 and grandma is 93.
I think it's a bit like ego thing and positive feedback loop. She takes pride in her longevity.
Conversely, I have a 97 year old relative who wants nothing more than to die, and yet, nature has cruelly allowed her to linger on. When she heard Betty White died, her response was "what's her secret".
My grandmother was getting that way toward the end of her life. She lived to be 104. More precisely, she thought she lived to 104. She died a week short of her birthday, but she thought it was her birthday. We were told she cried in the morning because her family had forgotten her birthday -- we lived in the area and would have come over. Then she didn't make it to the end of the day. This story has me wondering whether mistaking the date contributed to her death.
Nope, everyone (including her) though she'd be dead within a week of her husband passing, but it's been a few years now. Married for like 75 years, since they were really young, but no kids or grandkids or anything. No one had her lasting this long.
That's a pretty grim statement. You want everyone to die? Would you mind unpacking this a bit?
I'd like this material existence I am currently experiencing to have no end (i.e., I hope I never die), so this comes as a shock. I can understand not wanting yourself to live forever, but wanting everyone to die?
Not dying would probably mean even more concentration of wealth and power. I agree with the OP. If we had some idyllic society I might be more tempted to disagree, but as it is, those with power are most likely to be able to afford the necessary treatments and I don't think they are doing a good "leader" job in this world. It would not be the humble people living ordinary lives who will profit the most from longevity treatments.
In the interest of the future of humanity, I hope we don't figure out extreme longevity anytime soon. A few more years or even decades, okay, any more and you have even more old people at the top of society with even more power.
We already have a concentration of wealth and power. It's frightening that you think the solution to that is literally ending living, breathing, and dreaming beings rather than solving the actual societal issues at hand. It is like using a nuclear explosion - with all the associated death and destruction - to hammer in a nail.
Next time we come across a fundamental social issue, should we just kill everyone involved?
We can give people long, happy lives - as long as they want - while solving societal issues on a separate track. There is no reason to use death as a sledgehammer for an issue that is not more valuable than life.
It is, actually, kind of insulting to imply that people on the opposite spectrum of the rich don't want to live long, don't want to spend time with their family, hopes and loves - that they are expendable in the name of crudely brute-forcing some arbitrary wealth equation which is apparently more important to you than their very lives.
I would be quite happy being poor and getting to spend as long as I want with the loves of my life. Being poor barely even registers compared to the upside. No amount of money can compensate for time spent with loved ones, as anyone that has experienced the death of a loved one can attest to.
Yes, I want everyone to die of natural causes after a long and fulfilling life. You're an animal. You're supposed to die. What do you hope to gain and accomplish, sitting around and consuming years after your prime has come and gone and your children have grown? Don't you know what you are? Don't you have a soul? And please don't mistake this for an argument about materialism. Do you know why you're alive?
> What do you hope to gain and accomplish, sitting around and consuming years after your prime has come and gone and your children have grown?
1. If immortality is a reality, the health issues that come with the disease of aging are likely going to make it so your 'prime' lasts forever.
2. I neither have nor want children
(Edit: Removed bits on my personal beliefs. I don't want to get into them right now. I do have views on the soul that aren't based in materialism and they result in different conclusions than yours.)
Life (with a capital "L", the entire phenomenon, not the life of an individual organism) is predicated on death and birth in order to adapt and persist. Without death there is no adaptation, without adaptation Life will perish.
We humans sometimes forget we're a part of Life, but we are, and we benefit from death just as much as the rest of Life.
I have, but that is just one point of view, which I happen to disagree with. Given a mortal life, you have to cling to what you can carve out. You're going to die and your current ideas are all you're going to get; anyone who overthrows them is a threat to your 'legacy'.
With an immortal life -- assuming physical decay is arrested with immortality -- you have endless time to reconsider your ideas and expand on them using your wealth of knowledge and experience.
I don't see Planck's principle as inevitable, but an aberration that we can cure.
Yes, because we also control physical adaptation to a degree. Human adaptation has been disconnected from physical evolution for a long time now. How many type-1 diabetics only live now because of changes we invented our way out of?
> It often takes a new pair of eyes to see a new solution to a problem.
Why does this require death of current people and not simply more eyes that already exist?
Why is adaptation more important than life itself? The responses in this thread are so callous. Would you tell a loved one that they need to die so humanity can "adapt?"
If confronted with a society of people that live forever, but are relatively stagnant, would you propose to them that they all kill themselves every 80 years or so, so they "adapt?"
Why is adaptation more important than a life? A life is incredibly precious. Evolutionary adaptation barely works anymore and the cost in blood is immeasurable. Otherwise, adaptation can be achieved easily with technology, without costing so many people their hopes, dreams, and existence.
Living forever might not be that fun. People we know would still die for accidental reasons all the time. Maybe we can't cope with that for centuries or millennia and morale starts to take hits after a while.
I never said anything about fun. I said I don't want to ever die. 'Maybe we can't cope' sounds like a lot to take on faith. I'd rather live centuries or millenia and see for myself.
Nobody could ever live forever no matter what happens, but we might prevent people from dying from one specific cause (old age), if they don't want to.
Everything is transitory and impermanent and nature needs a garbage collector.
I'd be surprised if people didn't have some sort of instinct to die under the right circumstances just like they have an instinct to procreate under the right circumstances.
In fact I'm positive of it because people kill themselves sometimes. What a strange phenomenon that is if you think about it. I've never understood it and can't imagine wanting to end my own life but apparently the tendency exists given the right set of circumstances.
GP said nothing about how or when they wish everyone to die. It's as banal a statement as "I wish the earth will keep spinning". If GP is in a death cult, so are the overwhelming majority of known organisms.
> Death should be a personal choice.
This almost sounds like a satire of Western toxic individualism taken to a supernatural extreme. To me, the pursuit of immortality looks a lot more like a death cult than the acceptance of our finitude does.
You don't even need to die for that; I think a lot of people have experienced a situation at least once in their life where after a period of intense work or stress, or not long after their vacation starts, they got sick. I'm not talking about being overworked so much, but flu-like symptoms.
It's like your mind finally allows your body (and mind?) to relax, and it finally processes a lot of things it's been saving up. This isn't a very scientific comment, very anecdotal, but I believe it's not uncommon.
Heart attacks in the first year after retirement are a thing too:
"Among 5,422 individuals in the study, those who had retired were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than those who were still working. The increase was more pronounced during the first year after retirement, and leveled off after that."
Retirement is quite stressful for many. Suddenly having to come up with something to do every single day can cause anxiety. Most of us have recent experience with how stressful it can be to simply not visit a familiar group of people every day. The loss of stability of the 5x8 routine can cause anxiety, which may be a tipping point for borderline health issues. The loss of accountability can tip vices as well. Weekend drinkers don't always responsibly handle every day suddenly being a Saturday.
This is an incredible statistic, and quite counter intuitive…. Goes to show that stress can come from any kind of change, even if that change seems to remove a major amount of expected work
Perhaps weaning off of work would be better than cold turkey retiring?
Stress is very much not the same thing as work. My experience is that the most stressful times for me are the times when I'm suffering uncertainty over what I should do, or have a seemingly irreconcilable conflict of priorities, or when someone is in a bad situation and I can't do anything. The least stressful times are when I'm in the zone working hard ("work" being anything that needs focus, so might include play!).
The stress can be particularly bad for those that had no choice but to retire (due to health, job loss, or other reasons). Moving from working for money, and potentially being able to increase your income if needed, to a fixed income is tough for most people. Particularly if it was a sudden retirement and they realize the full implications of that after they retire.
"...those who had retired were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke..." (italics added)
My first thought - many retirees' daily routines suddenly included far more / longer periods of inactivity. Which changed their potential health issues related to blood clots into very real health issues related to blood clots.
Did they account for the 'sick quitter' bias? I know of people who were forced into retirement due to ill health and died shortly thereafter, but I have a hard time buying the idea that quitting work is somehow bad for you if it's something you've always wanted.
Under stress the body increases cortisol production to keep the energy level up and remain alert. When the stress subsides, the cortisol production is reduced to normal and the suppressed ills break out.
There are numerous such stories, but I tend to think it’s more selection bias than anything.
Accomplished people are almost always accomplishing things, even into late life. By definition, the last thing they accomplish is their final accomplishment. Even if deaths were randomly distributed, you’d expect to find a lot of these people dying shortly after finishing their last accomplishment.
Agreed, but I also wonder whether the couple situation increases survival because they've got someone to watch their back, e.g. if one has a fall, the other is there to call for help.
Would the legend of the ancient Greek messenger count? They raced from the site of Marathon to Athens a distance of 26.2 miles to deliver the message of a pending invasion then collapsed and died.
I’m always struck by US Grant in this regard. Suffering of debilitating cancer of throat, but convinced by Mark Twain and others his memoirs would bring financial benefit to his family after a failed business post presidency. He completed them and died a few days later, his final mission for his family.
Add Karlheinz Deschner to the list. He published the final (10th) volume of "Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums(Christianity's Criminal History)" in late 2013. 6 months later, he passed away.
In the Soviet Gulags, a lot of people would die immediately after their release. Solzhenitsyn described this phenomenon, saying they had no struggle left in life after the hell they had just gone through.
Boxers who die in the ring or shortly after usually either: didn't have enough time to rehydrate after cutting weight, were fighting too soon after taking a lot of damage, or were in a too-long fight. In almost all cases they've been failed by their corner, and often the commission.
That explains why they die, but not how they kept going when they were dying. I always remember the Nigel Benn/Gerard McClellan fight when he was touching his head after being stopped, and then collapsed in the corner.
An example that comes to my mind is that of Marcel Proust, who was sickly and suffered declining health for years. In the last three years of his life, we worked relentlessly on La Recherche, his life work. He managed to finish the last volume and died shortly after.
I'm sure there are many others.