If you could decide today... how long do you want to live?
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00:00If you had to choose right now, how long would you want to live?
00:0580 years? 90? 120? Longer?
00:10And do you think you'll change your mind once you reach that age?
00:1450,000 years ago, most humans died very young.
00:19As we learned how to use the resources around us to treat ourselves, this got better and better.
00:24Today, humans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before.
00:29But this has an unforeseen consequence.
00:32We spend an ever-increasing part of our lives being sick and in need of care.
00:37Most of us will die in a hospital bed, which is depressing enough by itself,
00:42but we also have to witness the same happening to our loved ones.
00:45Except, maybe, we can stop this forever.
00:49The most effective way to treat a disease is to prevent it.
00:53It saves many more lives if you stop a million people from smoking than coming up with better chemotherapies.
01:00So why not put a halt to the cause of all disease, the process of aging?
01:05In a nutshell, aging is caused by physics and not biology.
01:10Think of cars. Parts wear down from rubbing and grinding.
01:14Metal rusts, filters get plugged, rubber cracks.
01:19Our bodies are worn down by trillions of tiny physical processes.
01:24Oxygen, radiation from the sun, our metabolism.
01:28Our bodies have many mechanisms to repair this damage, but over time they become less effective.
01:34So our bones and muscles weaken, our skin wrinkles, our immune system gets weaker.
01:39We lose our memory and our senses diminish.
01:43There's no such thing as dying of old age.
01:46We all die because one of our important parts breaks.
01:49The older we get, the more damaged and fragile we become until one or multiple diseases take over and kill us.
01:57Unnoticed by most of us, longevity research has made some unprecedented advances in the last few years.
02:03For the first time, we're starting to understand the mechanisms behind aging and how to manipulate them.
02:09Aging is neither mystical nor inevitable, and we might be able to stop or delay it during your lifetime.
02:16We'll discuss the science behind it and how scientists are trying to stop it in another video.
02:21But first, if we could, should we end aging?
02:25Is this a good idea?
02:28The end of aging or life extension makes many people uncomfortable.
02:33We're born, are young, become older, and then we die.
02:37This has been the natural order for literally all of human history.
02:40And getting old is a good thing, right?
02:43We celebrate the idea of living long enough to experience old age.
02:47We even call them the golden years.
02:49But the reality is that everybody wants to become old, but nobody wants to be old.
02:55Think of the Greek myth of Tithonus, for example.
02:58Tithonus was the lover of the goddess Eos and probably an amazing dude
03:02because she begged Zeus to grant him immortality so they could spend eternity together.
03:07But she forgot to specifically ask for eternal youth.
03:11Tithonus was granted eternal life, but he kept aging, unable to die.
03:16After a few hundred years, he was reduced to the size of a grape, babbling on senselessly forever.
03:22Thousands of years ago, humans already feared never-ending old age.
03:27But ending aging does not mean getting weaker and weaker.
03:30If you become too old, it's too late.
03:33A 90-year-old who stopped aging would die anyway after a few years.
03:37Too much damage has been done to his internal machinery.
03:40There are already too many surfaces for disease to attack.
03:44Instead, the concept of life extension promises to end diseases and with them the end of a fixed maximum age.
03:51We don't know how much we could prolong our lives.
03:54We might make every human healthy to the currently accepted maximum age of around 120
03:59or we might stop biological aging and disease indefinitely.
04:03Nobody knows at this point what's possible.
04:06Okay, but even if we could achieve that, should we?
04:10Well, life extension is really just another phrase for medicine.
04:14All the doctors are doing is trying to prolong life and minimize suffering.
04:18The vast majority of healthcare resources are spent on the consequences of aging.
04:24Nearly half of your lifetime healthcare costs will be spent during your senior years
04:28and another third during middle age.
04:31We are actually already trying to prolong life with our current medicine,
04:34we're just doing it very inefficiently.
04:37Trying to stop aging from happening is not less natural than transplanting a heart,
04:42treating cancer with chemotherapy, using antibiotics or vaccines.
04:46Nothing humans do nowadays is purely natural anymore
04:49and we enjoy the highest standard of living ever as a consequence of that.
04:53What we're doing right now is waiting until it's too late and the machine is failing.
04:58And then we use the vast majority of our resources trying to fix it as well as we can
05:03while it breaks down even further.
05:05But life extension still feels hubristic.
05:08Most people assume that they will want to die once they reach a certain age
05:12and this might still be true.
05:14The idea of avoiding death entirely is off-putting for many.
05:18The end of biological aging would not mean the end of death in any way.
05:23It's more like a summer evening when you were a kid and your mum called you inside.
05:28You just wanted to keep playing, have a little more fun during sunset before you went to sleep.
05:33It's not about playing outside forever, just a little longer until we feel tired.
05:38If you imagine a world without disease where you and your loved ones could live in good health
05:43for another 100 or 200 years, how would this change us?
05:47Would we take better care of our planet if we knew we would be around longer?
05:51If we could work for 150 years, how much time would we spend figuring out what we're good at?
05:57How much more time would we spend learning?
06:00Would the intense feeling of pressure and stress many of us are feeling right now go away or get worse?
06:07So, asking again, if you could choose how long to live right now, in good health and with your friends and family,
06:14what's your personal answer?
06:16What would you like your future to look like?