The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out

My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and we know that to be true, because aside from the church records, they both have decent memories of the time before WW2 and the event itself. Oddly specific things at that, like prices of goods and salaries from the time.

Also grandpa has 7 siblings, with his older sister already being 100. Interestingly their own parents didn't live nearly that long.

My paternal grandmother on the other hand died one week before turning 97 and only after that it was revealed that she actually lied about her age, claiming to be six years younger, so as to not cause a scandal when my grandparents announced their marriage.

The common theme among them is that they are/were all active working manually and would neither drink nor smoke, but that's no revelation.

If you don't get to the end of the article you'll miss this gem:

> If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.

The last time I read about this there were a ton of comments along the lines of “author needs to come to <my tiny African nation> both my grandmas are over 100 years old and it’s normal here” - proves the point!

Great article but the oldest guy in the UK definitely isn’t from one of the roughest parts of Liverpool, he’s had a nice life living by the seaside in a place called Southport 25km away, and doesn’t seem like a liar.

The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency.

To reach next 1000 years, you need to do:

(1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage.

(2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation.

Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.

For a really good book on most of these long life nutritional surveys and other food panics, check out:

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...

Contrary to what the article says, the Gerontology Research Group[1] claims to have verified John Tinniswood's age: https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ Although I wish they'd be a lot more specific about how that was done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group

From Wikipedia:

"The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War."

How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.

> The ceremony was wonderful. It’s a bit of fun in a big fancy hall. It’s like you take the most serious ceremony possible and make fun of every aspect of it.

A glorified shitpost. I love it.

There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it’s underreported deaths instead.

To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.

My grandfather died over a hundred, he had 16 children and two wives. We estimated his age to be at 103 going by the youngest possible age he could have become a father.

My grandmother is well into her 90s.

They both were active throughout their lives, always in the fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes down. She insists on not having any electricity.

My step great grandmother is currently the oldest in the UK, the family had to take her car keys off her when she turned 100, she wasn’t best pleased about it.

https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/

It seems not all these contra-indicators apply to Loma Linda, CA as well.

From articles linked, most other area candidates are long dead, pension fraud, in low income areas, also affecting some areas in the U.S., but mostly relating to records keeping.

Meanwhile:

“In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. ... Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA ... 82% of supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification.”

However, in the research graphics, Loma Linda is not on the map depicting concentrations in midwest. There are these mentions, however:

“Centres for Disease Control generated an independent estimate of average longevity across the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly characterised by a ‘remarkable’ average lifespan 10 years above the national average, instead has an unremarkable average lifespan (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)”, “The two remaining blue zones, Loma Linda and the Nicoya Peninsula, are considered exceptional due to their high average longevity rather than the presence of the oldest-old.”, and “However, when assessed independently by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the five small-area survey tracts covering Loma Linda instead have an average life expectancy of 76 to 81 years: the 27th to 75th percentiles of US life expectancy (Fig S6). This means, at best, the independent CDC estimates rank Loma Linda as the 16,101st most long-lived neighborhood in the USA (Fig. S6; S1 code). As such, it is again unclear why the lifespan of this community has been considered remarkable.”

Till now, this area stood out as an odd duck among the blue zones, being an otherwise regular U.S. suburb, just high prevalence of longevity among the vegetarian health conscious non-smoker non-drinker types. Most of the other zones attribute health to hills and seafood, while now seeming poverty and pension fraud related.

Long before the study and term became popularized, it was noted that among one community in and around this CA area (including great grandmothers or aunts that had moved to mountain communities in other parts of CA), seemingly unusual numbers of women among extended family and friends' extended family lived over 100. Though less so since 2010s, as though most were of generations from 1860s - 1900s.

Incidentally, the directly known individuals who passed on in '80s or '90s did have birth certificates and carefully documented genealogies dating back to 1400s - 1600s or so.

Putting two and two together, while Loma Linda is not mentioned other than these quotes, it seems the suggestion here is that these western-most U.S. clusters could be late 1800s births in areas not yet organized for birth certificates and records keeping, still around to be noticed in the 1970s to 2010s.

TL;DR:

This makes it seem as though someone trying to make a case for the longevity of a small set of people misunderstood or overlooked the error rates at play and didn't dig further, allowing them to make a case for a zone-wide phenomenon.

This article is golden:

> Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.

The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.

One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain genes. Really old age may be genetic.

<sigh/> Once again, Big Science proves itself near-impotent against the Rule of Cool and the Want to Believe.

It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this researcher's current employer (University College London's Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research...

Anybody know what the reality is?