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impromptublue comments on Interesting new Pew Research study on American opinions about radical life extension - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (21)
Old people may be against radical life extension in principle, but they don't personally want to die just yet. I'd be curious to see what the typical 90 year old lists as their ideal life span; or more generally, at what age (if ever) people start actively wanting to die soon, measured as listing an ideal life span within 5 years of their current age.
I don't think that wish to die is directly correlated with age -- I think it's mostly a function of the state of one's health (which is correlated with age, of course) and the consequent quality of life.
That's my intuition as well: that someone who lists 90 as their ideal life span while young and then makes it to 89 without obtaining some debilitating and painful illness will change their mind about dying at 90. The fact that older people list higher ideal life spans despite being less gung-ho on life extension in principle suggests to me that "wanting to die eventually" is Far. I wouldn't be surprised if there was no age at which the median person wanted to die soon, no matter what their youthful ideals about aging may have been.