• dingus@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I always thought “middle aged” referred to someone in their 50s. I get that the average person doesn’t live to 100, but I thought that was the connotation that the phrase has.

      • TalesFromTheKitchen@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        I just checked, in the US it is 73 years, Europe it’s 77. I just eyeballed it, but yeah, I’m almost a middleaged man now. Crazy.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          You’re middle aged when your growth hormones still exist, but the levels are starting to drop. You know you’re middle-aged when you twist your ankle and it doesn’t heal for a really long time.

          When you start getting the injuries that don’t heal, that’s when you know.

          It’s not a numerical thing. It’s a phase of human life. As we extend lifespan with new medical technologies, the stages won’t stretch out to fill the lifespan; we’ll add new phases at the end.

          Those phases will be very strange, because they will involve drastic steps to maintain cognitive function in an aging brain. It could involve increasing top-down control of biology, or it would involve replacement of biology with machinery. Either way the new later stages of life will be stranger and stranger, and will feel different than any human experience does now.