Pending might be people who have been "hooked up to machines" for so long that they would need to have a debate over who lived the longest if one of these people made it.

Another bump. This thread is one of the few things I actually do on 2+2 nowadays!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ercentenarians

There are now 17 official 19th century-born living people, and 2 who are pending.

I sort of wish I had checked this once a month but I wasn't motivated enough. Reading through my previous bumps I see that I have recorded the following numbers of 19th century people on these dates:

January 2009-------100-130
November 2010-------70
December 2011-------37
November 2012-------21

This includes official and unofficial. In January 2009 I couldn't tell how many there were because everybody in the top 100 was born in the 19th century.

See you next year! I would guess there'll be about 13 left next year?

No more living WWI veterans. The last died this year, the last combat vet died last year, and the last American died last year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWI_veterans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ercentenarians

There are now only 11 left and it seems that they are dropping like flies. It looks like the half-life of this elite group is getting slightly shorter each year. It's hard to see them lasting another four years.

Noted there is only one 19th century male left on the planet. On the other hand, he's the oldest of them all.

Yeah, I wonder for what proportion of human history the oldest living human has been male? Serious outlier.

Think I'm recalling that when starting to read the Guinness book of records in my youth it was a male who was the oldest ever. Now the oldest ever is the French lady, who was 120+ years. Mega task for the Japanese guy if he's going to beat that.

She met Vincent van Gogh.

Can you deduce by looking at these lists of the oldest recorded/verified(?) currently (eg distribution in countries vs world population even that of ~1 century ago) that the truth about the entire planet can be significantly different and we get only a partial picture?

A quick glance tells me that Untited States and Japan are overrepresented.

Also a kind of personal question that obviously applies to all of us here probably more than the average population. What would the world (as we see it) look like if we were lucky(?) enough to pass 100 or even 110 say and be unable (unless science delivers a still possible for most of us break) to think and execute calculations, thought experiments, solve problems (we once had fun with), produce arguments ie mentally perform not nearly as well as once before? I wonder what it feels like to the brain to know that its decay is evident and recognizable? Maybe that is not true to the average human but it ought to feel a little bit tragic/devastating to the bright ones (maybe as much as it may feel to a supermodel or sex symbol of mainstream entertainment or even adult entertainment to have permanently lost that capacity to superficially influence men). I mean at some point we all recognize the reality of the inevitable outcome through various signs at a personal level, first say in speeds at running or say long jumping results or how fast we get tired playing eg basketball or tennis, then other things later with eg eyes and frequency of medical problems etc.

But the good news is that if you use your brain all your life and you learn something everyday, unlike the other general population people that were never particularly curious and intellectually active, you can be easily >70-80 and still have substantially good thinking capacity and skills, even be able to learn new things, that due to experience and education that never stopped can somewhat cover the deficit of pure IQ decline. So this can give the impression its still pretty interesting/productive overall to think about the world and imagine problems and their solutions etc. I mean your body betrays you gradually but you have a friend you can count on that will stick around! So you can go on for many decades with that comfort, even long after the body has started to be a significant frequent distraction.

The strong human can deal with that and can also anticipate the brain's decay as well and come to peace with the fact. But how do you recover emotionally in terms of mood when the brain has started to fail you in ways that it still allows it to be aware of it (what was once an anticipated projection is now a reality)? Is that a tragic recognition that you need to accept the natural path and embrace the fact that the others will now continue the game and you should feel good about them and eager to show them that (instead of being eg grumpy ) and see as your only redeeming purpose then maybe that of a tutor of a little kid or a great companion of an old friend or something easy going that is composed of active demonstrations of affection/love for the others? I think most people do not deal well with aging and modern society itself proves an unethical cultural monster in the way it conditions many to treat the elders (both directly and in implied terms) and this is why most old people are not happy and they do not inspire optimism, rather proliferate depression to others when interacting with them. I think its important to remain strong until the end and keep proving wrong the arrogance of society (to focus on superficial elements of ephemeral beauty seen in vividly embracing properties and interests of youth for example in most mainstream trends) through an active life even at the face of the betrayal of the most loyal friend you ever knew...Still the recognition of lets call it the final betrayal ought to be the ultimate tragedy of very old age. To even live and not to be aware of that betrayal must be one of the most cruel punishments time can deliver to intellect...

Since i dont want to finish with a negative thought i will take comfort in the conviction that when you have kept faithful to your friend all your life (brain) it will also take good care of you (prolong nicely the inevitable on average) and allow you the illusion that you are young at heart and capable of delivering rare gifts of success on occasion in something creative/interesting long after the average man has stopped feeling so. That and the love for (and of) others ought to be the defense against old age in my opinion to fight depression and pessimism evident in most old people.

^ another upside is you can reread with joy old books (films etc) you loved as you've forgotton much of what happened.

Unless there is a medical breakthrough it is a giant underdog that any will break the record. Its about the same that Secretariat's Belmont record will be broken in the next ten years. Think standard deviation.

this is an overstatement....

the medical "breakthroughs" in last 10 years have been dramatic, if the trend continues (looks like an exponential one) breaking of that record could be the norm.....

True. When looking at the first list, you can see there are 13 people 113 year old, 12 people 112 years, 29 people 111 years, and a lot of 110 (taking into account the other lists). But only one 114, 115 and 116. Looks that 113 year olds is what you can expect to have at all times on the planet. And if somebody goes beyond that, we are talking maybe 1-5 years with rapidly declining probability. That would be a forseeable maximum of 118 years. The 122 years just doesn't make sense. It's like Bob Beamon's long jump in the 1968 olympics (it finally got beaten though )

I think we will need true age reversing techniques for achieving significant increase of the number of people say 114+. I haven't heard something like that really is behind the corner. The normal breakthroughs can maybe give us some individuals more, but not en masse.

Not for ninety plus. John Adams lived to ninety and few people know that. Why? Because it was no big deal even back then. When I was a kid the oldest person was about 113. Eighty five is the new seventy. But 105 is the new 103.

well, you know, the structural damage to human body has (as every complex system) an accumulation point after you get rapid degradation of performance per unit of damage/malfunction. So naturally 103 -> 105 since that degradation point is before the year 103. you are simply pushing that point further back to get more quality life years per person and we are currently around 50 to 60 years in life in developed world where, based on your habits, that break occurs. Also most current oldies don't have the medicine profession on their side tackling the aging problems, but the exploitation (viruses etc.) problems. Plus todays oldies are to old to reap benefits of the last 10 years.

P.S. Additional plus, for vivid readers, the current jump from 40 to 80 year life is been sprung by reduction in damage from exploitation and excessive labor damage. Human bodies working in highly suboptimal conditions so to say. You'll certainly have a natural decay in structural quality of human cells as they decade and loose information/gain entropy. We've barely touched that.

Wanted to look at how old the second oldest in history really was, so googled and found lists you can spend minutes on reading! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people

The second oldest in history was 119. Nobody 118, two 117 and five 116. Mrs Calment really does look like an serious outlier with her 122.

But we can also note that the top ten all have lived maximally 20 years ago, so we may see some serious challengers in the future if the trend continues...

I think it would be difficult to determine if our max age has been steadily increasing or not since we can't really trust records from 150+ years ago, leaving us with a fairly small sample of the oldest geezers to compare. A quick glance at this Wiki page shows how much credit we can give to past reports. So, assuming our record keeping is now fairly trustworthy and we can keep it that way, maybe we can get a large enough sample size to come to a consensus. I'll check back here in about 50 years.

And the winner is, not as we expected Methuselah, but En-men-lu-ana!

The reason why medical breakthroughs don't increase max age much even though it greatly increases average age is because old age itself is the biggest cause of death rather than disease. Put mathematically suppose there used to be a two percent chance of contracting a deadly disease that doctors reduced to one percent. Meanwhile at age 100 there is a ten percent chance that age itself will kill you and that this figure goes up by three percent a year.

Sounds reasonable for a while. Old age is likely to come under serious medical attack fairly soon though. Plenrty of work going on with Telomeres etc.

Was just gonna post about telomeres actually...

Thing about lengthening telomeres is a greater chance of cancer. Lot of speculation that telomere lengthening wouldn't actually increase life span.