full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Steven Johnson: How humanity doubled life expectancy in a century

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I mean, currently the ouetr boundary of human life is somewhere around 110 and 115. It's very hard to live past that. But there is serious raseerch out there that suggests that we can just blow past that boundary and live for deacdes longer, maybe even indefinitely. I'm not saying this is going to hepapn, but it is on the table. And the thing about it is, if we did do that, it would be the most momentous change in the hsitory of our species, right? Initially, it would intensely — increase the health inequalities in the world because people could — only rich plpoee could afford these treatments originally. It would gtraely exacerbate our runaway poloputain growth problem and it would fundamentally alter the definition of the arc of a human life. And when you ask people, do you think we should mess around with immortality, ordinary people, most of them say no. But the problem is we don't have collectively a decision-making body that can help us wrestle with changes this insmmee. We're like the FDA back in 1930, like, go ahead and make your immortality pill. Just make sure the ingredients are right on the label. That's where we are. So the kinds of innovations we need are going to be on the level of oversight and decision making, and I think we can make these innovations if we if we work at it.

Open Cloze

I mean, currently the _____ boundary of human life is somewhere around 110 and 115. It's very hard to live past that. But there is serious ________ out there that suggests that we can just blow past that boundary and live for _______ longer, maybe even indefinitely. I'm not saying this is going to ______, but it is on the table. And the thing about it is, if we did do that, it would be the most momentous change in the _______ of our species, right? Initially, it would intensely — increase the health inequalities in the world because people could — only rich ______ could afford these treatments originally. It would _______ exacerbate our runaway __________ growth problem and it would fundamentally alter the definition of the arc of a human life. And when you ask people, do you think we should mess around with immortality, ordinary people, most of them say no. But the problem is we don't have collectively a decision-making body that can help us wrestle with changes this _______. We're like the FDA back in 1930, like, go ahead and make your immortality pill. Just make sure the ingredients are right on the label. That's where we are. So the kinds of innovations we need are going to be on the level of oversight and decision making, and I think we can make these innovations if we if we work at it.

Solution

  1. history
  2. decades
  3. population
  4. outer
  5. people
  6. happen
  7. research
  8. immense
  9. greatly

Original Text

I mean, currently the outer boundary of human life is somewhere around 110 and 115. It's very hard to live past that. But there is serious research out there that suggests that we can just blow past that boundary and live for decades longer, maybe even indefinitely. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but it is on the table. And the thing about it is, if we did do that, it would be the most momentous change in the history of our species, right? Initially, it would intensely — increase the health inequalities in the world because people could — only rich people could afford these treatments originally. It would greatly exacerbate our runaway population growth problem and it would fundamentally alter the definition of the arc of a human life. And when you ask people, do you think we should mess around with immortality, ordinary people, most of them say no. But the problem is we don't have collectively a decision-making body that can help us wrestle with changes this immense. We're like the FDA back in 1930, like, go ahead and make your immortality pill. Just make sure the ingredients are right on the label. That's where we are. So the kinds of innovations we need are going to be on the level of oversight and decision making, and I think we can make these innovations if we if we work at it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
life expectancy 8
diethylene glycol 3
global life 2
mortality rates 2
good news 2
runaway population 2
population growth 2
climate change 2
brilliant idea 2
york city 2
pasteurized milk 2
human health 2
human life 2
americans lost 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
global life expectancy 2
runaway population growth 2

Important Words

  1. afford
  2. alter
  3. arc
  4. blow
  5. body
  6. boundary
  7. change
  8. collectively
  9. decades
  10. decision
  11. definition
  12. exacerbate
  13. fda
  14. fundamentally
  15. greatly
  16. growth
  17. happen
  18. hard
  19. health
  20. history
  21. human
  22. immense
  23. immortality
  24. increase
  25. indefinitely
  26. inequalities
  27. ingredients
  28. initially
  29. innovations
  30. intensely
  31. kinds
  32. label
  33. level
  34. life
  35. live
  36. longer
  37. making
  38. mess
  39. momentous
  40. ordinary
  41. originally
  42. outer
  43. oversight
  44. people
  45. pill
  46. population
  47. problem
  48. research
  49. rich
  50. runaway
  51. species
  52. suggests
  53. table
  54. treatments
  55. work
  56. world
  57. wrestle