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Society Has Everything Wrong About Ageing | Andrew Scott | Modern Wisdom Podcast 201

Andrew Scott is an economist and an author. Society has never been so old and yet never had so long still to live. More women had children over the age of 40 than under the age of 20 in 2019 and 1 in 5 women born today will reach 100 years old. What does this ageing globe mean for how we should see our life's journey? How should public policy be changed? And what are we going to do with all these old people (including ourselves)? Sponsor: Sign up to FitBook at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (enter code MODERNWISDOM for 50% off your membership) Extra Stuff: Buy The New Long Life - https://amzn.to/3eO9NUd Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #longevity #ageing #health - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Andrew ScottguestChris Williamsonhost
Jul 25, 202059mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:41

    Intro

    1. AS

      And so one of the ways I sort of visualize things is it's like you're playing a computer game, you've got these four indicators: finances, skills, relationships, and health, and then your ability to deal with change. And what you've got to make sure is that none of them are going in the red. So, it's fine if you're focusing on money right now, as long as you think, "Actually, when am I going to update my skills? When am I going to invest in my relationships?" And so they're aware that there will come a point where you have to flip. And similarly, if you're just focusing on skills, like, that's great, you're building up your skills but what about the other things? And that's why I think life has gotten more complicated 'cause life over 70 years and the three-stage life, all those things were taken care of just by following what everyone else did. That won't work anymore. You have to do things differently.

  2. 0:41 – 2:00

    Society Has Everything Wrong About Ageing

    1. CW

      I'm joined by Andrew Scott. Andrew, welcome to the show.

    2. AS

      Nice to, to talk to you, Chris, a pleasure to be here.

    3. CW

      Lovely to have you here. So, we're talking about getting older, kind of.

    4. AS

      Yeah. Uh, and I'm an old man at 55. Although not an old man at 55, that's one of the things. So, uh, I work along the area of longevity, I'm an economist, and I kind of think society's got something wrong because we keep talking about this aging society. You know, there's, the birthrate's declining, people are living for longer, so there's more old people. Which is certainly true. I mean, the number of people aged over 65 is growing everywhere, uh, over 80 is growing. The fastest-growing age group are the number of people aged over 100. For the first time ever, the world today has more people aged over 65 than under five, you kind of get the story. And the general problem is, that's seen as a challenge 'cause old people are a problem, they get ill, they don't work, they, you know, they claim a pension and we can't afford it. But actually, I think we need to flip it around and actually look what's really happening, which is on average, we're living for longer and we're healthier for longer. So, whatever age you are, you've got a lot more time ahead of you. And certainly, the younger you are, the more time you have got ahead of you. So, the UK government in 2018 said one in five girls would live, born today, would live to be 100.

  3. 2:00 – 3:32

    Age 100

    1. AS

      So-

    2. CW

      One in five girls is going to be-

    3. AS

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... triple f- triple figures. The Queen's-

    5. AS

      And that's-

    6. CW

      ... going to be knackered-

    7. AS

      Exactly.

    8. CW

      ... writing all those letters.

    9. AS

      I, it's, well, I'm, I mean, the Queen used, apparently used to have one person sending the telegrams at 100, now she's got a department of seven.

    10. CW

      (laughs)

    11. AS

      Um, in Japan they used to send out a silver sake dish when you reached 100. They've scrapped it now 'cause they couldn't afford to do it 'cause so many people are reaching age 100. Um, and that, but the thing is, we kind of therefore, what that means is everyone will have... So, the average Brit has never been so old but never had so long left to live.

    12. CW

      What an odd paradox.

    13. AS

      Yeah. So, kind of, if you've got more time ahead of you, in a way you're kind of younger, not older. But you know, the, what this is, the way I put it is as follows. You see these big increases in life expectancy, but we haven't changed our concepts of age, 'cause we measure age by the number of candles on your birthday cake. And of course, 12 months is always 12 months, but how we're aging is changing. We're actually aging better. So, biological age and chronological age are, are breaking out a little bit, their relationship. And if you look at the scientific research happening, they say wow, you haven't seen anything yet, some wild things are gonna happen. You know, everyone's going to live to 120 and be healthy forever is kind of what some people are saying. But this is really about having more time and what I always say is that, you know, if your day went from 24 hours to 32 hours, which is like life expectancy getting longer, you'd run your day differently. I mean, what would you do, Chris? Would you get out of bed the same time and go to sleep the same time? What would you do?

    14. CW

      Oh, absolutely not.

    15. AS

      If the day went from 24 to 32?

  4. 3:32 – 5:36

    What superpower would you have

    1. AS

    2. CW

      Someone asked me, "What superpower would you have if you could have one?" And I said, "Never need to sleep." And that's essentially the equivalent of what you've just given me there. Oh, God.

    3. AS

      (laughs) That's great.

    4. CW

      If you gave me, if you gave me another eight hours in my waking day, it would be, it would be glorious. But then Parkinson's Law, right, you expand your work to fill the time that's given for it. Like, it would be, it would be phenomenal. I mean, the, the moon is going to slow the earth's rotation over the next couple of billion years sufficiently-

    5. AS

      (laughs)

    6. CW

      ... that we're going to end up with some really, really long days, you know?

    7. AS

      I didn't know that. That's a good one. But, you know, so, so, so the... But let's, let's push this metaphor a bit more because we kind of think that this longer life is all the years come at the end of life. But it's not actually. It... in a way, if you think about where these extra years have come from, they kind of come at late middle-age. It fits like someone's inserted kind of another 20 years at age 50. And that then raises all sorts of issues because as the day, you know, going, taking the day from 24 to 32 hours, you know, I, I, I would probably get out of bed earlier and go to bed later and I'd have a lovely sleep in the middle of the day. And I would probably not have three meals, I'd probably have five meals, hopefully smaller meals or I'd never reach-

    8. CW

      (laughs) I was gonna say.

    9. AS

      ... the sort of the 100. Um, and I'd still call them breakfast, lunch and dinner but I'd shift them and they would be different and at different times and I'd invent... And that's kind of what's happening with this life expectancy increase. In the 20th Center, we created teenagers and pensioners. They didn't used to exist before the 20th Center. So, with life expectancy gains, we created these two new stages of life. Previously, you just had children and adults. You didn't have teenagers. And of course, as life is getting longer, I think you're also seeing major changes in behavior. So, people are now getting married at 30 rather than 20, they're having kids in their 30s rather than 20s. Um, again, another kind of weird stat. Uh, I think last year in the UK for the first time ever, um, more women over 40 had a child than women under 20.

    10. CW

      No way.

    11. AS

      Which is a massive change. So-

    12. CW

      That's a huge,

  5. 5:36 – 7:10

    The dating market

    1. CW

      huge difference. And also, I, you know, we've been talking about it a lot on here, evolution and the dating market and the, um, brutal, evolution's brutal travesty about women is the, the narrow window that they have to, to have, uh, children in. And that stat, that more women have children-

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      ... over 40 than under 20-

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... is really, you know, it's great news for a lot of women.

    6. AS

      A- a- absolutely, but of course, you'll then see all sorts of changes happen. So the other one is that on average, the divorce rate is falling in the UK, and I think that's because people are getting married later. They kind of know themselves better and blah, blah, blah. Um, that's not to say you can't succeed if you get married early, but I- I- it's sort of, you know, uh, I think that's it. And although the divorce rate is falling on average, you're actually seeing the divorce rate rise amongst the over 50s. And I think, j- doing some back of the envelope calculations, it's probably growing fastest amongst the over 80s. Um, so, you know, I can't think of a better stat about longevity than divorces rising in the 80s, 'cause, uh, you know, it's a kind of a sign of how long you've been together and how much more time there still is to go. You're seeing rises of STDs amongst people aged over 60, 'cause you're getting so much more dating happening in this sort of remarrying market.

    7. CW

      (laughs) Oh, God.

    8. AS

      Um, so, uh, there, you know, th- these are kind of deep changes in how we structure our life. And of course, the younger you are, the bigger the implications. And of course, one of them, you said, you know, maybe work expands to fill the time available, some of those years, you're gonna have to spend working for longer.

  6. 7:10 – 9:54

    The New Long Life

    1. AS

    2. CW

      Well, yeah. Previously, if you only had 15 years or 10 years left after retiring-

    3. AS

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... you didn't really need to be too concerned about what the pot of gold was that you had kept... saved up in your, in your ISA or whatever it was at the time.

    5. AS

      Exactly.

    6. CW

      Whereas now, that's, that's all going to change. So there's so much to get into. I mean, to start, to start with, uh, The New Long Life, which is your book, why, why did you feel like that needed to be written? Just to kind of, uh, open this door, break the fourth wall to people so they actually understand what's going on?

    7. AS

      Yeah. So, uh, in 2016, we wrote The 100-Year Life, which was about th- the, this, you know, the day going as to work from 24 to 32 hours and what that means, and we were sort of saying, it, it changes careers, it changes relationships, changes how you plan your life. And then what we were trying to do is put a positive s- narrative around aging and saying, "Actually, the really good news is you're living longer and you're healthier for longer, you've got more time. And it's not at the end of life, you can use it across all of life." So it was like a liberating story. One of the feedback we got was, "Oh, great, I'm gonna have to work for longer. Where are the jobs gonna come from? There's this tech coming along. And, you know, that's gonna take over our lives. It's gonna make us all jobless." And I think, yeah, what's interesting is these two phenomena of aging and smart... you know, AI and robotics. I call it the Frankenstein syndrome. You know, there are... We're fearful of these great inventions. We've added years to life. We've got this wonderful new technology coming along, but we think it's gonna be a bad outcome. So the question is, neither of them are destiny. We can shape them as we see fit. So how do you prepare for these forces? What do you want to get out of them? And then how do we make sure society achieves that? And I think, you know, this to me is the key thing, we're, we are about to see some pretty fundamental changes in life and work, and we've got to make sure it works for us as people and as a society. So we need to start saying, "I want this and not that." When the Industrial Revolution first happened, you know, you saw GDP improve, you saw this great new technology, but it was a pretty bad experience socially for lots of people. You know, wages didn't rise, anxiety was high, uh, living conditions were poor. And then after a while, you started to see trade unions and labor movement, and they said, "This is what we want from it." And so we then saw, you know, the working week go from six and a half days to, uh, six days to five days. We got the weekend, we got bank holidays, uh, we got all sorts of changes to make sure that it could actually work for us socially. And that's kind of why we wrote The New Long Life. We have these smart new technology, these longer lives. Rather than be frightened by them, how do you make sure we actually seize the advantages of

  7. 9:54 – 11:58

    How do we seize the advantages

    1. AS

      them?

    2. CW

      Are people gonna be working until they're 75 then and 80? Is this realistic?

    3. AS

      Well, I think they will, and they are. I mean, uh, it's quite staggering what's already happening. Um, but yeah, I mean, we did some s- I did some simple calculations in The 100-Year Life which sort of says, if you're gonna live to 100 and you're prepared to save, say, 10% uh, a year of your income, which is pretty a- ambitious, and you want to retire on half of your final salary, you'll probably work into your late 70s. So, um, yeah. That's, that's... So then the immediate thought is, "Wow, God,, y- how's that gonna work? Because if I start work at 20 and I carry on doing the same thing until my mid-70s, that sounds pretty dull."

    4. CW

      (laughs)

    5. AS

      Um, and, you know, I'm going to get bored, uh, and also, will I keep my job or will something happen? So this is where we say we're seeing a major shift. And, you know, your listeners, I think, will be already aware of this. I think it's more of a shock to older people. But the three-stage life that was invented in the 20th century of education followed by a career followed by retirement is already disappearing. Retirement's kind of already gone. There's no point where everyone suddenly stops working. And you're seeing more and more people over 50, over 60, over 70 working. I think one in 10 Brits over 70 are working, and that number is just rising. So we're seeing it there, but we're then seeing changes right the way along the career path, because of course, you do things differently. Uh, and yeah, for instance, one of the things we see is a lot of entrepreneurship by people in their 70s and people in their 20s. And I think you can kind of u- understand why, because, you know, if we have got this longer path, how do we use it to our advantage? And I think that gives us more time to investigate and explore. You certainly don't want to commit so early. Options become more important the longer the horizon you hold them for. So again, not marrying early perhaps is a way of keeping your options open, discovering what you like and what you're good at rather than rushing into the first job. You know, these are all possibilities that we can try and experiment with.

  8. 11:58 – 14:43

    Young people and their jobs

    1. AS

    2. CW

      So that explains away the fact that I'm still single at 32.

    3. AS

      Yes, and you're a young man, Chris.

    4. CW

      Thank you. So that's wh- what you're saying, Andrew, is that actually it's, it's perhaps the most prudent approach.

    5. AS

      (laughs) Indeed.

    6. CW

      And not, and, and not that I'm just hopeless, hopelessly single. Um, yeah, it, it's so interesting to see the way that people's relationships with their jobs have changed, right? Like, you know, we've got-

    7. AS

      Yeah.

    8. CW

      ... my core, uh, industry is nightlife, so I take students, 18 and 19 year olds, these rough-hewn rocks, and try and buff them into brilliant entrepreneurial gemstones-

    9. AS

      Magic.

    10. CW

      ... over the course of three years. Uh, and I see these kids, we've got some of the guys that work for us who, at 19, 20 years old, are beasts, absolute freak savages when it comes to being able to think laterally, to problem solve-

    11. AS

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      ... to, uh, be able to deal with the chaos of being in a nightlife environment, for instance. And you think like, um, only in the gap of 14 years between me at 32 and them at 18, 19, I'm sit- I wasn't anywhere near as mature as that. And that's only in this p- time period, right? So you're starting to see young people being older and old people being younger.

    13. AS

      Yes. Well, I think that's, and I think that's kind of right, because in that, that three-stage life sort of age and stage come together. But in a multi-stage life, you can kind of... And by multi-stage life, I mean you're gonna have several different parts to your career. And, and this is just talking about longevity, let alone things like technology coming into play. But you're gonna want to do different things at different points and time. It may be this is the time to focus on relationships, it may be a time to focus on skills and learning, or making money, or making a contribution in society, and you're gonna flip all those around. And that does require a certain flexibility, and I think actually that's where, uh, I mean, particularly as you get older, it's gonna be more important to sort of be young. Um, so adolescence is meant to be a time of change where it's kind of, kinda scary because you're no longer the child you were, but you're not yet the adult you're g- gonna be. And that's exciting 'cause I could be anyone, but it's also terrifying 'cause who am I?

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. AS

      Uh, and we have all these institutions to help people through that, but in a way, we're gonna see that more and more at every age because, you know, you will find people in their 30s or their 50s or their 70s saying, "You know what? I'm gonna- I've got another 20, 30 years ahead of me, another 50 years. I wanna do something different." So how do you go through that process of change? And as a teenager, we kind of accept it, but we now gotta try and accept it at other stages. And that's, that's tricky. So that, in a way, is a transition that just kind of binds lots of different people together.

    16. CW

      I'll tell you

  9. 14:43 – 16:19

    The secret of age

    1. CW

      what I would absolutely love. I would love to see someone in their 70s rocking up to do a- an undergraduate degree, you know?

    2. AS

      Well, they are doing it, you say, and so, I mean, th- so this is a really good im- point and, you know, I think we've got a bit messed up as a society about age 'cause we think... So the, the, the real secret of age is we age very diversely. So s- so, so if you accept that chronological age is not a good measure of biological age, you're gonna age differently because of bad luck, the environment that you live in, and 'cause of your own diet, behavior, and healthcare. So actually what happens as you get older, you see this great diversity in how people age. You can be l- you know, like Colonel Tom Moore in your 100s raising millions for charity or you could be in a wheelchair at 50. So actually the older you get, the less relevant age as a number is. But we really just assume that age tells you something and that therefore everyone over 65 is the same. Now you wouldn't dream of saying everyone under 35 is the same, but we kind of say it for the over 65s. But that three-stage life of education, work, retirement led to lots of age segregation. We've kind of lost this intergenerational mixing, and I think that's, that's really important. So your idea of sort of people in their 70s going back to university, uh, it's actually hap- a number of places are doing it. Uh, and of course, it's gotta be a slightly different program with some overlap, but we have lost a lot of that intergenerational mixing, which is why we have all these dreadful stereotypes around about Gen X, Baby Boomers, Millennials, which I think really get in the way of just seeing people as people.

  10. 16:19 – 17:48

    Generational labels

    1. AS

    2. CW

      Is that a byproduct of just the period of change, that inevitably you do need to categorize some people into this is the, um, this is the epoch of the world that you lived through and this is the epoch of the world that I lived through, and because of the pace of change, those epochs, whereas previously might've been-

    3. AS

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... 100 years or 50 years are now like a 10-year gap?

    5. AS

      So I think, you know, that, that's the theory, and certainly, um, you know, they're a modern invention, these generational labels. They didn't used to exist. I, I, I think there's something in them, uh, and you're absolutely right, that sort of theory that, you know, as the world changes, this 10 years is different from that 10 years. But, but you kinda know that change doesn't happen quite so discretely. You know, we can't point to that, "Oh, well, that's what caused that change." Uh, so there everyone's, everything's a little bit overlapping. And I think, you know, for me, the trouble with the generational stuff is not that there isn't something there. Of course there is. Uh, you know, a child who's brought up playing with an iPad from an early age can be very different from one who, you know, for whom, you know, the telephone was, uh, uh, something, uh, uh, to use.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    7. AS

      So there's clearly gonna be a difference, but of course what you see as technology spreads throughout society, look at what's happening in COVID, old people are using technology a lot more, so it does spread through. So I think the, the, the danger of the generation stuff is too far. I, I, there's a whiff of, um, I call it demographic astrology. I don't know if you like horoscopes.

  11. 17:48 – 19:38

    You were born in

    1. AS

      But the idea-

    2. CW

      Um, I, I don't, but my, my, my mum does, so be careful what you say or you'll be getting-

    3. AS

      Well, people like th-

    4. CW

      ... you'll be getting a, a message on Instagram or something.

    5. AS

      (laughs) People like them. But the idea that your character is firmly pinned down by precise dates you were born in I think can be limiting, and you know, if I think of the difference between the average Millennial...... and the average baby boomer. I think that's quite small compared to the differences amongst millennials and amongst baby boomers. So, uh, it's, it's too easy a way of stereotyping. I think it's useful to think about young and old, and there are real tensions there, but I'm not quite sure how much insight we get from calling someone a ba- And I'll tell you why it worries me, because it becomes a zero-sum game. And why that's important is that, you know, come back to some of the stats again. Uh, 100 years ago, in 1920 when the Spanish influenza happened, a 20-year-old had a 50% chance of making it to 70. So, most young people didn't become old. Today, it's 90%. So basically, young people are gonna become old in a way that they've never done before. And this is where some of the ageism becomes a problem, because it's kind of a prejudice against your future self. Uh, a- and so, you know, I, I think, you know, when you've got this long life ahead of you, you've got to think about different stages and different ways. And sadly, the young aren't young forever. Although, if the scientists get their way, perhaps that will happen. Um, and I think w- we, we forget that, you know, this, you know, you're always a millennial, you're always a baby boomer, but millennials are getting quite old now. They're, you know, they're middle-aged. The, the, um, you know, it's the Gen X are now the younger ones, or Alpha gen or whatever's coming through. And w- I think that's a better way of looking at things than just saying, "You're that group, I'm this group." There's a constant conflict between

  12. 19:38 – 23:01

    A machine will take our jobs

    1. AS

      us.

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm. I get it. So, are machines gonna take our jobs? You looked at technology and technological change a lot. Am I gonna be replaced-

    3. AS

      (clears throat)

    4. CW

      ... by a, a robot on a microphone in a couple of years' time?

    5. AS

      Uh, y- you might be. Um ...

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. AS

      So, I, I don't think ... So there's this smart technology coming along. I, I don't th- I mean, it depends how smart the technology gets. There's, in, in the past, technology is what's made us richer. It hasn't created mass unemployment. It's created higher productivity, higher wages and a shorter working week. And let's hope that happens. It's pretty clear that AI, uh, is going to change the jobs we do, and it's gonna change how you do them. So, even if you don't lose your job, what you do is gonna change. So, the way economists look at this is they look at a job as being made up of lots of different tasks. So just bear with me on this one. So, a job may involve 20 or 30 tasks. I'm a, uh, economics professor, I've got to do research, I've got to teach, I've got to grade, and I have to go to endless meetings.

    8. CW

      (laughs)

    9. AS

      So, the question is, which of those tasks can be automated? And if you look at what AI is doing, the first set of tasks it's started to get rid of were what are called routine, uh, sort of, kind of non-thinking tasks. Tasks that you can just write a list of processes and the machine can do it. So back-office processing, cheque clearing, that type of stuff. Now what you're getting with technology is it's starting to do two other things. It's starting to do routine cognitive tasks. So what's that? That's things like marketing, legal advice, accounting, financial advice. The sort of the, the standard stuff, like give me a bunch of numbers and tell me what to do with a marketing plan, give me a bunch of numbers and calculate an investment plan. That can all be done by AI, and is increasingly doing so. So all those tasks are starting to get done. The other set of tasks that is happening is things like driverless cars, that are non-routine, so, you know, it's unpredictable, but sort of instinctive rather than analytical. And they're also disappearing. So, it depends how much of your job is made up with a task that can be automated, and then how much that you're gonna shift into the other tasks. So I think in terms of me as a professor, we'll probably get grading done by robots and AI. Uh, possibly teaching done, uh, remotely. But then I'll have more meetings and more research on how to-

    10. CW

      (laughs) Which I'm sure, it sounds like you're absolutely thrilled about the idea of more meetings.

    11. AS

      Uh, yeah, exactly. Uh, but, uh, so, you know, there are things that we as humans will always be best at. And I think the best way of thinking about what's gonna happen in the labor market is that as machines become more machine-like, your advantage is in being more human-like. So what is it to be more human? It's caring, sharing, empathy. But also sort of decision-making under uncertainty, ambiguity, leadership, those sorts of things. So that's kind of where the jobs of the future, I think, are. Um, not necessarily in the sort of, "Let me be ever smarter than the machine." But it does require, you know, everyone's in a race with technology. If your education keeps ahead of technology, you're doing okay. So we all need to advance our education. But also it's gonna require different skills. 'Cause as I say, I think most people won't lose their job, but what their job is will change. So there's gonna be a lot of upskilling and re-skilling required here.

  13. 23:01 – 24:20

    How to be antifragile

    1. AS

    2. CW

      If you were someone now who is considering re-skilling themselves, how would you make someone anti-fragile for the next couple of decades in the job market?

    3. AS

      Yeah. And, and, you know, um, so one temptation of course is to, uh, um, uh, get involved in coding and science. And, and there's lots of jobs in, uh, the AI world for that. The evidence suggests though that probably just keeps your job for 10 years, 'cause soon it becomes out of date and you need to do something else. So I think the first thing is to accept that probably, you know, there's no job that's gonna be secure for 20, 30 years. Um, so you may have to be continually evolving and changing. Um, but one of the most important things is just learning how to learn and to be flexible. And also finding out what it is that you like, because if you're gonna be doing something for a long while, it's important that it's the right thing for you. So that experimentation is also very, very important. But in general, you know, it's a combination of what we call T-shaped learning. It's going deep in one dimension, and then broad in others. And then every now and then you'll have a, you know, your career will change because you've gone deep in a subject that it'll need to evolve and shift into something different. So it is facing up to the fact that probably every 10, 15 years, you're gonna have to do a major re-skilling or re-orientation.

  14. 24:20 – 28:33

    Thinking long term

    1. CW

      That's so interesting. It's funny listening to how, uh, the rhetoric that you're putting across ties in with so much stuff that we've touched on recently. Uh, Dr. Adam Hart, who wrote, uh, Unfit for Purpose, which is, uh, an assessment of our evolutionary heritage and how it's misaligned with modern society, saying all the same things, right? We're just, we're, uh, Gayle Golden, Curating Your Life, which is looking at how the work-life balance is done. Again, it's all the same stuff. And, uh, we had Peter C. Brown, Learning to Learn, uh, Make It Stick creator.

    2. AS

      Okay.

    3. CW

      We had him on. This is two years ago. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back and check it out, it's awesome. Um, uh, but yeah, we had him on, and he was talking about that, that the ultimate ability, the ultimate anti-fragile skill is to learn to learn.

    4. AS

      It is. And that's so interesting. So there's a number of things there I wanna pick up on, which is really, you know, as you say, fits in with everything I'm saying. The first is that with this longer life, one of the great skills is gonna be thinking long term. And that's not something we're hardwired to do. Most of human existence has been just surviving to the end of the day, let alone planning, uh, 80, 90 years ahead.

    5. CW

      (laughs)

    6. AS

      Um, and that, that, that's gonna be a challenge. I mean, certainly, uh, for me it is. Um, but the other thing is, in thinking longer term, you've gotta just rewind... First of all, you mustn't kind of copy what your parents do, because your life will be longer than theirs. But you've gotta think about investing in a range of, I call it assets because I'm an economist, and some of that is financial. But actually, the most important things that you'll need to see you through this life will be your skills, your relationships, your health, and your sense of identity that can navigate you through these processes of change. And that's gonna kind of be a great opportunity, because I think one of the great things about living for a long time is then it can be your life. You know, it, it gets a bit Buddhist-like. You know, I'm gonna go through lots of stages, what is it that makes it all hang together? But that, that sort of thinking long term, reinventing yourself, and then managing to staple it together is important. And, you know, this is where the, the jobs are gonna be very different, because the other thing that AI is gonna do is not just cause lots of changes to your career, but we're seeing jobs now, sometimes you have a job where I go to a place of work and I have an employer who pays me money. But we're increasingly seeing jobs also being specified in terms of tasks. So in the gig economy, I have a task and I get paid for that task. And I don't have an employer, I just have someone who pays me for that task. And over this long career, you're gonna go through a whole bunch of cycles where sometimes you've got a job, sometimes it's more task-based, sometimes it's flexible work, sometimes it's, uh, um, uh, not contingent, it's a proper job. Sometimes you'll be working on site, sometimes you'll be working at home. So you're gonna be cycling through all of these different stages. And sometimes it will be a choice. You know, I, I don't want that full-time job, I wanna work in the gig economy. Other times, I'm gonna be, "Shit, I really want a job, but I'm stuck in the gig economy." So it's gonna be a lot adaptable, and I think that leads to some big changes, because you mentioned work-life balance. I don't want to get too historical here, but I, I would hazard a guess that work-life balance came in with the Industrial Revolution, because what the Industrial Revolution did was create a place of work and a place of home. Before then, everything kind of happened in the home or in the fields, and there wasn't a separation between a place of work and a home, there wasn't a separation between work and leisure. There probably wasn't much leisure and it was all work, but it was kind of blended together. And then we get this work-life balance. How do I get my life at home and my work done here? But in this world of these evolving jobs, work I think will take on a much broader meaning, because sometimes you'll be doing work where you're not getting paid for it, because you're brushing up on your skills to get another job, or I'm doing some marketing hoping to get a job, or I'm networking, or I'm doing some charity work. And it's a sense of productive use of time, but I'm not getting a check for it. And viewed like that, I'm not sure work-life balance even exists anymore. It's kind of just all blended into one, which many people are finding with COVID as they work from home anyway. But it's a very different way of structuring a career and how you think about things.

  15. 28:33 – 31:04

    Managing wealth

    1. AS

    2. CW

      From, uh, as I've got the fortune of being able to ask an economist this. From a personal finances perspective-

    3. AS

      (laughs)

    4. CW

      ... what is your view, in this case, on managing wealth? Is the most optimal approach, as far as you're concerned, to front-load wealth acquisition, to downplay liabilities early in life, and then to be able to iterate on that compounding effect as much as you can? Or is it to live your life, and then because you've got long enough to continue to earn as you get older? Where do you sit on this spectrum?

    5. AS

      So because I, I kind of think of lots of things as being an asset, not just money, you're gonna get compounding on everything. You're gonna get compounding on your health. You're gonna get compounding on relationships. So it's really a question of, of balance. I think the financial one is interesting, because in this multi-stage life, you could spend the first 10, 15 years not earning money, you know, sort of washing your face financially, but that's just, you know, that's just the aim of it, and then saying, "Right, I need money."

    6. CW

      Crack on.

    7. AS

      Or you could be working really hard to get money to give you freedom later. I think in the end, part of that is gonna be about you as a personality, about your attitude to risk, and, you know, uh, "I've got the money locked down, that's good." Um, so it's really about thinking about how your future then may unfold, and, you know, it could well be that's great getting the money, but of course, you may be missing opportunities which won't come again later. So it- it's now a lot more complicated. And sorry if that's sort of, uh, wimping out from the answer-

    8. CW

      (laughs)

    9. AS

      ... but any investment advice has to be tailored for the person.

    10. CW

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      And I think it's totally legitimate not to focus on finances early on. I think actually the really big value of this new stage of life is exploring, not committing. And normally earning large amounts of money involves some form of commitment. But, you know, heck, if it's, if it bothers you, the money, um, if you can get a job that you really enjoy that brings in money, go for it. But I think, um...... yeah, uh, and certainly compound interest really helps. The, the, the best advice I ever heard is just to however much you're earning, try and put aside a fixed percentage into a long-term pot. Um, and I think that's right, even if it's just, you know, five pounds a week or something like that. Um, it, it, it really does make a difference. Um, so that, that would be the, the, the best advice. But that's not about basing everything around money.

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. AS

      It's just making sure you have a pot that is that long-term pot.

  16. 31:04 – 32:13

    Explore exploit paradigm

    1. AS

    2. CW

      I like it, yeah. It's, uh, it's interesting to hear the explore/exploit paradigm come back out again. It must be... It's like one in four guests talks about-

    3. AS

      Interesting.

    4. CW

      ... talks about that. Um, more, more guests in this year than I can, than I can name have come up with th- that dynamic.

    5. AS

      So, uh, so one of the ways in The 100-Year Life I sort of visualized things was just like you're playing a computer game. You've got these four, uh, indicators, finances, uh, skills, um, h- relationships and health, and then your ability to deal with change. And what you've got to make sure is that none of them are going in the red. So, it's fine if you're focusing on money right now as long as you think, "Actually, when am I going to update my skills? When am I going to invest in my relationships?" And so they're aware that there will come a point where you have to flip. And similarly, if you're just focusing on skills, like, that's great, you're building up your skills, but what about the other things? And that's why I think life has gotten more complicated because a life over 70 years and a three-stage life, all those things were taken care of just by following what everyone else did. That won't work anymore. You have to do things differently.

  17. 32:13 – 35:30

    Changing dynamic

    1. CW

      It's, it's interesting this, this changing dynamic, uh, especially again having spoken to, uh, Professor Adam Hart about our misalignment with our evolutionary heritage, who, who we are physiologically, biologically, and what this environment is doing to us. Um, without the old examples being set by the people that are ahead of us, there's no...

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      You know, I, I lead such an incredibly different life from my parents.

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      So unbelievably different from when they were at my age and also from when I will be at their age. So it's like when do you... when do you learn, right? There's no one here teaching us-

    6. AS

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      ... accruing us wisdom. You know, there isn't.

    8. AS

      There isn't, uh, and that's both, you know, l- it's, it's called liminality, that sense of sort of, you know, in-betweenness where you're neither, you know, betwixt and between. Of course, it's, it can be exciting because it's like I can, you know, I don't have to do what everyone else did. But I think for, for that, the other thing you need to do is to look around you and see what others are doing and, and how they're experimenting, going, "Oh, that looks interesting."

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AS

      I mean, it was, as part of The 100-Year Life, I started reading up about how we invented teenagers, and it's kind of-

    11. CW

      That's fun. (laughs)

    12. AS

      ... just fun how we invented teenagers. Uh, you know, for most of human history, you became, went from a child to being an adult, and it occurred sometime between 12 and 14. And then suddenly with the Industrial Revolution, we extend, uh, schooling. Uh, and suddenly, you know, people at school till 14, 16, and now 18. And then it's like, "Shit, what do we do with these young adults without responsibility?" And it took about 60 years to work it out. It's so interesting. So, you know, the, the first sort of stuff was things like, uh, the Bobby Soxers and the... Oh, no. The first thing was like the Boy Scouts and the Boys' Brigade. It was stick them in uniform, give them some discipline.

    13. CW

      (laughs)

    14. AS

      And, you know, that, that's what you do with them.

    15. CW

      Children, little children army, yeah.

    16. AS

      Yeah, then it was, uh, the Bobby Soxers, which is sort of, you know, uh, it's being middle-aged when you're young. And then kind of James Dean comes along, and it's like, "That's it. That's what teenage years are." Uh, so it took 40, 50 years for society to work out how to use that time. And now, of course, we all know what teenagers are, and we know what they do. It's kind of a rite of passage. But we're seeing the same thing I think in people's 20s. I think we're also seeing the same thing in people's 50s, where, um, used to be called a midlife crisis, but now I think it's called something different. And also people in their 70s behaving very, very, very differently. I mean, I have... Uh, the, you know, the average age of The Rolling Stones, I don't know if this is good or a bad example, is like mid-70s or something. Uh, and, and, so that's it's a very-

    17. CW

      Paul, Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney turned like 72 the other day, didn't he?

    18. AS

      Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. But then of course you see other things, like, I think... How old is Prince Charles? Is he 71? And so-

    19. CW

      Uh, whatever they're giving the royals, man, like whatever they're doing to them. They... Some NAD booster direct from-

    20. AS

      Well, that's the

    21. CW

      ... Doctor David Sinclair.

    22. AS

      ... World Health Center.

    23. CW

      Oh, yeah, well... (laughs)

    24. AS

      There's quite a lot of it, a lot of... But, um, yeah, no. The David Sinclair stuff. But, uh, you know, but he's 71, and he still hasn't got the job. That's the interesting thing.

    25. CW

      (laughs) Yeah.

    26. AS

      Because of course, if people are living for longer...

    27. CW

      How long am I supposed to wait for this thing?

    28. AS

      Yeah, he's going to be the oldest monarch. If he comes to the throne, he'll be the oldest monarch ever to have come to the throne.

    29. CW

      Well, I mean, a perfect example of this as well, let's look at the, um, presidential candidates.

    30. AS

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  18. 35:30 – 36:32

    Comparing to JFK

    1. AS

      Uh-

    2. CW

      Everyone's getting older. And people say... I mean, the criticisms about Biden seem to actually hold, hold true. But, uh, people are saying like, "How can you have..." They compare them to JFK, right, who's this sort of young, vibrant guy. Uh, and you think, "Well, yeah, but in this new frontier, it's actually like is 70..." 70 is like-

    3. AS

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... what? Like s- maybe 55 or 60 now.

    5. AS

      Exactly.

    6. CW

      And 40 back then is probably closer to like 55 now. You... It's... Everything's changing.

    7. AS

      And of course JFK was not as young as you think, and actually in pretty poor health, which is also quite interesting.

    8. CW

      Was he?

    9. AS

      But, uh, yeah, had all sorts of health ailments. But, uh, but I think this is where the sort of the generational labels come in because, you know, we've got to try and find a way as life gets longer to get different voices being heard in all sorts of ways. I mean, this is key for all of society. And, you know, if the, our leaders get older and older, how do then younger people get their voice heard? And I think that is a, uh, a challenge. Comes back again to these intergenerational vehicles we have to create.

  19. 36:32 – 48:36

    David Sinclair

    1. CW

      Yeah. Uh, speaking of Dr. David Sinclair, who I'll send this to once we're done, uh, he was on the podcast a year and a bit ago, and he was talking about-

    2. AS

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      ... how, um, he believes that at some point in the not-too-distant future, humans very well may be able to live to a thousand. And I'm li- I'm s-

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... I'm sat in Harvard Medical School, uh, uh, looking at him and thinking like, "Yeah, that sounds great," but that's like, you know, that's proper science fiction stuff. That's, that's forever away. But we are... That will be a spectrum. Someone's not going to one day just be a thousand. Someone will be 150, then they'll be 200, then they'll be 250, then they'll be da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

    6. AS

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      And, um, like, we are seeing this happen in front of us right now.

    8. AS

      (laughs)

    9. CW

      We are seeing people get older. The entire demographic of the world is getting older. And I read this story the other day, I don't know whether you've seen this, in The Washington Post about there's 40 million Asian men who are una- they can't get married.

    10. AS

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    11. CW

      Uh, so you've got this, um, population, uh, uh...

    12. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    13. CW

      The birth rate is now starting to level out. It looks like maybe about-

    14. AS

      Oh.

    15. CW

      ... 10, 10 million, 11 million or something is where the world's gonna kind of even out at-

    16. AS

      Yeah.

    17. CW

      ... and then potentially even take a dip. So that's gonna push the average age even further up.

    18. AS

      It is. And I know David well. In fact, I'm writing with David, so I- I... And, you know, he... I look at the how society adapts to longer lives that already happened and in... So t- to me, the big insight is that, to a degree we've didn't expect, we found that age is malleable. There are things we can do that affect how we age. And David, in this extraordinary scientific way, says, "Yeah, just wait. I'm, I'm gonna fiddle about and it's really-"

    19. CW

      (laughs)

    20. AS

      ... "gonna be malleable." Um, now, I, I d- I never know what to make of those claims. It's pretty clear that what is happening is an interesting shift. Um, a- as we get older, uh, chronic diseases get more important. Cancer, dementia, heart disease. And if you've got all of these, they're all correlated strongly with age. You know, the biggest risk factor in getting cancer is age, not smoking. Not that smoking's a good thing, but-

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. AS

      ... you know, it's, uh, uh... So what a bunch of people are saying is, "Well, let's focus on slowing down aging," which is a staggering thought, but you're already sort of seeing quite advanced drugs that, that hold the promise of getting rid of arthritis. So you will start to see more older people, but they'll be behaving differently. And, you know, the... We said earlier that 70 is the new 60. It's not really. 70 is the new 70 because you kind- you may have the health of a 60-year-old, but you've got 10 more years of road under your, uh, uh, on the clock. So it's kind of a really different combination. So I think that's interesting, but, but I think it's important to disentangle two things. One is the change in the age structure of society, which is there's more old people because there's fewer people being born. And in Asia, that's really dramatic. I mean, it is extraordinary what is happening in Asia. The Chinese population is gonna go from 1.4 to one billion over the next 30 years. There'll just be 400 million-

    23. CW

      That's-

    24. AS

      ... people less.

    25. CW

      ... that is insane.

    26. AS

      And of that one billion, 45% will be over 65.

    27. CW

      Is this all because of this w- single-child policy?

    28. AS

      So I mean, it's basically because when you grow very fast, your birth rate falls very quickly, and so you get smaller cohorts coming through and then more people living longer. Actually, in the US and the UK and Europe, that's much less because the birth rate's fallen much more slowly over time, so we're aging less. But the other thing is not just there's more old people, but how our aging is changing. And this is why I'm so glad to be talking to you and, and your younger group, because actually, that's the group who are gonna be most affected by this. And the challenge we've got is that... If I, if when I say to people, "How long do you think you're gonna live for? Um, how many of you even thought about it?" Most people haven't, and I get that. It's kind of not a pleasant thought.

    29. CW

      (laughs)

    30. AS

      And then about a third of people stick their hand up in the class when I ask this and I say, "Okay, so what, what information did you use?" And they all say their grandparents. Now, if you look at the data, and it's a big argument whether it's gonna carry on or, or not, over the last 100 years, in every decade, life expectancy has gone up by two or three, which basically means that every generation is living six to nine years longer than their parents and 12 to 18 years longer than their grandparents. So if you base yourself on your grandparents, if that trend continues, you're out by 18 years. So wow. And then it's like, great, it goes back to the day going from 24 to 32 hours long. Don't just use it all at the end of life. You can use it right the way through. And you need to do that because otherwise, if you try and just copy that life that your parents had, you're gonna be working till 75, 76, which is gruesome in one single block. So, you know, to me, you know, time is a social convention. We structure it in a way to make it work for us, and what's interesting right now is it's kind of our structured life isn't working for anyone.

  20. 48:36 – 59:42

    Artificial General Intelligence

    1. AS

    2. CW

      Yeah, you are correct. It's, um, it's interesting, I think it was Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, where I was reminded or I, I was first told-... what it is that we do in the workplace that we're complex decision engines. That's what we're able to do. And it would appear, based on who you look at from the artificial general intelligence, uh, insight community, um, it would appear that proper broad-spectrum AGI-

    3. AS

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    4. CW

      ... is actually moving very slowly.

    5. AS

      Yeah.

    6. CW

      The, the narrow general intelligence is getting very, very good.

    7. AS

      Yeah.

    8. CW

      But the, the, the ability to compile and synthesize all of these-

    9. AS

      Yeah. (laughs)

    10. CW

      ... different pieces of information is still where the competitive advantage, for the very foreseeable future, is going to lie-

    11. AS

      Totally.

    12. CW

      ... for humans. Is that something you agree with?

    13. AS

      Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there, there's a whole bunch of issues here. So there's, you know, what tasks do you do in your job which gives you some defense? There's regulation may defend you. But then there's that one w- about, we know we're still some way off the singularity, if ever it's gonna happen. Um, so completely agree. And then, you know, certainly, you know, deep knowledge has shown us that there's some fantastic things that AI can do. It's pretty expensive in doing it. So it's only when it becomes cheap, it also starts to rival. But there should be... I mean, I think this is the trouble with technology, is that the technologists, I think, fall for two problems, and economists have problems of their own.

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. AS

      The, the, but the technologists, they exaggerate how fast the technology's coming. Um, you know, driverless cars have come along in leaps and bounds, but still most of the cars on the road are not driverless, and it's some way before they will. And that's not about the technology. That's about just implementation. The second thing is they see the jobs that will be destroyed, but they don't see the jobs that'll be created. And if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, uh, f- hundreds of thousands of jobs were destroyed. You know, the farming jobs were destroyed. Um, but we invented a whole bunch of jobs that no one could've predicted. Some of those jobs were about supporting the machines, but actually most of them, like the managerial roles, et cetera, just were, just didn't exist before. And, you know, the same thing will happen this time around. There will be a whole new jobs created. Some of them aimed at supporting the AI and the technology, but in general, there'll be a lot of jobs that'll be very human-orientated, exploiting that comparative advantage that humans have. Um, n- all of this, of course, is not destiny. We can't just leave it to the markets. We have to have the right-

    16. CW

      (laughs)

    17. AS

      ... education system, the right government policies. But yeah, that, that hopefully is what we will see.

    18. CW

      It's interesting. Uh, Rory Sutherland, past Modern Wisdom guest and fantastic behavioral psychologist, he, uh, he talks about how he thinks Silicon Valley sees everything as an optimization problem.

    19. AS

      (laughs) Yeah.

    20. CW

      Um, and that sort of hyper-technocratic, uh, view of the world fails to take into account that the people who, at the very end, are going to judge whether a thing was good or bad, are not input process output pur- perfect rational machines.

    21. AS

      Yeah.

    22. CW

      Right? So you can have something which by every objective measure was great. But it did the thing that it was supposed to do. Um, the, uh, machine which is going to be your new comedian, right? The machine can tell a joke which l- l- logically, rationally, deliverably is funnier than any joke that's ever been told. But there's something that we just don't quite get about the fact that we don't like that.

    23. AS

      Yeah.

    24. CW

      And it's irrational, but that is something-

    25. AS

      Yeah.

    26. CW

      ... which is difficult to program for.

    27. AS

      Yeah. No, 100%. Uh, and, and, you know, that's a nice boardwalk. And by the way, you know, there's lots of great advantages to come. M- my only worry is that i- if certain groups become incredibly important, then they will drive the direction of AI research in a route that may be that we don't like it, but it's the way it's going because it's easy and it's convenient.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm. That's where the power is, right? The, the disproportionate amount of power.

    29. AS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    30. CW

      So what is... Is it... W- we kind of touched on it there. Like is it, is it legislation? Because it's all well and good, me and you, uh, and, and David, Dr., Dr. Sinclair-

Episode duration: 59:42

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