October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
October 11, 2009
Free Market M.D.
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Economies of Scale in Compliance
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Balan's Challenge
October 10, 2009
The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
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Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
October 9, 2009
More Scott Sumner
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Not From The Onion
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Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
How do you calculate that ? o0
This reminds me of the Heinlein novel Time Enough For Love where everyone is immortal but usually dies in an accident after several thousand years or so.
Take the reciprocal of the probability of death to get the life expectancy. To get the median, you've got to solve for x in the equation (1-p)^x=.5, where p is the mortality rate. Just take logs of both sides.
Some argue that death is an evolutionary adaptation (there's a chapter on it in Nick Lane's very nice Life Ascending). If so, then the only way to 'lock in' the safety of youth would be to 'succeed where evolution has failed', so to speak.
"scientists don't have to succeed where billions of years of evolution failed"
You seem to be assuming that evolution has been tending towards extremely long life for any given individual but I don't think there's any reason to suppose that would be evolutionarily advantageous. In point of fact, if it were attained or came close to being attained I would imagine it would act as a significant brake on evolution.
Far more likely is that evolution has been trying for billions of years to evolve beings who don't die before they reproduce at least once but after that are better off gone, from evolution's standpoint.
Judging the evidence, I'd say evolution has suceeded admirably and science will have a tough row to hoe in trying to alter reality against a process that best facilitates (and is thus reinforced by) evolution.
"To get the median, you've got to solve for x in the equation (1-p)^x=.5, where p is the mortality rate. Just take logs of both sides."
(1-p)^x=0.5
log[(1-p)^x]=log(0.5)
xlog(1-p)=log(0.5)
x=log(0.5)/log(1-p), p=16.3/100,000=0.000163
x=4252 years
Of coarse for a quick calculation you can always use the rule of 70.
p=0.0163%
x=70/0.0163%
x=4,294 years (approximate)
Strictly speaking the life expectancy is the
reciprocal of the force of mortality.
All scientists have to do is stop the body from aging?
CAKE
Bryan:
Peter Pan gets into fights with pirates and crocodiles and flies around at dangerously high altitudes using only happy thoughts and fairy dust--a substance of dubious provenance and reliability. I'll give you two-to-one odds that he doesn't make it past the six-week mark.
"Peter Pan...flies around at dangerously high altitudes using only happy thoughts and fairy dust--a substance of dubious provenance and reliability."
All the rocket men swear by it.
All scientists have to do to extend human life span thousands or years is prevent death from old age and prevent the break down of the body due to age and long term abuse (Smoking, lack of exercise, extreme obesity). No problem. :)
The key reason to be optimistic about aging is David Gobel's "Actuarial Escape Velocity" argument. Basically, if we can rejuvenate people by X years, that extends their lives by more than X years, because they get X years of life, plus X years of rejuvenation research to bring new rejuv treatments.
It turns out that it only takes a modest rate of increase in rejuv technology to get immortality. Right now we gain 0.2years of lifespan per year. As that approaches 1 year/year, lifespans get really long, and at 1yr/yr, old age is a thing of the past:
http://www.singularity2050.com/2008/03/actuarial-escap.html