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Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

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Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#51

Post by farresito »

hydrogen18 wrote: post #30
Zirro wrote: post #4

I believe that we will see significant advances in lifespan-increasing research over the next hundred years, barring any major disasters affecting humanity. Old models and expectations for calculating death can no longer be relied upon. Most of the people alive today will probably (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your world view) be among the last generations to die from what we currently consider natural…

This notion seems to be as old as humanity. It's built on some inner hope that mortality can be outsmarted and escaped. Back in the real world, we can't even agree as a society what level of healthcare should be afforded to all members vs. what level you have to earn. The greatest advancements in life extension in recent years have only added more years of horribly low quality life. I don't want to die, but I am goin…

They have added years of lower quality of life because they have focused on the wrong thing. I doubt, no matter how much research we do, that we will get a higher than 100-120 life expectancy unless we focus on actually reversing aging, instead of spending money on curing all the diseases that come with aging. It's not very smart. Aubrey de grey has some very good talks about it.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#52

Post by fredkbloggs »

> And I should probably look into life insurance.

Why? What exactly is it that you think "life insurance" does? If there were a product that would reduce the variance in remaining life length, that might be interesting, but that's not what "life insurance" is. All it does is pay someone else some amount of money when you die, after you pay them some (usually increasing) amount each year while you're alive (with countless weird financial variants for those who really like being taken to the cleaners). The ev of every such policy is negative, as it is for all types of insurance. You are almost certainly better off taking the money you would have spent on premiums and investing it conservatively; that's all the insurer is going to do with it anyway, and that way you don't have to give them a cut or worry about them going out of business before you die.

As always, the primary exception to this rule is adverse selection: if you know something about yourself that makes you much more likely to die soon, isn't reflected in actuarial tables, and won't be found by a medical exam (if required), then it may be to your designated beneficiary's advantage to buy insurance. But a healthy 34-year-old is so unlikely to die any time soon that they'll almost always be better off if you just stick money into some tax-deferred account and designate a beneficiary. Which is probably what you ought to be doing anyway, just in case you do happen to live a long time.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#53

Post by ChuckMcM »

pedalpete wrote: post #3

Nice UX, but the probability is probably wrong. I am in my 40s, so I'll give the current life expectancy stats about a 50% chance of being valid by the time I reach the age to die. But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life expectancy much longer than the 80 yeas. The entire curve will be pushed out. So for that person, I'd guess the probability of this being correct is closer to 10%.

Not actually valid analysis, but it is a commonly held belief. I had an interesting conversation with a person who had just passed 50 and they where coming to grips with the realization that science was not going to defeat aging before they needed it to save them. That moment of mortality when you stop thinking about all the things you want to do, and start prioritizing them to the things you have enough time left to finish. There have been a couple of articles discussing this disconnect.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#54

Post by fredkbloggs »

peteretep wrote: post #9
pedalpete wrote: post #3

Nice UX, but the probability is probably wrong. I am in my 40s, so I'll give the current life expectancy stats about a 50% chance of being valid by the time I reach the age to die. But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life expectancy much longer than the 80 yeas. The entire curve will be pushed out. So for that person, I'd guess the probability of this being correct is closer to 10%.

> But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life > expectancy much longer than the 80 years Turns out there's a _highly_ developed and mature prediction market for this called life insurance, and they disagree with your assessment.

But they're probably wrong, too. Insurers have a lot of money riding on the actuarial tables, but they're still just a wisdom-of-crowds best guess. No one will know what the true life expectancy was of everyone born this year until the last of them dies; similarly, no one will know the true remaining life expectancy of everyone who is currently 50 years old until the last of them dies. I agree that actuaries are taking into consideration a lot more data and experience than any HN armchair futurist, but that doesn't mean they're going to be right. Until the 1970s, most of the increase in life expectancy at birth was due to reductions in child mortality, which from an actuarial standpoint is not very interesting because it's rare for infants to have life insurance policies. The life expectancy of a 40-year-old didn't change much from 1850 until then (source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html). In essence, nearly everyone now makes it to 40, and what's changed greatly since is what happens after that. The widespread concern is that it's not well understood whether that trend will continue, accelerate rapidly (and if so, whether the mean will increase, skew will increase, or both), or even reverse. Actuaries are professionals paid to make good guesses; they do it well, but they are not oracles.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

reasonattlm wrote: post #33
peteretep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life > expectancy much longer than the 80 years Turns out there's a _highly_ developed and mature prediction market for this called life insurance, and they disagree with your assessment.

An industry that will be destroyed or bailed out when there is a large upward discontinuity in life expectancy trends thanks to advances in medicine. There is a very big change going on in medical research at the moment, shifting from not trying to treat aging as a medical condition to actually treating aging and its causes. The difference in outcomes will be night and day; some relevant technologies are transferring…

I don't think that will destroy the life insurance industry. In fact, I think it will help them.

If I buy a life insurance policy for a 15 year old today, I pay them $X in order to receive $Y when the insured dies. If the insured lives for 70 years, the insurance company has 70 years to invest $X, in order to have $Y available when the insured dies.

But if the insured lives 80 years, then the insurance company has 10 more years to invest $X. They gain from that situation, rather than lose.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#56

Post by fredkbloggs »

reasonattlm wrote: post #33
peteretep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life > expectancy much longer than the 80 years Turns out there's a _highly_ developed and mature prediction market for this called life insurance, and they disagree with your assessment.

An industry that will be destroyed or bailed out when there is a large upward discontinuity in life expectancy trends thanks to advances in medicine. There is a very big change going on in medical research at the moment, shifting from not trying to treat aging as a medical condition to actually treating aging and its causes. The difference in outcomes will be night and day; some relevant technologies are transferring…

Pensions (especially) and life insurers are going to need/want bailouts regardless of medical changes. The combination of global ZIRP and absurdly optimistic assumptions about investment returns have led to extreme underfunding for nearly every pension fund in the developed world. This problem is especially acute in the United States but is not unique to it.

The extra uncertainty in actuarial assumptions will only leverage that problem further. Your assessment of expectations is actually pretty reasonable: pension fund managers aren't taking it seriously because they expect to be bailed out regardless, so they may as well enjoy their moral hazard dividends in advance. But I think that has more to do with the fact that financial repression and systemic underfunding have rendered everything else irrelevant anyway.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#57

Post by cm2012 »

ben010783 wrote: post #48
cm2012 wrote: post #34

I'm 24, and I recently bought $2 million of life insurance for $80 a month that's good for the next 10 years. I figure that's a pretty good deal. If I die young, I want my wife to not have to worry about money.

I don't think that's a good fit for a person in your situation. It's so unlikely that you'll die in that period. I don't know about if you have kids, a house, or your work situations, but I would consider lowering the the payout and investing the rest in a retirement account. If you dropped it down to $500,000, your wife would still be fine for years after you died. If that freed up $40 that you could invest every mo…

I want her to be set for life though in case of a freak accident - $500k will run out eventually.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#58

Post by mlrtime »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #53
pedalpete wrote: post #3

Nice UX, but the probability is probably wrong. I am in my 40s, so I'll give the current life expectancy stats about a 50% chance of being valid by the time I reach the age to die. But somebody who is 10 today, will likely have a life expectancy much longer than the 80 yeas. The entire curve will be pushed out. So for that person, I'd guess the probability of this being correct is closer to 10%.

Not actually valid analysis, but it is a commonly held belief. I had an interesting conversation with a person who had just passed 50 and they where coming to grips with the realization that science was not going to defeat aging before they needed it to save them. That moment of mortality when you stop thinking about all the things you want to do, and start prioritizing them to the things you have enough time left to…

I'd be interested in reading these articles if you have them.

Re: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

#60

Post by rajivm »

cm2012 wrote: post #57
ben010783 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a good fit for a person in your situation. It's so unlikely that you'll die in that period. I don't know about if you have kids, a house, or your work situations, but I would consider lowering the the payout and investing the rest in a retirement account. If you dropped it down to $500,000, your wife would still be fine for years after you died. If that freed up $40 that you could invest every mo…

I want her to be set for life though in case of a freak accident - $500k will run out eventually.

Yea, but a freak accident is unlikely to occur before 34. It is likely the decade after would be more concerning where she might have to support kids, etc. in addition to herself.
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