I'd be curious to know how old the author is, since the selection of 30 years to me points to biased analysis. As one likely knows that's spent any time researching the topic, and as others have committed, there's no evidence to support the author's claims. Historically speaking most people have been able to live as long as they do now on average. To my knowledge infant mortality was the big outliner historical speaking when it came to average life expectancy and points to why average life expectancy is a pour measure. Truth is that if there was a major leap, there's zero reason the general public would ever get wind of it; basic economic both in terms of it as a product and the impact it'd have on populations.
If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
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Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#12This article seems inherently flawed in its assumption that a. the exponential growth of computing power will keep up, despite the numerous technical and physical boundaries imposed upon them, b. computational power will solve many of the unknown inner workings of the human body, and c. that being aware of, and understanding those inner workings allows us to modify the human body in such a way that we can 'rejuvinate' the system.
While I do feel that life expectancy of everyone below 40 is probably going to massively higher than historical life expecancies (disregarding systemic failures of society and outside influences), I don't foresee a future where everyone gets to live forever.
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#13Bullshit
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#14I don't mean to be a pessimist but this entire article boils down to describing Moore's law, and saying that medical research will advance quickly because it uses computers as well. Seems a little shoddy.
Well, to play devil's advocate for a moment… if actuaries did agree they wouldn't publicise it as an increased expectation of health is would benefit them financially. If actuaries expected people to live less time they'd be keen to increase rates and advertise it. If they seriously expected people to stop dying then the estimated value of life insurance policies would drop to zero. Personally, I think it's more than…
> If they seriously expected people to stop dying then the estimated value of life insurance policies would drop to zero.
I think it's (not im)possible that rates would go up! Here's why:
The most risky (largest) life insurance policies aren't taken out by people who fully expect to reach old age; rather, they are taken out by people in their prime with young families or other dependents. So you have people taking out large policies from ages 25 - 50 or so, and then going back to small policies or no policy at all. The risk pool is now very different -- lots of very pofitable policies, but also a lot of risk. The existential risk to the insurance company might actually increase in that case, and rates would have to be increased to accomodate this risk.
Probably not, and IANAA, but it'd be interesting if an actual actuary familiar with life insurance could chime in.
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#15I'm of the opinion that I was born anywhere between 2 months and a year too soon to ride the wave of immortality.
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#16As someone who turned 50 this year - immortality being available in 30 years sounds pretty good to me!
However, I seem to remember a similar argument being made in a book I read at high school, which obviously wasn't yesterday. The Mighty Micro, published in 1979, talked about the imminent creation of UIM's (Ultra-Intelligent Machines) by the 1990s and that these would, naturally, lead to such rapid advancements in healthcare as to give effective immortality.
http://www.tof.co.uk/stories/page8.html
[NB Mind you that book did make me rather interested in AI and I did do a CS degree and go on to do post-grad AI research for 6 years up to 1994 where I encountered a far better technology for enhancing intelligence. I can't really be too critical of someone getting this excited, after all I did, eventually somebody is going to do it...].
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#17I have a feeling we'll have to go through a period of global catastrophe before humanity resumes making progress at a quick pace. The momentum of the previous age of intellect[1] is coming to an end, and we're well into the age of decadence. The strong pillars of duty in Western society have gradually, in the past two hundred years, been swapped out piece by piece with some kind of weak inflammable material of decadence. These days single terrorist groups conquer entire nations before being slowed down, and our inefficient & corrupt governments whose hands and feet act independently are hardly able to stop them even with funding of billions. Millions of migrants from wars encouraged by the West's governments threaten the unity of the EU. The enormous sovereign debt burden carried by the likes of Japan and U.S. creates economic instability which threatens the social fabric, leading to a situation where the choice of leaders is between an egomaniac (Trump) and a megalomaniac (Clinton). The supposed saviour of the world economy and driver of global growth, China, suffers from enormous mal-investments and is burdened with even more debt than the U.S.
My own pessimism is not helping.
[1] http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
(d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
The Age of Conquests
The Age of Commerce
The Age of Affluence
The Age of Intellect
The Age of Decadence.
(e) Decadence is marked by:
Defensiveness
Pessimism
Materialism
Frivolity
An influx of foreigners
The Welfare State
A weakening of religion.
(f) Decadence is due to:
Too long a period of wealth and power Selfishness
Love of money
The loss of a sense of duty.
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#18Life expectancy has been increasing by ever smaller amounts in the past decades. I am hopefully that a lot of new technologies could help buck that trend, but so far the trends don't support the author's hypothesis.
It was mainly increasing because we almost made the death at birth close to zero. Now the gains are much harder to get on the other side.
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#19Biologists hate him!
This programmer discovered Philosopher's stone with this one weird trick!
Anyway: Yes, we will do great advances in health care, but will we _cheat_ death? Will those advancements be available? Is this something we _should_ do as a society? Technological determinism/solutionism (as presented in the article) is a really shoddy idea. It ignores so many things and assumes that progress is an arrow always flying forward…
Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too
#20Life expectancy has been increasing by ever smaller amounts in the past decades. I am hopefully that a lot of new technologies could help buck that trend, but so far the trends don't support the author's hypothesis.
It was mainly increasing because we almost made the death at birth close to zero. Now the gains are much harder to get on the other side.
Most people - at least most people here - know that a lot of those publicized numbers are due to infant mortality, but ...
Post-childhood life expectancy has gone up in smaller amounts as the parent comment says. The grand numbers ("life expectancy was just 60 in 1900!") obviously reflect infant and childhood mortality, but we've increased the average lifespan in the United States by 2-3 years in the last few decades alone.
Here's a graph that shows life expectancy at various ages in the UK - you can see this is not all due to childhood mortality:
http://www.maxroser.com/gains-for-all-life-expectancy-by-age...