31–40 of 230 posts
Biologists 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 a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
Biologists 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 a…
Why would you not want to stop people from dying?
Life 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.
Avoiding childhood death improved life expectancy at birth most dramatically on a global scale. But if you look from other points (say life expectancy at age 20), or scope it for locality and gender, the ability to intervene for many formerly mortal events pushed the needle up significantly. Examples: heart attacks, diabetes, cancer.
The differences aren't as dramatic -- saving someone from a heart attack at 50 may move the needle 5 years. But they are real.
Biologists 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 a…
Why would you not want to stop people from dying?
Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder).
In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population died from accidental or malicious (but not self-inflicted) injury or poisoning. If we take that as a typical annual risk of death, then over a thousand years you have a 22% chance of dying from one of those causes. At about 3000 years, it becomes more likely than not: at about 9000 years, overwhelmingly more likely (~90% chance of death); at about 50000, a practical certainty (> 99.999%).
Of course, the above assumes that risk of death from injury won't drop as medical technologies improve, which is wrong, but as long as it's non-zero, there is still going to be a statistical limit on the length of life. No hanging around till the heat death of the universe for you.
> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and then there's simply no limit to how long you can live. Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder). In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population d…
I used to do yearly blog posts on the current state of whole brain emulation, and we are very very far away from any breakthrough there. So far away in fact that some prominent neuro scientists like Dennett believe this can't be done even in principle (I disagree with them, but it shows how far we have to go still).
In any case, I'll probably not be around in 30 years, and many HNers won't be either.