A ten year old boy has a probability of survival in that year of 0.999918. After that, his probability of survival in a given year decreases with every additional year.
If you could lock in the ten year old’s probability of survival per year after the age of 10, mathematically a population of such individuals would have a “half life” of ~ 8000 years. In other words, if you had a population of 1,000 such individuals with their annual probability of survival fixed at .999918, about half of them could survive for 8,000 years or so.
Of course this sort of calculation doesn’t mean anything without an empirical demonstration; the data have to come in over 8,000 years. That shows the problem with claims of life extension breaktrhoughs within current human life expectancies. You can’t measure the results any faster than the rate at which humans already happen to live, and unmodified humans can regularly live longer than other mammals any way.
A half life of ~8000 given current-day levels of accidental and other death. If we get our act together enough to get rid of the problem of aging, I would assume that we would continue to get rid of other sources of death as well, which would make the actuarial model less useful.
In the real world, the probability of a ten year old’s death also reflects the fact that in developed countries, children live in sheltered conditions.
Traffic accidents seem likely to be solvable to a large degree with self-driving car technology. Not as sure about the others. It’s worth noting that the primary cause of unintentional injury deaths for adults is unintentional poisoning. This was surprising to me; I would guess it’s mostly due to drug use.
It’s worth noting that the primary cause of unintentional injury deaths for adults is unintentional poisoning. This was surprising to me; I would guess it’s mostly due to drug use.
Food poisoning is more common and serious than most people I’ve talked about it with have expected.
“Unintentional poisoning” is 36k deaths, according to Adele’s link. Food poisoning is only 3k deaths (5k according to an older article). I think most of the accidental poisoning deaths are drug overdoses. Half (broken link) of those are legal drugs. 2⁄3 of the legal ones are opiates, 1⁄3 benzos.
I am not convinced that food poisoning is even included in accidental poisoning deaths. Wonder has deaths classified by ICD codes. About half of accidental poisonings are listed as X44 other/unknown. My guess is that this means an overdose on street drugs.
Does the ten year old child provide an actuarial model for superlongevity?
According to the actuarial tables:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
A ten year old boy has a probability of survival in that year of 0.999918. After that, his probability of survival in a given year decreases with every additional year.
If you could lock in the ten year old’s probability of survival per year after the age of 10, mathematically a population of such individuals would have a “half life” of ~ 8000 years. In other words, if you had a population of 1,000 such individuals with their annual probability of survival fixed at .999918, about half of them could survive for 8,000 years or so.
Of course this sort of calculation doesn’t mean anything without an empirical demonstration; the data have to come in over 8,000 years. That shows the problem with claims of life extension breaktrhoughs within current human life expectancies. You can’t measure the results any faster than the rate at which humans already happen to live, and unmodified humans can regularly live longer than other mammals any way.
A half life of ~8000 given current-day levels of accidental and other death. If we get our act together enough to get rid of the problem of aging, I would assume that we would continue to get rid of other sources of death as well, which would make the actuarial model less useful.
In the real world, the probability of a ten year old’s death also reflects the fact that in developed countries, children live in sheltered conditions.
According to the CDC, the leading causes for death for children aged 5-9 (in 2012 in the United States) are:
Unintentional injury
Malignant neoplasm (aka cancer)
Congenital disorders
Homicide
Heart disease
If we solved aging, it seems likely we could eliminate or significantly reduce deaths from cancer, congenital disorders and heart disease.
Once we look at the 10-14 age bracket or above, suicide makes it into the top five causes of death until age ~50 and above.
We can also look at the leading causes of unintentional injury. For the 5-9 age bracket, we have
Motor vehicle accidents
Drowning
Fire/Burns
Unintentional suffocation
Other land transport injuries
Traffic accidents seem likely to be solvable to a large degree with self-driving car technology. Not as sure about the others. It’s worth noting that the primary cause of unintentional injury deaths for adults is unintentional poisoning. This was surprising to me; I would guess it’s mostly due to drug use.
Food poisoning is more common and serious than most people I’ve talked about it with have expected.
“Unintentional poisoning” is 36k deaths, according to Adele’s link. Food poisoning is only 3k deaths (5k according to an older article). I think most of the accidental poisoning deaths are drug overdoses. Half (broken link) of those are legal drugs. 2⁄3 of the legal ones are opiates, 1⁄3 benzos.
I am not convinced that food poisoning is even included in accidental poisoning deaths. Wonder has deaths classified by ICD codes. About half of accidental poisonings are listed as X44 other/unknown. My guess is that this means an overdose on street drugs.