Does anyone know of a good life expectancy calculator? Preferably one which has good justification behind the model, and also has been tested.
I tried this calculator, but I noticed a few issues. First, it sells me I should start doing conditioning exercise… when I did check that off. I think that part of the calculator is broken. It also seems to think that taller people live longer, when from what I understand it’s well accepted that the opposite is true. Some of its other features seem unjustified to me, for example, it seems to think you get a life expectancy boost from eating less than 10% of your calories from fat, but I can’t find any evidence for that.
Good life expectancy calculators seem very valuable to those interested in longevity. Perhaps some people at LessWrong should create some sort of model. Though I have little experience with these sorts of statistical models, I think the Monte Carlo method might be useful here to get a distribution. If we put the code on GitHub then others can take a look at its guts and submit corrections/improvements/pull requests if they want to.
A good life expectancy calculator implies a good model of which factors drive longevity. I don’t believe such a model exists (for healthy people—the effects of various illnesses on your life expectancy are known much better). There are a lot of correlation studies but correlations and causality are not quite the same thing.
Perhaps some people at LessWrong should create some sort of model.
“Some sort of a model” is a very low bar—presumably you would like the model to be good. People who will be able to make a good comprehensive model of how various health/diet/lifestyle/etc. interventions affect longevity will probably be in the running for a Nobel.
It’s like saying that you found online some investment advice which doesn’t look too good, perhaps some LW people would like to construct a model of the markets that will give better advice. Well...
Fair points. I’m don’t think what we understand about longevity is as bad as what we understand about investments.
I suppose what I’m looking for is a model which 1) doesn’t have any obvious bugs, 2) doesn’t contradict anything we do know, and 3) has at least some evidence behind the model. If it produces a fairly wide distribution because that represents the (poor) state of our knowledge, I think that’s fine.
The issue of correlation vs. causation also is important, and I’m not sure what we could do about it short of allowing someone to turn off certain features of the model if they believe them to be untrustworthy. For example, I’ve seen a fair bit about how marriage is correlated with an increase in longevity, and it seems obvious to me that any similar sort of social structure where one has frequent socialization and possibly receives feedback and care is probably where the real benefit is. So I think you can say you are married if you believe your situation is equivalent in some way. Obviously these details need to be shown more rigorously, but this is the basic argument.
Does anyone know of a good life expectancy calculator? Preferably one which has good justification behind the model, and also has been tested.
I tried this calculator, but I noticed a few issues. First, it sells me I should start doing conditioning exercise… when I did check that off. I think that part of the calculator is broken. It also seems to think that taller people live longer, when from what I understand it’s well accepted that the opposite is true. Some of its other features seem unjustified to me, for example, it seems to think you get a life expectancy boost from eating less than 10% of your calories from fat, but I can’t find any evidence for that.
Good life expectancy calculators seem very valuable to those interested in longevity. Perhaps some people at LessWrong should create some sort of model. Though I have little experience with these sorts of statistical models, I think the Monte Carlo method might be useful here to get a distribution. If we put the code on GitHub then others can take a look at its guts and submit corrections/improvements/pull requests if they want to.
A good life expectancy calculator implies a good model of which factors drive longevity. I don’t believe such a model exists (for healthy people—the effects of various illnesses on your life expectancy are known much better). There are a lot of correlation studies but correlations and causality are not quite the same thing.
“Some sort of a model” is a very low bar—presumably you would like the model to be good. People who will be able to make a good comprehensive model of how various health/diet/lifestyle/etc. interventions affect longevity will probably be in the running for a Nobel.
It’s like saying that you found online some investment advice which doesn’t look too good, perhaps some LW people would like to construct a model of the markets that will give better advice. Well...
Fair points. I’m don’t think what we understand about longevity is as bad as what we understand about investments.
I suppose what I’m looking for is a model which 1) doesn’t have any obvious bugs, 2) doesn’t contradict anything we do know, and 3) has at least some evidence behind the model. If it produces a fairly wide distribution because that represents the (poor) state of our knowledge, I think that’s fine.
The issue of correlation vs. causation also is important, and I’m not sure what we could do about it short of allowing someone to turn off certain features of the model if they believe them to be untrustworthy. For example, I’ve seen a fair bit about how marriage is correlated with an increase in longevity, and it seems obvious to me that any similar sort of social structure where one has frequent socialization and possibly receives feedback and care is probably where the real benefit is. So I think you can say you are married if you believe your situation is equivalent in some way. Obviously these details need to be shown more rigorously, but this is the basic argument.