X-Message-Number: 1039 Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 18:38:48 EDT From: Subject: CRYONICS maximum life expectancy A comment on 0016 - "Misadventure as a Cause of Death in an Immortal Population" by Hugh Hixon > Death rate varies with age. The two major factors seem to be >experience and infirmity. The older we get, the more experienced we are >at avoiding accidents; and the older we get, the slower we get at >avoiding accidents. The curve bottoms out at the 40-44 year age group. >I will also use that age group for the homicide figures, even though the >minimum is in the 70-74 year age group, on the grounds that at that age, >who's *doing* anything that would make it worthwhile to kill them. I >also ignore the lower death rates for children and teenagers. They're >not out in the real world, yet, and besides which, we're only *that* >young once. And the number is, . . . 41.9 deaths per 100,000 in the >white population (64.9 for males, 19.5 for females. I do not wish to >predict the future distribution of women into more hazardous >occupations, or the appearance or disappearance of more or less >hazardous occupations). Which gives us a *half-life* for our population >of 1654 years. Agreed. I think that this is a good way to get a lower bound on a life expectancy given near perfect medicine. > Estimating the rate on this kind of homicide is very difficult. I >do not believe that, in any society with competitive forces, homicide >will disappear. It certainly will get less common. So I will grab a >figure out of the air, more or less, and say that the sum of truly >permanent fatal accidents and homicides will be *one* per 100,000 >population per year (the aggregate figure (male and female) for white >homicides is 8.9 in the 40-44 year age block.). This gives a population >half-life of *69,315* years. However, anyone who quotes this figure >without including a statement of its very speculative nature is on their >own. I agree that it is very difficult to estimate the future rate of homicide. I disagree with the prediction that the rate will drop. Is there a specific consequence of improved technology or medicine that implies that the rate should drop? Admittedly improved medicine would permit reviving more victims of current homicides, but I would just expect that in a future homicide the perpetrator would be motivated to ensure that their victim was dead in the information-theoretic sense, rather than just in the clinical sense. I look at the rate of successful homicide as something like an arms race problem. Does improved technology, particularly nanotechnology, favor the offense or the defense? I see this as an open issue (it has sparked a good deal on discussion in sci.nanotech). If I take a naive point of view and assume that the rate of successful homicide stays at about what it is today, we get a half life of about 10,000 years (from U.S. average homicide rate, if you live elsewhere your half-life is probably longer). -Jeffrey Soreff standard disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1039