Most people who die won't have a chance to say goodbye.
If you have children, I encourage you assemble an "oops, I died" kit for them, not just with legal papers, but with long goodbye letters. If they're younger, make a letter for now and a letter for when they are adults.
I also made letters for important people in my life so that my survivors can hand them out to them.
I try to update these once a year accompanied by a good bottle of wine. I have updated my ex-wife's letter several times. It gets shorter every year.
I've been trying to record a short video every year for my wife, should I pass. I read somewhere that hearing a voice is the hardest thing to remember over time. I keep them in a folder on my desktop called "In the event of my untimely demise" along with what bills need paid, who online needs to know I passed, how to get into my password manager, and approximate values of my hobby stuff.
> I try to update these once a year accompanied by a good bottle of wine. I have updated my ex-wife's letter several times. It gets shorter every year.
“The questions have been selected from 5 years of research into what people, whose parents died when young, wished that they had known. Use them as a springboard. You can select the questions you want to answer and/or add your own. Answer what you like, in the order you like. Ignore the questions you don’t like. Come back to others.”
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round"
-"Do You Realize?" by The Flaming Lips
I suppose we all find ways to cope with mortality as much as we can, but I've become much less sentimental in this way as I've aged; I just try to hold on to less and less and enjoy the moments as I can.
Transmitting lessons learned, hopes and memories isn't for you, the now dead person, it's for your children. It's to strengthen them and hopefully guide them.
Yes, but surely you're doing that as you go through life rather than saving it all up for after your death.
If your children are young and you're worried about an untimely death, then it makes sense. I wrote books for my children for just this reason (but I also gave them the books while they were still young).
If I'm lucky I still have 30-40 years left. That sounds reasonably long for life extension technologies to be available for the general public. I don't expect immortality, I just want an extended period in which I can walk around freely and enjoy life.
(don't put this on my headstone if a bus hits me next week)
My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and as recently as right before the pandemic they were both entirely independent, so it's not impossible.
Part of their secret seems to be living on the fourth floor without an elevator for seventy plus years and going out on a daily basis.
I can't hope to live this long due to years of leading a sedentary lifestyle, but I invested in an apartment that's more than 64 steps above ground and on top of that has two levels, so every time need something from the kitchen I have to go down and up again to where I have my desk.
The % probability continues to grow past the distribution peak. If you have made it that long, you are still more likely to die each year you go on living.
I feel exactly the same way. But I also recognize that many many many people who have been born, lived a long life, and died, felt exactly the same way.
I used to think it was very likely that by the time I am old, "old" will be 100+. I'm not very sure of that now.
Are there any life extension technologies at all, assuming an already healthy person? The only one I'm aware of that's definitely effective is caloric restriction, and last I heard that was only proven in smaller creatures and not confirmed in humans.
Exercise extends your life. I think this would qualify since you'd be considered healthy if you exercise a moderate amount, but if you exercise more than a moderate amount, it further increases longevity.
This strikes me as very unlikely. And if something like that will be developed, it will be priced out to the stratosphere, because most people will be willing to pay whatever it takes to get the treatment.
Imagine its a treatment rather than an expensive suite of continual treatments. Your proposition seems fairly US centric wheras most places would give it away and rejoice in the savings implied by not having to pay old age related costs.
Even here why wouldn't you just force your government to make enough for everyone at cost and string up the owners front trees if they object strenuously enough?
Even something as simple as a steady supply of Tylenol could have commanded a king's ransom before analgesics became available. You are likely right that it would be prohibitively expensive at first, but such treatment would go down in price as society redirects resources away from things like Bitcoin and into the new life extension technology.
I'm hoping when I hit 80( mid 30s now), I'll be able to have my brain hooked up to the matrix or something.
Would be awesome to effectively "live" for 500 years with options to pilot androids every now and then. Moral questions aside, it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes possible to get a new body for the exceptionally rich.
Factors are of course overlapping, but you could think about what questions a life insurer would ask you, since they have money on the line and probably the best models.
Smoking is a really big one, given that it's estimate that 2/3 of life-long smokers die due to smoking and that continuing to smoke across a lifetime is estimated to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years.
Not only poor record keeping, a lot of longest living people in Japan at least are simply descendants committing pension fraud. Well, I guess that also counts as poor record keeping.
Lol this would compound the issue because rich families would want to transfer control of assets only the poor would benefit from the fictional longevity of their equally poor relations
I don't really know how this data is useful, especially if you're younger. Because the group is so big when you're young it brings the average down, because the average is meaningless without showing the standard deviations.
In other words this data gets more accurate as you get older and your cohort dies off.
There are better calculators that ask you questions about your wealth and lifestyle, and then use this same data as a starting point and then the answers to the questions as modifiers. Those seem far more accurate (and are closer to what actuaries use).
Honestly, the best predictor of when you might die of natural causes is your life insurance company, who only makes money if they get it right most of the time and have an incentive to have good tables!
78 seems so young to die. I suppose my family is lucky to have good longevity genes and disciplined enough to live fairly healthy lifestyles. I have 3/4 grandparents still alive and relatively healthy in the mid 90s and several great and great-great grandparents lived past 100 even at times when that was even less likely than it is today.
I do expect there's going to be some revolutionary enhancements to human longevity over the next century. Not as optimistic as Kurzweil, but perhaps the oldest old will shift from ~120 to ~150 and the median from ~78 to ~100
My father is doing poorly, and he is just around this "median" age. He has a chronic disease which somewhat contributed to him not moving around much. Largely sedentary, but not over-weight.
On the other hand, my in-laws are doing very well, into their 80's. They take walks, attend talks, stay active. They don't have any substantial diseases.
So IMO, the revolutionary enhancements will come from controlling diseases, so those with diseases do almost as well as those without.
I put it together as a kind of Stoic practice to reflect on the fact that we will all die, but also with a data scientist hat on to try to get myself to think about life expectancy as a distribution, rather than an exact number.
Silly question: If I read this correctly, your chances of death go down after ~80 years of age. Why is this? Is it because most things that will get you would have earlier or just that the population size is so low at that extreme?
It's your probability of dying at those ages. The higher ages have lower probability because most people will have already died. In other words, the probability of dying at the age of 80 is conditional on the probability of surviving to the age of 80.
"Chance to die: 1 in 952 within a year, 1.5% (1 in 66.1) within 10 years" good grief... I think it's worth me keeping those figures in mind more often. I might be less frivolous with my time, being more actively aware of those stats...
I've kind of had that in the back of my mind probably since hitting 30-ish or so (perhaps it's what they call a mid-life crisis). I've been on kind of a tear ever since but I am not sure it has allowed me Tim etc smell the roses as they say.
1 in 952? Sounds nice. I got 1 in 510! :/ (41 year-old male in Canada). My wife, who is one year older than me gets 1 in 1000. Adding the fact that most of my father's side of the family died "young" (ex: my father passed away from brain cancer that hit us all by surprise at age 66) doesn't have me feeling all warm and cozy.
But yeah, when people tell others to slow down, take their time, there is no rush ... um, no. Time is precious and short-lived. Make the most of it. Spend as much of it as possible doing things you love, and as little of it as possible on things you don't.
> But yeah, when people tell others to slow down, take their time, there is no rush ... um, no.
I my mind, you should read this from a "work smart, not hard" angle; it's not advice to waste your time. Instead, do things right and do the things that are important to you. Spending a bit more time to find the right thing to do is in nearly all cases a good move.
> I my mind, you should read this from a "work smart, not hard" angle; it's not advice to waste your time.
I realize that I left out context and examples. To be honest, I wasn't even thinking about work when I wrote that. I was just thinking about day to day life in general. I've heard people say "slow down" to others even when it comes to hobbies and such.
You most often hear it when it comes to driving and, yes, safe driving is paramount otherwise this example is counterproductive to my thesis. I bring it up because, personally I can't stand driving as I find the experience of my time being at the mercy of others to be so frustrating that I would rather file a tax return. I think that's probably the most common source of road rage, actually. Feeling like you're not in control. I have to admit that when people say things like "We'll get there when we get there" the first thought that enters my mind is "how nice for you that your time isn't valuable." And I realize that mindset can be dangerous on the road, which is another reason that I choose to drive as little as humanly possible.
Take your age at the birth of your kid and double it. You'll have that many years until they are "your age" which is troubling for us fathers having kids in our 40's.
My mother saw zero grandchildren while my father enjoys half a dozen. The difference in the years between the two was about seven years.
My mom had me very young and my grandparents had my parents young so I got to spend quality time with my great grandparents and my grandparents are still alive in their 70s while I'm 33. It's a huge blessing. My mom is 49 and my dad is 51. I hope I have many more years with them all
I was given a median lifespan of 80 years, when I punched in my 80 year old father, he is given a median lifespan of 87 years.
Seems the older you are, the longer you are likely to live. Maybe that makes sense. Maybe if I make it to 80 it will also push out my median life expectancy.
It makes total sense. Lifespan is age-dependent. There is a minute possibility one can die at 45yo. But if they have not, of course, that portion of the bell curve is shifted out.
Of course it makes sense. For people already older than the population median lifespan, do you expect their remaining lifespan to become negative? These are conditional probabilities, conditioned on the age already reached.
Your father is like you, except that you know he didn't get die before the age of 80. You might die a car crash at age 65. You father definitely didn't die in a car crash 15 years ago.
That's how life expectancy works. It's an average of everyone's life span in the sample. If you reach age X, you've already dodged the various causes of death that affect people predominately younger than X.
So, I’m Dutch and have lived half my life in The Netherlands and half my life in the USA. Which country do I pick? The results are quite different for each.
> You probably know more about your health, lifestyle, and family history than the average person your age, so you might have a different life expectancy.
That's an interesting thought - just by virtue of the fact that you clicked on that link and read the notes probably indicates that you know and care more about your health than average, and will likely live a bit longer, statistically.
Caveat: This estimate eschews any other factors, ie assuming all things being equal.
I happen to have an expectancy of mid 50s, for my condition. Less than 10 years left to go. Most of my family has lived (will live) well into their 80s, on average.
The death probabilities per age vary quite a bit, even among countries with apparently similar standards of living. The default, Australia, has pretty good stats.
Because in the data, Germany did not exist before 1990 and there is a significant population that were born in East or West. It doesn't seem like the tool actually uses the differences but there is likely a difference between life span depending on which side of the Berlin wall you were born on, before and after reunification. The former East Germany is still more economically depressed in comparison to its western counterpart. It's the difference between living in a poor state like Mississippi and a wealthier state like California. Numerous factors like access to better food and healthcare play into this but the major factor is money. Poorer people usually don't live as long as wealthier ones.
How does this account for the ticking time bomb in the US where the majority is becoming obese and kids are overweight/obese in their early years? Seems like this damage that people are doing to their bodies is unaccounted for in these calculations...or are they?
It has a section on data. It only uses current mortality reports and doesn’t predict anything based on current health trends.
Also note that obesity isnt unique to the US and applies to pretty much the entire developed world, it’s just that the US is pretty rich so “worst” in the trend. But take a look at UK or Germany or France obesity. It’s also high and trending up.
Yeah I left out the other countries because I felt that at least they have a health care system that could try and correct for it which would affect the long term results(may not even cause them to deviate in the long run if they can catch the issue in time).
I don't see a mechanism for widespread correction in the US with its current health care system. The current system as it stands has people dying before they can age to see their Medicare healthcare and even then too much damage will be done by that age to fully correct.
The calculator states that it bases its calculation on past mortality data, so no, it does not engage in speculation about the effect of current health trends on actual mortality. Which I prefer, because that would just be a wild guess anyway.
Yeah, this does not seem useful. I'm not a smoker and I'm not obese so these calculations are going to lump me in with people who don't closely match me.
As long as I can live past 87, each year after that I am less likely to die until I finally become immortal! At age 110 I have a 0.003% chance of dying. That's better than my current chance of 0.46%
If you have children, I encourage you assemble an "oops, I died" kit for them, not just with legal papers, but with long goodbye letters. If they're younger, make a letter for now and a letter for when they are adults.
I also made letters for important people in my life so that my survivors can hand them out to them.
I try to update these once a year accompanied by a good bottle of wine. I have updated my ex-wife's letter several times. It gets shorter every year.