From: Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@mail.blarg.net)
Date: Wed Apr 15 1998 - 13:25:30 MDT
> From: "Scott Badger" <wbadger@psyberlink.net>
> > At 06:53 4/15/98 -0500, ChuckKuecker <ckuecker@mcs.net> wrote:
> > >At 23:47 4/14/98 -0700, you wrote:
> > >>As people's lifespans slowly but surely start to increase, the frequency
> > >>of death from "unnatural causes" will also increase.
> >
> This doesn't make sense to me. Longer life spans would not increase the
> _frequency_ of unnatural deaths.
Depends on how you interpret the sentence.
As our control of disease and aging becomes perfect, and we become
significantly more reliably nice to each other, accidental deaths
will approach 100% of all deaths, as opposed to its current level
of... um... 10%? That's quite an increase.
> Let's say you would normally live 100
> years and you are risk-aversive to the degree that you have a 1% chance of
> dying an unnatural death over the length of your life-span. If you then
> become able to live for 200 years and maintain that same level of
> risk-aversiveness, then (all other things being equal) you will still have a
> 1% chance of dying an unnatural death. It's just that 1% of 100 is only
> one-half of 1% of 200.
Incorrect. You would have a 1% chance of dying an unnatural death IN
YOUR FIRST 100 YEARS!!!
Ignoring the safety-enhancing effect of maturity and experience, if
you survive the first 100 years you would have a 1% chance of dying
an unnatural death in your second century. That's a combined 1.99%
chance of dying an unnatural death.
(In reality, your chances of dying an unnatural death in any given
year are rather higher from birth through age 25 than at a later
ages; and presumably the rate continues to decline until the
eyesight- and reflex-weakening effects of age counteract the
advantage of increased knowledge and experience.)
> And if your life was extended indefinitely (to infinity), there would be a
> 1% probablity times infinity (equivalent to 100% probability) that you would
> die of an unnatural cause eventually (even if you significantly reduced your
> exposure to risk). Am I right people?
It isn't multiplicative. It's exponential, and the proper way to
express it is the chance of *not* dying of an unnatural cause, which
is .99 (the chance per period) to the power of the number of periods
in question. Given enough periods, the chance is arbitrarily close
to zero but never actually reaches mathematical zero.
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