That was his dad.
A common criticism of the statement that life expectancy doubled is that this “only happened because child mortality declined”. I think that, even if this were true, it would be one of humanity’s greatest achievements, but in fact, this assertion is also just plain wrong. Mortality rates declined, and consequently life expectancy increased, for all age groups .
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I’m pretty sure that, in the US universities that I’ve taught in, the chains of prerequisites, exam schedules, and required capstone projects would make an 18 month degree impossible at any age or ability level.
BTW, not quite sure why all of you are taking the immortality thing so seriously. Have you not met (or been) a nerdy 11 year old before? It is a child’s sci-fi-ish fantasy, not a funded grant.
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You don’t, actually. At least, not necessarily. Proposals like an Omega Point cosmology or Dyson’s Eternal Intelligence enable infinite computational capacity in a universe containing a finite amount of free energy, because there is no fixed upper bound on entropy. No one currently has any idea how to actually build either of those, but physics as we know it allows something like them to exist.
Also, I love how everyone just assumes the kid is being naive. I mean, he probably is. But it’s possible he’s also just open minded enough to take physics seriously, which most physicists aren’t, not really. Some version of quantum immortality is one of the natural consequences of many-worlds, which is itself the interpretation of quantum mechanics that requires the fewest extra assumptions. If you already expect quantum immortality for yourself, it would be much more appealing to increase the measure of your loved ones continuing to exist in your future decohered wavefunction, because the alternative is an eternity alone.
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If you accelerate someone to the speed of light, won’t they live forever?
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Naw. The First Atlantic System was mostly Spanish and Portuguese. After the 1650s the Second Atlantic System was Mostly English, French, and Dutch.
But there was far-flung slave trading before that as well.
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Right you are! I was mainly thinking of the modernization and incorporation of the effort via Dutch West Indies Co, but you’re right the Spanish got there first.
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In England between 1800 to 2000 the mortality rate for children under 5 decreased from 339 per 1000 to 7 per 1000, did the other age groups have that same drop? Not by that chart… 70 year olds have gained 10 years, more or less, 30 year olds around 12 to 15, newborns have doubled their life expectancy.
It was heavily due to that number dropping (not surprisingly), not entirely. Obviously if you arrived at a certain age, you could expect to see a few more years, childhood was a minefield. Modern medicine has done wonders for extending our lifespan, especally vaccinations, with the largest effect by far on small children.
Then, you’ve used the exact stat I’m talking about, that graph in your first link is average life expectancy from birth, which goes from 42/3 to 81, primarily because children died a lot less.
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Life expectancy for someone who made it to 5 increased from 55 to 80+. This means, as the article says, that the increase was not mainly due to child mortality. Which was my point: if people tend to die at 55, it is going to skew their productivity after 50 way down.
The primary reason Galois didn’t prove anything at 60 is that he was killed at 21.
I wonder if there’s anyone for whom this framing would help:
So far, everyone who has ever lived, has died within 123 years, usually much less. At birth, babies face every possible risk to their lives, still in the future. Older people show a survivorship bias - they’ve already made it through some of the risks. At least, this is true in a world of unchanging technology and roughly-constant distributions of economic and environmental conditions and risks.
So when new technologies reduce the risk of certain causes of death, they will always improve the life expectancy of newborns, but only sometimes increase the life expectancy of 70 year olds.
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I think you are forgetting theoretical physics here?
So, causes of death can be many, communicable diseases, diseases due to genetics, due to poor nutrition, poor medical care, no antibiotics, and so on. If you don’t get killed by polio, measles, or other diseases when young, more chance you’ll die of something like heart failure, or cancer, etc when old…
The more children get past that gauntlet of 1y, then 5y, the more 10 year olds, 20 year olds and so forth there are, dragging up the average life expectancy. Each of those ages has leading causes of death, newborns in 1800 had a 1 in 3 chance of not seeing their first birthday, many times due to diseases that were not so risky for older children or adults, those odds get better until you get pretty old. Basically, there are more players in the lottery the more infants that survive.
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Yes, of course; the older you are, the longer you are expected to live, but it is also the case that that expectation is much greater at a given age now than it was 150 years ago. Meanwhile, if mathematicians are living longer – whatever the reason – they are likely to be doing mathematics longer. I know several excellent, productive mathematicians in their 80s, and I’ve known many over the years who were active and doing fantastic work until their deaths. The idea that the best math/physics/whatever is done by the very young is a popular false idea based on a few famous examples and obsolete historical realities.
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Very much agree that ageist people saying only young minds can make breakthroughs is absolute BS, possibly youngsters are less risk averse, or have less to lose, but I don’t think there’s some cutoff where your ability to understand, or make discoveries evaporates.
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