Subject: (urth) An Evil Guest science errors

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:07:18 +0000

I forgot to include this in my tone email, but another thing that
bothered me coming from an engineer is the apparent sloppiness with
his scientific assertions.

Reis claims that even if humans didn't age, we'd still only get 2 or
300 years because of accidents and murders and self-slaughter. This is
a classically conservative argument against being interested in curing
aging - you're going to die anyway, and soon - but as far as I can
tell, his numbers are just wrong.

I have seen statistics to the effect that a 12 year old who stopped
aging could expect a median lifespan of >1000 years before disease or
something else finally got her. But the mortality rates for young
people in general are low enough that 2 or 300 years is ridiculously
too little, and we can see this very easily,

http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/
mentions that 1/3000 or 0.03% of 25 year-olds will die age 25. (Seems
reasonable to me.)

If we assume a cohort of 10x people, and each year 0.03% of them die,
then 1000 years from now, 7.4x will still be alive. 300 years from
now, 9.15x will still be alive, and 200 years will see 9.42x. It's a
low death rate!

Even a little basic figuring would have show 2-300 years to be absurd.
And we can't make the excuse that Wolfe was estimating from the
mid-40s ages of the protagonists, since the mortality rate cited for
42 year-olds is 1/750 or 0.13%. Plug in the 1/750 to the formula and
ask for 300 years from now, and 6.7x are still alive. Heck, 2.6x are
still alive 1000 years from now. 7/10ths or 3/10ths odds are not
grounds for despair and dismissal.

I'm calculating this in a Haskell REPL, GHCi, using this expression
for 100 years: 'take 100 $ iterate (\x -> x - (x * 0.0003)) 10'

You can see that each step is a year, and each step subtracts 0.03% of
the previous year's population-total:
[10.0,9.997,9.9940009,9.99100269973,9.98800539892008,9.985008997300405,9.982013494601215,9.979018890552835,9.97602518488567,9.973032377330204,9.970040467617006,9.96704945547672,9.964059340640077,9.961070122837885,9.958081801801034,9.955094377260494,9.952107848947316,9.949122216592631,9.946137479927653,9.943153638683675,9.940170692592071,9.937188641384294,9.934207484791878,9.931227222546442,9.928247854379677,9.925269380023364,9.922291799209358,9.919315111669595,9.916339317136094,9.913364415340952,9.91039040601635,9.907417288894546,9.904445063707877,9.901473730188766,9.898503288069708,9.895533737083287,9.892565076962162,9.889597307439074,9.886630428246841,9.883664439118366,9.88069933978663,9.877735129984694,9.874771809445699,9.871809377902865,9.868847835089495,9.865887180738968,9.862927414584746,9.859968536360372,9.857010545799463,9.854053442635724,9.851097226602933,9.848141897434953,9.845187454865723,9.842233898629264,9.839281228459674,9.836329444091136,9.83337854525791,9.830428531694333,9.827479403134824,9.824531159313883,9.821583799966088,9.8186373248261,9.815691733628652,9.812747026108564,9.809803202000731,9.80686026104013,9.803918202961817,9.80097702750093,9.79803673439268,9.795097323372362,9.79215879417535,9.789221146537097,9.786284380193136,9.783348494879078,9.780413490330615,9.777479366283515,9.77454612247363,9.771613758636889,9.768682274509297,9.765751669826944,9.762821944325996,9.759893097742697,9.756965129813375,9.75403804027443,9.751111828862348,9.74818649531369,9.745262039365095,9.742338460753285,9.739415759215058,9.736493934487294,9.733572986306948,9.730652914411056,9.727733718536733,9.724815398421171,9.721897953801644,9.718981384415503,9.716065690000178,9.713150870293179,9.71023692503209,9.70732385395458]

-- 
gwern

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:28:19 +0000

Perhaps Chase is using different variables based on empirical data in other 
non-aging cultures. Perhaps un-aging cultures tend toward more violence and 
risk. And for self-slaughter, we're talking suicide. We simply cannot know 
the rates of suicide in cultures where life goes on and on.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Gwern Branwen" <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 10:07 AM
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: (urth) An Evil Guest science errors

> [10.0,9.997,9.9940009,9.99100269973,9.98800539892008,9.985008997300405,9.982013494601215,9.979018890552835,9.97602518488567,9.973032377330204,9.970040467617006,9.96704945547672,9.964059340640077,9.961070122837885,9.958081801801034,9.955094377260494,9.952107848947316,9.949122216592631,9.946137479927653,9.943153638683675,9.940170692592071,9.937188641384294,9.934207484791878,9.931227222546442,9.928247854379677,9.925269380023364,9.922291799209358,9.919315111669595,9.916339317136094,9.913364415340952,9.91039040601635,9.907417288894546,9.904445063707877,9.901473730188766,9.898503288069708,9.895533737083287,9.892565076962162,9.889597307439074,9.886630428246841,9.883664439118366,9.88069933978663,9.877735129984694,9.874771809445699,9.871809377902865,9.868847835089495,9.865887180738968,9.862927414584746,9.859968536360372,9.857010545799463,9.854053442635724,9.851097226602933,9.848141897434953,9.845187454865723,9.842233898629264,9.839281228459674,9.836329444091136,9.83337854525791,9.8304
> 28531694333,9.827479403134824,9.824531159313883,9.821583799966088,9.8186373248261,9.815691733628652,9.812747026108564,9.809803202000731,9.80686026104013,9.803918202961817,9.80097702750093,9.79803673439268,9.795097323372362,9.79215879417535,9.789221146537097,9.786284380193136,9.783348494879078,9.780413490330615,9.777479366283515,9.77454612247363,9.771613758636889,9.768682274509297,9.765751669826944,9.762821944325996,9.759893097742697,9.756965129813375,9.75403804027443,9.751111828862348,9.74818649531369,9.745262039365095,9.742338460753285,9.739415759215058,9.736493934487294,9.733572986306948,9.730652914411056,9.727733718536733,9.724815398421171,9.721897953801644,9.718981384415503,9.716065690000178,9.713150870293179,9.71023692503209,9.70732385395458]
>
> -- 
> gwern
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
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> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:43:36 +0000

When you are talking about something totally speculative, you can make up
whatever result you like, basically, and justify your assumptions however
you like.

Hey, the Shivapuri Baba took up smoking at the age of 107, and died at the
age of 137.

.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:21:27 +0000

> the previous year's population-total:

Those more modestly equiped with Excel or Windows' built-in CALC.EXE can 
check this by treating it as a survival chance of .9997 per year, and 
raise that value to (for example) 100 years with

=0.9997^100	(for Excel)

or

click View | click Scientific
.9997 [x^y] 100 [=]		(for CALC.EXE)

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:19:01 +0000

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:28 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> non-aging cultures.

Which would be? Woldercon?

> Perhaps un-aging cultures tend toward more violence and
> risk.

The intuitive arguments are for exactly the opposite: if your lifespan
is indefinitely long, you jeopardize indefinitely many years with
violence or risk, whereas with aging, no matter the risk you take you
can lose no more than 120 years of life. A ceiling on losses
encourages risk-taking. (Consider recent financial bail-outs...)

I am reminded of some old quips:

  Q- Why does the devil keep his deals?
  A- Because as an immortal he has an infinite time horizon of other
deals he jeopardizes if he betrays any given deal. Therefore the
opportunity cost of any betrayal is too high.

  Q- What does that make politicians then?
  A- Lower in ethical reliability than the devil.
-Oldman

> And for self-slaughter, we're talking suicide. We simply cannot know

If the suicides are caused solely by exogenous factors, then Reis -
and certainly Wolfe - cannot know this without aging having been cured
in a normal human society, which it has not, so the statement is
unjustified. If suicides are caused solely by internal reasons, then
Reis's statement about deaths being inevitable within 2-300 years is
false since people will live as long as they want to.
Any mix of endogenous or exogenous factors simply makes his statement
a greater or lesser mixture of false and unjustified.

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:43 AM,  <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
> When you are talking about something totally speculative, you can make up whatever result you like, basically, and justify your assumptions however you like.
>
> Hey, the Shivapuri Baba took up smoking at the age of 107, and died at the age of 137.

Entertainingly, I was recently reading
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-studies.html and
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/smoking-followup.html arguing
that the actual studies suggest that smoking is only harmful to people
with bad/vulnerable lungs (for whom it is harmful enough to skew all
the other statistics which we know and fear).

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> check this by treating it as a survival chance of .9997 per year, and raise
> that value to (for example) 100 years with
>
> =0.9997^100     (for Excel)

Quite right. If I had thought harder, I would've realized that was the
easier way to do it - but I'm a Haskeller and the iterate pattern is
what my mind jumped to.
(It does have the slight advantage of showing all the intermediate
results, but that's very slight.)

-- 
gwern

---

From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:47:48 +0000

> encourages risk-taking. (Consider recent financial bail-outs...)
For a Wolfe view of a world with unlimited longevity, look at 'The Doctor of Death Island.'

Life becomes meaningless, therefore cheap. Love is gone. The war between the sexes is literal. Etc.