[extropy-chat] The Longevity Dividend

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 16:50 -0800, "Hal Finney" wrote:

> Well, they better get going pronto if they are going to help baby boomers,
> some of whom are turning 60.  Not a lot of time left for some magic
> drug that's going to buy them 7 years.  But surely the prospects are
> more promising for interventions that could be applied at a younger age.
> 
At the current rate of life expectancy improvement in developed
countries, 7 years would take somewhere between two and three decades,
which matches the remaining life expectancy of the baby boomers, so this
objective could probably be achieved by doing whatever we are doing
already.  The remaining life expectancy wouldn't be increased by 7 years
at all stages of life, but the effect would still be that, on average,
the mortality at any specific age would be halved. Would Olshanky claim
the objective met if the current trend continued?