Estimate your age of death

"Do you realize

That everyone you know someday will die?

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know you realize that life goes fast

It's hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun doesn't go down

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.

> 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 letter or the amount of wine in the bottle?

Why wait until you’re dead to tell your loved ones important messages? Why not say it to them in person when you’re alive?

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.

This App is designed exactly to create videos for loved ones based on what people have said they wanted to know about deceased parents.

: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/recordmenow/id987986634

“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.”

I don't think this is the right way to look at this data.

It's a probability distribution you have a certain % of probability to die each year, which grows and peaks around the distribution peak.

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.

If you get hit by a bus, we'll do our best to put "(don't put this on my headstone if a bus hits me next week)" on your headstone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

in certain countries, yes

meanwhile in blue zones all over the world, the longest living people in the world are mostly quite poor

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.

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.

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?

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.

One of the biggest pros for having children relatively young.

I had 3 children before 25 then one when I was 39.

My oldest 3 had exceptional times with their grandparents. My youngest son didn't have this, they grew very old very quickly.

Cool!! So, if you first have kids at 92, you live to 184, and if you never have kids, it's infinite (bar getting 'hit by a bus')? ;-)

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.

Yes, that’s how statistics work. They average all the people at 80 to see how long further they lived. And here they show the median.

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.

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.

Bermuda is in between.

Quality over quantity brata

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.

Oh, that's mostly my lack of Observable Plot skills. The 110 year old category is meant to mean 110+, so it covers all the years after.

It doesn't

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, 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.

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.