Modeling the Future of Engineered Longevity
Anders Sandberg has built simple models to aid in a discussion of possible futures of enhanced human longevity: "Dirk Bruere on the Extrobritannia mailing list asked a provocative question: 'Any serious H+ predictions of longevity trends between now and (say) 2050 for various age groups? I would expect our predictions to start to deviate from the 'official' ones at some point soon.' This led me to develop a simple model of life extension demographics. I'm not a professional demographer and it depends on various assumptions, so take this with a suitable amount of salt. Summary of my results: I do not see any unexpected demographic changes before life extension breakthroughs, and age at death will not rise until a while after - despite potentially extreme rises of cohort life expectancy. (Flickr photostream [of charts]). I also think we 30+ transhumanists should be seriously concerned about speeding basic and transitional research, and look at alternative possibilities (cryonics, possibly [whole brain emulation]). ... What about our chances? It all depends on when we think the basic solutions are going to be discovered. ... My personal intuition is that we are not far from early research breakthroughs (they might have occurred already) ... I end up with the general life extension social breakthrough somewhere 2040-2060. Great news for current kids, a bit more worrying for us at 30+."
Link: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/09/life_extension_model.html