April 09, 2004
Live as Long as You Want!
Wow, according to Aubrey De Grey, we'd be able to live for a long long time, relatively.
Technology Review: Would you care to guess what the lifespan of someone born in the year 2025 will be?5,000 years, eh? I guess I'll witness Y3K bugs after all. Posted by david at April 9, 2004 11:47 PM | TrackBackAubrey De Grey: The number I usually put on that is 5,000 years. But this, I want to stress, is an absolute finger in the air. The way I calculate it is as follows. If aging already didn't exist but we did have all the other causes of death at the rates we have them now-infectious diseases that kill young people, car accidents, wars-then basically you come out 1,000 years that people would live on average, plus or minus a few hundred. I tend to say it will be more like 5,000 years simply because when society is faced with the opportunity to live an arbitrary length of time, we will become more risk averse. I predicted in 1999 that driving would be outlawed, because it will be too dangerous to other people. I still think that's likely, unless we design cars that are much safer and can avoid serious accidents even in the case of severe human error.