Actuarial Escape Velocity

Every now and then, an obscure concept is so brilliantly encapsulated in a compact yet sublime term that it leaves the audience inspired enough to evangelize it. 

I have felt that way ever since I heard the words 'Actuarial Escape Velocity'.

For some background, please refer to an older article from early 2006, 'Are You Prepared to Live to 100?".  Notice the historical uptrend in human life expectancy, and the accelerating rate of increases.  For more, do also read the article "Are You Acceleration Aware?".

In analyzing the rate at which life expectancy is increasing in the wealthiest nations, we see that US life expectancy is now increasing by 0.2 years, every year.  Notably, the death rates from heart disease and cancer have been dropping by a rapid 2-4% each year, and these two leading causes of death are quickly falling off, despite rising obesity and a worsening American diet over the same period.  Just a few decades ago, the rate on increase in life expectancy was slower than 0.2 years per year.  In the 19th century, even the wealthiest societies were adding well under 0.1 years per year.  But how quickly can the rate of increase continue to rise, and does it eventually saturate as each unit of gain becomes increasingly harder to achieve?

Two of the leading thinkers in the field of life extension, Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey, believe that by the 2020s, human life expectancy will increase by more than one year every year (in 2002 Kurzweil predicted that this would happen as soon as 2013, but this is just another example of him consistently overestimating the rate of change).  This means that death will approach the average person at a slower rate than the rate of technology-driven lifespan increases.  It does not mean all death suddenly stops, but it does mean than those who are not close to death do have a possibility of indefinite lifespan after AEV is reached.  David Gobel, founder of the Methuselah Foundation, has termed this as Actuarial Escape Velocity (AEV), essentially comparing the rate of lifespan extension to the speed at which a spacecraft can surpass the gravitiational pull of the planet it launches from, breaking free of the gravitational force.  Thus, life expectancy is currently, as of 2007 data, rising at 20% of Actuarial Escape Velocity.

I remain unconvinced that such improvements will be reached as soon as Ray Kurzeil and Aubrey de Grey predict.  I will be convinced after we clearly achieve 50% of AEV in developed countries, where six months are added to life expectancy every year.  It is possible that the interval between 50% and 100% of AEV comprises less than a decade, but I'll re-evaluate my assumptions when 50% is achieved. 

Serious research efforts are underway.  The Methuselah Mouse Prize will award a large grant to researchers that can demonstrate substantial increases in the lifespan of a mouse (more from The Economist).  Once credible gains can be demonstrated, funding for the research will increase by orders of magnitude. 

The enormous market demand for lifespan extension technologies is not in dispute.  There are currently 95,000 individuals in the world with a net worth greater than $30 million, including 1125 billionaires.  Accelerating Economic Growth is already growing the ranks of the ultrawealthy at a scorching pace.  If only some percentage of these individuals are willing to pay a large portion of their wealth in order to receive a decade or two more of healthy life, particularly since money can be earned back in the new lease on life, then such treatment already has a market opportunity in the hundreds of billions of dollars.  The reduction in the economic costs of disease, funerals, etc. are an added bonus.  Market demand, however, cannot always supercede the will of nature. 

This is only the second article on life extension that I have written on The Futurist, out of 154 total articles written to date.  While I certainly think aging will be slowed down to the extent that many of us will surpass the century mark, it will take much more for me to join the ranks of those who believe aging can be truly reversed.  To track progress in this field, keep one eye on the rate of decline in cancer and heart disease deaths, and another eye on the Methuselah Mouse Prize.  That such metrics are even advancing on a yearly basis is already remarkable, but monitoring anything more than these two measures, at this time, would be premature. 

So let's find out what the group prediction is, with a poll.  Keep in mind that most people are biased towards believing this date will fall within their own lifetimes (poll closed 7/1/2012) :

Comments

[zyndryl]

I only voted for the 2040-2050 to stay on the conservative side. My gut choice was originally 2030-2040.

So, I predict around 2035-2045. :)

[Protagonist]

I voted for 2010-2020.

Reaching this great milestone won't be like watching a moon landing on TV, but will be very subtle occurrence.

Take your pick: heart disease/strokes, cancer, diabetus, Alzheimer's/dementia. Find a definitive cure to one of these and life expectancy goes up easily by 10-15 years, that year. And I've heard tons of news and study that suggest definitive cures or prevention of these are possible in the next 10-15 years.

Find the cure to all three, and everyone's basically living to 120. Plenty of time for a singularity.

[Dave]

Perhaps the biggest variable as to when AEV is achieved is whether or not we get socialized medicine in the U.S. If that occurs, quality of medical care will drop do to loss of market forces: Medical and biotech firms will lose incentives for R&D and bright, ambitious people will choose professions other than medicine.

Too bad that at the very time we're at the cusp of AEV, we're also ready to throw a huge monkey wrench into the machine that will make it happen.

[GK]

Dave,

That is possible, which is why it is important for biotech R&D to occur in multiple countries, not just the US.

Protagonist,

Curing any of those is a tall order. Also, even if, say, heart disease is cured, that just means that there is more time to inevitably contract cancer and Alzheimers. Note that cancer death rates rose a lot before they fell, as longer lives due to the elimination of TB, Malaria, etc. enabled people to live long enough to actually get cancer.

And curing all 4 of these diseases is still not a *reversal* in aging, just a slowing down.

[b]

Interesting concept, but I don't think we will ever reach a time when the average life expectancy is increasing by over 1 year every year.

Technological advances may be an exponential curve, but human limitations are best represented by an inverse of that curve.

Will humans ever sprint at 100mph or throw a baseball at 200mph? I doubt it, at least not without some sort of bionic limbs.

So maybe it will happen when we're growing replacement human organs inside braindead genetically engineered pigs or whatever...

[stalker]

Hello, GK. I used to be ilya.

I am split between 2030-40 and 2040-50, but picked the latter to be on the safe side.

Btw, just to nitpick...

Just a few decades ago, the rate on increase in life expectancy was slower than 0.2 years per year. In the 19th century, even the wealthiest societies were adding well under 0.1 years per year.

Take a look at this graph of historical US life expectancy (ignore the projection).

http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/images/fig1.jpg

Life expectancy does not follow an obviously exponential trend. It shows that improvements were a lot more rapid, relatively, in 1900-50 (c.20 yrs), than in 1950-2000 (c.10 yrs). Indeed, in % terms US LE increased at a similar rate in 1950-2000 as it did throughout the nineteenth century.

[Ken]

There's two parts to this though. One is preventing premature death - heart attack, cancer - and one is prolonging the overall life of whatever index dates us, whether it's DNA or telomeres or whatever. Even if we elongate the lifespan, whether exponentially or linearly, we're going to hit a wall at the limit of cell/DNA/telomere life unless we find a way to refresh them.

[SanFranciscoJim]

The extremely wealthy will be able to extend their life indefinitely, but most of us will still end up dying of pedestrian causes, mostly infections picked up in hospital stays. There is no way that our economy can support a population that is 50% invalids over 100, so most people will just be allowed to go.

Perhaps at some point, the aging of the brain will be reversible or stoppable and we will have widespread adoption of robots for labor, but I don't expect that anytime this century.

[ces]

You need to review your references more carefully. The life expectancy tables show that life expectancy was increasing by 0.29 years per year in the 70's. This droped to 0.17 and 0.16 years/year in the 80's and 90's respectively. Yes, the rate increased back up to 0.21 from 1994 to 2004, but there is no clear trend here.

[Michal Tatarynowicz]

I think that at least for the next 2-3 hundred years people, even the richest, will not be able to survive forever. The oldest people alive will tend die from problems of old age that we simply won't yet have a cure for.

[Savethemales]

Stem cells alone is predicted for 200 year lifespans, this is more than enough time for the technological singularity of 2060 to cause AEV.

[Johnny]

@ces Life expectancy was artificially low in the mid 20th century, due to smoking.

[Chris]

I have heard Kurzweil mention many times that we will be increasing our life expectancy one year for every year we age in the next 15 years not by 2013 or by 2050

[Chris]

excuse me I must be needing glasses - I misread!

[SilverSeeker]

2019: the AEV >1 was already crossed. Telomere extension from Bill Andrews and senolytics already made it.

[Kartik Gada]

SilverSeeker,

Completely false.

AEV only applies to total life expectancy of a society. Life expectancy in the US has gone backwards in recent years, which means that AEV from 2000 to 2018 is exactly 0%.

For AEV to be greater than 1, US life expectancy would have to rise by over a year every year (say, by 11 years in the next 10 years). This is most certainly not happening.