Required reading: Google results on 1) Initiative 2045; 2) Alcor; 3) Ray Kurzweil There are two organisations that I am aware of tackling the problem of human mortality. These are Initiative 2045 and Alcor. Initiative 2045 aims to introduce cybernetic indefinite life extension to the human population and with time make it more affordable. Alcor is a cryonics institute that has been running for a few decades. They use the process of vitrification to preserve your brain or body. Neuropreservation costs about 80000 dollars plus some surcharges. There are already insurance companies that offer life policies where upon death, the benefit is paid to Alcor who preserve your brain. Under current laws, this can only be done when a patient's heart stops beating and they are declared legally dead (and also occurrence of the claim event). I feel that the insurance industry all over the world and actuaries in particular should aim to aid these organisations. Possibilities are creating zero-benefit policies (i.e. Asking for donations from the public - contradicts expected utility theorem?) or possibly provide some form of benefit s.t. a policyholder can undergo the procedure contingent on the current technology available upon time of death. The major problem to tackle is funding the research. This is where the insurance industry can make the biggest impact as insurance companies have access to the majority of the first world population with disposable income. Small amounts paid into a fund by a large sample of people could really make an impact on how the research progresses. What are you guys' thoughts on the matter? I'd actually like to focus my career towards involving myself in this research. Down with the tqx!
Also see SENS (http://www.sens.org/about). You've probably heard of Aubrey de Grey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey) one of their more prominent speakers, who believes that the first person to live to 1,000 may already be alive. As for whether the (re-)insurance industry will become a major contributor to these bodies, I think that may well depend on whether a group is long mortality or longevity risk. I don't see the specialist annuity writers being too quick to sign up!
Prepare yourself for my disjointed musings on the topic.. I wouldn't see the insurance industry funding anything like this. Private companies are not known for being generous with their capital. The best you could hope for is collaboration on data collection. You'd struggle to get people to pay for zero benefit policies or to gamble on the availability of technology to pay for potentially available technology. People take out insurance contracts to reduce risk, the idea of paying money for a contract that may provide zero benefit is not an attractive one, especially over the long term where the probability of a benefit is very uncertain. Though if people had a lot of disposable income then you might get away with it. This is going to be one of those things that has to be funded by the incredibly rich, indefinite life is (surprisingly) not high on the list of things people are looking to fund. Focus is on other ways to reduce probability of death (curing diseases etc). For most people this is far too long term and it's already a struggle to even convince people to adequately provide for their retirement. When it's first available it will presumably be priced s.t. only the very rich can afford it. I get the feeling that's not a group that spends a lot of money on annuities (given the financial cushions they already have against their own longevity risk), hopefully give enough time for life companies to adjust their assumptions. If it does become available to the average Joe I guess you can say bye-bye annuities (or at least bye-bye affordable annuities). Lifelong health insurance, income protection would also probably have to go.. A lot depends on the quality of the extended life I guess. There's a whole lot of what ifs.. That said the idea of living forever currently appeals to me.. Though we'll see if I'm saying that in 50-60 years!
I have also come across SENS and Aubrey De Grey but had forgotten about them. Thanks for linking to them. Understandably the pensions side would not want people living long (evil actuaries!) and the life side would would want people to live longer (good actuaries!). General insurers would only care about how much stuff people have (materialistic actuaries!) Of course, pensions are contingent on retirement. We'd probably just need to put double transition arrows from active to retired to legally dead and contracts adjusted so that the benefit can't be paid out indefinitely. Also, I do not think people would choose to stay retired for many years if they are healthy and able since they could earn more while working and increase their human capital further. With life insurance, people would cancel their contracts if they knew the probability of them dying is zero (invincibility). However, if the probability is non-zero (because of accidental death), then life insurance would still exist. I think people would stop trying to accumulate wealth as fast as possible and start living and be more goal oriented if there is no time limit on life e.g scientifically researching optimal grooming methods for maltese dogs for 20 years, researching how to build spaceships etc. The reason why people pursue money (or take jobs they hate/have no interest in) is because they want to enjoy life as much as possible (in their free time) before their time runs out. Given enough time, people would rather pursue their passions even if they pay less. Far down enough into the future, people and companies could build up sufficient reserves to self-insure so maybe even general insurance companies would be phased out although new businesses and new working age humans would probably need general as they wouldn't have reserves. This is me speculating at any rate. No one can really predict what would happen if the human population was given the opportunity to extend their lives indefinitely. There was a member on this forum who predicted the recession back in 2007. I'd like to hear his/her views.
I'd just like to emphasise that each member of this forum could afford neuropreservation by Alcor. 80000 dollars isn't really that much if you already own a house or are young right now. It's actually the most viable opportunity given that it preserves your conciousness through time - assuming the brain is the essence of our being. Two posts above is right in that people don't really have life extension as a priority right now. Cryonics allows for the matching of your mind to the time in which life extension is available. It may seem far-fetched but some pretty cool technologies have been created recently: -mind-controlled androids by US Defence people - small scale Star-Trek esque tractor beam - small scale Star-Trek esque transporter -www.buildtheenterprise.org exists and is serious - cure for HIV (Tetrasil) - viruses modified to target cancer cells - the gene that causes cancer and also cell division has been mapped - an enzyme that keeps telomeres at the same length has been found - nanotechnology - German people made a hand that looks and functions like The Terminator's hand- ion propulsion engines Once you have read this post and become aware of this information and the opportunities, the choice to live or die is up to you. Historical data is not necessarily representitive of future performance! Don't take the fact that people have historically died in the past to mean that people will always die in the future.
I'm mostly looking at this from an insurance perspective, but the other facet - what people would be like if they had more time in a lifetime would be interesting. I guess it depends on what way indefinite life is manifested and who it is available to. I would imagine that investment and protection products would remain relatively unchanged, depending on what happens to population growth. The developed world is about at the stage where indefinite life could be of use. Low birth rates, aging population.. that's the kind of situation where these low birth rates may possibly balance off the effect of accidental death. I'm not sure that GI would phase out. Even if you're pushing 200 your house is likely to be a large part of your wealth, and even if you earn far more money over this time, people aren't just going to keep it in a bank, the world would stop moving!! I'd imagine you'd just see more people with expensive cars, nice houses and other assets they'd want to be compensated for the loss of. An important point here is that the normal progression of life will no longer happen. People won't move up companies and get pay rises automatically, the person above them will never have to retire to make room... Ah speculation... fun but often fruitless. That last point on someone predicting the recession.. is there a link to that thread??
This was the thread where it was predicted about 7 months before it happened www.acted.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=676
Forgetting the insurance side of things for a minute. From a Darwinian point of view, there's nothing so undesirable as a species which doesn't die. Firstly, there's the obvious problem of population explosion, and the associated lack of food, water, energy, to support them all. Some leading scientists already believe that the next war will be over water, and that's without the problems of immortality. Secondly, the whole point of a species is to adapt over time to aid survival. If we can't die (and therefore, can't really have children due to lack of resources and space), then we can't adapt over time to new challenges. Take infections as an example. We're already seeing infections becoming resistant to antibiotics, because over time they multiply and adapt, and with each multiplication grow stronger and more resistant to their predators (in this case, drugs) This is the same with humans. We are so much stronger and smarter than we were even a century or so ago (look at olympic records and how often they keep getting broken if you want to see a stark progression of strength improvements, or IQ levels over time if you want to see the intelligence progression). Immortality halts this progression and leaves us stuck in our current state. Obviously nobody really wants to die, but our dying and leaving behind offspring is the best thing for our species, as those offspring will be smarter and stronger than we are, and thus the chances of humans surviving throughout all the hardships awaiting us in the future are much greater.
Very valid points.. but there are biologically immortal creatures already, they get by living for hundreds of years. They don't even have the advantages we have. The situation is not directly comparable, but it does show it can work. At least for a few hundred years.. It's quite possible that evolution will stop favouring mortality in humans, and we would reach biological immortality without intervention of our own (but who wants to wait for that?). The resource issue is much more of a limit. But it looks like we're facing into that no matter what happens with human lifespans. As you say that it's better for humans if we leave behind stronger, smarter offspring but as a rational, self-interested person I'd much rather I was alive than the human race had slightly better humans!
I would argue that the loss of knowledge that comes from our lead scientists dying is the major problem for our world. More scientists + More time = More knowledge being generated = More problems being solved. The question of evolution can be thought of in another way. Augmenting ourselves with technology can be seen as a form of cybernetic evolution. The benefits are that it is more targetted than Darwinian evolution. In essence we just need food and water to power our bodies. Given enough time, we can solve any problem. IQs just affect how well a person is able to learn. It just means a person with a lower IQ will take more time to understand the material. The fact that we have limited time in the world is the major limit of a human being's knowledge. Resources will be scarce whether we achieve indefinite life extension or not. Having scientists working across generations while new scientists learn and familiarise themselves with the material. This way, we can have continuity with research on important topics.
