Average Human Lifespan

[Condottiere]

I donno.

Upgrade cycles will lengthen, and you probably will buy stuff that lasts far longer.

A ten year old computer still works remarkably well for browsing and office work, and I put my sim card into (a new) Nokia 105 I bought for about twenty five bucks while on holiday; the other(s) I activate for credit card transactions (because they insisted) and MP3 player.

 

[kilemall]

If it's bothering you, just consider again that our characters are not simming Average Space Joe but adventurers.


It's not the years, it's the mileage.

 

[Winged Cat]

Do you really expect to be adventuring when you are in your 80s? Or even late 70s?

In my case, yes. The one grandparent of mine who lived long enough to meet me sure did, and my mom's looked forward to doing so.

Granted, I'd also like to accelerate the invention of anagathics IRL so I can still be adventuring come my 1,000th birthday and beyond. But even without that, I have some evidence that I know some of the secrets to staying active in long life. (The biggest one: staying active, mentally and physically. Those who stop working - for pay, volunteer, or otherwise - and stop thinking, just getting drunk and lazing about all the time, trigger end-of-life processes in their body. If you want to live longer, try not to do that. This likely extends to those on anagathics: they'd have to still do stuff, even with the drugs' assistance.)

 

[Grav_Moped]

That depends on where you are at. Taking a chance on making a political statement, a fair number of cities have been going bankrupt because of public pensions which they cannot afford to fund without massively raising taxes, which in turn results in a shrinking tax base. At that point, pensions are an economic and political problem.

As for the deferred compensation, when you are a public employee getting paid about the same as the private sector would pay, and your pensions contribution comes no where near covering what the pension payout will be, that is not deferred compensation. Then add to that depending on where you live pensions are not taxed as income.

It's deferred compensation, by definition: work now, get paid later. The failure mode you describe isn't a pension failing to be deferred compensation, it's an employer (in effect) defrauding employees through offering higher total compensation than they can afford to pay for. I'll grant that they may have been forced into that position by decades of politically-expedient decisions to shortchange pension funding in order to keep taxes low while prioritizing other governmental services, but it's just the bill coming due for those prior choices.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Is there a specific reason the average human lifespan in the Traveller universe is so low? (It's set at 74 years.) I would expect it to increase as technology increases, not go down.

Humans wouldn't be humans otherwise.

 

[Timerover51]

In my case, yes. The one grandparent of mine who lived long enough to meet me sure did, and my mom's looked forward to doing so.

Are you 100% absolutely positive that you will wake up tomorrow morning, or any morning for that matter? Are you absolutely 100% positive that you will not be diagnosed with cancer in the next year?

 

[Timerover51]

It's deferred compensation, by definition: work now, get paid later. The failure mode you describe isn't a pension failing to be deferred compensation, it's an employer (in effect) defrauding employees through offering higher total compensation than they can afford to pay for. I'll grant that they may have been forced into that position by decades of politically-expedient decisions to shortchange pension funding in order to keep taxes low while prioritizing other governmental services, but it's just the bill coming due for those prior choices.

Any response that I could make to this would result in the thread either being locked for becoming too political, or moved to the Pit. I suggest that we drop this discussion.

 

[77topaz]

Are you 100% absolutely positive that you will wake up tomorrow morning, or any morning for that matter? Are you absolutely 100% positive that you will not be diagnosed with cancer in the next year?

While technically true, that's not really a valid criticism of what Winged Cat said. He didn't say "I'm positive I will live to that age", but more something along the lines of "If I live to that age, I'm positive I will still be adventurous".

 

[Grav_Moped]

Any response that I could make to this would result in the thread either being locked for becoming too political, or moved to the Pit. I suggest that we drop this discussion.

Agreed.

 

[Ulsyus]

Granted, I'd also like to accelerate the invention of anagathics IRL so I can still be adventuring come my 1,000th birthday and beyond. But even without that, I have some evidence that I know some of the secrets to staying active in long life. (The biggest one: staying active, mentally and physically. Those who stop working - for pay, volunteer, or otherwise - and stop thinking, just getting drunk and lazing about all the time, trigger end-of-life processes in their body. If you want to live longer, try not to do that. This likely extends to those on anagathics: they'd have to still do stuff, even with the drugs' assistance.)

For really old adventurers, read some of Iain M. Banks "Culture" novels. Way over TL15, but fascinating nonetheless.

As for characters living longer, the BBB p503 (sounds like the start of a sermon) tells us that geneering is a matured technology at TL14 and Anagathics at TL15. The latter are a way of dealing with slowing down aging, but more recent perspectives could see a PC who's been geneered to live longer and so doesn't commence aging rolls until later.

 

[Frewfrux]

I don't know. Maybe Canadian's are just long-lived humans and that's what I'm used to so it didn't seem like a reasonable assumption to say our average as a race is 74.

If you take the world LEB, it's 67 years, and In Japan LEB is around 83 years, but that's taking infant mortality into account, something the T5 rules don't do, so you would think T5 rules should have it even higher.

I guess if we assume that the humans of the future don't change their diet/lifestyle at all from what it is today an empire-wide 74 might not be too far off the mark.

The other thing that occurs to me is that life expectancy and maximum age are two very different things. The oldest human on record appears to have been 122 years, which is almost double the current world LEB. I guess as long as you keep your character's body fit somehow to counter the aging process you could extend life quite a bit.

For myself (IMTU) I think I'm just going to say that humans have 3 terms in life stages 7, 8, and 9, and that this can be modified up/down based on culture and TL.

I'm also going to change (IMTU) the sophont rules around setting the terms for the various life stages. As is, you end up with very staggered results as the norm.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

High tech improves aging.

In my ATU I use a modified Aging roll which has TL as the Modifier. Basically the higher the tech the longer the age. On the other hand if the TL is low you tend to age faster.

 

[aramis]

In my ATU I use a modified Aging roll which has TL as the Modifier. Basically the higher the tech the longer the age. On the other hand if the TL is low you tend to age faster.

One interesting thing has been noted by a few more recent historians...

Aging doesn't seem to have changed much; if anything, the elderly are MORE frail now than at lower tech levels...

... but lots more are surviving other (non-age) related issues.

Historic peak ages tend to be around 5-6 score (100-120 years) pretty uniformly.
Infant mortality dropped with agriculture, and dropped again with industrialization, and once more with mid-20th C medicine, and edges down slowly since.
Childhood/pre-adolescent mortality reduced with agriculture, increased with industrialization, and dropped again with child-labor laws... and has continued to drop with improved medicine (especially immunization) and food.
Warfare is the big filter for young adults. It's where most of the premodern lowered lifespan really drops the averages. As warfare became both less universal and more survivable... those populations with decent military medicine edge up.

Modern medicine makes most of the former pandemics no longer so. It's not doing much to keep the elderly fit... just ensuring there are more elderly.

 

[coliver988]

One interesting thing has been noted by a few more recent historians...

Aging doesn't seem to have changed much; if anything, the elderly are MORE frail now than at lower tech levels...

... but lots more are surviving other (non-age) related issues.

Historic peak ages tend to be around 5-6 score (100-120 years) pretty uniformly.
Infant mortality dropped with agriculture, and dropped again with industrialization, and once more with mid-20th C medicine, and edges down slowly since.
Childhood/pre-adolescent mortality reduced with agriculture, increased with industrialization, and dropped again with child-labor laws... and has continued to drop with improved medicine (especially immunization) and food.
Warfare is the big filter for young adults. It's where most of the premodern lowered lifespan really drops the averages. As warfare became both less universal and more survivable... those populations with decent military medicine edge up.

Modern medicine makes most of the former pandemics no longer so. It's not doing much to keep the elderly fit... just ensuring there are more elderly.

The US has seen the average life expectancy go down the last couple of years, primarily due to drug overdoses. However - that IS at the macro level, and assuming you don't OD your chances of living longer are better due to the aforementioned reasons.