[Dragaera] A Teckla thought

Philip Hart philiph at slac.stanford.edu
Mon Sep 13 13:44:38 PDT 2010



On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:

> Though really, I used the wrong phrasing.  What I meant wasn't "life
> expectancy" as an average, but more like "age by which we are surprised at
> each successive birthday not being fatal."  Not that I've done detailed
> research on the topic yet.

Certainly this is extreme nitpicking, but if one makes it to 80, one's 
life expectancy is another eight years.  Even at 100 you average another 
two years.  One's probability of dying within a year crosses 50% at 107.


> Actually, I totally *would* call an 80-year-old "really really old".  The
> fact that some people last for decades after that doesn't make 80 itself
> any less impressive an achievement.

50,086 out of 100000 born alive achieve this, per the SSA; 24,183 make it 
to 87.


To segue back to the original point, I would in fact predict a long tail - 
I would naively expect that there would be some 4k-year-old Teckla even 
if 3k is the life expectancy under good conditions (assuming the Cycle is 
that patient).

And of course one would think that practically any Teckla soul has a good 
shot of having been alive then.



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