On Death and Dying

The other night, Ms. Eclectic and I were speculating about how long we expect to live. She's a cancer survivor, and both my parents died of heart disease; so we figured we'd both probably be below average. 

The sudden death of my friend, Alan Adamson, caused me to think more than just idly about the question. So I took this test. The results indicate I might live a little longer than I expected, but then the 50% confidence interval spans a tonne of years, too. Ms. Eclectic had similar results, so we are guessing we still have quite a few years together ahead of us. My results:

Life Expectancy Results

Life Expectancy: 88.47 years
Lower Quartile: 81.08 years (75% chance you will live longer than this)
Median Lifetime: 88.59 years (50% chance you will live longer than this)
Upper Quartile: 95.60 years (25% chance you will live longer than this)

Another life expectancy calculator, which insists on registration (and hence which seems likely to be more commercial) is this one. Unfortunately, it provides only a point estimate instead of a range, but it says I'll live 'til I'm 95. I took it a second time, giving slightly different answers, and it tells me I'll live to the age of 87. And Jack sent this one, which says I'll live until I'm 83.

With results like these, we'd better reorganize our spending to make our pension savings last a bit longer. And if I'm going to live that long, I sure hope low-cost, effective joint and muscle care/repair become available soon!

From a different perspective, my friend Jack says that at our age we must accept the fact that there is a non-negligible probability we can go at any time. I understand that, objectively. But I'm having so much fun, I'm really not ready to go yet.

Comments

[Joshua]

Really strange this. I was going to write something on the earlier post, but thought better of it, about how our shock and sorrow at the death of others, especially those who are the same age or younger, says as much regarding the fears about our own mortality as anything else.

If we do not believe in an afterlife, this little existence of ours is meaningless. Our deaths should not therefore bother us one jot or tittle. Besides, we cannot escape it. Nobody ever has. Might as well just face up to the reality then and shrug.