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Artaxerxes comments on Open thread, Nov. 17 - Nov. 23, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 17 November 2014 08:25AM

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Comment author: Artaxerxes 17 November 2014 04:37:37PM 3 points [-]

A half life of ~8000 given current-day levels of accidental and other death. If we get our act together enough to get rid of the problem of aging, I would assume that we would continue to get rid of other sources of death as well, which would make the actuarial model less useful.

Comment author: advancedatheist 17 November 2014 06:27:32PM 3 points [-]

In the real world, the probability of a ten year old's death also reflects the fact that in developed countries, children live in sheltered conditions.

Comment author: Adele_L 17 November 2014 10:54:59PM 6 points [-]

According to the CDC, the leading causes for death for children aged 5-9 (in 2012 in the United States) are: 1. Unintentional injury 2. Malignant neoplasm (aka cancer) 3. Congenital disorders 4. Homicide 5. Heart disease

If we solved aging, it seems likely we could eliminate or significantly reduce deaths from cancer, congenital disorders and heart disease.

Once we look at the 10-14 age bracket or above, suicide makes it into the top five causes of death until age ~50 and above.

We can also look at the leading causes of unintentional injury. For the 5-9 age bracket, we have 1. Motor vehicle accidents 2. Drowning 3. Fire/Burns 4. Unintentional suffocation 5. Other land transport injuries

Traffic accidents seem likely to be solvable to a large degree with self-driving car technology. Not as sure about the others. It's worth noting that the primary cause of unintentional injury deaths for adults is unintentional poisoning. This was surprising to me; I would guess it's mostly due to drug use.

Comment author: Vaniver 21 November 2014 02:50:58PM 2 points [-]

It's worth noting that the primary cause of unintentional injury deaths for adults is unintentional poisoning. This was surprising to me; I would guess it's mostly due to drug use.

Food poisoning is more common and serious than most people I've talked about it with have expected.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 30 November 2014 02:15:24AM *  4 points [-]

"Unintentional poisoning" is 36k deaths, according to Adele's link. Food poisoning is only 3k deaths (5k according to an older article). I think most of the accidental poisoning deaths are drug overdoses. Half (broken link) of those are legal drugs. 2/3 of the legal ones are opiates, 1/3 benzos.

I am not convinced that food poisoning is even included in accidental poisoning deaths. Wonder has deaths classified by ICD codes. About half of accidental poisonings are listed as X44 other/unknown. My guess is that this means an overdose on street drugs.