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Yes, there's an interesting philosophical question here about burdens of proof and Humean 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Calment's claim
by gwern 7y ago
Yes, there's an interesting philosophical question here about burdens of proof and Humean 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. Calment's claim is to be the oldest person out of billions of people, and she is the oldest by a truly extraordinary margin - no one has even come close to reaching her record before or since. So, which is more likely: that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct (and she simply had some unique luck or mutation enabling her excess longevity), or that some highly unusual (but still more likely than '1 in tens of billions') circumstance (such as a complicated tax & insurance fraud) has led to a mistake? Indeed, how would one ever be sure of such a claim, short of the isotopic testing advocated in OP - which will, incidentally, stop working in the future?
(This is a general problem of priors and evidence and model uncertainty I think about occasionally: https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Modus https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Mail-delivery#on-model-uncertainty https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-unseeing https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#on-seeing-through-and-... )
- CommieBobDole 7y agoI really wouldn't say "nobody has come close" - she was 3 years older (122 vs 119) than the next oldest verified person, and around five years from most of the next top ten - most of them died at 117. If she was, say, 132, I'd be more suspicious, but 122 sounds more reasonable for statistical outliers in an incredibly complex process.
- gwern 7y agoThe problem is, 3 years is a huge gap. If you look at all the other centenarians, they really do cluster within months of 117-119. And then you have Calment, who is the only outlier and who is like 30+ months past them all (and this is at a time of life where the annual mortality rate is like >50%). I plotted the age gap between the record holders once, and it looks basically like a flat line and then a single dot at the top of the graph corresponding to Calment. It may be a complex process, but at least for everyone else they die on schedule.
- galaxyLogic 7y agoIt is possible even if unlikely. But if you are right that it is way too unlikely then the next alternative is that her age was exaggerated by 3 years. The theory that she "was her own daughter" I think is also possible but less likely than an (intended or unintended) error of 3 years somewhere.
- xamuel 7y agoIt's also worth pointing out that all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit, which prediction dates back thousands of years (Genesis 6:3). So regardless of your opinion of Abrahamic religions, there are a lot of people who would care a great deal about verifying those extra three years!
- mrsuprawsm 7y ago>all the Abrahamic religions predict a 120-year limit Do you have any more information on this? It sounds like interesting reading, but all I can find on Google is a link to this post.
- Jabbles 7y agohttps://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-people-limited-to-120-years-of-life https://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are-peopl... from https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit https://www.google.com/search?q=bible+120+year+age+limit
- tastygreenapple 7y agoThe book of Genesis spends the most time talking about this. The book of Genesis is roughly the same between Judaism and Christianity, I know the Qur'an's account is different but I don't know much more beyond that.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoThe other explanation is that God was saying he was going to bring the flood in 120 years.
- aj7 7y agoNo. 122 is not reasonable.
- jl6 7y agoA suggestion that there may be a straightforward determination of facts via a blood test: https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-could-reveal-if-Jeanne-Calment-was-really-122 https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/DNA-blood-test-c...
- gwern 7y agoA special case, though. Almost all centenarians wouldn't admit of such a solution - at least, until we start getting whole population pedigrees and then an inability to put a centenarian in the appropriate place becomes proof of error/fraud.
- GuiA 7y ago> that her claim however improbable (someone has to win the lottery) is completely correct That line of reasoning does not apply here. Someone will win the lottery given enough time as the possibility space is bound - but there is no similar given guarantee that any human would ever live to age X if we have never observed a human living to age X before.
- gwern 7y agoIt does apply. Someone has to be the oldest. Someone has to be the oldest-person who has the largest gap. Regardless of how old that is, or how large the gap is, there will be at least one.
- GuiA 7y agoOk, now I get the point you were trying to make. The lottery parallel still doesn't feel the most apt; the definition you specify ensures that you will always have such a person (who lived to be the oldest, and who had the largest gap with the previous record holder) for n > 1 people. In that sense it is recurrent, unlike winning the lottery, which no one has until someone does (or winning in a raffle, where we know that there will aways be a winner due to the very definition of the game). Regardless, none of that helps us determine any further how plausible Calment's statistically anomalous record is.
- jobigoud 7y agoSomeone has to be the oldest but the gap is an independent information. Mortality rate is constant at 0.5 per year for Supercentenarians. That gap is a massive outlier.