6 ms·
At age 54, I'm now in the final quarter of my life. That assumption inspires me. It discourages procrastination, and encourages me to let go of plans that pro
by sivers 3y ago
At age 54, I'm now in the final quarter of my life.
That assumption inspires me.
It discourages procrastination, and encourages me to let go of plans that probably won't happen, since I'm almost out of time.
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”
― Leonard Bernstein
- boringg 3y agoGreat quote. Hopefully you get two more quarters but I hope that doesn't take away from the motivation ;)
- partiallypro 3y agoDrugs and obesity skew the numbers, so you're probably more likely in the final 1/3rd.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- just_boost_it 3y agoYou're making 2 assumptions there!
- saalweachter 3y agoI like to reassure myself that my first 20-25 years were wasted on things like "learning basic life skills" and "working too many hours at my first jobs", and that everything I really consider "my life" has taken place in the portion since then. So by the actuarial life tables, he has 24.5 years left, and has had about 30-35 years of self-directed life so far, which gets him up to 40-45% of his life remaining.
- dietr1ch 3y agobut 1/3 < 1/4 right?
- chrisweekly 3y agowhat kind of math is that?
- dietr1ch 3y agoBurger math
- Analemma_ 3y agoThe life expectancy distribution is not flat: it varies considerably by income, location, and whether you do drugs. It's also a mean, not a median, skewed by early deaths from suicide, drugs, etc. The point being: if you're already 54, earning a median HN salary and not doing drugs, you'll probably live to a lot longer than 73.
- taylodl 3y agoI used Bard to figure out what the life expectancy would be for someone like me who's an older, but otherwise "typical" HN-er and the result was 84 years, thus corroborating your point.
- viknesh 3y ago> it varies considerably by income, location, and whether you do drugs It's not even that complicated - if you've lived to age 54, you've already lived long enough to not die for the first 54 years and so your life expectancy is higher than the default "no info" value of 73 years old. According to https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html, you have an expected 25 years left.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoMildly interesting: If lifetimes were exponentially distributed (they're not, of course), they'd have a well defined mean, but your future life expectancy would never change. If the mean were 90 years old, and you were 102, you could still expect another 90 years. I bring this up because it's sort of the extreme spherical cow version of what you're saying.
- viknesh 3y agoNeat fact! I guess that's basically Martingales for life expectancy?
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
- Archelaos 3y ago> At age 54, I'm now in the final quarter of my life. Not on average. Life expectancy such as "73" without further qualification means "life expectancy when born today". Since you already made it until 54, your life expectancy is higher than 73 (probably somewhere close to 80). If you are not convinced outright, think of what your life expectancy is if you were 74.
- bachmeier 3y agoForget about life expectancy. What are the odds you'll want to do big things and be able to do them after age 70?