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Pot, like gay marriage, has simply been a demographic matter of waiting for enough stuck up old people to finally die that the preponderance of opinion is in fa
by thrownaway2424 13y ago
Pot, like gay marriage, has simply been a demographic matter of waiting for enough stuck up old people to finally die that the preponderance of opinion is in favor of it. When you're old, statistically speaking, people younger than you will be waiting for you to shuffle off, too.
- veidr 13y agoSure, whole classes of problems will disappear as old people die. But we may not need to wait for grannie and her bridge club to die for this one; TFA notes that support for full-blown legal weed is up 14% in people over 65 since 2011.
- WiseWeasel 13y agoNote that the average life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years old. 79 minus 65 is 14 years. So in two years, we can expect that 2/14ths of the population over 65 will have died, or ~14% of that population. A 14% increase in the population over 65 in favor of legalization in two years does not conflict with the notion that this is a demographic issue.
- whyenot 13y agoLife expectancy for someone who is 65 years old is actually 82.5 or 85.2 years (depends on gender) [1]. You are making a very common mistake by using life expectancy for someone born today -- that's a very different thing. [1] http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
- WiseWeasel 13y agoI was hoping someone would correct me on that. So 84-65 = 19 years, and 2/19 = 10.5% predicted population churn in two years. 14% is 3.5%/10.5%, or 33% higher than the demographic factor alone would predict.
- whyenot 13y agoYour calculations assume nobody lives past the age of 84. You may want to rethink that.
- WiseWeasel 13y agoIt assumes that the average person aged 65 will live to 84, meaning as many will die before as after.
- whyenot 13y agoNo. It is a prediction that someone who is 65 will live on average another 19 years to age 84. It does not assume "as many will die before as after." The wikipedia article on life expectancy is actually quite good, if you are interested in learning more.
- nitrogen 13y agoIf the definition of average used by life expectancy is the median, then yes, by definition as many will die before as die after.
- emiliobumachar 13y agoI hope nobody is actually redefining the word "average" to mean median, because that would confuse all I thought I knew about statistics. Is there a less allegedly ambiguous term for the "traditional" definition of average, that is, the sum of many measurements of the same characteristic, divided by the number of elements measured?
- robmil 13y agoMean, surely?
- 13y ago
- jvrossb 13y agoNot quite: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
- thrownaway2424 13y agoThat can still be a demographic effect. The people over 65 today are not the same people who were over 65 two years ago. The correct way to control these statistics is by birth-year cohort, not age.