Reframing the longevity and ageing
One of the topics discussed at the ESPAS conference in Brussels this week was about the implications of rapidly rising average longevity in advanced countries for the pension and social security systems. The short answer to that question is simple: our pension and social security systems cannot deal will as many old people as demographers are predicting. But the problem is not unsolvable – we simply need fewer old people. And this is not an impossible task if we dare to re-frame the issue. There is a lot that we know about ageing and longevity. Each year our life expectancy increases by three months. What we know is that all the people that will be old in 2030 are alive today. Even people who will be old in 2070 are alive today. And, I would dare say, some people who will be old in 2130 are alive today. Singularity University considers the infinite life span, in addition to infinite energy and infinite machine intelligence the three elements of singularity that will ...