Posted by Kenneth Anderson:
I Love this Site:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_16-2009_08_22.shtml#1250461048
[1]Gravity and Levity. Check out this recent post that gives a
[2]layperson's introduction to path integrals, and a plug for the
beauty of calculus, in a few nicely written paragraphs.
But I was particularly taken with this post (and the ones that link to
it) on the idea that as a psychological matter, [3]people tend to live
"different lives" roughly as a function of our doubling age. On a
completely unscientific basis, the idea kinda fits my experience,
anyway. Still more interestingly, however, the post links that idea of
a psychologically "new" lifetime with every doubling, with the famous
[4]Gompertz law of human mortality, which does have a surprising
amount of empirical observation. It says that the probability of dying
in a given year doubles every eight years. Taken together:
If you try to come up with an equation for probability of survival
vs. number of lifetimes lived, you get an almost absurd exponential
within an exponential within an exponential. (Cool graph in
original post.) That, in my book, is extreme fairness. Virtually
all of us get to live to the end of our seventh lifetime, but
almost none of us get to complete the eighth [which begins at age
48 and ends at age 96].
References
1. http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/
2.
http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/the-path-integral-calculating-the-future-from-an-unknown-past/
3. http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/on-the-fairness-of-life/
4.
http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/
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