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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

I would disagree --at advanced age, multiple systems and organs are near failure, so while one may identify one as being the proximate cause, if not that today, it would have been another tomorrow and that offers a false sense of certainty or precision.

It’s akin to saying we estimate the newly discovered satellite to be about 1 mile across or 1609.34 meters.

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Right, but if you can prevent death from each of those causes, you run out of death.

If grandpa's liver is failing and he gets hit by a car, he didn't die of old age. If the deadly car accident is prevented, and then he dies of liver failure, then he didn't die of old age. If his liver is replaced, and he dies of heart failure...

Most people are dying from cancer and cardiovascular issues. If we cured cancer next year, then we would see a huge drop in people dying from old age, at least until the heart failure caught up to them.

Basically, that would introduce latency without changing bandwidth, and the total mortality rate would only be delayed temporarily.

Mortality rate will be always 100% until we manage to escape this universe and move to a newer one. That or learn how to massively decrease the amount of entropy. Something about light, perhaps.

> I would disagree --at advanced age, multiple systems and organs are near failure, so while one may identify one as being the proximate cause, if not that today, it would have been another tomorrow and that offers a false sense of certainty.

Exactly. Saying someone died of old age also communicates important information about how expected the outcome was.

It's still a different condition caused by aging. If you live long enough, cancer will eventually get you.

How do you draw the line between grouping it under 'old age' VS the actual proximate cause?

Like many things in life, that’s a judgement call. Old age, person was living on borrowed time, so to speak. liver disease, person would have lived relatively healthy till something else naturally failed or unexpectedly failed.

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