As the science of
medicine and the technology of
life extension advances, the
life expectancy of the entire population should increase somewhat each year.
This process tends to accelerate given new technologies or new knowledge. Here's the tricky bit - the longer you live, the more medical advances will occur during your lifetime which may extend your life expectancy. In the extra time the extensions provied, more medical advances can occur, and so on. If {the increase of life expectancy} becomes larger than {one year longer life for every year lived} the breakeven point is reached and individuals have a finite chance of living indefinitely. Quite naturally the breakeven point presupposes that medical advances never run into any firm barriers, and that they can be developed fast enough, which is of course very speculative.
The term is taken from the nuclear fusion term for the point where more energy is produced than is used to drive the reactor, and was first applied in this context by Anders Sandberg in 1997.
- return to the Transhumanist Terminology metanode