Zeno's paradox and the faith that technological game-changers are impossible

Abstract

In their article in this issue, Olshansky and Carnes [Gerontology 2013;59:85-92] spell out in perhaps the most explicit terms yet a view which they have long espoused: that increases in longevity will inevitably slow down in decades to come, since the rate of biomedical progress that everyone agrees would be necessary to avoid such a slowdown is far too dramatic to be plausible. By doing so, they also betray more explicitly than ever before the flaws in their own logic. It is ironic that these flaws, unlike the work they critique, are actually quite closely analogous to the flaws in Zeno's paradox. Since others are offering their own comments on other parts of the article, I shall restrict my remarks on the article to those passages which refer specifically to my own work, together with the conclusion.