In the Next 5 Years, Humans Will Become One Year Younger Every Year!

Due to medical and technological advancements, humans will soon reach a point where life expectancy increases every year, effectively reversing time. This is a highly controversial concept and requires widespread access to advanced medical technologies. Death has been an inevitable event throughout human history, but now some of the world's most prominent futurists believe that death will soon be removed from the list of unavoidable phenomena.

Lifespan escape velocity is a debated idea in the futurist community. Although it may seem like science fiction, it has a simple explanation. According to this concept, with advances in medical technologies, the average lifespan of humans, or life expectancy, can increase more than the aging process within a given period. For example, with continued medical innovations, people will age at the same rate each year, but their life expectancy might increase by a year and two months, meaning that functionally, two months of life will be regained.

In April this year, Ray Kurzweil, a former Google engineer and prominent AI futurist, told several media outlets that he believes humanity will reach the escape velocity of lifespan by 2029. "After 2029, you will regain more than a year of your life. You will literally go back in time. When you can turn back at least a year, you will have reached the escape velocity of lifespan."

This concept will primarily be made possible due to advancements in medicine. Kurzweil also said, "We created the COVID vaccine in ten months. It took two days to make it. We sequenced several billion RNA strands in two days. Many other advancements are also happening. Medical science has recently begun using bio-simulations, and this is one of the reasons why we will make great progress in the next five years."

It's undeniable that medical advancements have saved countless lives and significantly increased life expectancy, but critically, life expectancy is not the same as lifespan. The concept of lifespan escape velocity focuses on the first phenomenon. Reaching this concept is not the same as achieving immortality. Kurzweil said, "Achieving lifespan escape velocity is not a guarantee of immortality. You can have a 10-year-old child, and you can calculate how many decades they will live, but they might die tomorrow."

The main reason is life's unpredictability. We likely won't be able to cure all cancers in the next five years, and cancer is a disease defined by the randomness of mutations that cause it. Accidents are also a part of life, though Kurzweil argues that with technological advancements like self-driving cars, the likelihood of fatal accidents will decrease in the near future.

Kurzweil is known in the tech world for his impressive track record in accurately predicting technology timelines. He successfully predicted the proliferation of portable computers (i.e., mobile phones and laptops), the existence of cloud computing, and even a computer that beat the world chess champion by 1998. Despite this, he has also been wrong many times. No one can predict the future, even with all the data available in the world.

Additionally, it is important to remember that, at its core, achieving lifespan escape velocity is based on statistical calculations of average life expectancy. Even if it is possible to achieve, it doesn't mean everyone worldwide will suddenly experience a longer life. This would require universal access to advanced technologies and medical infrastructure, which is unlikely to happen within the next five years. For instance, tuberculosis, a disease we have known how to treat and prevent for several decades, kills more people than any other infectious disease worldwide. In this case, the existence of treatments and medical advancements is not synonymous with their widespread implementation. As tempting as the idea of lifespan escape velocity is, it remains a prediction for now. Death, at this point, will still remain inevitable.