Beta 006: Lifespan

[He Qixin]

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=kindjal

This nation has:

(a) Very healthy citizens (5th in the world)
(b) Very beautiful environments (1st in the world)
(c) Very eco-friendly governments (55th in the world)
(d) High welfare spending (68th in the world)
(e) High poor incomes (1,621st in the world)

Yet both the lifespan and HDI of this nation decreased, and death rate increased. Why?

[Leutria]

They have really poor economic strength which is a bigger factor now.

[Dieselvania]

This is definitely a great feature to add. I really do not mind an extra 10 years for lifespan.

[Dwarfpolis]

You mean I'm finally gonna make it and the unforgiving lifespan and HDI destruction will end???????????? I can't believe... the dips will be finally over... a new golden age is dawning ....

Thank you based lavish NS gods
https://i.imgur.com/UrIiF5p.png

[He Qixin]

I don't mind this though I'm one of the ones with a big jump. I gain 72 years roughly. From 23 to 95 years.

That seems a bit much...

I see similarly enormous effects on nations such as Christian Democrats, Digmound, and Sovereign Default. I think the beta is just a bit imbalanced.

I’ve wanted this for a while, though. Most NS nations are developed nations, and developed nations should have lifespan in the 70+ range

It's not really unbalanced, it's just some weird stats going on here.

For those nations, they have really good economic strength, and may also have healthy citizens, high welfare spending and/or high poor incomes. Yet they somehow have low lifespan due to other reasons. This beta thus makes health, economy, welfare and poor incomes more correlated with lifespan.

[Ratateague]

Old Age, Involuntary Euthanasia, Work, Heart Disease, Malnourishment, War, Disappearance, Suicide While in Police Custody, Murder, Capital Punishment, Ritual Sacrifice, Scurvy, Nuclear Spill, Exposure, Vat Leakage, Accident, Space Shuttle Mishap, Bungee Jumping, @@animal@@ Attack, Lost in Wilderness, Cancer, Sunburn, and Acts of God.

would it make sense to have a few that impact lifespan? While many involve accidents or intentional violence that incidentally cut one's life short, some are health and environmental factors that gradually reduce one's potential longevity and have long-lasting effects that could be passed on by genetics.

For example, Exposure is a lack of shelter - a need for many life forms - and leaves the affected vulnerable to the elements and pathogens. While there are those that don't last one winter or bite the dust in desert regions, continual exposure regularly tries one's immune system and disrupts sleep. There are many potential consequences depending one what kind of biome and climate people live in.

Malnourishment and Scurvy indicate a lack of food or nutrition and is pretty self-explanatory. They can stunt one's physical growth and lead to boatloads of health problems.

Cancer rates high enough would indicate pervasive sources of carcinogens, be it from background radiation, polluted water, smoking, lead products, toxic mold, etc.

Work-related death ("Karoshi") amounts from persistent mental and physical stress from a combination of poor habits: operating in a regular state of stress, sleep deprivation, being sedentary (or physical exhaustion/overexertion), erratic eating patterns, lack of nutrition, bad hygiene, etc. This leads to stress on the heart and brain as well as homeostatic imbalance.

Heart Disease is another one.

I concede that I don't fully understand the mechanics of NS: how causes of death is derived from stats or whether it can be used as a factor in other stats. Maybe this suggestion is redundant with other existing factors. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Old Age, Involuntary Euthanasia, Work, Heart Disease, Malnourishment, War, Disappearance, Suicide While in Police Custody, Murder, Capital Punishment, Ritual Sacrifice, Scurvy, Nuclear Spill, Exposure, Vat Leakage, Accident, Space Shuttle Mishap, Bungee Jumping, @@animal@@ Attack, Lost in Wilderness, Cancer, Sunburn, and Acts of God.

would it make sense to have a few that impact lifespan? While many involve accidents or intentional violence that incidentally cut one's life short, some are health and environmental factors that gradually reduce one's potential longevity and have long-lasting effects that could be passed on by genetics.

For example, Exposure is a lack of shelter - a need for many life forms - and leaves the affected vulnerable to the elements and pathogens. While there are those that don't last one winter or bite the dust in desert regions, continual exposure regularly tries one's immune system and disrupts sleep. There are many potential consequences depending one what kind of biome and climate people live in.

Malnourishment and Scurvy indicate a lack of food or nutrition and is pretty self-explanatory. They can stunt one's physical growth and lead to boatloads of health problems.

Cancer rates high enough would indicate pervasive sources of carcinogens, be it from background radiation, polluted water, smoking, lead products, toxic mold, etc.

Work-related death ("Karoshi") amounts from persistent mental and physical stress from a combination of poor habits: operating in a regular state of stress, sleep deprivation, being sedentary (or physical exhaustion/overexertion), erratic eating patterns, lack of nutrition, bad hygiene, etc. This leads to stress on the heart and brain as well as homeostatic imbalance.

Heart Disease is another one.

I concede that I don't fully understand the mechanics of NS: how causes of death is derived from stats or whether it can be used as a factor in other stats. Maybe this suggestion is redundant with other existing factors. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

Thanks for your well thought out post, but I can confirm that the architecture of the game doesn't really work that way. Death causes are outcome figures, rather than numbers that are input back into other calculations.

Also, it should be noted that the causes of death chart emphasises humour and satire over simulation, so shouldn't be taken as part of the bit of the simulation that we strive to make realistic. Rather, its just a bit of fun.

[The New California Republic]

Is there any ETA for this Beta to be implemented?

[He Qixin]

I don't mind this though I'm one of the ones with a big jump. I gain 72 years roughly. From 23 to 95 years.

That seems a bit much...

I see similarly enormous effects on nations such as Christian Democrats, Digmound, and Sovereign Default. I think the beta is just a bit imbalanced.

I’ve wanted this for a while, though. Most NS nations are developed nations, and developed nations should have lifespan in the 70+ range

Uniserve is another example of that. The average lifespan would increase a whopping 74 years roughly from 17 to 91 years.

[Supreme Authority]

SA's lifespan also gets a huge jump, increasing from 24.81 to 92.24 years. While I understand that this beta seems to be more fair to non-psychotic dictatorships, I wonder if there could be some way that dystopias like SA could keep their sky-high death rates without penalizing everyone else. Possibly a combination of high authoritarianism and low civil rights could negatively influence lifespan?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

The extreme results come because you are 182,288th of 183,484 in the world for environmental beauty, while you have well prioritised healthcare spending (top 2%) and made lots of pro health decisions (top 7%). Various freedoms and economic strengths are having a small effect here, but barely anything compared to those two factors.

Basically the current simulation is having your significant commitment to health being far outweighed by your significant anti-environmentalism, which is pretty unrealistic. A country can be solidly eco-sceptical and still have healthy long-lived citizens.

The corrected value for you basically takes out that over-effect of environmentalism.

As to your authoritarianism, it actually IS knocking back your lifespan by quite a lot under the new model, whereas it wasn't before. It's just that is lost against the huge background change of your crappy environment being counted for less, and your healthcare counting for more. If you went fully democratic and freedom-loving, you'd see even higher lifespans under the new model.

[Supreme Authority]

The extreme results come because you are 182,288th of 183,484 in the world for environmental beauty, while you have well prioritised healthcare spending (top 2%) and made lots of pro health decisions (top 7%). Various freedoms and economic strengths are having a small effect here, but barely anything compared to those two factors.

Basically the current simulation is having your significant commitment to health being far outweighed by your significant anti-environmentalism, which is pretty unrealistic. A country can be solidly eco-sceptical and still have healthy long-lived citizens.

The corrected value for you basically takes out that over-effect of environmentalism.

As to your authoritarianism, it actually IS knocking back your lifespan by quite a lot under the new model, whereas it wasn't before. It's just that is lost against the huge background change of your crappy environment being counted for less, and your healthcare counting for more.

Fair enough, I can of course see why health spending could plausibly increase lifespan. I've always valued RP and factbooks over NS stats, but I've viewed SA's health care as investment into biotech. They don't really care much about the average subject as long as they're productive and loyal, but SA uses biological modification and weaponry extensively.

If you went fully democratic and freedom-loving, you'd see even higher lifespans under the new model.

And for such an audacious suggestion of SA going fully d*m*cr*tic and fr**d*m-loving, your nation earns a place on SA's (tongue-in-cheek) Enemy List

[Magna Atlantica]

I believe this beta shouldn't pass until they fix the way Health seems to be increased or decreased by issues.

Right now it seems that it's one of the few stats that grow by percentage, but rarely by gross values.

Can anyone confirm that? Because amongst my puppets and some testing, it's very hard to go back up once you get below 1 health.

If I answer issues seeking a solid increase in health and public health, my nations under 1 health all grow in gross values of 0.01 to 0.04. While those around 8 to 9 health seem to vary in terms of 0.5 to 1 per issue.

[Trotterdam]

Health is artificially scaled to never be negative, but the internal value used to calculate it is (I'm pretty sure) still capable of ranging arbitrarily far in both directions. So while some internal value related to your health might be getting very negative, this is displayed on the front-end as getting closer and closer to 0 without getting there. If it gets negative enough, you'll need lots of increases to get it back to a decent value, displayed on the front-end as only increasing very slowly until you pass some threshold.

[Krusavich]

Fully support this, hope it gets implemented someday. Kinda bummed I spend so much on keeping people alive right now but my lack of trees and shrubs means everyone just keels over regardless.

[Leondaldal]

I am in favor! If you look at the real world average world lifespan across all countries, it is about 72 (if you round up) in NS average world lifespan is in the early 60's and this change would increase the average into the early 70's which would make the game significantly more realistic.

[Trotterdam]

NationStates has a lot more deliberately-bad nations than real life. Early 70s versus early 60s isn't that much of a difference.

[Valentine Z]

Thank goodness for that execution having less effect. I had my Lifespan and HDI took a nosedive because I accidentally executed the elderly.

I mean, there’s a follow up, but that was quite a ride.

[Aclion]

Thank goodness for that execution having less effect. I had my Lifespan and HDI took a nosedive because I accidentally executed the elderly.

I mean, there’s a follow up, but that was quite a ride.

I feel like executing the elderly should be really effective at getting your Lifespan below 70

[Trotterdam]

Logically, executing the elderly should have a much bigger effect on Lifespan in nations where it's otherwise high than in nations where Lifespan was already very low to begin with.

[He Qixin]

My environment is appalling, but life expectancy will go up from 28.08 to 90.33: https://www.nationstates.net/page=beta? ... a_republic

I mean, look at this: https://www.nationstates.net/nation=the ... ensusid=63

So even having a really trashy environment doesn't guarantee that life expectancy won't go up once the new beta is implemented.

Check out East Borland. Right now, he has the worst environment and highest death rate in the world and the lowest lifespan possible (14 years). Despite all of that, he still gets a 4.07 years increase in lifespan. And yeah, his environment really did take 7 times as many anti-environment decisions as yours.

[Herzegovenia]

Very interesting. I’ve always been a bit surprised that my personal nation had such a low lifespan, given its high technological advancement, massive personal incomes, relative wealth equality, and so on. It was all that damn polluted environment’s fault.

*fist shake*

Looking forward to the average Landser living a bonus fifty years.

THIS is exactly my case as well!

[United Massachusetts]

Amen I say. My lifespan goes up.

Also, religion should increase lifespan. It makes sense when you think about it.

A number of studies have shown associations between attending religious services and living a long time. One of the most comprehensive, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, found that women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period. Another study, published last year in PLOS One, found that regular service attendance was linked to reductions in the body’s stress responses and even in mortality–so much so that worshippers were 55% less likely to die during the up to 18-year follow-up period than people who didn’t frequent the temple, church or mosque.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/health/r ... index.html
http://time.com/5159848/do-religious-pe ... ve-longer/

To be fair, religiousness should increase compassion and the average income of the poor.

[Agnatoli]

mostly for it

[Agnatoli]

I think these should affect lifespan:
Weather
Safety
Low-Crime
Low-Death Rate
Health
Cheerfulness(does it? Cheerful prevents suicides)
Healthcare
HDI
Income Of Poor
Environmental Beauty(It's more like water and air quality)
Religiousness(However secular doesn't mean unhappy. Just a plus in religiousness, no minus on secularism)
Low Obesity