>the prior number ignores the cumulative probability that you have died as a <50 yr old during all years prior to 2016
Ah you're right about that. Looks like I'm probably way off. This random thing google turned up [0] says that a 25 y/o male has like a ~70% chance to make it to 50!
>Given that all of us will die
Something doesn't feel right about this, but I can't figure out what. I'll let it simmer and assume you're correct in the meantime.
[0] - http://flowingdata.com/2015/09/23/years-you-have-left-to-liv...
yeah, the probability of death depends on a ton of priors so assuming the distribution is uniform is not quite right either.
just intuitively though, a probability of .7% for dying before 50 seems way too low
this means that out of 100k 25-50 yr olds 726 died during 2016. This is the probability that you will die during this year, given that you are a 25-50 year old, which is different from the probability that you will die before the age of 50. (the prior number ignores the cumulative probability that you have died as a <50 yr old during all years prior to 2016)
Given that all of us will die, the only question is the age at which we die. The conditional probability that, given you have died, you are under the age of 50 is exactly what we should be looking at.