In this metaphor, your distance above the ground represents your health, and the speed that you are moving up or down represents your decreasing or increasing health. When you "hit the ground", you die. If you are falling down, then your remaining lifespan is decreasing (the normal state of affairs). If you are rising upward, then your remaining lifespan is increasing.
If you think about aging like I've described, then you can imagine that when we are born we are in "mid air" - far above the ground. At that time, our health is not deteriorating very quickly, but our remaining lifespan is not increasing either. We are born suspended in mid air, so to speak.
However, the force of gravity/aging immediately begin to pull us downward with a constant force. Over time, this force accelerates us into a faster and faster velocity towards the ground/death.
When we are 10 years old, we are moving down towards the ground, but very slowly. When we are 30, we are moving downward faster. When we are 60, we are moving quite fast. When we are 80, we are moving so fast that there may be no way to reverse our "fall".
Now, let's imagine "anti-aging" treatments as UPWARD forces, counter-acting gravity/aging. Early aging treatments will pull upwards with a force that is less than gravity: they will slow aging, but not reverse it, so we will continue to "fall".
One day, hopefully, an aging treatment will be invented which will be MORE powerful than gravity/aging. Maybe it will pull "upward" towards longevity with 150% the force of gravity/aging! Unfortunately, this won't be enough to save everyone. The lines on the graph are labeled with numbers. Each line traces the hypothetical trajectory of a person who is of a certain age when the treatment becomes available. Each line is labelled with that age.
If someone is 80 years old, they are exposed to the same gravity as a young person, but over their life they have built up a lot of downward "momentum" - they are moving downwards very fast. Even with the upwards pull of the longevity treatments, they may not be able to "pull up" in time, and they will die. (See the lines on the graph marked 80, and 100)
However, younger people may be able to pull out of their dive, and begin to ADD time to their lifespan - not merely slow the reduction of lifespan. (See the lines on the graph marked 30, and 50)
If someone is born after this treatment is invented, then they will never loose lifespan. Their life span will increase instead of decrease, so that even if they are cut off from the treatment at some point, they may have 200 years of "natural" lifespan ahead of them. (See the line labelled 0 on the graph)
Does that make sense?
(By the way: keep in mind that this is just a metaphor. We don't yet know if it is actually valid, and it makes a lot of assumptions. For example: it assumes that the force of aging is approximately constant - that it doesn't increase exponentially as we age. Plus, we don't know if treating aging like a "velocity" is even valid in the first place. It may be simply to complicated for such naive models. Time will tell...)
from reddit.
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