I think focusing on extended lifespan misses the point though (although it's a nice side benefit).
The diseases of old age cause more suffering than everything else combined.
Seeing people I love deteriorate to a state of constant suffering is unbearable to watch. Seeing signs of ageing in myself hammers home just how helpless I am to do anything.
I don't understand why AI safety gets more attention. We're already facing our own personal dissolution from natural causes -- a real and tangible existential threat which is already claiming people in the most torturous ways possible. To be brutally honest, I'd rather die quickly in an AI takeover than suffer decades of chronic pain and dementia... and one of these scenarios seems a lot more likely than the other.
Let's get real, take responsibility, and do something about ageing.
If you're looking for medical miracles, this is a very plausible place to find them.
The "existential risk" talk tends to assume, to start with, that some wonderful, incredibly happy and nice "intergalactic civilization" of future transhumans or posthumans will exist, unless existential risks "destroy" it "in embryo" in our near-term future. Given the incredible prior improbability of intergalactic utopias, there's basically no reason to take the thought-experiment at its word or to value a particularly improbable imagined far-future over the actually-existing present and very likely near-futures.
Can you cite such a person? I've read quite a few folks concerned with existential risk, and never saw this assumption before.
Solving AI would allow us to fix ageing, but only if we get it right. Please watch Bostrom’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our...
AI safety is not relevant to exploiting technology to ameliorate senescence.
Absent immediate focussed direct efforts in ameliorating senescence, by the time there is a level of AI technology which can make a dent in medical progress, at least a billion, probably many billion, people will have suffered and died who might otherwise have avoided that fate. And the loss of their productivity will impoverish the survivors - and so cause AI progress to suffer.
To expand upon this, it's not just publishing papers behind paywalls that is the problem. The entire system we use to advance humanities shared knowledge is broken. The Internet enables a dramatically more efficient model of scientific collaboration. The problem is academic science has been stuck with a reward system from the 17th century. And quite simply, it does not reward what we want it to reward anymore. However, there is a solution: science funders can distribute their money in a way that creates a very different set of incentives. Sadly, almost all science funders are very conservative organizations. YC Research can play a critical role in catalyzing a transition to an Internet-native model of research. My startup, Thinklab, wants to help. We're a service that helps science funders reward participation in a massively collaborative open online model of research.
Just in my own field of biology, the amount of progress we have made in understanding how cells regulate themselves (20 year ago we were still teaching DNA->RNA->PROTEINS that do stuff), how immune systems function and can be used (stem cell therapy, cancer treatments, HIV drugs) and the flow of genetic information between organisms (the advance of (whole) genome sequencing into becoming a generic tool) has been mind-boggling.
Okay, can you elaborate on why?
Do we? Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? Why quantity over quality?
Seems there's a lot of quality improvements that could be made [1]. For instance, I read recently (can't recall source) that San Fransisco's homeless is the least happy in the world. Also that the top 1% in the world make over $35K a year, but there are far happier people than exist in middle America living in poverty [2]. Looking at populations that are happier - but in poverty - is perhaps an interesting study. Imagine a cross disciplinary study between (perhaps) techniques used in epidemiology/health informatics & anthropology / the humanities.
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[1] Notice that cancer, heart-disease, Alzheimer, etc research also falls into this category - allowing people to live with less suffering.
[2] Yeah, 3 assertions, no sources, sorry - just my word & unreliable memory of something someone said in a book once folks :)
We do: we need to realize how horrible it is that we treat it so casually, rather than as a tragedy. Perhaps then we'll do something about it.
> [1] Notice that cancer, heart-disease, Alzheimer, etc research also falls into this category - allowing people to live with less suffering.
All three of which (especially the first and last) have heavy ties to aging. It isn't just about living longer; it's about not aging. We're not talking about getting a few more decades like those in your 90s; we're talking about getting a few more centuries like those in your 30s-40s. (And hopefully that will buy us enough time for the next such improvement, and the next.)
Being against death reveals a profound misunderstanding about what life is about, which is: finiteness, urgency, novelty, creativity.
We don't need room for new people with new ideas, room isn't the issue: as far as we know so far, the Universe is virtually infinite. When we come around to defeating death (it's bound to eventually happen) we'll start terraforming, doing generation-ships to reach even further, and the rate of growth of human knowledge will reach an even more unimaginably fast pace.
And then we existentially argue "Does any of it matter?" :)
You're seeing it as the key to suffering, but its equally reasonable to view it as what it will likely become - an instrument of power.
Congratulations: you've managed to point out one of the very, very few nice things about having your body slowly but unstoppably degrade for six decades starting in your mid-20s.
This is a classic example of a limited rationalised mindset. Imagine how much more enriched people lives would be if they got to know their great grandparents and more. Death is a tragedy, there is nothing stopping you and others who share your beliefs from ending life at any moment they want. This is about options, think about the potential -- it would change society is so many ways.
Something I've been thinking about for a while is: what would it mean for peoples' willingness to save another person from a burning building, or swim to rescue someone drowning at sea, or donate a kidney, etc, if we all developed a sense of entitlement that we should be able to live forever?
When so many people at all levels of society are unable to enjoy the lives they have, I feel that life extension research is not something that should be a high priority for investment.
I would gladly sacrifice my life to prevent the rest of the species suffering the physical agony, mental degeneration, poverty, frustration, and violence which result from pandemic senescence.
Your moralizing aesthetic judgements do not justify the misery of billions of people, or inaction in the face of its preventable imminence.
We've been extending our lifespan for the last century through various technological advances. We are just continuing that trajectory, albeit at a faster pace.
This is a really great scifi short story that is kinda relevant to this: http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html
How would people remember everything? How would you spend all that time? What would everyone do?
Is this just for rich people or do poor people get to live for centuries too?
Haven't done the math but if 8 billion people lived for say 500 years each, plus new arrivals constantly, wouldn't we accumulate rather?
What about fertility? Should there be a window on that?
"centuries" is far too short-term; "forever" is the goal, and "centuries" just buys enough time to get there. And of course that lifespan should be available to everyone. If the solution itself doesn't already imply a post-scarcity world, then it'll help that once you have a cure for aging, it's more economical to supply that to everyone than to treat the myriad complications that arise from aging. It's hard to get people to fund such a cure, but it seems far simpler to get funding for "we have a proven cure, let's get it to everyone".
> How would people remember everything?
In the short term, curing aging seems likely to help greatly with many degenerative mental disorders. In the long term, I expect people will find increasingly successful ways to augment their own capabilities. I doubt I'll have the same brain structure a hundred thousand years from now that I do today, if only because I expect we'll eventually run out of effective ways to debug biology in-place.
> How would you spend all that time? What would everyone do?
What wouldn't everyone do? I don't have a finite "bucket list"; my list contains everything positive I can possibly imagine, with a sort order applied, and it will always grow faster than it shrinks. Quite apart from the rest of the universe, other people provide an unbounded source of novelty.
Do you think people thousands of years ago would have asked such questions about a 120-year lifespan, and think it sounded too long?
If you lived for ten thousand years by default, would you think it too long and decide to die at 120? How about if you lived indefinitely?
> "centuries" is far too short-term; "forever" is the goal, and "centuries" just buys enough time to get there. And of course that lifespan should be available to everyone. If the solution itself doesn't already imply a post-scarcity world, then it'll help that once you have a cure for aging, it's more economical to supply that to everyone than to treat the myriad complications that arise from aging. It's hard to get people to fund such a cure, but it seems far simpler to get funding for "we have a proven cure, let's get it to everyone".
You do know that every culture, since the beginning of time, has thought that they would live to be immortal in their lifetime. What makes you think you're different? Sure, you might have a better chance, but it's still a slim chance. Pining for a cure to aging rather than living your life is a sad way to spend something as short and precious as your life.
> > How would people remember everything?
> In the short term, curing aging seems likely to help greatly with many degenerative mental disorders. In the long term, I expect people will find increasingly successful ways to augment their own capabilities. I doubt I'll have the same brain structure a hundred thousand years from now that I do today, if only because I expect we'll eventually run out of effective ways to debug biology in-place.
> > How would you spend all that time? What would everyone do?
> What wouldn't everyone do? I don't have a finite "bucket list"; my list contains everything positive I can possibly imagine, with a sort order applied, and it will always grow faster than it shrinks. Quite apart from the rest of the universe, other people provide an unbounded source of novelty.
I don't think so. Wanting to live forever is a childish thing, it's a fear of death mixed with a type of greed. Actually living forever would be a greater hell than anything I can imagine. After the first few hundred years, when you realise that it's never going to end, after you've read every book and done all you've wanted to do, what then?
> Do you think people thousands of years ago would have asked such questions about a 120-year lifespan, and think it sounded too long?
No, because the maximum lifespan of a human hasn't fundamentally changed. The only difference is that more people are living to old age.
A slim chance is infinitely better than no chance at all. How many cultures had even the remotest chance of actually doing something about it?
And no, I'm not certain it'll happen in my lifetime. I'd say that I'd be sad and disappointed if that didn't happen, but really if that doesn't happen then I won't be anything at all. But I still consider it by far the most important problem that could possibly be solved, and worth putting incredible effort and resources towards. I also consider it worth advocating, to encourage others to push for the same goal, or at the very least discourage others from perpetuating arguments that shut down such efforts.
> Actually living forever would be a greater hell than anything I can imagine.
Then don't. But I'd suggest trying it first, or significantly expanding your imagination.
> After the first few hundred years, when you realise that it's never going to end, after you've read every book and done all you've wanted to do, what then?
With all the imagination you can bring to bear, and a universe full of possibilities, you can only think of a few hundred years worth of things to do before you'd not only get bored but get so bored you'd long for death?
To give even a minimal lower bound based on your own comment, books and stories are already being written today faster than they can be read. And that's only one of myriad possibilities. A few minutes imagination can easily produce far more interesting ones.
Do you currently get bored with life and want it to end? If not, then why do you expect that to change in only a few hundred years?
> A slim chance is infinitely better than no chance at all. How many cultures had even the remotest chance of actually doing something about it?
None, and we're no different. Why would we be?
> And no, I'm not certain it'll happen in my lifetime. I'd say that I'd be sad and disappointed if that didn't happen,
Well, no. You'll be dead. Dead people aren't disappointed.
> I also consider it worth advocating, to encourage others to push for the same goal, or at the very least discourage others from perpetuating arguments that shut down such efforts.
I don't agree that it's worth advocating. Yes, curing diseases and other such things is a worthwhile goal. But the goal of living forever is just selfish. Note that children couldn't exist in a world where people live forever (otherwise we'd run out of resources even faster than we are now).
> > Actually living forever would be a greater hell than anything I can imagine.
> Then don't. But I'd suggest trying it first, or significantly expanding your imagination.
I have a very vivid imagination. That's how I came to that conclusion. Also, how can I "try it"?
> > After the first few hundred years, when you realise that it's never going to end, after you've read every book and done all you've wanted to do, what then?
> With all the imagination you can bring to bear, and a universe full of possibilities, you can only think of a few hundred years worth of things to do before you'd not only get bored but get so bored you'd long for death?
Yes. Why do you think any differently? Evolution has placed a cap on our lifespan, because living longer than that wasn't better for our species. Have you considered that? Why do you think we'd be able to contribute anything meaningful to the world after we are 80 years old? Aside from helping younger generations (which don't exist in your world), we have nothing left to do.
More than 98% of people who ever lived are dead. It's incredibly arrogant (and akin to a tantruming child) to assume that you will survive.
> To give even a minimal lower bound based on your own comment, books and stories are already being written today faster than they can be read. And that's only one of myriad possibilities. A few minutes imagination can easily produce far more interesting ones.
I'm a scientist (as well as programmer). So I can imagine spending several hundred years trying to solve all of the scientific problems that exist. But after a few hundred years, I'll definitely get bored of that. So, I'll have to move on to something else.
> Do you currently get bored with life and want it to end? If not, then why do you expect that to change in only a few hundred years?
No. But that doesn't mean I won't get bored of it eventually. Not to mention that I can see myself being bored with <things I'm interested in now>, and no doubt I'll eventually get bored of all of the things that make me a productive member of society. At that point, I'm a drain on the world's resources. What benefit is there to keeping me alive?
LOL that is for sure. It'll be dirt within 1/1000 of that time.
As for how that might affect psychology: honestly, I'd love to see how the world might change if people adopted drastically different attitudes towards death, but I don't think it likely that this would produce far more risk aversion than we have today. Not least of which because I see no signs of tobacco companies going out of business.
For myself personally, I'm not going to stop leaving the house, but I certainly have no intention of taking up hobbies like hang gliding or motorcycle racing, any more than I plan to start smoking. (Side note: for an interesting measure of risk, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort) I don't think that level of risk aversion qualifies as "a pretty frightened bunch not leaving home much".
Also the fact that life is only a fleeting moment in time is beautiful and again, I believe necessary.
People have done the modeling on what radical life span does to population growth. The answer is a lot less than you think. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ "For example, we applied the cohort-component method of population projections to 2005 Swedish population for several scenarios of life extension and a fertility schedule observed in 2005. Even for very long 100-year projection horizon, with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at all after age 60), the total population increases by 22% only (from 9.1 to 11.0 million)."
Most of the objections of the type that you voice can be answered by moving you to 1850 and making the same objections to the progress of medicine, and then seeing that they are obviously false concerns given where we are today. You could argue in 1920 that the same objections exist to building treatments that prevent people dying from heart disease: isn't it just for rich people, won't there be too many people if the old don't die on time, what would they do with all those extra years, isn't the present length of life just right, etc, etc.
Why not? Veterinaries would love novel approaches. Plus the pre-research is always carried in animals.
> How would people remember everything?
You should ask Google's Director of Engineering (Ray Kurzweil) about that. Hint: within 25-30 years your brain could have x1000 capacity via cloud computing (mobile + brain-cloud interfaces).
> Is this just for rich people or do poor people get to live for centuries too?
Your questions are quite common and have been answered hundreds of times in any of the SENS presentations. Answer: humanity as a whole will benefit from this research.
> Haven't done the math but if 8 billion people lived for say 500 years each, plus new arrivals constantly, wouldn't we accumulate rather?
The fact that we live twice as long, and we have duplicated the human lifespan in the last 100 years (in the western world), but now we have less natality tells you something? Overpopulation comes from the 3rd world and decreases as a country starts to develop...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2012/10/16/warning...
> What about fertility? Should there be a window on that?
Ask Apple or Facebook why they are offering female employees to freeze their eggs for $20k...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/15/apple-face...
I see many atheists carry on religious memes after they deconvert. Which is only natural, religion isn't just a single idea, it's deeply ingrained into our culture. One of those memes is that death is natural and ok. Which, if you believe in religion, it absolutely is. It's the way things are supposed to be according to a trustworthy higher power. There is a life afterwards that makes it all ok. People don't really "die", they just go to a different place.
I don't see anything ok about true death. It's natural, sure, but there's no law that says nature has to be good. We are the product of an uncaring universe and plenty of bad things exist that shouldn't. Death is one of those things.
So I came to the idea that if Heaven didn't really exist, we should build it. I was quite young at the time and influenced by science fiction. I thought that maybe future humans could invent time travel and come back in time and save people who died.
I've since come to the conclusion that time travel is very unlikely to be physically possible in our universe. But other advanced technologies, like curing aging, are certainly not. Perhaps even within our reach. And if backwards time travel might be impossible, we have invented a way to do forwards time travel with cryonics.
To be clear, this is pretty untrue of Christianity, the dominant religion in Western civilization, so I'm constantly puzzled about this claim. (HPMOR makes the same claim.) The central story of Christianity is that God takes human form, dies, and cannot stay dead. If it were just "Jesus died for our sins", there would be no need for a resurrection story; his followers would have had way more credibility saying merely that he was killed, which is far more objectively verifiable.
From 1 Corinthians: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (which, incidentally, comes up in canon HP), and, quoting the prophets: "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'" From Revelation, also quoting Isaiah: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." From a 1500-year-old hymn: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death."
Death is an enemy; death is not good, and should not exist. Perhaps other religions disagree, but Christians and atheists should be able to agree on this basic fact.
A species is basically self perpetuating genetic code stuck somewhere in an evolutionary local maxima. In our case there may be an advantage in adaptability by having individuals die and genetic code mix/change more frequently.
This still sucks and if we could figure out how the brain actually worked to prevent it that would be cool, but we'd start getting into identity issues (what makes you you? how does consciousness actually work?).
Sleep is interesting to think about here since it likely has something to do with re-calculating weights in a neural net, garbage collection, persisting memories etc. Though we don't consider going to sleep dying and waking up new because of the sense of continuity. If a copy of you was made and the original then killed though we wouldn't like that.
Sense of purpose difficulties still exist in our relatively brief lifespans, but at least we get an easy out with the biological one - we'd have to think more about this with death out of the way. Also the drive to have sex and reproduce would probably still be around since it's core to our existence, not sure how we deal with that.
Though I'd still prefer a star trek future where we're colonizing the galaxy and the goal is to learn.
Mostly rambling thoughts.
Evolution works at the level of genes. Genes that cause more copies of themselves to spread will spread. Even to the detriment of the group or the species.
An organism that lives longer will have time to have more offspring, and those offspring will carry it's longer living genes. An organism that lives shorter will have fewer offspring, and so fewer organisms will carry it's genes. Very rapidly these genes would be selected for or against.
A simple alternative explanation is just that evolution doesn't care. 90% of organisms will die of other causes long before they reach old age. Evolution will end up devoting almost all of it's resources on improving survival rates there, and none on fighting aging.
>This still sucks and if we could figure out how the brain actually worked to prevent it that would be cool, but we'd start getting into identity issues (what makes you you? how does consciousness actually work?).
Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms: http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms/
Heaven did exist, and our ancestors destroyed it; it was the Caribbean, and its inhabitants were all killed and/or enslaved to build... churches.
That’s a false dichotomy. Please disregard my one-liner, and watch one of de Grey’s talks instead — or read his “When Quality and Quantity Do Not Compete”: http://online.liebertpub.com.sci-hub.io/doi/abs/10.1089/rej....
Of course not! Why should you ever want to die? Why should you ever "get over" that?
It's a bug. We haven't fixed it yet. It should not be romanticized, and it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. It's an abomination we have yet to eliminate.
What life never dies?
What non-living thing does not change?
For humans (or at least for me), I think the main concern is really more of continuity of experience than maintaining a particular body configuration indefinitely. I.e. I would like to run into an old friend in 10,000 years and reminisce about that time we did something hilarious. It wouldn't be very satisfying to undergo a procedure that resets my body but wipes out my memories in the process.
We whipe out memories every day. Your memory of your childhood is a half imagined highlight reel of moments. If you lived 10,000 years, you might only have a couple moments left from this century.
Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable? Or do you think humans can cure them someday?
I don't think of death as inevitable. I think of it as something humans can cure someday. Thinking of it as inevitable means giving up on all possible solutions.
No.
> Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable?
No.
Change, and thus, death, is inevitable. Also, if you want to prolong you then you are the result of countless deaths.
Lack of change seems closer to death than change does.
But in any case, whatever definition of death you've used doesn't seem to relate in any way to the ones that people in this discussion have advocated eliminating.
I mean the thing that everybody else means: ie "pushing up daisies", "feeding earthworms", "to dust", etc
If I understand this differently, then it's this perspective I am offering :)
If you 'survive' (say every cell is replaced) then what is "you"? I'd say it's more likely to be a set of linguistic & cultural norms than it is to be anything fundamental from the view point of physics.
So that raises the point: is 'you' conceptual or is there anything fundamental? It makes sense for evolution to have selected for organisms to believe there was, no matter what, something fundamental, existant & worth preserving about them, but really - we're this group of cells & the plants we ate for breakfast (and the efforts of the farmer of those plants and so on)
Of course, as a "manner of speaking" (that is, in common every day culturally contingent world), all this is bogus.
But from a fundamental, naturalistic point of view, I don't see anywhere else to go :) It's also a very parsimonious view as you get to explain a lot of stuff with less entities, etc :)
> Do we?
Yes, we do. Categorically. If you would prefer to die, then speak for yourself.
And of course, no one wants a longer life if they're miserable. We need to solve poverty as well.
Wanting more lifespan is a different thing. The claim that most people want to live longer is not as controversial as the claim that most people need to live longer.
Senescence and death costs the species and the planet a horrible price in lost productivity, social conflict, medical costs, human desperation and suffering. Even if you don't want to live beyond some fixed span, if you want to impose suffering and death upon others...well, I don't even...
If you can’t spare an hour, please watch Rosling’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_...
Since permanent growth comes from fertility and as "Don't Panic" shows we're getting to a sustainable average of 2 child per woman, augmenting our lifespan will only increase our maximum population, not our population growth.
However I think YC research would be better spent trying to find better ways to fight climate change, world stability and/or lift billions out of poverty. This way if we ever augment lifespans in a significant way it will be available to more people and in a healthier world. Also lifting billions out of great poverty will have the added benefit of allowing more minds to work on issues like increasing life expectancy.
Also, we should really focus on getting people on board with the life-preserving tech that currently exists (medicine, water treatment, doctor training, etc) before developing new (and potentially expensive) tech that will only widen the gap between what the rich can do that the poor can only dream of.
More importantly, "near-infinite" lifespans reduce the efficacy of natural selection — longer-living organisms evolve at a slower rate. While, perhaps, unappealing, the culling of species members well past reproductive age is necessary to allow for more resources and potential for competition and selection in their offspring. And humans are certainly still undergoing natural selection in many arenas; just look at sickle cell trait [5] or or CCR5-Δ32 [6].
Death is a feature, not a bug.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8608934
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601460
Reminds me of Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae[1], an essay about (as the title suggests) the shortness of life. He argues that what matters is not how long one lives, but what he accomplishes and/or how "well" he lives.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) (english translation in External links, worth a read if you have some spare time)
We can work towards both quality and quantity. That is the point of technology, to make everything better, to remove limits, to enable the human condition to be more than it was before, to give us choice where there was no choice. The choice to fly, to talk to distant people, to be healthy, to live rather than to die before we want to.
But, why? Nothing about "AI safety" is remotely useful. It would be like researching "alcohol safety" (something everybody has access to and nobody can restrict) or researching how ants can influence "human safety" (tiny things trying to influence massive things). It's nonsense no matter which way you think about it unless you just want to write SF novels.
Open-source infrastructure.
Sadly, we don't need "research" to study how it works, we need direct payments to contributors. As a "startup culture" we need to stop the trend of billion dollar companies using free open source labor to reduce corporate costs and boost corporate profits while paying highly skilled professional volunteers nothing.
Yudkowsky Ambition
A key part of _research_ is you need to have a plan of attack. Saying "We're going to fund research into antigravity, time travel, and zero point energy" sure sounds like fun, but it's an absolute waste of time.
This is a problem of ancient outdated patent and copyright law, not scientific innovation. Its in the field of politics since the industry is entirely built on state enforced IP legislation.
Iterating those concepts don't seem to fix the issue of Twitter running 50,000 copies of an application developed by 3 open source volunteer people and not paying those 3 people anything.
They just don't correlate that to proprietary software at all, which is understandable because most people cannot internalize concepts related to information transfer, scarcity, transformation, or preservation. They exist in the real world and more easily relate to the physical and ignore the implications of ignorance in all that is not presented to them in that medium.
That still remains a political problem, one with your system of economics. I guess since YC is funding that UBI research it may also be relevant to research alternatives to US IP law that can optimize for productivity and social utility of the results, because we are obviously not close to a maxima right now.
I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent.
I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it.
Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/?
Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phages have been tested by the Soviets, and are available as an over-the-counter treatment in certain countries.
Open-source infrastructure. How many ‘unicorns’ were only possible because of years of prior volunteer work? See @nayafia’s recent post: https://medium.com/@nayafia/how-i-stumbled-upon-the-internet...
Feynman’s and Drexler’s molecular nanotechnology. Smalley muddied the waters, and the National Research Council dropped the ball. We can do better than just nanoelectronics.
See also “Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?”, paying attention to the Yudkowsky Ambition scale: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4509934