If I had to choose between contributing 0.1% of the cost of a project that has a 1% chance of saving 100,000 lives a day (effectively saving 1.0 lives a day), versus contributing 0.2% of the cost of a project that has a 60% chance of saving 1,000 lives a day (effectively saving 1.2 lives a day), I might choose the latter.
I started supporting SENS pretty early, so I had to actually go read the primary literature and take a few years to figure out that yes, I think that this is the best fulcrum to make progress in changing the research community, building the right tech, etc.
Nowadays, you can actually rely upon more distributed middle man expertise. E.g. that Peter Thiel invested millions in SENS, or that the SRF advisory board includes numerous researchers who are at the tops of their fields, names appearing in the media, all of whom endorse the SENS approach (http://sens.org/about/leadership/research-advisory-board), and so on and so forth.
What is telling and makes it clear that this organization (not going to discuss the cause, but this specific organization) is that there are NO people of color on the advisory board and only one person of color on the board of directors. The board of directors also is entirely startup founders, venture capitalists, and other entrepreneurs.
Without diversity at the leadership level, it is fairly easy to assume (externally) that this organization is working to solve aging related illnesses for the 1%.
SENS approach is essentially suggesting something better than that. According to them, pouring billions of dollars into individual age-related diseases (e.g., age-related onset of cancer) is the wrong way to go, because age-related diseases are a symptom of the root cause, which is aging itself, defined to be molecular and cellular damage through out the body. If that is tackled head on, there would enourmous savings in health care costs (both maintenance and research) and a positive impact on the economy as a result of more healthy people being available for work.
That seems rather dubious. It would be wonderful if society were organised to maximally channel the efforts of all the warm bodies available, but (bizarrely in my view) "not enough jobs to go around" is seemingly a thing. Also, "more people alive" certainly does not equal "cheaper healthcare" no matter how you slice it.
That aside, it seems to me that a more immediately realizable method of achieving that goal would be to redistribute wealth to the enormous fraction of the world that cannot afford even basic medical care - even in the United States.
It seems highly likely to me that even if it were possible to extend human lifespan by some substantial degree with no ill effects, this technology would probably not be used on everybody in the world, or on every social class. This would come with grave destabilising effects. You'd struggle to find a better way to foment resentment and revolution than today's super-powerful and mega-rich becoming immortal as well.
It's possible that if mortality rates were reduced really dramatically, some population activists would get upset (and I've seen indications of that in other threads here).
When a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk can use a rubber-stamp to tell an elderly person, "Nope, no treatment for you this time, you're done," there's nothing to stop more and more people from being denied treatment. Eventually even younger people with mental illnesses or genetic disorders will be eliminated--all to avoid overcrowding and overloading of the health care system, of course.
It's for the greater good. Don't you want to be a good citizen? Reduce your burden on society, today!*
*Cremation fees not included.
https://philanthropy.com/interactives/giving-usa-2015
A trillion dollars every 3 years. Simply trying to make every dollar more effective would go a long way. We probably need fewer, but more effective charities, for example. Identify the best ways to fund medical research.
On a more constructive note, I have a rather high opinion of Doctors Without Borders.
(I know that negativity in comments is discouraged, but I hope I'll get away with this.)
I guess maybe you can argue that funding people to advocate for anti-aging research can encourage more people to engage in it? Is that your argument on why this is a useful charity to fund?
Ignoring the fact that you're pulling statements out of a hat, and assuming what you said is true, which one of the following two scenarios would you rather be in:
- A world where fundamental research on aging hasn't been done and people get sick and start to die between the ages of 60-90.
- A world where, as a result of some secretive research and development of medical technology, a handful of people (the rich ones) seem to be living a healthy life all the way up to 180-210, and the public starts demanding that such research be made available to everyone.
If you look at comparable technologies today, autologous stem cell transplant is the most expensive, and you can get that for a few tens of thousands of dollars via medical tourism. Other points of comparison are, say, biologics for autoimmune conditions, which are enormously finicky to mass-produce at the moment and presently run to a few thousand dollars per shot or infusion. They'll get cheaper. Generic drugs, widely produced and past their legal protections, on the other hand cost a few cents to a few dollars for a dose.
For SENS-like repair technologies you're looking at one treatment every few decades if it's very efficient at clearing damage, or perhaps every few years if it isn't.
Bottom line is that you seem to be awfully confident about predicting the future of things that don't exist yet.
People die. In other news water is wet.
Now, I'm all for making people live longer, with quality of life
> and causes horrible day to day suffering for hundreds of millions of others
Because doctors prop up the sick (often with family support) and artificially extend their life while costing a lot of money in 'treatments' for unrecoverable conditions.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/your-money/how-doctors-die...
Step 1: Drugs, invasive procedures, and diet are completely off the table as viable solutions.
Step 2: ? (Nanite/Magic)
Because we really don't have many other options right now.
PS: A lesser goal involving tradeoffs may be possible with drugs, but flow out slow aging so you keep a 25 year old body for longer that's not going to happen from drugs.
The problems facing the wealthy elites are not the problems most people face.
Cancer is closely related to the processes of aging, and aging research is highly likely to overlap with cancer prevention and treatment. (If only because the processes that cause cell aging and death are also the ones that prune potential cancer cells from the body.) So, aging research is also quite likely to help prevent childhood cancer or other early-onset cancers.
(That said, people always act shocked and appalled when cancer strikes those in their teens, 20s, and 30s, as though that's somehow worse than it hitting someone in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or older. I can't stand the phrase "before their time"; all deaths are too soon.)
Cancer gets more attention because it's the thing written down under "cause of death" next to a loved one's name. But that's a proximate cause; the underlying cause is usually "aging".
Actually, it is. A huge amount of resources is spent on trying to treat the symptoms of aging, and much of that comes out of the pockets of younger people.
If so, do you happen to know how it breaks out? Cancer and heart disease get quite a lot of medical and funding attention (which doesn't necessarily mean they get enough).
Gradually losing health is unfortunate. I have to watch what I eat and be careful with my lifestyle due to chronic illness. My vision has degraded pretty badly and I'm forced to use a really gigantic font when I'm programming (you don't want to know how much time I spend fiddling with my colours!). These things pale in comparison to simply knowing what makes me happy.
I've worked hard to learn to be happy. Again, at least for me, I don't think happiness is something that is given to you. It's something that you make yourself. I suppose some people have a talent for it, like everything else, but it's something that you can work on and get better at. Without trying to sound arrogant there is no way that a child can have the kind of happiness that I have every day, because they simply do not have the experience to do it. They have a tumble of conflicting emotions which they have no control over. You couldn't pay me to do that again.
(If possible. I realize that isn't an option for everyone, and some people are working as hard as they can just to reach a secure position in life where they don't have to worry about basic needs. But this applies for those groups as well: if you had a thousand extra years to work with, as a start, you'd have a lot more time to enjoy the secure lifestyle you've worked so hard for, not just to pass that more secure position on to your children.)
That's a big assumption, and one that seems rather unlikely to hold or to suddenly change.
> You'd literally be trading a teenager's first crush for an 80-year old's third marriage.
If you're going to blatantly invoke imagery like that, then how about preserving the wisdom of experience? How much more might we advance the state of the art in every field if the experts in those fields are still around, healthy, and making new discoveries?
And there are plenty of 80-year-olds still enjoying their first marriage.
Youth is a wonder largely because of aging; eliminate aging and you get the pleasures of youth when you're a hundred.
Personally, I'm satisfied with "death is bad; stopping death would be good". Simplistic yet still incredibly true.
That will also keep bad guys around indefinitely. I think we can agree that things can be better. (I mean things like, environmental issues, corruption and foreign policies). But one cannot really hope to change the viewpoints/values/priorities of people already in power. Our only hope is the new generations, which we can hope to bring up with better values, which will eventually replace them.
Imagine if Hitler could live indefinitely or created an army of clones. Imagine every corrupt/powerful person in the world right, has the capability for doing this.
The point I am trying to make, is good cannot do good, when evil forces are in power. And the only thing that prevents evil forces in power indefinitely, is natural death. (We can all agree that things like democracy are not really doing a good job at that, right?)
Because you're questioning the only real moral principle humanity has.
This is probably not the place to argue about the existence of God, but I will say this: your reasoning is circular. "There's no rational justification for it, so it's not true; and since it's not true, there's no rational justification for it." You have made up your mind already, so you don't even realize when you beg the question. In fact, many people do see rational arguments in favor; just because you disagree with them doesn't make them irrational. And your stated arguments are, in fact, irrational.
Food for thought.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth
I'm sure Knuth is full of joy writing his next book.
Age-related disease kills ~100,000 people every day, and causes horrible day to day suffering for hundreds of millions of others. Nothing else comes even close as a single presently addressable cause of terrible things in the world, and lack of money is the greatest obstacle to progress towards meaningful treatments that address the root causes of aging and thus all age-related disease.