The saddest thing about the reaction on HN is that so many commenters are angry this thing that we don’t even have yet and didn’t even dream of a few hours earlier will be ‘only for the rich’.
I agree. These commenters seem to be ignorant of both the history of technological progress and modern socioeconomic reality. In case after case—cars, flight, computers, cell phones, electricity, indoor plumbing—a technology started out very expensive and rapidly became inexpensive and widely available as it became popular (in some sense, the most important factor determining the price of a technology is not its innate sophistication, but its popularity—the more popular it becomes, the less expensive; and anti-aging technology will be very popular). Furthermore, there are very few health-improvement technologies that are both 1) highly effective and 2) available only to the wealthy—expensive medical treatments are usually experimental. Also, one of the big problems with our current system is that it spends millions of dollars on the homeless.
I agree. These commenters seem to be ignorant of both the history of technological progress and modern socioeconomic reality. In case after case—cars, flight, computers, cell phones, electricity, indoor plumbing—a technology started out very expensive and rapidly became inexpensive and widely available as it became popular (in some sense, the most important factor determining the price of a technology is not its innate sophistication, but its popularity—the more popular it becomes, the less expensive; and anti-aging technology will be very popular). Furthermore, there are very few health-improvement technologies that are both 1) highly effective and 2) available only to the wealthy—expensive medical treatments are usually experimental. Also, one of the big problems with our current system is that it spends millions of dollars on the homeless.