We live in special period of time when radical life extension is not far.
If you’re thinking of Aubrey de Grey’s estimates on the cost (~1b USD) required to reach the point where we can add 30 years of healthy human life to people who have already aged quite a bit, I’ve always wondered exactly how optimistic those are. I do like Aubrey, and think that SENS is probably a good use of funding (though I bet the VOI on what SENS’s cost effectiveness is high, too). Anyhow, it feels like the same sorts of errors that come up in doing charity cost-effectiveness estimates a-la-Givewell would come up in doing cost-effectiveness estimates of SENS, such that we might expect the cost-effectiveness of SENS to drop by a couple of orders of magnitude (or more) after we do the appropriate multilevel modeling. At the same time, Aubrey has always been precise and consistent enough in his estimates of what it will take to get SENS off the ground that he does inspire social confidence.
nanotechnologies
I’d like to be on the record as thinking that hard-nanotech/nanobots a-la-Drexler are silly and unfeasible, even with FAI. (Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned this, since I’m a bit too depressed to have a proper debate about this today. Hmm).
Depression is related to a low standard of living, and prevents the implementation of any actions for life extension
This seems especially true for those who would otherwise be quite motivated to implement various life-extending interventions.
Basically SENS is not relevant for this map. If you survive until FAI in 2050 without SENS it is completely ok and quiet possible. Also SENS is not the only approach to antaging. Exiting drugs cocktail probably could slow aging as they did on mice. But if FAI is delayed until 2100, you should ride the wave of life extension methods: antiaging, cyborgization, head transplanation, brain in vat and finally uploading.
If you’re thinking of Aubrey de Grey’s estimates on the cost (~1b USD) required to reach the point where we can add 30 years of healthy human life to people who have already aged quite a bit, I’ve always wondered exactly how optimistic those are. I do like Aubrey, and think that SENS is probably a good use of funding (though I bet the VOI on what SENS’s cost effectiveness is high, too). Anyhow, it feels like the same sorts of errors that come up in doing charity cost-effectiveness estimates a-la-Givewell would come up in doing cost-effectiveness estimates of SENS, such that we might expect the cost-effectiveness of SENS to drop by a couple of orders of magnitude (or more) after we do the appropriate multilevel modeling. At the same time, Aubrey has always been precise and consistent enough in his estimates of what it will take to get SENS off the ground that he does inspire social confidence.
I’d like to be on the record as thinking that hard-nanotech/nanobots a-la-Drexler are silly and unfeasible, even with FAI. (Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned this, since I’m a bit too depressed to have a proper debate about this today. Hmm).
This seems especially true for those who would otherwise be quite motivated to implement various life-extending interventions.
Basically SENS is not relevant for this map. If you survive until FAI in 2050 without SENS it is completely ok and quiet possible. Also SENS is not the only approach to antaging. Exiting drugs cocktail probably could slow aging as they did on mice.
But if FAI is delayed until 2100, you should ride the wave of life extension methods: antiaging, cyborgization, head transplanation, brain in vat and finally uploading.