They seen grandma getting sicker and sicker, suffering more and more, and they feel outrage: why have we not solved this yet?
You expect them to get angry—at whom in particular? - because grandma keeps getting older? For tens of thousands of years of human history, the only alternative to this has been substantially worse for grandma. Unless she wants to die and you’re talking about euthanasia, but no additional medical research is needed for that. There is no precedent or direct empirical evidence that anything else is possible.
Maybe people are wrong for ignoring speculative arguments that anti-aging research is possible, but that’s a terrible example of people being bound by social reality.
1. True, for ten thousands of years of human history, it has been that way. But “there is no precedent or direct empirical evidence that anything else is possible” emphatically does not cut it. Within only a few hundred years the world has been transformed, we have magical god-devices that connect us across the world, we have artificial hearts, we can clean someone’s blood by pumping out of it and then back in, we operate on brains, we put man on the moon. In recent years you’ve got the rise of AI and gene editing. Lifespans are already double most of what they’ve been for most of history. What has held for tens of thousands of years is no longer so. It is not that hard to see that humankind’s mastery over reality is only continuing to grow. Precedent? Maybe not. But reason for hope? Yes. Actually pretty reasonable expectation that our medical science is not maxed out? Definitely.
This isn’t speculative. The scientific and technological progress should be apparent to those who’ve lived more than a few decades in the recent history.
2. Anger doesn’t always have to have a target. But if you need one then pick society, pick science, pick research, pick doctors, pick your neighbours.
3. Watching your loved ones decay and die is anguish. If people are going to yell at the doctors that they should do something, that something must be possible (though some would argue this is fake/performance), then let them also yell at state of the world. That this unnecessary circumstance has come to be. Yell at the universe.
4. The alternative explanation to saying that people see the world overwhelmingly via social reality is that people simply have terrible causal models. Perhaps to me the scientific/technological progress of the last few hundred years is obviously, obviously reason to believe far more is possible (and better today than in fifty years), but not to others. Perhaps I’m wrong about it, though I don’t think I am.
And you needn’t be absolutely certain that curing death and aging is possible to demand we try. A chance should be enough. If you demand that doctors do things which only might prolong grandma’s life, then why not ask that have better science because there’s chance for that working too.
Perhaps people really didn’t get enough of an education to appreciate science and technology (that we manipulate light itself to communicate near instantaneously sparks no wonder and awe, for example). So then I’d say they are overly anchored on the status quo. It is not so much being bound by social reality, but by how things are now, without extrapolation even fifty years forward or back—even when they themselves have lived through so much change.
5. I pick the example of disease and death because is so personal, so immediate, so painful for many. It doesn’t require that we posit any altruistic motivation and it’s a situation where I expect to see a lot of powerful emotion revealing how people relate to reality (rather than them taking the options they think are immediately available to them and strategic).
I don’t think the disagreement here is about the feasibility of life extension. (I agree that it looks feasible.) I think the point that Benquo and I have been separately trying to make is that admonishing people to be angry independently of their anger having some specific causal effect on a specific target, doesn’t make sense in the context of trying to explain the “causal reality vs. social reality” frame. “People should be angrier about aging” might be a good thesis for a blog post, but I think it would work better as a different post.
And you needn’t be absolutely certain that curing death and aging is possible to demand we try. A chance should be enough.
I think the point that Benquo and I have been separately trying to make is that admonishing people to be angry independently of their anger having some specific causal effect on a specific target, doesn’t make sense in the context of trying to explain the “causal reality vs. social reality” frame.
I wonder if this is a point where I being misunderstood. Based on this and a few in-person conversations, people think I’m taking a normative stance here. I’m not. Not primarily. I am trying to understand a thing I am confused about and to explain my observations. I observe that my models lead me to expect that people would be doing X, but I do not observe that—so what am I missing?
Fore the record, for all those reading:
This post isn’t trying to tell anyone to do anything, and I’m not actively stating a judgment. I haven’t thought about what people should be doing. I’m not saying they should be clamoring in the streets. There is no active admonishing directed at anyone here. There is no thesis. I haven’t thought about what people should be doing enough—I haven’t thought through what would actually be strategic for them. So I don’t know. Not with any confidence, not enough to tell them what to do.
Given this is about my confusion about what I expect people to do and that I don’t expect people to be strategic, the question of whether or not doing X would be strategic isn’t really relevant. My model doesn’t predict people to be strategic, so the fact that strategic action might not to be do X doesn’t make me less confused.
(A valid counter to my confusion is saying that people are in fact strategic, but I’m rather incredulous. I’m not sure if you or Benquo were saying that?)
I am a bit confused, I might not be reading you carefully enough, but it feels here like you’re trying to explain people’s behavior with reference to normative behavior rather than descriptive (in this comment and earlier ones).
It’s precisely because I expect most people to think “but there’s still a chance right” that I would expect the possibility of life extension to motivate to action—more so than if they cared about the magnitude. (Also, caring about magnitude is a causal reality thing, I would say as the notion of probabilities is, seemingly.)
Your argument doesn’t make sense unless whatever “clamoring in the streets” stands in for metaphorically is an available action to the people you’re referring to. It seems to me like the vast majority of people are neither in an epistemic position where they can reasonably think that they know that there’s a good chance of curing aging, nor do they have any idea how to go about causing the relevant research to happen.
They do know how to increase the salience of “boo death,” but so far in the best case that seems to result in pyramids, which don’t work and never could, and even then only for the richest.
You expect them to get angry—at whom in particular? - because grandma keeps getting older? For tens of thousands of years of human history, the only alternative to this has been substantially worse for grandma. Unless she wants to die and you’re talking about euthanasia, but no additional medical research is needed for that. There is no precedent or direct empirical evidence that anything else is possible.
Maybe people are wrong for ignoring speculative arguments that anti-aging research is possible, but that’s a terrible example of people being bound by social reality.
1. True, for ten thousands of years of human history, it has been that way. But “there is no precedent or direct empirical evidence that anything else is possible” emphatically does not cut it. Within only a few hundred years the world has been transformed, we have magical god-devices that connect us across the world, we have artificial hearts, we can clean someone’s blood by pumping out of it and then back in, we operate on brains, we put man on the moon. In recent years you’ve got the rise of AI and gene editing. Lifespans are already double most of what they’ve been for most of history. What has held for tens of thousands of years is no longer so. It is not that hard to see that humankind’s mastery over reality is only continuing to grow. Precedent? Maybe not. But reason for hope? Yes. Actually pretty reasonable expectation that our medical science is not maxed out? Definitely.
This isn’t speculative. The scientific and technological progress should be apparent to those who’ve lived more than a few decades in the recent history.
2. Anger doesn’t always have to have a target. But if you need one then pick society, pick science, pick research, pick doctors, pick your neighbours.
3. Watching your loved ones decay and die is anguish. If people are going to yell at the doctors that they should do something, that something must be possible (though some would argue this is fake/performance), then let them also yell at state of the world. That this unnecessary circumstance has come to be. Yell at the universe.
4. The alternative explanation to saying that people see the world overwhelmingly via social reality is that people simply have terrible causal models. Perhaps to me the scientific/technological progress of the last few hundred years is obviously, obviously reason to believe far more is possible (and better today than in fifty years), but not to others. Perhaps I’m wrong about it, though I don’t think I am.
And you needn’t be absolutely certain that curing death and aging is possible to demand we try. A chance should be enough. If you demand that doctors do things which only might prolong grandma’s life, then why not ask that have better science because there’s chance for that working too.
Perhaps people really didn’t get enough of an education to appreciate science and technology (that we manipulate light itself to communicate near instantaneously sparks no wonder and awe, for example). So then I’d say they are overly anchored on the status quo. It is not so much being bound by social reality, but by how things are now, without extrapolation even fifty years forward or back—even when they themselves have lived through so much change.
5. I pick the example of disease and death because is so personal, so immediate, so painful for many. It doesn’t require that we posit any altruistic motivation and it’s a situation where I expect to see a lot of powerful emotion revealing how people relate to reality (rather than them taking the options they think are immediately available to them and strategic).
I don’t think the disagreement here is about the feasibility of life extension. (I agree that it looks feasible.) I think the point that Benquo and I have been separately trying to make is that admonishing people to be angry independently of their anger having some specific causal effect on a specific target, doesn’t make sense in the context of trying to explain the “causal reality vs. social reality” frame. “People should be angrier about aging” might be a good thesis for a blog post, but I think it would work better as a different post.
The magnitude of the chance matters! Have you read the Overly Convenient Excuses Sequence? I think Yudkowsky explained this well in the post “But There’s Still a Chance, Right?”.
I wonder if this is a point where I being misunderstood. Based on this and a few in-person conversations, people think I’m taking a normative stance here. I’m not. Not primarily. I am trying to understand a thing I am confused about and to explain my observations. I observe that my models lead me to expect that people would be doing X, but I do not observe that—so what am I missing?
Fore the record, for all those reading:
This post isn’t trying to tell anyone to do anything, and I’m not actively stating a judgment. I haven’t thought about what people should be doing. I’m not saying they should be clamoring in the streets. There is no active admonishing directed at anyone here. There is no thesis. I haven’t thought about what people should be doing enough—I haven’t thought through what would actually be strategic for them. So I don’t know. Not with any confidence, not enough to tell them what to do.
Given this is about my confusion about what I expect people to do and that I don’t expect people to be strategic, the question of whether or not doing X would be strategic isn’t really relevant. My model doesn’t predict people to be strategic, so the fact that strategic action might not to be do X doesn’t make me less confused.
(A valid counter to my confusion is saying that people are in fact strategic, but I’m rather incredulous. I’m not sure if you or Benquo were saying that?)
I am a bit confused, I might not be reading you carefully enough, but it feels here like you’re trying to explain people’s behavior with reference to normative behavior rather than descriptive (in this comment and earlier ones).
It’s precisely because I expect most people to think “but there’s still a chance right” that I would expect the possibility of life extension to motivate to action—more so than if they cared about the magnitude. (Also, caring about magnitude is a causal reality thing, I would say as the notion of probabilities is, seemingly.)
Your argument doesn’t make sense unless whatever “clamoring in the streets” stands in for metaphorically is an available action to the people you’re referring to. It seems to me like the vast majority of people are neither in an epistemic position where they can reasonably think that they know that there’s a good chance of curing aging, nor do they have any idea how to go about causing the relevant research to happen.
They do know how to increase the salience of “boo death,” but so far in the best case that seems to result in pyramids, which don’t work and never could, and even then only for the richest.