All of AndyMcKenzie's Comments + Replies

I agree aging research is under-invested in and that research here has the potential to lead to many QALYs in the future. However, I would generalize this cause area to longevity, because I think brain preservation/cryonics is also neglected and should also be a part of this. See: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sRXQbZpCLDnBLXHAH/brain-preservation-to-prevent-involuntary-death-a-possible

I agree with you that pure software AGI is very likely to happen sooner than brain emulation.

I’m wondering about your scenario for the farther future, near the point when humans start to retire from all jobs. I think that at this point, many humans would be understandably afraid of the idea that AIs could take over. People are not stupid and many are obsessed with security. At this point, brain emulation would be possible. It seems to me that there would therefore be large efforts in making those emulations competitive with pure software AI in important wa... (read more)

I think that given the possibility of brain emulation, the division between AIs and humans you are drawing here may not be so clear in the longer term. Does that play into your model at all, or do you expect that even human emulations with various cognitive upgrades will be totally unable to compete with pure AIs? 

I think I basically agree that if someone can identify a way to reduce extinction risk by 0.01% for $100M-1B, then that would be a better use of marginal funds than the direct effects of brain preservation. 

Great post. I fully agree that this seems to be a worthwhile area of funding. Although it was written too soon to be included in the Open Phil prize, I wrote a post on a similar topic here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sRXQbZpCLDnBLXHAH/brain-preservation-to-prevent-involuntary-death-a-possible

I wonder if the EA community feels they have already spent too many "weirdness points" on other areas -- mainly AGI x-risk alignment research -- and don't want to distribute them elsewhere. Evidence for this would be that other new cause areas that get c... (read more)

Hi Jeremy, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the QALYs are dependent upon the idea that it's better to extend someone's life than to replace them with a new person. Because by the time that revival is possible, we will likely be able to create new people at will. (This is assuming that society does not decide to not create more people before reaching Malthusian limits.) 

Basically, we get rapidly into population ethics if you want to debate whether lives are fungible. As Ariel points out elsewhere in the comments - I was not aware of this connection,... (read more)

Hi Peter, I agree with you that right now there are not any obvious high-value ways to donate money to this area. Although as I just wrote in a comment elsewhere in this thread, I am hoping to do more research on this question in the future, and hopefully others can contribute to that effort as well. 

I also agree with you that the history of cryonics suggests it's hard to get people to sign up. But, I do think that the cost of signing up is an obvious area where interventions can be made. My understanding is that the general public's price sensitivity... (read more)

Thanks for your interest in this topic! 

I agree with you that it is hard as an outsider to tell what the current scope of the situation is regarding the need for more funding. This post was more of a high-level overview of the problem to see whether people agreed with me that this was a reasonable cause area for effective altruism. 

Since it seems that a good number of people do agree (please tell me if you don't!), I am hoping to work on the practical area more in the future. For now, I don't think I know enough to publically say with any confide... (read more)

Thanks for the kind feedback! 

The main counter-argument to the idea that there is limited space is that in the future, if humanity ever progresses to the point that revival is possible, then we will almost certainly not have the same space constraints we do now. For example, this may be because of whole brain emulation and/or because we have become a multi-planetary species. Many people, myself included, think that there is a high likelihood this will happen in the next century or sooner: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/ 

There i... (read more)

As @Ariel_ZJ wrote, it is already possible for brain activity to fully cease and then restart, and people don't typically think that they were "destroyed" and "recreated" after that. 

With some revival strategies, such as whole brain emulation, some people are concerned about a "copy problem", because it would not be the same atoms/molecules instantiated, just the same patterns. Personally, I don't think that the copy problem is an actual concern, for reasons explained here: https://www.brainpreservation.org/content-2/killed-bad-philosophy/

My expectation is that in the future, with anti-aging technology or whole brain emulation, aging will not significantly add to the marginal cost of providing another year of life. 

Does this address your hesitation? I'm not sure if you're referring to something else. 

Thanks for your kind comments! Much appreciated. 

I agree that brain preservation could potentially be cost-saving for healthcare systems if combined with medical aid in dying and people were interested in this rather than pursuing painful care that is likely futile. However, my guess is that healthcare systems in general are not very cost-efficient from an effective altruism perspective, so it's hard to see how this would affect overall QALYs. 

Can you please explain what you mean by "anti-aging fetish"? 

I think the cost of brain preservation procedures and financial accessibility is extremely important. As I mention in the post, some of the options that are already available today are relatively cheap, costing a few thousand dollars. This is cheaper than the average funeral in the United States. With more research, the procedures could potentially become cheaper. In my view, brain preservation would ideally be free to the individual and paid for by philanthropy or health insurance, so that ... (read more)

I'm surprised that you find that persuasive. 

It suggests that humans are fungible: if some people die, it's no matter, because more can simply be created. This strongly goes against my intuition. 

I also think that human fungibility is flawed from a hedonistic quality of life perspective. Much, perhaps most, of human angst is due to involuntary death. There has been a lot of philosophic work on this. One famous book is Ernest Becker's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death/. 

Involuntary death is one of the great harms of life. Dec... (read more)

That's actually not what I am saying; rather, I am questioning your claim that human life is exchangeable. Because most people intensely dislike the prospect of death and it makes life a lot more difficult in many ways, it seems much better (to me) to have one person live for 100 years than to have two people live for 50, given the same healthspan.

Separately, I expect that any increased expected chance of an increased lifespan, including cryonics, would increase the average person's propensity to make long-term investments in themselves and in their communities.

Important link that hasn't been mentioned yet: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/cryonics-as-charity.html

The argument is that social reasons are a contributor to people not signing up for or being interested in brain preservation/cryonics, and that doing so yourself helps decrease that.

Really agree with this style of reasoning.

It's worth pointing out your case is weakened by the cases of Kim Suozzi and Aaron Drake, both of whom had their suspensions paid for by the community within the last few years.

It's also worth pointing out that there has been at least one attempt to give away an Alcor membership to a random person (chosen by lottery). The person who won it ended up not going through with the sign-up process. This was discussed on Mike Darwin's blog (I can't easily find the link right now, but lmk if you're curious).

Also, some in... (read more)

It seems to me (as a utilitarian) that allowing people to effectively die and then be brought back to life later is approximately morally equivalent to allowing people to die and then creating entirely new people later.

Could you please flesh out your reasoning for this a little bit more?

It seems to me that there is a large difference between your two scenarios, with much larger utility going to extending existing people's life rather than creating new ones.

This is because an extremely large cause of disutility for current people is the fact that they... (read more)