Radical life extension is IMO a big part of the rationalist worldview, if not the EA movement. (Although recent progress in AI has taken attention away from anti-aging, on the grounds that if we get AI alignment wrong, we’re all dead, and if we get alignment right, the superintelligent AI will easily solve aging for us.)
One of the problems with radical life extension as an EA cause area is that it seems like other people ought to be rationally self-interested in funding anti-aging research, so it’s not clear why EA should foot the bill:
Health interventions in the world’s poorest countries—a lot of the leverage comes from the fact that poor people often don’t have the resources or knowledge to help themselves
Animal welfare & longtermism—animals obviously have about ~0 ability to advocate for themselves. Ditto for unborn far-future generations of human civilization.
Anti-aging—sure, there is a pretty significant collective-action problem (I might pay for anti-aging research because I personally don’t want to die, but then the benefits are diffused around to all humanity), but still, wouldn’t there be plenty of especially rich people willing to pay the $$$ to do the anti-aging research?? Yes, indeed, this is what we see:
Google funds a variety of anti-aging moonshot projects, which are probably money-losing propositions in expectation but are supported by various top executives: https://www.calicolabs.com/
Personally, I cheer these billionares on, I think they’re doing a great thing, and I think people in general ought to wise up about the badness of death and aging (it would be great if millions more people had read “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant”!) and support more anti-aging research through government-funded health agencies. HOWEVER, even with all that enthusiasm… I don’t think it’s really a great fit for an EA cause, since so many other people have a self-interested incentive to fund this stuff.
I’d also note that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on biomedical research generally each year. While most of this isn’t targeted at anti-aging specifically, there will be a fair amount of spillover that benefits anti-aging research, in terms of increased understanding of genes, proteins, cell biology etc.
Radical life extension is IMO a big part of the rationalist worldview, if not the EA movement. (Although recent progress in AI has taken attention away from anti-aging, on the grounds that if we get AI alignment wrong, we’re all dead, and if we get alignment right, the superintelligent AI will easily solve aging for us.)
One of the problems with radical life extension as an EA cause area is that it seems like other people ought to be rationally self-interested in funding anti-aging research, so it’s not clear why EA should foot the bill:
Health interventions in the world’s poorest countries—a lot of the leverage comes from the fact that poor people often don’t have the resources or knowledge to help themselves
Animal welfare & longtermism—animals obviously have about ~0 ability to advocate for themselves. Ditto for unborn far-future generations of human civilization.
Anti-aging—sure, there is a pretty significant collective-action problem (I might pay for anti-aging research because I personally don’t want to die, but then the benefits are diffused around to all humanity), but still, wouldn’t there be plenty of especially rich people willing to pay the $$$ to do the anti-aging research?? Yes, indeed, this is what we see:
a billion-dollar-per-year fund of saudi oligarchs funding anti-aging trials https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/07/1053132/saudi-arabia-slow-aging-metformin/
Vitalik Buterin has made a bunch of inspiring donations to anti-aging groups: https://www.lifespan.io/news/vitalik-buterin-longevity-ai-zuzalu/
Google funds a variety of anti-aging moonshot projects, which are probably money-losing propositions in expectation but are supported by various top executives: https://www.calicolabs.com/
Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner, Peter Thiel, etc, have funded several ambitious projects in the anti-aging space: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/04/1034364/altos-labs-silicon-valleys-jeff-bezos-milner-bet-living-forever/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-leadership/peter-thiels-life-goal-to-extend-our-time-on-this-earth/2015/04/03/b7a1779c-4814-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html
Personally, I cheer these billionares on, I think they’re doing a great thing, and I think people in general ought to wise up about the badness of death and aging (it would be great if millions more people had read “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant”!) and support more anti-aging research through government-funded health agencies. HOWEVER, even with all that enthusiasm… I don’t think it’s really a great fit for an EA cause, since so many other people have a self-interested incentive to fund this stuff.
I’d also note that hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on biomedical research generally each year. While most of this isn’t targeted at anti-aging specifically, there will be a fair amount of spillover that benefits anti-aging research, in terms of increased understanding of genes, proteins, cell biology etc.