I’m not sure if these considerations would change how aging research looks from an EA perspective. It’s one of the many “rounding errors” that could be considered as side effects, besides the main purpose of buying QALYs and freedom. Moreover, all of these additional considerations, both positive and negative, might be made irrelevant by new disrupting tech and societal/political/organisational change. Examples: cognitive enhancements, AI, research funding management.
I’m not sure if there’s a definite answer about how much cognitive decline influences this kind of stuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if “being stuck in old ways” or not being able to understand new developments and innovate are symptoms of neurological old age more than accumulated bias.
There are also other factors that are less related to aging (but which could still benefit from rejuvenation) that play into how superstar researchers hinder the careers of younger scientists (see Gavintaylor’s comment). These problems, though, don’t need people to die in order to be solved. Organisational improvements would be sufficient.
A simple suggestion to mitigate these problems could already be trialled well before life extension is available. It is probably possible to identify niche field where star scientists are acting as gatekeepers (either from citation patterns or conversations with scientists in a variety of fields) - an agency interested in that field could then simply offer some large and long term grants for work in the field provided that does not involve any of the star scientist or any of his collaborators. Hopefully the promise of substantial funding would be enough to encourage new entrants to the field.
Admittedly, this would be a very confrontational approach that might lead the star scientist to try and block publications or other grants from people entering his field in this way, but academic rivalries already occur via other causes so it should hopefully work itself out. If funding scientific competition like this resulted in similar gains as this publication shows for the death of a star scientist then it is not only a solution to the situation, but also suggests funding competitors could prove more effective than funding the incumbent gatekeepers in some cases.
I’m not sure if these considerations would change how aging research looks from an EA perspective. It’s one of the many “rounding errors” that could be considered as side effects, besides the main purpose of buying QALYs and freedom. Moreover, all of these additional considerations, both positive and negative, might be made irrelevant by new disrupting tech and societal/political/organisational change. Examples: cognitive enhancements, AI, research funding management.
I’m not sure if there’s a definite answer about how much cognitive decline influences this kind of stuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if “being stuck in old ways” or not being able to understand new developments and innovate are symptoms of neurological old age more than accumulated bias.
There are also other factors that are less related to aging (but which could still benefit from rejuvenation) that play into how superstar researchers hinder the careers of younger scientists (see Gavintaylor’s comment). These problems, though, don’t need people to die in order to be solved. Organisational improvements would be sufficient.
A simple suggestion to mitigate these problems could already be trialled well before life extension is available. It is probably possible to identify niche field where star scientists are acting as gatekeepers (either from citation patterns or conversations with scientists in a variety of fields) - an agency interested in that field could then simply offer some large and long term grants for work in the field provided that does not involve any of the star scientist or any of his collaborators. Hopefully the promise of substantial funding would be enough to encourage new entrants to the field.
Admittedly, this would be a very confrontational approach that might lead the star scientist to try and block publications or other grants from people entering his field in this way, but academic rivalries already occur via other causes so it should hopefully work itself out. If funding scientific competition like this resulted in similar gains as this publication shows for the death of a star scientist then it is not only a solution to the situation, but also suggests funding competitors could prove more effective than funding the incumbent gatekeepers in some cases.