I second the suggestion to add a summary at the top of the post.
The Forum has a feature that it took me a while to notice: On pages that show lists of posts, each post has an estimated reading time. The time for this post, for example, was â20mâ. If someone is thinking of investing 2o minutes in a post (and that number is likely conservative if they need to pause, think, go back, etc.), giving them a summary can be really valuable in helping them make that decision.
Thanks Mati_Roy and aarongertler for the suggestion of adding a summary. Now there is one!
Maty_Roy, thank you for the points made! I would like to correct what I think are a couple of misunderstandings and I would like to elaborate on your idea about using Death Escape Velocity, instead of Longevity Escape Velocity:
Misunderstandings:
1) 36,500,000 are the people dying of aging in a year, so bringing LEV closer by one year (and not by one day) would save this number of lives.
2) If Longevity Escape Velocity doesnât happen, bringing the date in which aging is cured completely closer could simply do nothing. This because people living at that time could have already a really low risk of death, that canât go much further down with an additional improvement on treatments for aging. This because if Longevity Escape Velocity doesnât happen, then I would expect the âvery slow scenarioâ or the âdire roadblocksâ scenario to be true, and aging would be eradicated really slowly, possibly in centuries.
The points about why my estimate is conservative are summarised well, thanks for doing that :)
Regarding the idea of using âdeath escape velocityâ: I didnât use it because technologies that would decrease the risk of death by other causes other than aging are substantially different from the ones brought about by aging research. So it would be another cause area completely! I also would expect them to become more relevant in the future. I think there is not much use of thinking about them now and they wouldnât make potential EA interventions to fund, since our ideas will be probably be made useless by potentially much better technology existing after aging gets eradicated (that is the first step). âDeath escape velocityâcould be brought about, for example, by friendly AGI, if that ever comes about. I think this input is valuable though, since itâs an existing related concept that is not talked about much.
I second the suggestion to add a summary at the top of the post.
The Forum has a feature that it took me a while to notice: On pages that show lists of posts, each post has an estimated reading time. The time for this post, for example, was â20mâ. If someone is thinking of investing 2o minutes in a post (and that number is likely conservative if they need to pause, think, go back, etc.), giving them a summary can be really valuable in helping them make that decision.
Thanks Mati_Roy and aarongertler for the suggestion of adding a summary. Now there is one!
Maty_Roy, thank you for the points made! I would like to correct what I think are a couple of misunderstandings and I would like to elaborate on your idea about using Death Escape Velocity, instead of Longevity Escape Velocity:
Misunderstandings:
1) 36,500,000 are the people dying of aging in a year, so bringing LEV closer by one year (and not by one day) would save this number of lives.
2) If Longevity Escape Velocity doesnât happen, bringing the date in which aging is cured completely closer could simply do nothing. This because people living at that time could have already a really low risk of death, that canât go much further down with an additional improvement on treatments for aging. This because if Longevity Escape Velocity doesnât happen, then I would expect the âvery slow scenarioâ or the âdire roadblocksâ scenario to be true, and aging would be eradicated really slowly, possibly in centuries.
The points about why my estimate is conservative are summarised well, thanks for doing that :)
Regarding the idea of using âdeath escape velocityâ: I didnât use it because technologies that would decrease the risk of death by other causes other than aging are substantially different from the ones brought about by aging research. So it would be another cause area completely! I also would expect them to become more relevant in the future. I think there is not much use of thinking about them now and they wouldnât make potential EA interventions to fund, since our ideas will be probably be made useless by potentially much better technology existing after aging gets eradicated (that is the first step). âDeath escape velocityâcould be brought about, for example, by friendly AGI, if that ever comes about. I think this input is valuable though, since itâs an existing related concept that is not talked about much.