If we assume that there will be no existential risks and there will be space exploration, there will be a lot of new people (trillions?), much more than actually living people now, so extending life of currently living people is not taking the opportunity from future people to be born.
Sure it will take away from the opportunity: the currently living people will have demand for important resources, this extra demand will increase the equilibrium prices of important resources, and these higher prices will cause people to be unable to afford having as many new kids (or the kids who do exist will have a lower standard of living due to higher prices for important resources).
Moreover, if future people will be born in the world there is no death, suffering and ageing, they could enjoy much better life, as long as they want, so there is no negative opportunity cost for such people -
Sure, but there is a negative opportunity cost for the people that could have been born.
Yes, I just suggested it as an example of absurd consequences of the idea that one has value unborn people as much as already existing.
Anyway, If humanity survives and start space exploration, an enormous amount of new people will be born, and they will be born in the much better conditions, where there is no aging and involuntary death. Thus, postponing new lives until creation a better world may be morally good.
I also added the following section to the article where tried to answer yours and other commenters concerns:
4.6. Analysis of the opportunity costs and possible negative consequences of the life extension
Proper cost-benefit analysis of the effective altruistic intervention requires looking into possible opportunity costs of the suggested intervention. Here we list some considerations:
Life extension will increase global population which will increase food and other prices and lower quality of life of the poorest people. The main driver of the population growth is fertility, and if it becomes lower, we move to the next point about the value of unborn people. The main model of the future on which we rely is based on the idea of indefinite technological progress, and if the progress will outperform growth of the population, there will no negative consequences. So, overpopulation will be a problem in the situation of low fertility, low technological progress and very large life extension. This outcome is unlikely as the same biotech which will help extend human life could be also used to produce more food recourses. Also, in our model of the effect of simple interventions, the total effect on the population is rather insignificant, in order of magnitude of several percent, which is smaller than expected error in the population projection.
Life extension will take resources and fewer new people will be born, thus unborn people will lose the opportunity to be alive. As we discussed above, fewer newborn people now could be compensated but much more people which will be born in the future in the much better world.
The older population will be less innovative and diverse. The population is aging anyway, and slowing aging process will make people behave as if they are younger in the same calendar age.
Effects on pension system and employment. Life extension may put pressure on labor market and pension funds, but the general principle is that we can’t kill people to make the economy better. In reality, if powerful life extension technologies will be available, the same technological level will revolutionize other spheres of society.
Optimizer curse could affect our judgment. Optimizer curse is mathematical proof that in case of choice between several uncertain variables, the median error tends to accumulate, and the best solution likely has the biggest error (Smith & Winkler, 2006). This means that our estimation of the metformin efficiency in saving lives is likely to be an overestimation. However, we have around 4 orders of magnitude margin to be the best possible solution to save lives.
We also will explore relations between life extension and existential risks prioritization in the section 8.
These claims about life extension’s impact on the economy, finances and resource shortages are controversial and uncited. You also aren’t applying sound counterfactual reasoning, instead you are appealing to a generic sense of “well, lots of people will live wonderful lives ANYWAY, so there is no opportunity cost!!” which clearly doesn’t address my concerns. Moreover, no one is talking about killing people, we are talking about being more accurate about the value of saving people’s lives.
My point is not to keep arguing about this here, but to say that these things should be properly addressed in the paper. With these points and the optimizer’s curse especially, you’re still not doing real work to improve the argument. You’re just taking comments from yourself and other users, and including them in the paper. A paper for cause prioritization cannot be a list of comments, it must be a structured argument.
I updated the section about unborn people and I am going to read and add more links on the topic. Currently it is:
2) Life extension will take resources and fewer new people will be born, thus unborn people will lose the opportunity to be alive. It is not easy to measure value of unborn people without some ethical axioms. If this value is very high, we may try to increase population as much as possible, which seems absurd as in would decrease the quality of life.
While life extension seems to mean fewer new people born each century, the total number of new people is still infinitely large in the situation of constant space exploration (Bostrom, 2003b). Also, fewer newborn people in the 21 cnetury could be compensated by much more people which will be born in the next centuries in the much better world with higher quality of medicine.
If the explorable universe is infinite, the total number of newborn people will not change, but these people will move to later epochs, where they will live even better lives. Tipler (Tipler, 1997) suggested that at the end all possible people will be created by enormous superintelligence in Omega point, and thus all possible people will get chance to be alive. However, we can’t count on such remote events.
But we could compare potential 21th and 22th centuries from our model. In 21th century, fewer people will be born because of life extension, but after superintelligent AI or other power technology will appear, supposedly at 2100, much more new people could live on Earth on much better conditions.
Also, it is not obvious that life extension will affect reproduction negatively because of the “grandmother effect”: the decision about reproduction people typically take in early life, but if they have available grandparents which could help them with babysitting this would increase the willingness to have children as also less strain economy outside the family
Sure it will take away from the opportunity: the currently living people will have demand for important resources, this extra demand will increase the equilibrium prices of important resources, and these higher prices will cause people to be unable to afford having as many new kids (or the kids who do exist will have a lower standard of living due to higher prices for important resources).
Sure, but there is a negative opportunity cost for the people that could have been born.
The first is an argument against fertility in general, not only about life extension. Higher fertility will increase the population and food prices.
The second is an argument is pro-fertility: by having fewer children I refuse the opportunity to be alive to my unborn children.
So what? It still refutes your claim.
This doesn’t even make sense.
Yes, I just suggested it as an example of absurd consequences of the idea that one has value unborn people as much as already existing.
Anyway, If humanity survives and start space exploration, an enormous amount of new people will be born, and they will be born in the much better conditions, where there is no aging and involuntary death. Thus, postponing new lives until creation a better world may be morally good.
I also added the following section to the article where tried to answer yours and other commenters concerns:
4.6. Analysis of the opportunity costs and possible negative consequences of the life extension
Proper cost-benefit analysis of the effective altruistic intervention requires looking into possible opportunity costs of the suggested intervention. Here we list some considerations:
Life extension will increase global population which will increase food and other prices and lower quality of life of the poorest people. The main driver of the population growth is fertility, and if it becomes lower, we move to the next point about the value of unborn people. The main model of the future on which we rely is based on the idea of indefinite technological progress, and if the progress will outperform growth of the population, there will no negative consequences. So, overpopulation will be a problem in the situation of low fertility, low technological progress and very large life extension. This outcome is unlikely as the same biotech which will help extend human life could be also used to produce more food recourses. Also, in our model of the effect of simple interventions, the total effect on the population is rather insignificant, in order of magnitude of several percent, which is smaller than expected error in the population projection.
Life extension will take resources and fewer new people will be born, thus unborn people will lose the opportunity to be alive. As we discussed above, fewer newborn people now could be compensated but much more people which will be born in the future in the much better world.
The older population will be less innovative and diverse. The population is aging anyway, and slowing aging process will make people behave as if they are younger in the same calendar age.
Effects on pension system and employment. Life extension may put pressure on labor market and pension funds, but the general principle is that we can’t kill people to make the economy better. In reality, if powerful life extension technologies will be available, the same technological level will revolutionize other spheres of society.
Optimizer curse could affect our judgment. Optimizer curse is mathematical proof that in case of choice between several uncertain variables, the median error tends to accumulate, and the best solution likely has the biggest error (Smith & Winkler, 2006). This means that our estimation of the metformin efficiency in saving lives is likely to be an overestimation. However, we have around 4 orders of magnitude margin to be the best possible solution to save lives.
We also will explore relations between life extension and existential risks prioritization in the section 8.
These claims about life extension’s impact on the economy, finances and resource shortages are controversial and uncited. You also aren’t applying sound counterfactual reasoning, instead you are appealing to a generic sense of “well, lots of people will live wonderful lives ANYWAY, so there is no opportunity cost!!” which clearly doesn’t address my concerns. Moreover, no one is talking about killing people, we are talking about being more accurate about the value of saving people’s lives.
My point is not to keep arguing about this here, but to say that these things should be properly addressed in the paper. With these points and the optimizer’s curse especially, you’re still not doing real work to improve the argument. You’re just taking comments from yourself and other users, and including them in the paper. A paper for cause prioritization cannot be a list of comments, it must be a structured argument.
I updated the section about unborn people and I am going to read and add more links on the topic. Currently it is:
2) Life extension will take resources and fewer new people will be born, thus unborn people will lose the opportunity to be alive. It is not easy to measure value of unborn people without some ethical axioms. If this value is very high, we may try to increase population as much as possible, which seems absurd as in would decrease the quality of life.
While life extension seems to mean fewer new people born each century, the total number of new people is still infinitely large in the situation of constant space exploration (Bostrom, 2003b). Also, fewer newborn people in the 21 cnetury could be compensated by much more people which will be born in the next centuries in the much better world with higher quality of medicine.
If the explorable universe is infinite, the total number of newborn people will not change, but these people will move to later epochs, where they will live even better lives. Tipler (Tipler, 1997) suggested that at the end all possible people will be created by enormous superintelligence in Omega point, and thus all possible people will get chance to be alive. However, we can’t count on such remote events.
But we could compare potential 21th and 22th centuries from our model. In 21th century, fewer people will be born because of life extension, but after superintelligent AI or other power technology will appear, supposedly at 2100, much more new people could live on Earth on much better conditions.
Also, it is not obvious that life extension will affect reproduction negatively because of the “grandmother effect”: the decision about reproduction people typically take in early life, but if they have available grandparents which could help them with babysitting this would increase the willingness to have children as also less strain economy outside the family