Hey, so, on a similar but slightly different topic, I focused on substantial cognitive enhancement of adults through genetic modification when I was in grad school. Because I thought it was potentially a very valuable cause area, especially if it could be used to selectively enhance technological progress on key issues like AGI alignment and better governance, and of course, on better forms of cognitive enhancement which would then potentially positively spiral. Eventually, reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that I am highly confident it is possible but that it just isn’t feasible to implement (given legal restrictions on experimentation, funding constraints, etc) before AGI. And if it can’t be done before AGI, well… why bother? AGI risks and benefits just utterly overwhelms the issue. I think pharmacological enhancement has much smaller potential payoffs (a few IQ points rather than many), but does seem enough more tractable in terms of timelines that it’s at least relevant to consider.
nathanhb
As a former neuroscientist, I am very in favor of brain plastination, particularly of ‘soft’ plastination (e.g. the CLARITY technique). I think there’s a huge amount of long-term cost savings and safety improvement from making the brain info stable at room temperature and easily readable multiple times over without destruction. The value of soft plastination is that you can still infuse antibody labels and such into the tissue to non-harmfully study the tissue.
The only reason I am not encouraging people to donate to this as a cause area is that it seems so small impact compared to x-risk causes. The people who will live in the next couple hundred years are potentially dwarfed by the people of the far future so… lets just try to get to the far future without being too self-obsessed.
That being said, I do hope to preserve my brain and the brains of my spouse and children and their children, etc. It’s just a small consideration all things considered.
I’ve been a big fan of your work for many years now, and I’m really glad you’re taking a stab at explaining Longtermism! I remember being in school many years ago, before the EA movement was a thing, and trying to explain my intuitions around Longtermism to others and finding it difficult to communicate. I feel like we really need some introductory material which is helpful for building intuitions for a target of something like 4th grade reading level, to be approachable by a wider audience and by kids.