[tsally]

Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research. Spare a few cents for a vaccine anyone? As opposed to dumping a bunch of money into theoretical anti-aging efforts.

Now you might argue that one additional year for an adult is more valuable to society than one additional year for a child, but I'd rather not quibble over the exact value of a year of life. There are counterarguments; how many genius do you think we lose in Africa because of inadequate medicine and education?

EDIT: If it's cheaper than optimizing on the low end, then of course I would support optimizing on the high end. But given the large number of human beings that die young for stupid reasons, I can't imagine that the high end is cheaper. Thanks for pointing out Aubrey de Grey, though. I'll do some reading.

[MikeCapone]

> Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research.

If we accept that there's no reason why we couldn't defeat aging (mostly with periodical repair of the molecular damage that accumulates as a by-product of metabolism -- not need to understand how everything work, just keep damage under a certain threshold) and that we will some day do it, we should do everything to bring that day closer;

100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.

This would be one of the most important things that humanity ever did, and once we do, we'll look back at our current lack of enthusiasm in curing aging as a great sin of omission (we could have did it sooner, but just took our time).

I'm all for vaccines, but right now it's not anti-aging research that is taking money away from vaccines. There are a billion other places to cut first.

If you're looking for a very important field that is dramatically under-funded, it's hard to get more marginal utility than in curing human senescence.

[tsally]

100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.

So you're talking about immortality? I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system capable of surviving such an invention.

When I read anti-aging, I assume the extension of lifespan, not immortality.

I really like your posts on this issue though, I'm going to check out the links you provided.

[mnemonicsloth]

I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system...

From the perspective of our ancestors, birth control is just as weird, arguably weirder.

Human beings are strongy predisposed to believe that the way we do things right now is the only correct/justifiable way they could be done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

[tsally]

As an educated person, obviously I'm aware of this. I'm not rejecting the possibility of designing a government that can handle immortality; I'm merely remarking on what I perceive to be great difficulty in designing such a system. I haven't said anything regarding the correctness, justifiability, or longevity of our current systems of government.

Having a degree of skepticism is a far cry from supporting the status quo; I want to be clear that I do not support it.

[MikeCapone]

Not immortality, you can still get hit by a truck. Just indefinite lifespan.

At the rate at which fertility is dropping, and at the rate at which technology is progressing, it would probably be pretty sustainable. But even if it causes problems, these would probably be much smaller than the problem of aging we have right now; besides, we can't make that choice for the future. If people decide they want to die of aging, they can stop taking the therapies. But if they want to live, they'll have to figure how to make it work.

edit: I'll add that the main motivator of many people working on this is curing horrible diseases (cancer, alzheimer's, diabetes, etc), and living a really really long time is a side-effect of not becoming decrepit and frail.

[xenophanes]

If you get good at anti-aging research, you get to the point where you extend lifespans by more than 1 year per year of research. And that is immortality, like it or not (minus accidents, murders, etc).

[cglee]

<sarcasm> Embrace constraints. Basecamp was built in 10hrs/week. You can do something great in ~60-80 years</sarcasm>

[ido]

> Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research. Spare a few cents for a vaccine anyone? As opposed to dumping a bunch of money into theoretical anti-aging efforts.

I will most likely never be an infant in Africa, but am very probable to eventually become an old person in the industrialized world.

It might sounds cold-hearted, but for me infant mortality in the third world is someone else's problem.

[almost]

It doesn't just sound cold-hearted, it is quite cold hearted but most people's standards. That's up to you of course, it's not like you're actively killing babies in Africa, but it does mean that conclusions you reach are not necessarily ones which other people will reach, even assuming good logical thought between the two points.

[kls]

Actually, I think most people would chose themselves over the idea of an infant in a far off land. impersonal association usual leave one with a stronger self-preservation response, over electing to sacrifice oneself for someone else. Most are either more tactful or self-delusional to not voice it out-loud.

[ramchip]

Except that if you look at it from a utility point of view: a child in the middle of Africa, as he ages, is going to produce a lot less value than someone in a developed country. In one year a programmer makes perhaps $150k's worth of product, including a large amount of taxes which the government can allocate as he pleases, while an African farmer doing survival farming is going to make a tiny fraction of that, and not one that can easily be allocated to worthy projects. Beans and bananas can buy microscopes or vaccines, but you need a lot of them.

Considering that the value produced by the programmer (or whoever) can be reinvested or dedicated eventually to fighting infant mortality, I think there's a balance to be reached. It's not as simple as saying that infant mortality must have priority over anti-aging.

[Vitaly]

by this logic outlawing condoms will be even better :)

the idea is not to make more people to productive age, but to increase the span of this productive age. and decrease/prevent the suffering at the end.