Fighting Aging as an Effective Altruism Cause: A Model of the Impact of the Clinical Trials of Simple Interventions
Abstract: The effective altruism movement aims to save lives in the most cost-effective ways. In the future, technology will allow radical life extension, and anyone who survives until that time will gain potentially indefinite life extension. Fighting aging now increases the number of people who will survive until radical life extension becomes possible. We suggest a simple model, where radical life extension is achieved in 2100, the human population is 10 billion, and life expectancy is increased by simple geroprotectors like metformin by three more years on average, so an additional 250 million people survive until “immortality”. The cost of clinical trials to prove that metformin is a real geroprotector is $60 million. In this simplified case, the price of a life saved is around 24 cents, 10 000 times cheaper than saving a life from malaria by providing bed nets. However, fighting aging should not be done in place of fighting existential risks, as they are complementary causes.
Highlights:
● Aging and death are the main causes of human suffering now.
● Simple interventions could extend human lives until aging is defeated.
● These interventions need to be clinically tested before FDA approval.
● A trial of the life extension drug metformin is delayed by lack of funds.
● Starting trials now will save 250 million people from death, at a cost of $0.24 for each life saved.
Please comment on the preprint of the article here: https://goo.gl/WaEYt5
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 sa... (read more)