The economic value of targeting aging • Hacker News Board

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#41

Post by epicureanideal » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #34

wpasc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind me asking (off-topic), are you less into longevity stuff now? if yes, what made you less into it/possibly more skeptical of it?

Not the same person, but it used to excite me when I was younger. Now I realize that life is mostly full of bullshit outside our control. I hate my job, so why would I want to live significantly longer when it means working longer? Political and cultural changes could be difficult to handle too.

I sometimes have similar thoughts, but then I wonder, if I were to live to 300, maybe some of the bullshit would go away some time in my 100s and everything might be more enjoyable?

Let's hope we don't need to deal with critical race theory / unconscious bias trainings at work and open derogatory statements against non-minorities for more than another 5-10 years, for example... I have to say it's making work a lot less pleasant than it used to be.

And maybe if we're extremely lucky some of the VC money will become more widely available to people based on competence rather than connections and personal wealth.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#42

Post by majormajor » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

It’s obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for the ‘economy’ but clearly humanity doesn’t live to optimize for the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the seriousness of how we fight COVID.

The linked abstract claims the opposite: "We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion." Is saying the opposite is just "obvious" enough of a rebuttal?

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#43

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

wgolsen wrote: post #12

mkoubaa wrote: post #3

The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?

My favorite response to this and related objections to ending aging (such as “what about the dictators”): imagine a scenario where humans did not age, but still had the problems of “gerontocracy” and dictatorships. Would you propose subjecting the whole of humanity to debilitating degenerative diseases and ultimately death to solve these societal problems? I picked this up from Ageless by Andrew Steele, a highly reco…

Yeah it seems like the same thing as proposing we shorten today's average lifespan from 80 to 50 as a solution.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#44

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

techbio wrote: post #16

blacktriangle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly why is that a problem? Wouldn't one thing that we'd want the people with the most experience in higher level management positions. I don't think the problem with Congress is that members are in their 70s. The problem is that ideally they would have real jobs till their 60s THEN run for government. Instead they bum around various government roles till they get elected in their 30s and once they are there dig…

Self-fulfilling policy is the best policy. Also: "...like tic[-tac-toe]

If they intended the insect, "tick" is/was correct.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#45

Post by epicureanideal » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

It’s obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for the ‘economy’ but clearly humanity doesn’t live to optimize for the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the seriousness of how we fight COVID.

I'm not sure that's true. We invest a lot of money in making people productive at their jobs, basically 0-25, and then they only work another 40 years after that. If they could work another 60-80 years instead, the return on investment is much better.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#46

Post by godelski » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

I'm reminded of Nick Bostrom's story called "The Dragon Tyrant"[0][1] and David Foster Wallace's "This is Water"[2]. The dragon became so normal in our lives that we do not even question it, like a fish does not question what water is. That we've created a society around this how to deal with this inevitability. But at the end of the day if we could, killing the dragon would be more beneficial and reduce harm by a significant amount.

I see several people in this thread complaining about the economic analysis here or how old people are messing up our world and thus we should fix those things first. For the former question, I see this analysis as adding ammunition to the debate, because many people that determine where we should fund base their decisions on economics. This paper isn't aimed at you, it is aimed at them (speak to your audience). For the latter, I question the premise. Culture has moved too fast that it cannot be purely explained by younger generations dictating the change. This also falls counter to old people controlling everything. So I don't buy the premise. The truth is that if people were living to a thousand years old that society would fundamentally change. Who we consider children and adults would fundamentally change. The truth is that we don't know what this society will look like until we open the box, and until the dust settles. We should be questioning if this is good or bad (we should challenge all ideas) but we need to recognize that this would be such a fundamental change in society that we have no real baseline for determining how we would change. My personal belief is that we do not go quiet into that dark night. There is a lot to fear, but often our fears are irrational. This would save billions of lives, and so I believe it is worth the risk and worth the hardship we will face as society transitions into this new paradigm.

[0]https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

[1](Animated by CGP Grey) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7xzavzEKY

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#47

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

wgolsen wrote: post #12

mkoubaa wrote: post #3

The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?

My favorite response to this and related objections to ending aging (such as “what about the dictators”): imagine a scenario where humans did not age, but still had the problems of “gerontocracy” and dictatorships. Would you propose subjecting the whole of humanity to debilitating degenerative diseases and ultimately death to solve these societal problems? I picked this up from Ageless by Andrew Steele, a highly reco…

This seems like a loaded question. How would the people in power allow someone else to make that decision? If the issue still exists and there are no alternatives (implied by it still existing), then what would the eventual answer be? It seems that the power dynamics would not allow for artificial control and thus, some natural control for which the people in power have little influence over would be necessary.

I kind of like somthing along the same lines as the idea intended in Altered Carbon - everyone gets 100 years of generally healthy life, but then everyone dies at 100. Not realistic at all, but seems highly equitable. Any artificial constraints will be evaded or manipulated at some point, even in the name of what's best for humanity (ie what if Davinci or Einstien were still alive; eventually the people in power would say I'm president, so presidents should live forever too, etc).

Regardless, the bigger issue would be overpopulation.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#48

Post by cptaj » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #45

mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

It’s obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for the ‘economy’ but clearly humanity doesn’t live to optimize for the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the seriousness of how we fight COVID.

I'm not sure that's true. We invest a lot of money in making people productive at their jobs, basically 0-25, and then they only work another 40 years after that. If they could work another 60-80 years instead, the return on investment is much better.

I think he means under the current life expectancy and quality of life in the final decades.

He probably means those final decades are completely unproductive and taxing on the whole economy, so a productive person dying just before becoming unproductive would be optimal.

Naturally, if you give people more productive years then it changes.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#49

Post by Ericson2314 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #33

mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

It’s obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for the ‘economy’ but clearly humanity doesn’t live to optimize for the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the seriousness of how we fight COVID.

There is no cohesive "humanity" with any sort of desire or ability to optimize for "the economy." Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economic benefit. That's it. The corporate overlords at ACME don't care about fighting obesity, because there are more than enough non-obese workers for them to exploit, and they don't want to cannibalize their highly profitable line of products that obese people need…

> Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economic benefit. That's it.

Don't go to too far with this sort of atomistic analysis. Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than "society at-large" or other groupings. The fact that at different scales the coordination is markedly different has a huge affect.

We're not an "economy of households" as the orthodox macro might have one model.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#50

Post by epicureanideal » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

mkoubaa wrote: post #3

The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?

Disclaimer: this is a non-partisan comment. Both parties are reflected below.

It makes me wonder if the US system will break down the same way the USSR broke down. As the politicians from the "early days" age out, it's difficult to replace them with people who are similarly bought into the system. And you end up with a Gorbachev or equivalent. I'm not sure if our Gorbachev is an AOC-like or a Trump-like or something else, but it's possible we'll have difficulty filling in the ranks of the Pelosis, Schumers, McConnells, etc.