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The economic value of targeting aging

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Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#91

Post by jjoonathan »

dalbasal wrote: post #62
jjoonathan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any action you take to preserve life has the side effect of putting an economic value on life. You invest some amount of effort into the action and the action has some amount of efficacy, so you can always divide the two to find a valuation. I agree that this exercise usually winds up as cheap rhetoric, but I'm not fully convinced it's the fault of the exercise. Refusing to calculate a value doesn't mean the value do…

This has a "trolley problem" feel to it. It's a contrived scenario that doesn't reflect real life. I'm not suggesting that all our decision making is good. Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete. A model of the world where everything competes with everything isn't a good one for decision making. Just like "don't build a particle collider until we have solved poverty" is not a workable approach. Terroris…

> It's a contrived scenario

Any time you help people is a contrived scenario? Uhh... I certainly hope not. Putting a valuation on life is not a result of philosophical debate, it's a direct, unintentional, unavoidable consequence of any real-world action we take that helps people. The only way to avoid it is to avoid helping people. Which is ludicrous.

> Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete.

They sure compete for tax dollars and public attention.

> We're not machines.

No kidding. That's why we prefer chasing Bin Laden to chasing heart disease.

The "value of a life" discussion is an accusatory finger that says "yeah, actually we did have a choice there, and our choice had consequences," and I understand how that's uncomfortable, but that's exactly why we need the tool to hold our instincts accountable, such as we can.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#92

Post by miltondts »

dalbasal wrote: post #62
jjoonathan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any action you take to preserve life has the side effect of putting an economic value on life. You invest some amount of effort into the action and the action has some amount of efficacy, so you can always divide the two to find a valuation. I agree that this exercise usually winds up as cheap rhetoric, but I'm not fully convinced it's the fault of the exercise. Refusing to calculate a value doesn't mean the value do…

This has a "trolley problem" feel to it. It's a contrived scenario that doesn't reflect real life. I'm not suggesting that all our decision making is good. Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete. A model of the world where everything competes with everything isn't a good one for decision making. Just like "don't build a particle collider until we have solved poverty" is not a workable approach. Terroris…

> Terrorism vs heart disease just don't really compete.

They do actually. Both for budget and for misery.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#93

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ben7799 wrote: post #88

This article seems to be about the economic value gained by reduced health care or something. If you actually extended lifespans by a significant margin (say to 200 years) there would be other knock on effects that would completely derail the global economy & markets. This study doesn't seem to think about how those things could actually negatively impact economics. Eventually if you're intelligent and you're trying…

> If you actually extended lifespans by a significant margin (say to 200 years) there would be other knock on effects that would completely derail the global economy & markets

Re-structure? Sure. De-rail? No. One could imagine our current low-interest rate environment (interest rates and time horizons are fundamentally linked) as a first step towards that world.

You're highlighting a problem of retirement savings running out and the labor pool diminishing. These problems offer an obvious solution.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#94

Post by giantg2 »

kiba wrote: post #58
giantg2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kin…

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. OK. Do you want to die? I don't want to die. Life is already inequitable as it is. The rich live a little bit longer. The pleb dies short and miserable life. At the very least, everyone should be able t…

"Do you want to die?"

Someday, yes.

"Life is already inequitable as it is."

Which is why my statement was commenting on the equitable nature of lifespan in the fictional system.

"At the very least, everyone should be able to live as long as they like."

How do you propose to achieve this? Specifically, how would resource availability/consumption and indignant support systems be able to support it?

"There's also no absolute law of politics that dictators rule forever or indefinitely if they also happen to be immortal."

Nobody suggested what you are saying.

"No, the problem is ecological disaster."

For which increasing population would greatly contribute. Population is a major driver of consumption and there's no evidence that we can even support our current population sustainably. Your comment about scaling seems to be implicity acknowledge this.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#95

Post by ska »

nostromo wrote: post #86
ska wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone actually comes up with an empirically verified treatment for aging (let alone a "cure"), market access or payment is not a problem they will face.

David Sinclair is an expert on this and has said otherwise. Clinical trials are expensive. To fund them you need billions of dollars. Pharmas won’t fund research in anti-aging directly because it’s not considered a disease, can’t get FDA approval, and thus couldn’t be sold. So, yes, you need to find another route to approval, similar to metformin and rapamycin.

Pharma companies won't fund research because they don't consider the risk-reward tradeoff worthwhile compared to other options for their resources.

Off label use in endemic, and it does give a path to play with some things clinically; however if you formed a company around this idea and could have been demonstrated to do it, you'll be pulled off the market so fast it will make your head spin.

What you are really talking about is about funding the research that wont work, in the hopes that eventually you hit on something that does.

If you do hit on that and can rigorously demonstrate it, market access will not be a problem.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#96

Post by somesortofthing »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #20
giantg2 wrote: post #8

"the WTP at birth for the initial 1-year increase in remaining LE from 78.9 to 79.9 years via rectangularization is US$118,100, the WTP at age 60 for the first 1-year increase in remaining LE from 21.7 to 22.7 years through lifespan improvement is US$257,700." Who the fuck did they get to determine willingness? Most people don't have the money to spend. If it takes you years of extra work to pay for a one year life e…

Back when I was _really_ into longevity stuff, aubrey de gret etc... I seem to recall that even if we removed all forms of aging people would have an expected lifespan of roughly 1000 years due to trauma death (eg: getting hit by a bus) . So that could serve as a rough rule of thumb for how to think about risk/reward on increasing health in later years. That is it generally has a good EROI for how safe (accident wise…

I'm willing to bet that we're also going to get significantly better at treating trauma within that thousand years though. The numbers aren't great now, sure, but what about in something like 500 years when we can begin doing complex tissue engineering and replacing parts of the CNS? There are certain things that no amount of medical advances will solve, sure(Not really much to replace after your liner to Mars explodes), but I think that if we found a way to cure aging tomorrow, most people would live well beyond 1000.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kiba wrote: post #77
throwkeep wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials and news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors, wear a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating healthier, eating less, exercising more? "Obesity steals more years than diabetes, tobacco, high blood pressure and high choleste…

It's strange. Obesity is our biggest preventable health problem, and it gets almost no attention in the media or by public officials. We heard endlessly from health officials and news media personalities to wash our hands, stay indoors, wear a mask, get vaccinated, but nothing about eating healthier, eating less, exercising more? Because it's been going on in the background so long, that it became part of the backgro…

> recommendations and guidelines we should lose weight and get more exercise

We also don't understand it, not well at least. You can't go to Walgreens, get a shot and be cured of obesity.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#98

Post by joshmarlow »

ben7799 wrote: post #88

This article seems to be about the economic value gained by reduced health care or something. If you actually extended lifespans by a significant margin (say to 200 years) there would be other knock on effects that would completely derail the global economy & markets. This study doesn't seem to think about how those things could actually negatively impact economics. Eventually if you're intelligent and you're trying…

Just increasing lifespans alone would have lots of effects, but they wouldn't be happening in a vacuum. Once we have that type of technology, there's going to be other variables at play.

For instance, I think we'll see close to 100% technological unemployment before we can extend human lifespans by 200 years. In that type of environment, most humans would be effectively retired.

Even if we have less than 100% technological unemployment, birth rates are generally declining, so there's lots of ways that could interact with increased longevity.

EDIT: fixed mispelling

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#99

Post by syoc »

908B64B197 wrote: post #87
dalbasal wrote: post #19

I only skimmed past the abstract (wolverine case is gold, lol) feel that such an analysis gets squirrely, both morally and technically. A few years back, there seemed to be a desire to justify cigarette taxes with a "it costs the state money when you get cancer" rationale. Some of the analysis seemed to indicate opposite results. Lung cancer, for example, tends to kill more quickly than age related diseases, saving o…

> A few years back, there seemed to be a desire to justify cigarette taxes with a "it costs the state money when you get cancer" rationale. When you have guaranteed pension funds for an ever growing number of bureaucrats, you HAVE to find new ways to tax. Taxing unpopular things is the easiest thing (and doesn't hurt for reelection).

Tobacco tax does not make or break any budget, at least not where I live. It is also taxed with the intention of reducing sales, which in turn reduces tax income. This is also by large the result.

Re: The economic value of targeting aging

#100

Post by gpt5 »

godelski wrote: post #46

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 si…

That's not what happened in practice as health care improved. The retirement age has been increasing together with life expectancy.

The market balances itself so that the cost of living adjusts so that an average person would need to work until retirement age. That's why the cost of living is significantly higher in the bay area.

For better and worse, this capitalistic dynamic is what makes the US so productive as a country.

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