Honestly, I think this kind of thing is interesting, but it's totally for the benefit of the ego of the poster. And I think it's fine to speculate about his identity too. That's part of the ego stroking.
I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
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Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#62> "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?" Fight death. - Fight death of individuals: Cryonic preservation: http://www.cryonics.org/ -- see also http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics Basic research on aging and fighting it: http://mprize.org/ - Prevent the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life: Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - academic research on global catastrophic…
Where to hang out with other people interested in rational philanthropy with maximum utilitarian impact per marginal dollar As far as the human race is concerned, pretty much everything you listed (cryonics, anti-aging, preparing for AI that may never be invented, etc) has the least amount of utility per dollar spent.
You missed the part where he listed an organization focusing on general catastrophic risk.
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
- have a bunch of fun You should probably do this, plus one of the other three.
That's a given, though. I don't know what kind of fun you're after, but everything I can think of won't put much of a dent into a large sum of money.
I can think of a few things that will =)
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. He said that it was sold between 1 year ago and 4 years ago. In addition, his company is still going. 2. He said that before taxes he had 30 million dollars, so the startup was sold for >=30 million dollars. 3. He is married and has an 11 year old daughter (and at least one more kid). Him and his wife are at least 30 years old. 4. At least one newspaper reported on him selling his startup. I tried using CrunchBase…
>so the startup was sold for >=30 million dollars He got 30M. That means that startup was sold for much more than that (2-300M?)
Maybe not. Derek Sivers, for example, sold *Baby for that range but owned 100% of the company.
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 wi…
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 thi…
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).
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#66> "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?" Fight death. - Fight death of individuals: Cryonic preservation: http://www.cryonics.org/ -- see also http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics Basic research on aging and fighting it: http://mprize.org/ - Prevent the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life: Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - academic research on global catastrophic…
Rational philanthropy? It's a very healthy concept but I have to ask, are there any studies about the per dollar value of the above? I love the basic idea of the Copenhagen Consensus. You may or may not agree with its conclusions, but as far as process goes they're the only ones I know of who try to do things in a scientific, falsifiable way.
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#67"My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?" Thats a hard question, with that kind of money I can't think of any obvious ideas that would have a big impact on humanity. If he had said I have $20 billion heres my ideas: - Make Creative Commons text books. Hire a group of editors and staff that over see super star teachers who write the books. Release them under the CC licence. - Startup Apa…
> - Make Creative Commons text books. Hire a group of editors and staff that over see super star teachers who write the books. Release them under the CC licence. The problem being that no one will use them. There was an article a while back about how all the textbooks' content is basically controlled by some Christian 'watchdog' group in Texas.
I think you mean this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 wi…
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 thi…
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:
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#69> "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?" Fight death. - Fight death of individuals: Cryonic preservation: http://www.cryonics.org/ -- see also http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics Basic research on aging and fighting it: http://mprize.org/ - Prevent the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life: Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - academic research on global catastrophic…
Eliezer, to you, how does the fight against aging compare with the fight against poverty or the fight against war? Is it just a matter of scale? These concerns of yours, while pressing to us lucky few, seem to sidestep the urgent problems faced by the rest of the world: insecure access to food, shelter, healthcare, and education.
I think the answer is that we can worry about those problems once we solve the problem of not accidentally destroying humanity.
Re: I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA.
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where to hang out with other people interested in rational philanthropy with maximum utilitarian impact per marginal dollar As far as the human race is concerned, pretty much everything you listed (cryonics, anti-aging, preparing for AI that may never be invented, etc) has the least amount of utility per dollar spent.
Do you have stats showing anti-aging research has low benefit per dollar spent? Or do you just have some kind of prejudice against life? Aubrey de Grey says it's cheap, as these things go.
You should watch this video about Aubrey de Grey: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3329065877451441972...