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Most of the comments here are about culture war and missing the more interesting point of the essay. We knew political tribalism was getting bad in SF. But isn'

Most of the comments here are about culture war and missing the more interesting point of the essay. We knew political tribalism was getting bad in SF. But isn't insane that things like life extension and genetic engineering are becoming a victim to this? I wouldn't have even thought these issues were controversial or political. These are by far the most important technologies of our time. The consequences of them being set back even a little is utterly enormous, and we should be very concerned about this. Another very important point was missed here. The smartest people can have the absolute weirdest political beliefs. They are the least likely to conform. And the most likely to not shut up about their weird ideas even when the consequences are obvious.

GuiA 9y ago
> These are by far the most important technologies of our time. The consequences of them being set back even a little is utterly enormous, and we should be very concerned about this. That's just like, your opinion man. If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare) These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism. If someone's feelings are hurt because there is a backlash against their technoscientism, that's on no one else but them.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  >If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare) Why not? People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago. But this is beside the point. These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd.
  - edmccard 9y ago
    >People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago. Which doesn't really matter unless you have a time machine that can send them back 50 years. At least, none of the poor people I've known (including myself) have ever said "I can't afford to give my children better opportunities, let alone leave them something in my will, but hey! at least they'll have nifty pocket computers!"
    - prepend 9y ago
      It does matter as they live a healthier, happier and more productive life. I think the point is that people are better off now than 50 years earlier. So in 50 years what used to only be available to billionaires will be over the counter.
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      Sorry, I just don't see the world in terms of "anything that makes one person better off, necessarily makes someone worse off." That kind of world view is toxic to progress. It completely flies in the face of everything we've achieved in the last 2 centuries.
  - GuiA 9y ago
    > These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd. Agreed. But wait, is anyone actually getting ostracized now for having different opinions? Has Sam Altman been refused service somewhere, or denied employment, or suffered any consequence for holding the opinions he does, besides maybe being called a dick on Twitter? Because this all seems to me like rich people getting their panties in a bunch because they don’t like being called dicks on Twitter.
    - alien_at_work 9y ago
      People in this very thread are saying anyone who works on such technologies are inherently unethical people. Do you not see how this kind of labelling is dangerous and distructive to debate?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > That's just like, your opinion man. No. Given the technologies we're talking about, what the parent wrote in those two quoted sentences is literally as close to stating an obvious fact as possible when discussing future technology. > These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism. Discourse and criticism? Fine. But first, understanding. And some basic math. The way I see most of those objections look, some people would literally prefer everyone to keep dying over the possibility that they won't be the first to receive a life extension serum. It's one of the most selfish beliefs I've ever encountered.
  - marchenko 9y ago
    It's not necessarily selfish. One argument I've heard against life extension is that if it is only - or even deferentially - available to the upper stratum, the power of compound interest will allow them to accumulate and hold even greater proportions of social and economic resources (esp. zero-sum resources like status and power). Others caution that social structures will become more resistant to change if those with the most social capital are also the longest-lived. Most people really do care about status relative to their contemporaries-not just absolute status - and how it affects their agency. And then there are environmentalists who have ecological worries, and others with different specific but impersonal concerns. Death is a great redistributor for all forms of capital - social, economic, and organic. I can think of counter-arguments to these points, but they do not necessarily stem from selfishness,merely different preferences.
    - GuiA 9y ago
      Yeah, you summed up perfectly one of the main counter arguments. If the richer you are, the healthier and smarter you can make your babies, and the healthier and the smarter your babies, the more access to jobs/education/etc they get, it’s not much comfort that poor people will be somewhat better off than they were 50 years prior as the inequality gaps keep getting wider and wider. 70 years later, our society is still very much suffering the consequences of things like real estate redlining, which heavily discriminated against black people in the US. Thinking that things like targeted gene therapy and radical life extension couldn’t be harmful in the same way is either pure ignorance or delusion.
edmccard 9y ago
>But isn't insane that things like life extension and genetic engineering are becoming a victim to this? I wouldn't have even thought these issues were controversial or political. You don't think there are any political ramifications to the possibility of dividing the world into new categories of "haves" (life-extended and genetically-modified) and "have nots"?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  There could be, but this is exactly why politics is toxic. People start to bicker about who gets what piece of a pie before it's even baked, and they're willing to kill each other and destroy the oven over that, even though without that pie, everyone will starve.
  - ihm 9y ago
    But it's clear who will have access to these technologies once they exist -- those who can pay the most. Access to such technologies will probably also give the user better economic outcomes, so there's a very legitimate fear that such technologies will significantly widen the already wide chasm separating rich from poor. The kind of argument you're making only stands to benefit those who will get access to these technologies by default (i.e., the rich).
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      I'm not rich and yet I'm making the argument, because it seems to me that a) life-improving inventions that can scale eventually scale to everyone, even if initially they were limited to the well-off, and b) (and this may be controversial) all in all, still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it.
      - edmccard 9y ago
        >still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it. But that's already the case. There are people right now who will live longer than others because they have access to better healthcare.[1] Why should it be strictly better (addressing only your point b) for the situation to change from "people with an average lifespan plus people who live 10 years longer" to "people with the same average lifespan plus people who live 20 years longer"? Or in other words, is longevity some sort of unalloyed good? Is arithemtic the only tool needed to judge the merits of life extension? Another comment asked us to consider what would happen if Einstein were still alive; maybe there are some other people whose continued existence would not have been a net benefit to humanity? [1]Yes, as mentioned elsewhere in these comments, people on welfare have access to some healthcare, but after going from a premium employer-paid insurance plan to what's available under my state's Medicaid expansion, I can guarantee that the former has a higher standard of care.
mikeash 9y ago
Are life extension and genetic engineering really becoming a victim of this? Or is this just a mostly inconsequential reaction by people who have noticed that wealthy Silicon Valley technologists love to talk about improving humanity but mostly end up producing products which make life easier for wealthy Silicon Valley technologists?
- observation 9y ago
  I believe that it is a reality that people die through the side affects of political hegemony. I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and am familiar with those outside the religion criticizing it because it frequently occurs that their children die due to the refusal of blood transfusions. However I now think there is a similar type of ignorance which has stemmed out of politically correct thought. I believe biracial children are more likely to die due to the side affects of ignoring racial topics in our society. Here is how: biracial children have a lower probability of organ donation matches, and a drastically lower probability of bone marrow matches. I have never seen this discussed before but it seems self evident to me. In order for a Congolese-Belorussian (a real family I know) child to obtain a bone marrow match it must be sought out way in advance of the illness, if a match can be found at all that is. Since few if any people are aware of the rarity of matches for biracial people it must mean a lot of them die, there just isn't enough time to source the match in time. Of course there are failure modes for rightist thought also. Were biracial couples illegal I don't think that would be a step forward. Still the failures of our current order linger in my mind and I believe that a slightly more right wing policy with respect to biracial couples (activating searches for organ/marrow matches in advance) would save lives. Some people here may suggest that this isn't right wing, it is merely common sense or logical. Sure, but as Sam Altman's blog post suggests, sometimes good ideas are quelled if they could potentially interfere with political heuristics.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    >biracial children have a lower probability of organ donation matches, and a drastically lower probability of bone marrow matches. Sure, but the vast majority of people will never need this in their lifetime. I doubt this alone would make a noticeable dent in life expectancy statistics. (Also we are within a few decades of being able to clone organs anyway.) On the other hand biracial people are believed to have stronger immune systems and potentially other characteristics ("heterosis").

GuiA 9y ago

> These are by far the most important technologies of our time. The consequences of them being set back even a little is utterly enormous, and we should be very concerned about this. That's just like, your opinion man. If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare) These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism. If someone's feelings are hurt because there is a backlash against their technoscientism, that's on no one else but them.

Houshalter 9y ago
>If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare) Why not? People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago. But this is beside the point. These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd.
- edmccard 9y ago
  >People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago. Which doesn't really matter unless you have a time machine that can send them back 50 years. At least, none of the poor people I've known (including myself) have ever said "I can't afford to give my children better opportunities, let alone leave them something in my will, but hey! at least they'll have nifty pocket computers!"
  - prepend 9y ago
    It does matter as they live a healthier, happier and more productive life. I think the point is that people are better off now than 50 years earlier. So in 50 years what used to only be available to billionaires will be over the counter.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    Sorry, I just don't see the world in terms of "anything that makes one person better off, necessarily makes someone worse off." That kind of world view is toxic to progress. It completely flies in the face of everything we've achieved in the last 2 centuries.
- GuiA 9y ago
  > These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd. Agreed. But wait, is anyone actually getting ostracized now for having different opinions? Has Sam Altman been refused service somewhere, or denied employment, or suffered any consequence for holding the opinions he does, besides maybe being called a dick on Twitter? Because this all seems to me like rich people getting their panties in a bunch because they don’t like being called dicks on Twitter.
  - alien_at_work 9y ago
    People in this very thread are saying anyone who works on such technologies are inherently unethical people. Do you not see how this kind of labelling is dangerous and distructive to debate?
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> That's just like, your opinion man. No. Given the technologies we're talking about, what the parent wrote in those two quoted sentences is literally as close to stating an obvious fact as possible when discussing future technology. > These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism. Discourse and criticism? Fine. But first, understanding. And some basic math. The way I see most of those objections look, some people would literally prefer everyone to keep dying over the possibility that they won't be the first to receive a life extension serum. It's one of the most selfish beliefs I've ever encountered.
- marchenko 9y ago
  It's not necessarily selfish. One argument I've heard against life extension is that if it is only - or even deferentially - available to the upper stratum, the power of compound interest will allow them to accumulate and hold even greater proportions of social and economic resources (esp. zero-sum resources like status and power). Others caution that social structures will become more resistant to change if those with the most social capital are also the longest-lived. Most people really do care about status relative to their contemporaries-not just absolute status - and how it affects their agency. And then there are environmentalists who have ecological worries, and others with different specific but impersonal concerns. Death is a great redistributor for all forms of capital - social, economic, and organic. I can think of counter-arguments to these points, but they do not necessarily stem from selfishness,merely different preferences.
  - GuiA 9y ago
    Yeah, you summed up perfectly one of the main counter arguments. If the richer you are, the healthier and smarter you can make your babies, and the healthier and the smarter your babies, the more access to jobs/education/etc they get, it’s not much comfort that poor people will be somewhat better off than they were 50 years prior as the inequality gaps keep getting wider and wider. 70 years later, our society is still very much suffering the consequences of things like real estate redlining, which heavily discriminated against black people in the US. Thinking that things like targeted gene therapy and radical life extension couldn’t be harmful in the same way is either pure ignorance or delusion.

edmccard 9y ago

>But isn't insane that things like life extension and genetic engineering are becoming a victim to this? I wouldn't have even thought these issues were controversial or political. You don't think there are any political ramifications to the possibility of dividing the world into new categories of "haves" (life-extended and genetically-modified) and "have nots"?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
There could be, but this is exactly why politics is toxic. People start to bicker about who gets what piece of a pie before it's even baked, and they're willing to kill each other and destroy the oven over that, even though without that pie, everyone will starve.
- ihm 9y ago
  But it's clear who will have access to these technologies once they exist -- those who can pay the most. Access to such technologies will probably also give the user better economic outcomes, so there's a very legitimate fear that such technologies will significantly widen the already wide chasm separating rich from poor. The kind of argument you're making only stands to benefit those who will get access to these technologies by default (i.e., the rich).
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I'm not rich and yet I'm making the argument, because it seems to me that a) life-improving inventions that can scale eventually scale to everyone, even if initially they were limited to the well-off, and b) (and this may be controversial) all in all, still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it.
    - edmccard 9y ago
      >still I find it strictly better to have a part of the population with access to life extension than nobody with access to it. But that's already the case. There are people right now who will live longer than others because they have access to better healthcare.[1] Why should it be strictly better (addressing only your point b) for the situation to change from "people with an average lifespan plus people who live 10 years longer" to "people with the same average lifespan plus people who live 20 years longer"? Or in other words, is longevity some sort of unalloyed good? Is arithemtic the only tool needed to judge the merits of life extension? Another comment asked us to consider what would happen if Einstein were still alive; maybe there are some other people whose continued existence would not have been a net benefit to humanity? [1]Yes, as mentioned elsewhere in these comments, people on welfare have access to some healthcare, but after going from a premium employer-paid insurance plan to what's available under my state's Medicaid expansion, I can guarantee that the former has a higher standard of care.

mikeash 9y ago

Are life extension and genetic engineering really becoming a victim of this? Or is this just a mostly inconsequential reaction by people who have noticed that wealthy Silicon Valley technologists love to talk about improving humanity but mostly end up producing products which make life easier for wealthy Silicon Valley technologists?

observation 9y ago
I believe that it is a reality that people die through the side affects of political hegemony. I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and am familiar with those outside the religion criticizing it because it frequently occurs that their children die due to the refusal of blood transfusions. However I now think there is a similar type of ignorance which has stemmed out of politically correct thought. I believe biracial children are more likely to die due to the side affects of ignoring racial topics in our society. Here is how: biracial children have a lower probability of organ donation matches, and a drastically lower probability of bone marrow matches. I have never seen this discussed before but it seems self evident to me. In order for a Congolese-Belorussian (a real family I know) child to obtain a bone marrow match it must be sought out way in advance of the illness, if a match can be found at all that is. Since few if any people are aware of the rarity of matches for biracial people it must mean a lot of them die, there just isn't enough time to source the match in time. Of course there are failure modes for rightist thought also. Were biracial couples illegal I don't think that would be a step forward. Still the failures of our current order linger in my mind and I believe that a slightly more right wing policy with respect to biracial couples (activating searches for organ/marrow matches in advance) would save lives. Some people here may suggest that this isn't right wing, it is merely common sense or logical. Sure, but as Sam Altman's blog post suggests, sometimes good ideas are quelled if they could potentially interfere with political heuristics.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  >biracial children have a lower probability of organ donation matches, and a drastically lower probability of bone marrow matches. Sure, but the vast majority of people will never need this in their lifetime. I doubt this alone would make a noticeable dent in life expectancy statistics. (Also we are within a few decades of being able to clone organs anyway.) On the other hand biracial people are believed to have stronger immune systems and potentially other characteristics ("heterosis").