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> For instance, gaining capability to deflect meteors puts us in a better position That would still have to be weighed with the cost of such an ability. What w

> For instance, gaining capability to deflect meteors puts us in a better position That would still have to be weighed with the cost of such an ability. What would it take to actually do that? What would it take to get there? And what destructive or dangerous uses are now unlocked along that path? In a vacuum I'd absolutely want to have that ability, in reality its just a lot harder to say whether that goal is worth chasing. > As compared to 1995, the average life expectancy has increased from to 64.9 to 73.5 and the portion of population living in extrmee poverty has decreased from 32.5% to 8.5% What's the scope for those stats, are they global of specific to one country? I'm always torn on life expectancy as a metric. Modern medicine has done a great job of extending lives but I've seen plenty of examples of the extra years being pretty miserable. I'd be very interested to see a life expectancy comparison taking into account quality if life. > To me, "treadmill" implies lack of progress. Totally fair, that may not be the best analogy. My point was just that its a goal with no end state. > If we have the option to improve things (e.g: reduce cancer cases) and an option to not, I don't really understand the idea that we should default to the latter The point with defaulting to the latter is "don't break a god thing." Considering only the potential upsides misses the potential downsides. We can't cure cancer in a vacuum, there are always costs, and frankly the idea of curing a disease seems more utopian than realistic. Disease is nothing more than a named collection of symptoms, you may be able to drastically reduce any one root cause but that doesn't eradicate the symptoms and most modern treatments are designed only to treat symptoms and ignore root cause.

Ukv 2y ago
> That would still have to be weighed with [...] As always you'd have to determine whether some course of action would have disproportionate negative impact on other objectives, yep. Point there was to set out on what basis I'd decide and weigh those objectives - an orientation for what "progress" is. > And what destructive or dangerous uses are now unlocked along that path? I believe unanticipated novel applications skew positive on average, largely on account of most humans having mostly-positive intentions. > What's the scope for those stats, are they global of specific to one country? Global, e.g: * https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy * https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin... > but I've seen plenty of examples of the extra years being pretty miserable. I'd be very interested to see a life expectancy comparison taking into account quality if life. You could consider a factor such as Quality-Adjusted Life Expectancy (QALE), which is also on the rise. > The point with defaulting to the latter is "don't break a god thing." If "break" means "make overall better", why not? > Considering only the potential upsides misses the potential downsides. To be clear, my stance is that you should consider whether it's a net positive/negative: * "Threshold for new advancements should not be whether we absolutely need it, but whether it does more good than harm" * "if we're at 500 malaria cases and can reduce it further (without equal/greater degradations in other areas) then I don't see why we should ever be "happy to stop there"" My understanding is that you believe there should be some point at which we just stop even if there are still more beneficial changes to be made (in addition to not making net-negative changes, which we both agree on - though perhaps disagree about what specifically works out to be net-negative). > We can't cure cancer in a vacuum, there are always costs, There are costs, but it's very easily possible for the benefits to outweigh them, and more becomes feasible as humanity's knowledge/capabilities increase. > and frankly the idea of curing a disease seems more utopian than realistic. There are already a couple of diseases (including smallpox) that we've completely eradicated, and more (like polio) that we've made very good progress on. Cancer is tougher by its nature, but we can certainly at least reduce the number of cases and improve life for those who have it.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > If "break" means "make overall better", why not? Well that depends heavily on how well we can predict the outcomes and account for downsides and externalized costs. That doesn't mean never change anything, I'd never argue for that, but I am generally more hesitant to than most to change things that are working well enough. > My understanding is that you believe there should be some point at which we just stop even if there are still more beneficial changes to be made I think your description here assumes too much clarity in what is possible or what will happen if you continue on. Sometimes the system is well understood and the potential gains are pretty clear, that isn't always the case though. > There are already a couple of diseases (including smallpox) that we've completely eradicated, and more (like polio) that we've made very good progress on I wish virology was that cut and dry. There are diseases that present nearly identically to smallpox and polio but were given different names based on hypothesized causes. Monkeypox and acute flaccid myelitis come to mind, respectively. If I remember right, polio is actually one where the clinical diagnosis steps rules it out simply because polio has been deemed irradiated, meaning anyone with polio-like symptoms must have something else because we got rid of polio. There's a whole rabbit hole around how virology tests and isolates viruses, that's probably not helpful to ho down here. My point stands though, maybe we can eradicate a particular virus but we can't really eradicate a disease when that's largely just a named collection of symptoms.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > I think your description here assumes too much clarity in what is possible or what will happen if you continue on. Sometimes the system is well understood and the potential gains are pretty clear, that isn't always the case though. Does halting not also come with lack of clarity? For instance, say we're choosing between two options: 1. Continue with disease/vaccine/antibiotic/etc. research 2. Halt said research To me it seems as though both options come with uncertainties, which could resolve positively as well as negatively. That there is uncertainty or a lack of clarity does not bias me towards option 2. My choice would still be based on analysis of which option has the better expected outcome (which is, to my current knowledge, the former) - even if the best analysis available is a guesstimate with very low correlation (so long as it's a positive correlation). > There are diseases that present nearly identically to smallpox and polio but were given different names based on hypothesized causes. Monkeypox and acute flaccid myelitis come to mind Mpox is considerably milder - having killed hundreds of people compared to smallpox's hundreds of millions. > If I remember right, polio is actually one where the clinical diagnosis steps rules it out simply because polio has been deemed irradiated Polio isn't eradicated like smallpox is, though for most people it may as well be. Given ongoing eradication efforts my understanding is that there is fairly extensive testing compared to other diseases of its rarity (e.g: https://polioeradication.org/what-we-do/ https://polioeradication.org/what-we-do/), so it's not just a case of "it's gone because we're ignoring it" if that's what's being implied.

Ukv 2y ago

> That would still have to be weighed with [...] As always you'd have to determine whether some course of action would have disproportionate negative impact on other objectives, yep. Point there was to set out on what basis I'd decide and weigh those objectives - an orientation for what "progress" is. > And what destructive or dangerous uses are now unlocked along that path? I believe unanticipated novel applications skew positive on average, largely on account of most humans having mostly-positive intentions. > What's the scope for those stats, are they global of specific to one country? Global, e.g: * https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy * https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin... > but I've seen plenty of examples of the extra years being pretty miserable. I'd be very interested to see a life expectancy comparison taking into account quality if life. You could consider a factor such as Quality-Adjusted Life Expectancy (QALE), which is also on the rise. > The point with defaulting to the latter is "don't break a god thing." If "break" means "make overall better", why not? > Considering only the potential upsides misses the potential downsides. To be clear, my stance is that you should consider whether it's a net positive/negative: * "Threshold for new advancements should not be whether we absolutely need it, but whether it does more good than harm" * "if we're at 500 malaria cases and can reduce it further (without equal/greater degradations in other areas) then I don't see why we should ever be "happy to stop there"" My understanding is that you believe there should be some point at which we just stop even if there are still more beneficial changes to be made (in addition to not making net-negative changes, which we both agree on - though perhaps disagree about what specifically works out to be net-negative). > We can't cure cancer in a vacuum, there are always costs, There are costs, but it's very easily possible for the benefits to outweigh them, and more becomes feasible as humanity's knowledge/capabilities increase. > and frankly the idea of curing a disease seems more utopian than realistic. There are already a couple of diseases (including smallpox) that we've completely eradicated, and more (like polio) that we've made very good progress on. Cancer is tougher by its nature, but we can certainly at least reduce the number of cases and improve life for those who have it.

_heimdall 2y ago
> If "break" means "make overall better", why not? Well that depends heavily on how well we can predict the outcomes and account for downsides and externalized costs. That doesn't mean never change anything, I'd never argue for that, but I am generally more hesitant to than most to change things that are working well enough. > My understanding is that you believe there should be some point at which we just stop even if there are still more beneficial changes to be made I think your description here assumes too much clarity in what is possible or what will happen if you continue on. Sometimes the system is well understood and the potential gains are pretty clear, that isn't always the case though. > There are already a couple of diseases (including smallpox) that we've completely eradicated, and more (like polio) that we've made very good progress on I wish virology was that cut and dry. There are diseases that present nearly identically to smallpox and polio but were given different names based on hypothesized causes. Monkeypox and acute flaccid myelitis come to mind, respectively. If I remember right, polio is actually one where the clinical diagnosis steps rules it out simply because polio has been deemed irradiated, meaning anyone with polio-like symptoms must have something else because we got rid of polio. There's a whole rabbit hole around how virology tests and isolates viruses, that's probably not helpful to ho down here. My point stands though, maybe we can eradicate a particular virus but we can't really eradicate a disease when that's largely just a named collection of symptoms.
- Ukv 2y ago
  > I think your description here assumes too much clarity in what is possible or what will happen if you continue on. Sometimes the system is well understood and the potential gains are pretty clear, that isn't always the case though. Does halting not also come with lack of clarity? For instance, say we're choosing between two options: 1. Continue with disease/vaccine/antibiotic/etc. research 2. Halt said research To me it seems as though both options come with uncertainties, which could resolve positively as well as negatively. That there is uncertainty or a lack of clarity does not bias me towards option 2. My choice would still be based on analysis of which option has the better expected outcome (which is, to my current knowledge, the former) - even if the best analysis available is a guesstimate with very low correlation (so long as it's a positive correlation). > There are diseases that present nearly identically to smallpox and polio but were given different names based on hypothesized causes. Monkeypox and acute flaccid myelitis come to mind Mpox is considerably milder - having killed hundreds of people compared to smallpox's hundreds of millions. > If I remember right, polio is actually one where the clinical diagnosis steps rules it out simply because polio has been deemed irradiated Polio isn't eradicated like smallpox is, though for most people it may as well be. Given ongoing eradication efforts my understanding is that there is fairly extensive testing compared to other diseases of its rarity (e.g: https://polioeradication.org/what-we-do/ https://polioeradication.org/what-we-do/), so it's not just a case of "it's gone because we're ignoring it" if that's what's being implied.