> how come they don't give some of their money to help save hubndreds of millions NOW, in Africa and elsewhere? A couple of things. First, the overlap between

> how come they don't give some of their money to help save hubndreds of millions NOW, in Africa and elsewhere? A couple of things. First, the overlap between the anti-aging and anti-death community and the effective altruism community is pretty large. Because the base rate of people who take effective altruism seriously is still so low, it's a reasonable assumption to make, but in this case it's incorrect. Have a look at how much interaction there is between, for example, GiveWell and Good Ventures (as background, GiveWell places a very strong emphasis on being very sure that what they're doing is helping and how much, and Good Ventures focuses more strongly on projects that might do massive amounts of good) [1]. Second, it's great that you're thinking in terms of how money can best be spent to provide the maximal benefit to humanity. You're entirely correct that medical interventions in Africa are orders of magnitude more effective per dollar at than, for example, the Make a Wish foundation -- the estimate I'm familiar with is about $3,000 per life saved, which is pretty impressive [2]. However, continuing that line of thought, tropical diseases and malnutrition have a combined cost of about 200 million DALY's annually. The problems we generally consider "just a normal part of aging" (cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases, cancer, arthritis, etc.) have a combined cost of about 1 billion DALY's annually [3]. My personal opinion is that addressing medical problems in the developing world is probably still more cost-effective than medical research in the developed world, but it's not all that clear-cut. When you're a billionaire like Thiel, you can afford to put some resources into both ways of improving the world, and either way is still better than buying a fourth yacht. "Angry about death" could mean "if I could step all over others to live forever, I would", but in this case I don't think it does. [1] http://www.givewell.org/about/official-records/board-meeting-19/givewell-and-good-ventures http://www.givewell.org/about/official-records/board-meeting... [2] http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets#HowcosteffectiveisLLINdistribution http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins... [3] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61689-4/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... (you can register and view the full text, charts, etc. for free).