If all we get out of this is a serious challenge to deathism (Tim Cook AND Larry Page? Woah.), well, that’s a huge change for the better. But I do think these guys have what it takes to go further still.
The saddest thing about the reaction on HN is that so many commenters are angry this thing that we don’t even have yet and didn’t even dream of a few hours earlier will be ‘only for the rich’. It really does boggle the mind.
I haven’t read the HN comments, nor do I intend to, but it doesn’t seem particularly mind-boggling to me that many people are more concerned by the size of the advantage-gulf between them and more powerful humans than they are by the absolute level of advantage they enjoy.
After all, for most of our lives more powerful humans have been the biggest threat we have to worry about, and the magnitude of the threat they pose has been proportional to the size of that advantage-gulf.
I’m not saying it’s a rational response given the specifics of this situation, merely that it’s an understandable habit of thought.
I have met people who explicitly say they prefer a lower gap between them and the better-offs over a better absolute level for themselves. IIRC they were more concerned about ‘fairness’ than about what the powerful might do to them. They also believed that most would agree with them (I believe the opposite).
Yes, ‘fairness’ is often a concept that gets invoked in these sorts of discussions.
For my own part, given world W1 where I have X1 and the best-off people have Y1, and world W2 where I have X2 and the best-off people have Y2, such that (X2 < X1) and (Y2-X2) << (Y1 - X1), within a range of worlds such that X1 and X2 are both not vastly different from what I have today, I expect that when transitioning from W2 to W1 I would experience myself as better off, and when transitioning from W1 to W2 I would experience myself as worse off.
I expect that’s true of most people.
It’s not necessarily the only important question here, though.
You’re making predictions about something you could just observe. This is the comment thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406084
In it, the primary critic of Catico, bowlofpetunias, considers themself among the elite it benefits. That is, what you believed to have happened did not happen.
“It will be only for the rich” is a valid concern. Not one that should make us discard antideathism, but one that is worth being addressed fully and seriously, not discarded as “it boggles the mind”. The prospect of having a few rich people living forever while most still know old age and death is a real potential failure mode. And it’s not like the world isn’t full of places without universal healthcare in which people who don’t have the money are left dying while they could be saved.
commenters are angry this thing that we don’t even have yet and didn’t even dream of a few hours earlier will be ‘only for the rich’. It really does boggle the mind
The saddest thing about the reaction on HN is that so many commenters are angry this thing that we don’t even have yet and didn’t even dream of a few hours earlier will be ‘only for the rich’.
I agree. These commenters seem to be ignorant of both the history of technological progress and modern socioeconomic reality. In case after case—cars, flight, computers, cell phones, electricity, indoor plumbing—a technology started out very expensive and rapidly became inexpensive and widely available as it became popular (in some sense, the most important factor determining the price of a technology is not its innate sophistication, but its popularity—the more popular it becomes, the less expensive; and anti-aging technology will be very popular). Furthermore, there are very few health-improvement technologies that are both 1) highly effective and 2) available only to the wealthy—expensive medical treatments are usually experimental. Also, one of the big problems with our current system is that it spends millions of dollars on the homeless.
If all we get out of this is a serious challenge to deathism (Tim Cook AND Larry Page? Woah.), well, that’s a huge change for the better. But I do think these guys have what it takes to go further still.
The saddest thing about the reaction on HN is that so many commenters are angry this thing that we don’t even have yet and didn’t even dream of a few hours earlier will be ‘only for the rich’. It really does boggle the mind.
I haven’t read the HN comments, nor do I intend to, but it doesn’t seem particularly mind-boggling to me that many people are more concerned by the size of the advantage-gulf between them and more powerful humans than they are by the absolute level of advantage they enjoy.
After all, for most of our lives more powerful humans have been the biggest threat we have to worry about, and the magnitude of the threat they pose has been proportional to the size of that advantage-gulf.
I’m not saying it’s a rational response given the specifics of this situation, merely that it’s an understandable habit of thought.
I have met people who explicitly say they prefer a lower gap between them and the better-offs over a better absolute level for themselves. IIRC they were more concerned about ‘fairness’ than about what the powerful might do to them. They also believed that most would agree with them (I believe the opposite).
Yes, ‘fairness’ is often a concept that gets invoked in these sorts of discussions.
For my own part, given world W1 where I have X1 and the best-off people have Y1, and world W2 where I have X2 and the best-off people have Y2, such that (X2 < X1) and (Y2-X2) << (Y1 - X1), within a range of worlds such that X1 and X2 are both not vastly different from what I have today, I expect that when transitioning from W2 to W1 I would experience myself as better off, and when transitioning from W1 to W2 I would experience myself as worse off.
I expect that’s true of most people.
It’s not necessarily the only important question here, though.
So, that which certain right-wingers here on LW were fighting against wasn’t a straw man after all. :-/
You’re making predictions about something you could just observe. This is the comment thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406084 In it, the primary critic of Catico, bowlofpetunias, considers themself among the elite it benefits. That is, what you believed to have happened did not happen.
Thanks for the pointer.
“It will be only for the rich” is a valid concern. Not one that should make us discard antideathism, but one that is worth being addressed fully and seriously, not discarded as “it boggles the mind”. The prospect of having a few rich people living forever while most still know old age and death is a real potential failure mode. And it’s not like the world isn’t full of places without universal healthcare in which people who don’t have the money are left dying while they could be saved.
This fits Robin Hanson’s model of inequality talk being about grabbing.
I agree. These commenters seem to be ignorant of both the history of technological progress and modern socioeconomic reality. In case after case—cars, flight, computers, cell phones, electricity, indoor plumbing—a technology started out very expensive and rapidly became inexpensive and widely available as it became popular (in some sense, the most important factor determining the price of a technology is not its innate sophistication, but its popularity—the more popular it becomes, the less expensive; and anti-aging technology will be very popular). Furthermore, there are very few health-improvement technologies that are both 1) highly effective and 2) available only to the wealthy—expensive medical treatments are usually experimental. Also, one of the big problems with our current system is that it spends millions of dollars on the homeless.