I wonder if starting a GiveWell-like organization focused on evaluating the cost-effectiveness of anti-aging research would be a more effective way to fund the most effective anti-aging research than earning-to-give. Attracting a Moskovitz-lever funder would allow us to more than completely fund SENS (provisional on SENS still seeming like the best use of funds after more research was done).
The product of meta-orgs is taste. If boardgamegeek thinks that Twilight Struggle is a good game, then you, not having played it, should expect that it’s likely a ‘good’ game. If Givewell thinks that AMF is a good charity, then you, not having looked at it yourself, should expect that it’s likely a ‘good’ charity.
With games that many people play, a website can average together those ratings and then sort them to generate a solid taste measure. With charities that have done things in the past and have models of what they can do in the future, an organization can evaluate the things done and the models for how things would change and estimate impacts and then sort by those impacts.
But with scientific projects, this seems much more difficult, because you’re extrapolating past the fringes of current knowledge. It’s not “which board games that already exist are best?” but “which board game would be best, if you made it?” This is a skill that people have to various degree—someone is designing these things, after all—but I think it’s very difficult to communicate, and more importantly, for listeners to have a good sense of why they should or should not trust another person’s taste.
Another way of looking at this is, with medical research, all of the cost-effectiveness is driven by whether or not the technology works. If the research is to validate or invalidate a theory, the usefulness of that theory (and thus the evidence) is determined by the technologies enabled by that theory (or the attention spared to work on other technologies that do work). But this is the thing that, by definition, we don’t know yet, and is the thing that, say, SENS leadership spends its time thinking about. Do we approve this grant, or that grant?
(This comment may oversell the degree to which tech growth is about creating new knowledge / tech rather than spreading old knowledge / tech, but I think the point still gets at what you’re talking about here.)
Another way of looking at this is, with medical research, all of the cost-effectiveness is driven by whether or not the technology works.
That depends on how you define “technology”. Knowledge about which lifestyle choices that result in healthier living has an effect but I wouldn’t call it “technology” in the narrow sense. I think there a good chance that there’s a bias of people focusing too much on trying to use technology to solve problems.
Agreed but I think I’m more willing to call lifestyle choices, and in particular the means by which medical experts can guide the lifestyle choices of their patients, ‘cultural technology’ or something similar. One can know that some exercises will fix the patient’s back pain, but not know how to get the patient to do those exercises. (Even if the patient is you!)
Strechting the meaning of the term technology that way is baily-and-moat. For large parts of the medical community “technology” refers to something you can in principle patent.
Even if you see the notion more broadly the mental model of medical experts using cultural technology to get patients to comply isn’t the only way you can think.
You can also practice the values of what Kant called enlightenment where individuals engage in self-chosen actions because they can reason. With enlightment values it becomes important to educate people but how the body works. If you think as patients as subjects that benefit from eduction you have a different health system then if you think of them as objects to forced into engaging in certain actions.
If easy to make the moral argument that what Kant calls enlightment is good but it might also be in practice the paradigm that produces better health outcomes.
If you care about radical process in medicine than it’s important to be open for different paradigms to produce medical progress.
Scientific paradigms are in flux and it’s important to be open for the possibility that different paradigms from how we do medicine might have advantages. I think ideally we have pluralism in medicine with many different paradgims getting explored.
How can different paradigms lead to a different science?
Take an area like the question whether a single sperm is enough to get a woman pregnant. You will find a lot of mainstream sex advice from sources like WebMD say that a single sperm is enough. That’s likely wrong.
If you believe that the point of sex education is to get people to always use condoms it can be helpful to teach the wrong fact that a single sperm is enough. A system that however would focus on true eduction would rather teach the truth. Knowing the truth in this instance isn’t a “technology” that does anything specific. I don’t trust biology to progress if it doesn’t care for the truth and just tries to find out facts that get people to comply with what their doctor tells them.
I seriously engaged with NLP and it’s “change is what matters, truth of statements is secondary”-ideology. NLP is actually much more honest about this but once you accept the technology frame, you get there. I think that relationship to the truth is flawed.
One of the key characteristics of research of the unknown is that you don’t know the cost-effectiveness beforehand.
SENS (provisional on SENS still seeming like the best use of funds after more research was done).
What kind of research do you think could prove that claim?
The interesting thing of that claim is the idea that effective anti-aging research is research that’s branded as anti-aging.
I would guess that one of the most effective investments to further anti-aging research was the NHI decision to give out grants to DNA sequencing companies.
Investigating SENS more closely is also an interesting proposition. Doing so will show that it’s over-optimistic and driven by assumptions that are likely wrong. However it scores high in the “clarity of vision” department that YCombinator uses to decide which startups to fund. SENS doesn’t have to be right on it’s core assumption to produce useful knowledge.
Startups don’t profit from highly critical outside scrutiny into how they invest their money. Critical scrutiny might harm SENS.
I wonder if starting a GiveWell-like organization focused on evaluating the cost-effectiveness of anti-aging research would be a more effective way to fund the most effective anti-aging research than earning-to-give. Attracting a Moskovitz-lever funder would allow us to more than completely fund SENS (provisional on SENS still seeming like the best use of funds after more research was done).
The product of meta-orgs is taste. If boardgamegeek thinks that Twilight Struggle is a good game, then you, not having played it, should expect that it’s likely a ‘good’ game. If Givewell thinks that AMF is a good charity, then you, not having looked at it yourself, should expect that it’s likely a ‘good’ charity.
With games that many people play, a website can average together those ratings and then sort them to generate a solid taste measure. With charities that have done things in the past and have models of what they can do in the future, an organization can evaluate the things done and the models for how things would change and estimate impacts and then sort by those impacts.
But with scientific projects, this seems much more difficult, because you’re extrapolating past the fringes of current knowledge. It’s not “which board games that already exist are best?” but “which board game would be best, if you made it?” This is a skill that people have to various degree—someone is designing these things, after all—but I think it’s very difficult to communicate, and more importantly, for listeners to have a good sense of why they should or should not trust another person’s taste.
Another way of looking at this is, with medical research, all of the cost-effectiveness is driven by whether or not the technology works. If the research is to validate or invalidate a theory, the usefulness of that theory (and thus the evidence) is determined by the technologies enabled by that theory (or the attention spared to work on other technologies that do work). But this is the thing that, by definition, we don’t know yet, and is the thing that, say, SENS leadership spends its time thinking about. Do we approve this grant, or that grant?
(This comment may oversell the degree to which tech growth is about creating new knowledge / tech rather than spreading old knowledge / tech, but I think the point still gets at what you’re talking about here.)
That depends on how you define “technology”. Knowledge about which lifestyle choices that result in healthier living has an effect but I wouldn’t call it “technology” in the narrow sense. I think there a good chance that there’s a bias of people focusing too much on trying to use technology to solve problems.
Agreed but I think I’m more willing to call lifestyle choices, and in particular the means by which medical experts can guide the lifestyle choices of their patients, ‘cultural technology’ or something similar. One can know that some exercises will fix the patient’s back pain, but not know how to get the patient to do those exercises. (Even if the patient is you!)
Strechting the meaning of the term technology that way is baily-and-moat. For large parts of the medical community “technology” refers to something you can in principle patent.
Even if you see the notion more broadly the mental model of medical experts using cultural technology to get patients to comply isn’t the only way you can think.
You can also practice the values of what Kant called enlightenment where individuals engage in self-chosen actions because they can reason. With enlightment values it becomes important to educate people but how the body works. If you think as patients as subjects that benefit from eduction you have a different health system then if you think of them as objects to forced into engaging in certain actions.
If easy to make the moral argument that what Kant calls enlightment is good but it might also be in practice the paradigm that produces better health outcomes.
If you care about radical process in medicine than it’s important to be open for different paradigms to produce medical progress. Scientific paradigms are in flux and it’s important to be open for the possibility that different paradigms from how we do medicine might have advantages. I think ideally we have pluralism in medicine with many different paradgims getting explored.
How can different paradigms lead to a different science? Take an area like the question whether a single sperm is enough to get a woman pregnant. You will find a lot of mainstream sex advice from sources like WebMD say that a single sperm is enough. That’s likely wrong.
If you believe that the point of sex education is to get people to always use condoms it can be helpful to teach the wrong fact that a single sperm is enough. A system that however would focus on true eduction would rather teach the truth. Knowing the truth in this instance isn’t a “technology” that does anything specific. I don’t trust biology to progress if it doesn’t care for the truth and just tries to find out facts that get people to comply with what their doctor tells them.
I seriously engaged with NLP and it’s “change is what matters, truth of statements is secondary”-ideology. NLP is actually much more honest about this but once you accept the technology frame, you get there. I think that relationship to the truth is flawed.
One of the key characteristics of research of the unknown is that you don’t know the cost-effectiveness beforehand.
What kind of research do you think could prove that claim?
The interesting thing of that claim is the idea that effective anti-aging research is research that’s branded as anti-aging. I would guess that one of the most effective investments to further anti-aging research was the NHI decision to give out grants to DNA sequencing companies.
Investigating SENS more closely is also an interesting proposition. Doing so will show that it’s over-optimistic and driven by assumptions that are likely wrong. However it scores high in the “clarity of vision” department that YCombinator uses to decide which startups to fund. SENS doesn’t have to be right on it’s core assumption to produce useful knowledge.
Startups don’t profit from highly critical outside scrutiny into how they invest their money. Critical scrutiny might harm SENS.