Late. Oh well...hope deadline is not strict the judging hasn’t begun yet.
Essay: Human Life Gains Value With Each Passing Year, Therefore Life Extension?
My intuition is that, given that extremely cheap interventions such as mosquito nets and deworming can significantly improve quality of life for a large number of strangers, putting lots of resources put into freezing a smaller number of strangers in hopes of radically extending their lifespan is not effective altruism and would likely not satisfy my preferences as much as other forms of altruism to strangers. This is an introspective essay which explores the basis of this intuition, and where it might be distorted by biases. I hope that other readers who may share my intuitions will find my thoughts beneficial in their own introspections.
Hypothetical scenario 1: Suppose that you had to choose between extending one doomed child’s life for 100 years, or extending 100 doomed children’s lives for 1 year. Which would you choose?
I expect most readers to choose to extend a single doomed child’s life for 100 years. To my intuition, extending 100 children’s lives for only 1 year seems much less valuable, since 1 year is insufficient time to grow, develop, and live a full life.
Hypothetical scenario 2: Suppose we could extend one individual’s life for 1,000 years at the cost of being unable to extend 10 doomed children’s lives for 100 years?
In some respects, these two scenarios are identical. The lengths of time are equal—in both cases, we are saving an equal number of total life-years. In both cases, we are choosing between many short lives and one long life. Yet my intuition finds the second scenario more challenging than the first scenario. My intuition is that it is wrong to deny 10 doomed children a normal lifespan in exchange for greatly prolonging a single individual’s life-span to abnormally long lengths. Is this intuition a true expression of my values, or is this intuition about what my values are distorted by my biases?
The case that the objection is primarily due to human bias is presented here.
One of my objections is that life-extension seems to violate my Fairness preferences. Why should a wealthy individual use resources to radically extend life while so many other lives are cut short? However, as we saw before, I was willing to ignore fairness norms in Scenario 1. Perhaps my objection is better framed in terms of status-quo bias: I feel that humans are owed 100 years of life. Cutting this span short is a loss and a tragedy, while extending it further is a luxury. In fact, my notions of how many years are “owed” was entirely determined by the status quo of natural life expectancy.
A second intuition is that I consider 100 years to be a life “fully lived”. Lifespans of 1 year or 10 years seem woefully incomplete to me. Because there is simply not enough time to do anything worthwhile with a 1 year lifespan, I am not willing to sacrifice a 100 year long life in exchange for 100 lives which last for one year in Scenario 1.
Why does this intuition not easily extend to Scenario 2? I seem to have a notion that years between 10 and 50 are more valuable than years between 100 and 1000. However, my intuition most likely arises because 10-50 represent a human’s cognitive prime. Life extension assumes extension of a human’s cognitive prime as well as their life span. Might not a single human life lived continuously for 1000 years be even richer and more fully lived than 10 human lives cut short after 100 years? Just as I prefer one human life lived continuously for 100 years to 100 human lives cut short after 1 year because the longer life is richer and more “fully lived”, should I not prefer one human life lived for 1000 years to 10 human lives cut short after 100 years for the same reason? Once again, because the status quo is that humans do the types of learning and growing I consider valuable between the ages of 10-50, my intuition automatically assumed that things would remain that way when considering radical life extension.
In conclusion: Assuming a lack of cognitive decline, I already hold the intuition that a human life gains value with each passing year. The human becomes more intelligent, more experienced, and more complex. My status quo bias may play a role in preventing me from applying this intuition to radical life-extension.
Late. Oh well...hope deadline is not strict the judging hasn’t begun yet.
Essay: Human Life Gains Value With Each Passing Year, Therefore Life Extension?
My intuition is that, given that extremely cheap interventions such as mosquito nets and deworming can significantly improve quality of life for a large number of strangers, putting lots of resources put into freezing a smaller number of strangers in hopes of radically extending their lifespan is not effective altruism and would likely not satisfy my preferences as much as other forms of altruism to strangers. This is an introspective essay which explores the basis of this intuition, and where it might be distorted by biases. I hope that other readers who may share my intuitions will find my thoughts beneficial in their own introspections.
Hypothetical scenario 1: Suppose that you had to choose between extending one doomed child’s life for 100 years, or extending 100 doomed children’s lives for 1 year. Which would you choose?
I expect most readers to choose to extend a single doomed child’s life for 100 years. To my intuition, extending 100 children’s lives for only 1 year seems much less valuable, since 1 year is insufficient time to grow, develop, and live a full life.
Hypothetical scenario 2: Suppose we could extend one individual’s life for 1,000 years at the cost of being unable to extend 10 doomed children’s lives for 100 years?
In some respects, these two scenarios are identical. The lengths of time are equal—in both cases, we are saving an equal number of total life-years. In both cases, we are choosing between many short lives and one long life. Yet my intuition finds the second scenario more challenging than the first scenario. My intuition is that it is wrong to deny 10 doomed children a normal lifespan in exchange for greatly prolonging a single individual’s life-span to abnormally long lengths. Is this intuition a true expression of my values, or is this intuition about what my values are distorted by my biases?
The case that the objection is primarily due to human bias is presented here.
One of my objections is that life-extension seems to violate my Fairness preferences. Why should a wealthy individual use resources to radically extend life while so many other lives are cut short? However, as we saw before, I was willing to ignore fairness norms in Scenario 1. Perhaps my objection is better framed in terms of status-quo bias: I feel that humans are owed 100 years of life. Cutting this span short is a loss and a tragedy, while extending it further is a luxury. In fact, my notions of how many years are “owed” was entirely determined by the status quo of natural life expectancy.
A second intuition is that I consider 100 years to be a life “fully lived”. Lifespans of 1 year or 10 years seem woefully incomplete to me. Because there is simply not enough time to do anything worthwhile with a 1 year lifespan, I am not willing to sacrifice a 100 year long life in exchange for 100 lives which last for one year in Scenario 1.
Why does this intuition not easily extend to Scenario 2? I seem to have a notion that years between 10 and 50 are more valuable than years between 100 and 1000. However, my intuition most likely arises because 10-50 represent a human’s cognitive prime. Life extension assumes extension of a human’s cognitive prime as well as their life span. Might not a single human life lived continuously for 1000 years be even richer and more fully lived than 10 human lives cut short after 100 years? Just as I prefer one human life lived continuously for 100 years to 100 human lives cut short after 1 year because the longer life is richer and more “fully lived”, should I not prefer one human life lived for 1000 years to 10 human lives cut short after 100 years for the same reason? Once again, because the status quo is that humans do the types of learning and growing I consider valuable between the ages of 10-50, my intuition automatically assumed that things would remain that way when considering radical life extension.
In conclusion: Assuming a lack of cognitive decline, I already hold the intuition that a human life gains value with each passing year. The human becomes more intelligent, more experienced, and more complex. My status quo bias may play a role in preventing me from applying this intuition to radical life-extension.