Doesn’t the revealed preference argument also imply people don’t care much about dying from aging? (This is invested in even less than catastrophic risk mitigation and people don’t take interventions that would prolong their lives considerably.) I agree revealed preferences imply people care little about the long run future of humanity, but they do imply caring much more about children living full lives than old people avoiding aging. I’d guess that a reasonable version of the pure revealed preference view is a bit below the mortality rate of people in their 30s which is 0.25% (in the US). If we halve this (to account for some preference for children etc), we get 0.1%.
(I don’t really feel that sympathetic to using revealed preferences like this. It would also imply lots of strange things. Minimally I don’t think how people typically use the term “common-sense values” maps very well to revealed preference, but this is just a definitions thing.)
Consider how much individuals typically spend on healthcare and how much society invests in medical research relative to explicit existential risk mitigation efforts. There’s an enormous gap, suggesting society greatly values immediate survival and the well-being of currently living people, and places relatively lower emphasis on abstract, long-term considerations about species survival as a concern separate from presently existing individuals.
[...]
Politically, existential risk receives negligible attention compared to conventional concerns impacting currently-existing people. If society placed as much importance on the distant future as you’re suggesting, the US government would likely have much lower debt, and national savings rates would probably be higher. Moreover, if individuals deeply valued the flourishing of humanity independently of the flourishing of current individuals, we probably wouldn’t observe such sharp declines in birth rates globally.
I think you misinterpreted my claims to be about the long run future (and people not being person-affecting etc), while I mostly meant that people don’t care that much about deaths due to older age.
When I said “caring more about kids and humanity having a future than defeating aging”, my claim is that people don’t care that much about deaths from natural causes (particularly aging) and care more about their kids and people being able to continue living for some (not-that-long) period, not that they care about the long run future. By “humanity having a future”, I didn’t mean millions of years from now, I meant their kids being able to grow up and live a normal life and so on for at least several generations.
Note that I said “This is sensitive to whether AI takeover involves killing people and eliminating even relatively small futures for humanity, but I don’t think this makes more than a 3x difference to the bottom line.” (To clarify, I don’t think it makes that big a difference because I think it’s hard to get a expected fatality rate 3x below where I’m putting it.)
Doesn’t the revealed preference argument also imply people don’t care much about dying from aging? (This is invested in even less than catastrophic risk mitigation and people don’t take interventions that would prolong their lives considerably.) I agree revealed preferences imply people care little about the long run future of humanity, but they do imply caring much more about children living full lives than old people avoiding aging.
I agree that the amount of funding explicitly designated for anti-aging research is very low, which suggests society doesn’t prioritize curing aging as a social goal. However, I think your overall conclusion is significantly overstated. A very large fraction of conventional medical research specifically targets health and lifespan improvements for older people, even though it isn’t labeled explicitly as “anti-aging.”
Biologically, aging isn’t a single condition but rather the cumulative result of multiple factors and accumulated damage over time. For example, anti-smoking campaigns were essentially efforts to slow aging by reducing damage to smokers’ bodies—particularly their lungs—even though these campaigns were presented primarily as life-saving measures rather than “anti-aging” initiatives. Similarly, society invests a substantial amount of time and resources in mitigating biological damage caused by air pollution and obesity.
Considering this broader understanding of aging, it seems exaggerated to claim that people aren’t very concerned about deaths from old age. I think public concern depends heavily on how the issue is framed. My prediction is that if effective anti-aging therapies became available and proven successful, most people would eagerly purchase them for high sums, and there would be widespread political support to subsidize those technologies.
Right now explicit support for anti-aging research is indeed politically very limited, but that’s partly because robust anti-aging technologies haven’t been clearly demonstrated yet. Medical technologies that have proven effective at slowing aging (even if not labeled as such) have generally been marketed as conventional medical technologies and typically enjoy widespread political support and funding.
I think I mostly agree with your comment and partially update, the absolute revealed caring about older people living longer is substantial.
One way to frame the question is “how much does society care about children and younger adults dying vs people living to 130”. I think people’s stated preferences would be something like 5-10x for the children / younger adults (at least for their children while they are dying of aging) but I don’t think this will clearly show itself in healthcare spending prioritization which is all over the place.
Random other slightly related point: if we’re looking at societal wide revealed preference based on things like spending, then “preservation of the current government power structures” is actually quite substantial and pushes toward society caring more about AIs gaining control (and overthrowing the us government, at least de facto). I don’t think a per person preference utilitarian style view should care much about this to be clear.
Doesn’t the revealed preference argument also imply people don’t care much about dying from aging? (This is invested in even less than catastrophic risk mitigation and people don’t take interventions that would prolong their lives considerably.) I agree revealed preferences imply people care little about the long run future of humanity, but they do imply caring much more about children living full lives than old people avoiding aging. I’d guess that a reasonable version of the pure revealed preference view is a bit below the mortality rate of people in their 30s which is 0.25% (in the US). If we halve this (to account for some preference for children etc), we get 0.1%.
(I don’t really feel that sympathetic to using revealed preferences like this. It would also imply lots of strange things. Minimally I don’t think how people typically use the term “common-sense values” maps very well to revealed preference, but this is just a definitions thing.)
I think you misinterpreted my claims to be about the long run future (and people not being person-affecting etc), while I mostly meant that people don’t care that much about deaths due to older age.
When I said “caring more about kids and humanity having a future than defeating aging”, my claim is that people don’t care that much about deaths from natural causes (particularly aging) and care more about their kids and people being able to continue living for some (not-that-long) period, not that they care about the long run future. By “humanity having a future”, I didn’t mean millions of years from now, I meant their kids being able to grow up and live a normal life and so on for at least several generations.
Note that I said “This is sensitive to whether AI takeover involves killing people and eliminating even relatively small futures for humanity, but I don’t think this makes more than a 3x difference to the bottom line.” (To clarify, I don’t think it makes that big a difference because I think it’s hard to get a expected fatality rate 3x below where I’m putting it.)
I agree that the amount of funding explicitly designated for anti-aging research is very low, which suggests society doesn’t prioritize curing aging as a social goal. However, I think your overall conclusion is significantly overstated. A very large fraction of conventional medical research specifically targets health and lifespan improvements for older people, even though it isn’t labeled explicitly as “anti-aging.”
Biologically, aging isn’t a single condition but rather the cumulative result of multiple factors and accumulated damage over time. For example, anti-smoking campaigns were essentially efforts to slow aging by reducing damage to smokers’ bodies—particularly their lungs—even though these campaigns were presented primarily as life-saving measures rather than “anti-aging” initiatives. Similarly, society invests a substantial amount of time and resources in mitigating biological damage caused by air pollution and obesity.
Considering this broader understanding of aging, it seems exaggerated to claim that people aren’t very concerned about deaths from old age. I think public concern depends heavily on how the issue is framed. My prediction is that if effective anti-aging therapies became available and proven successful, most people would eagerly purchase them for high sums, and there would be widespread political support to subsidize those technologies.
Right now explicit support for anti-aging research is indeed politically very limited, but that’s partly because robust anti-aging technologies haven’t been clearly demonstrated yet. Medical technologies that have proven effective at slowing aging (even if not labeled as such) have generally been marketed as conventional medical technologies and typically enjoy widespread political support and funding.
I think I mostly agree with your comment and partially update, the absolute revealed caring about older people living longer is substantial.
One way to frame the question is “how much does society care about children and younger adults dying vs people living to 130”. I think people’s stated preferences would be something like 5-10x for the children / younger adults (at least for their children while they are dying of aging) but I don’t think this will clearly show itself in healthcare spending prioritization which is all over the place.
Random other slightly related point: if we’re looking at societal wide revealed preference based on things like spending, then “preservation of the current government power structures” is actually quite substantial and pushes toward society caring more about AIs gaining control (and overthrowing the us government, at least de facto). I don’t think a per person preference utilitarian style view should care much about this to be clear.