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Nighteyes5678 comments on Near Concerns About Life Extension - Less Wrong
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I estimate the chance of getting uploaded or having the effects of aging reversed before society collapses (at least to the point that such a person would die) is about, oh, one in ten thousand. Given that estimate and my sense of the cost, then that is an implication of what I am saying.
It might be off topic for this thread, but I think a claim like this is worth some sort of separate post. If you truly believe that civilization is that close to the brink, then it seems helpful to display the argument somewhere to inform others of the danger. Even if we can't stop the collapse, we could be prepared. And if your argument doesn't convince us, you'll have tried and have that off your conscience.
It's nothing I have enough detail on to support a separate post. I suspect my phrasing emphasized the wrong part of it (sorry). I have no reason to think our society is due for a catastrophic "dip" in the next few hundred years. I'd even give it a thousand. And after that we might well recover, but preservation of any individual life gets iffy through that period. So I'm giving us one in ten thousand of reversing aging or uploading brains before that collapse (100-1,000 years from now). The chances of developing it when civilizations rise and fall over what could be millions of years might be higher (one in four?) -- but that's of no use to today's frail elderly. Those periodic, "black swan" catastrophes themselves are cause for great concern of those who want to live a very long time.
Maybe I'm missing the context here, but why is the preceding post down voted? As far as I can see he's just reporting his subjective probability of some future events. If you disagree, you could supply links to evidence that might change his opinion, but I don't see why you'd down-vote his honest probability assessment. Maybe it was his rhetorical flourish: "that's of no use"?
My sense of the discussion here is that Bart119's attempting a tricky cost-benefit analysis of life extension and being a bit loose with his arguments. Perhaps he could start over with a defensible smaller argument: "present-day life extension, if extraordinarily successful, will create costs for society as a whole that may be a problem."