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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong
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I'd vote this up, but I can't shake the feeling that the author is setting up a false dichotomy. Living forever would be great, but living forever without arthritis would be even better. There's no reason why we shouldn't solve the easier problem first.
Sure there is. If you have two problems, one of which is substantially easier than the other, then you still might solve the harder problem first if 1) solving the easier problem won't help you solve the harder problem and 2) the harder problem is substantially more pressing. In other words, you need to take into account the opportunity cost of diverting some of your resources to solving the easier problem.
In general this is true, but I believe that in this particular case the reasoning doesn't apply. Solving problems like arthritis and cancer is essential for prolonging productive biological life.
Granted, such solutions would cease to be useful once mind uploading is implemented. However, IMO mind uploading is so difficult -- and, therefore, so far in the future -- that, if we did chose to focus exclusively on it, we'd lose too many utilons to biological ailments. For the same reason, prolonging productive biological life now is still quite useful, because it would allow researchers to live longer, thus speeding up the pace of research that will eventually lead to uploading.