Fadeway comments on Interesting new Pew Research study on American opinions about radical life extension - Less Wrong
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Comments (21)
This may be because as people get older they have more medical problems and so when they think of life-extension they think of not life-extension as extending the very healthy years as much as extending how they currently are or soon will be.
This is less surprising to me. Higher income means one has more to lose by things which impact the stability of society severely.
I think another possible reason for the negative correlation with age is that as people get older and death becomes more imminent, they (in my experience) try harder to convince themselves and their peers that it is a good/natural/acceptable thing, to lessen the sense of fear and helplessness.
I'd guess that there's nothing magically wonderful about living to be 90. The more important part seems to be wanting to live longer but not wanting (or wanting to want) anything that seems implausible or socially abnormal.
It would have been interesting to see if greater age was correlated with holding a stronger view either for or against radical life extension. I would predict that older people hold stronger views, since the issue is more relevant to their current life experiences.
I did not expect this. And it seems weird, since young people are also more optimistic about their futures. And more likely to want to undergo radical life extension. Plus they haven't suffered the effects of aging (having many loved ones die, illness and pain, etc.).
Didn't predictions for the Singularity follow a similar trend? Older people predicting 30-40 years until the event, and younger predictors being more pessimistic because they're likely to still be alive even if it happens in 60 years?
Not really: http://lesswrong.com/lw/e36/ai_timeline_predictions_are_we_getting_better/