How should I help us achieve immortality?

Hul-Gil

16 How should I help us achieve immortality?

10th May 2011

1 min read

16

I was immensely glad to find this community, because while I knew intellectually that I was not the only person who felt that rationality was important, death was bad, and technology was our savior, I had never met anyone else who did. I thus determined my career without much input from anything except my own interests; which is not so bad, of course, but I have realized that I might benefit from advice from like-minded people.

Specifically, I would like to know what LessWrong thinks I should do in order to get into "immortality research." Edit: that means "what field should I go into if I want humanity to have extended lifespans as soon as possible?"

I feel immortality, or at least life-extension, is one of - if not the - most important thing(s) humanity can accomplish right now. I don't think I am suited to AI work, however. Another obvious option is an MD, but that's not in my temperament either. My major right now is biochemistry, in preparation for a doctorate in either biochemistry itself, or pharmacology.

I think there's a good chance that advances in this area could contribute to life extension; aging is a biochemical process, right? And certainly drugs will be involved in life extension. But is this the best place to apply my efforts? I have considered that biogerontology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology) might be better, as it is about aging specifically; but I don't know much about the field - only that Wikipedia says it is new and very few universities offer degrees in it. My final idea is nanotechnology of some kind; I believe nanomachines may be able to repair our bodies. I'm not sure what type of nanotechnology I'd be looking at for this, or if degrees in it are offered.

Any ideas, suggestions, or comments in general are welcome. I favor the biochemical approach as of now, but only through temperament. As far as I know, AI, biochemical/pharmacological methods, and nanotechnology are all about equally close to giving us immortality. If someone feels one option is better than the others, or has recommended reading on the subject, please share!

Thanks in advance, my new rational friends.

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16 How should I help us achieve immortality?

by Hul-Gil

10th May 2011

1 min read

16

Thanks in advance, my new rational friends.

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James_Miller15y100

The best ways to earn a high salary are to go into finance, law or to start your own business.

You should be careful to properly measure the marginal intellectual contribution you can make to a field. Think what would happen if the organization you would work for hired the next best candidate. Your marginal contribution is the difference between what you would do and what this second best candidate would do. You need to take into account that anyone who ends up paying you to conduct immortality research would likely have paid someone else to do it if you weren't around. In contrast, if you end up donating money to an organization that does immortality research then there isn't any other money this organization loses because they end up getting your funds.

gjm15y40

I think this account of marginal contribution is wrong. Here's a handwavy model to explain why.

Suppose there are N people in the world working on X, and you're the Mth best. And suppose (laughably) that every organization doing X hires exactly one person, the best person it can get. And (also laughably) that everyone works for the best organization they can, and that that's the one doing the most valuable work in X. Write A(n) for the importance of the nth-best organization's work and B(n) for the quality of the nth-best person's work.

OK. So the total util... (read more)

1AlephNeil15y

But how much money would that "someone else" otherwise have donated to immortality research, if they hadn't got the research job themselves?

3Hul-Gil15y

That's an excellent way to think about it. I had not considered it like that; it makes me feel less guilty about the possibility of going into finance! However, intellectual contributions are not necessarily purchasable. That is, donating enough money for an organization to hire two mediocre scientists may not result in the insights of one slightly better scientist; margin size may not be linear. To paraphrase a quote from an article I've forgotten the rest of, "a hundred years of doggy living won't add up to one human insight." Not to suggest I am so excellent as to make all other scientists look like dogs, of course. Rather, I feel that the insights of any one researcher are possibly unique. The example that comes to my mind is that of vulcanized rubber - discovered by accident. Who knows when it would have come about if Goodyear had gone into law instead? Who knows but that I might stumble on the Vulcanized Rubber of Immortality? In any case, a world where everyone researched immortality would be better than a world where one person researched it with the funds of everyone else. Science is my true love and I don't think I shall abandon it, but finance is a little interesting. Do you suggest it just because financial careers come with high salaries, or do you think that understanding of finance means understanding how to manipulate money in order to become wealthy? I envisioned the latter for economics, but like I said, economists don't necessarily seem to be better investors than anyone else.

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