@[739471037:2048:Matt Bell] asks:
"What are the most effective ways people can use their disposable income to fight the diseases that are likely to affect people we know and care about?"
My answer:
Curing cancers completely would only increase life expectancy by three years. Curing all heart disease related causes of death would only increase life expectancy by about ten years. (Thomas, 2013)
That’s because humans have a built-in self-destruct mechanism that will kill us all by age 135: aging. (Skinner, 2009)
However, even if we cured aging (leaving accidents and homicide/suicide as the remaining causes of death), life expectancy would only increase to 1200 - 3000 years. (Magalhães, 2012)
While 3000 years might seem like an ocean of time now, it will seem all too short once it becomes commonplace. And many of our friends and family will still die from misadventure far too young.
A company that didn't have multiple backups of its most important data, stored separately in secure locations, would be considered dangerously irresponsible.
Yet the only copy of our minds runs on a single blob of jello.
Can we make our minds more durable? Can we make backups?
If you accept the materialist view that our minds result from the patterns of interconnections between the neurons in our brain, then it follows that preserving those patterns in sufficient detail will also preserve our most important features—our minds.
And if it is this pattern, rather than the particulars of our brain’s biological substrate, then it should be possible to upload our minds to a more durable medium, such as future iterations of robotic brains.
And if we can upload to sturdy silicon brains, then it should also be possible to make backups.
Death then, would only come from events so catastrophic that it destroyed not only our primary mind, but also our backups.
However, curing aging, let alone uploading, are still distant goals. All of us are likely to long dead before either is fully realized. So what do we do now?
In my view, our highest priority should be to find better ways to preserve our brains until technology is mature enough to upload our minds.
Therefore, I think the best way an individual can help is by making a lot of money doing whatever is their comparative advantage in life, then donating lot's of money to research into brain preservation technology.
Personally, I think the Brain Preservation Foundation prizes offer the most bang for the buck. (Smart, 2016) The prizes right now are a pittance, given the potential payoff. Here’s their long-term goal:
"The nonprofit Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF) hereby officially announces a cash prize for the first individual or team to rigorously demonstrate a surgical technique capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term (>100 years) storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic (EM) imaging techniques.”
If investing is more your style, then investing in companies that make enabling technologies (such as 3Scan and 21CM) is another good route.
Personally, I'm working to find a better incentive system for scientific research, to replace patents and the grant system (which I think drastically slow innovation in general).
We’re each a living book in Library of Alexandria of human life. Let's find a way tell stories of a length of our own choosing, rather than the cruel page count set by Mother Nature.
Thomas, Kas. "Taeuber's Paradox and the Life Expectancy Brick Wall”
Assert True. February 25, 2013. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/02/taeubers-paradox-and-life-expectancy.html#
Pedro de Magalhães, João. "Social Implications of curing aging.” Senesence. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://www.senescence.info/immortal_society.html
Skinner, Brian. “Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates.” Gravity and Levity. July 8, 2009.
Accessed September 8, 2016
https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/
Smart, John. 2016. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://www.brainpreservation.org/
"What are the most effective ways people can use their disposable income to fight the diseases that are likely to affect people we know and care about?"
My answer:
Curing cancers completely would only increase life expectancy by three years. Curing all heart disease related causes of death would only increase life expectancy by about ten years. (Thomas, 2013)
That’s because humans have a built-in self-destruct mechanism that will kill us all by age 135: aging. (Skinner, 2009)
However, even if we cured aging (leaving accidents and homicide/suicide as the remaining causes of death), life expectancy would only increase to 1200 - 3000 years. (Magalhães, 2012)
While 3000 years might seem like an ocean of time now, it will seem all too short once it becomes commonplace. And many of our friends and family will still die from misadventure far too young.
A company that didn't have multiple backups of its most important data, stored separately in secure locations, would be considered dangerously irresponsible.
Yet the only copy of our minds runs on a single blob of jello.
Can we make our minds more durable? Can we make backups?
If you accept the materialist view that our minds result from the patterns of interconnections between the neurons in our brain, then it follows that preserving those patterns in sufficient detail will also preserve our most important features—our minds.
And if it is this pattern, rather than the particulars of our brain’s biological substrate, then it should be possible to upload our minds to a more durable medium, such as future iterations of robotic brains.
And if we can upload to sturdy silicon brains, then it should also be possible to make backups.
Death then, would only come from events so catastrophic that it destroyed not only our primary mind, but also our backups.
However, curing aging, let alone uploading, are still distant goals. All of us are likely to long dead before either is fully realized. So what do we do now?
In my view, our highest priority should be to find better ways to preserve our brains until technology is mature enough to upload our minds.
Therefore, I think the best way an individual can help is by making a lot of money doing whatever is their comparative advantage in life, then donating lot's of money to research into brain preservation technology.
Personally, I think the Brain Preservation Foundation prizes offer the most bang for the buck. (Smart, 2016) The prizes right now are a pittance, given the potential payoff. Here’s their long-term goal:
"The nonprofit Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF) hereby officially announces a cash prize for the first individual or team to rigorously demonstrate a surgical technique capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term (>100 years) storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic (EM) imaging techniques.”
If investing is more your style, then investing in companies that make enabling technologies (such as 3Scan and 21CM) is another good route.
Personally, I'm working to find a better incentive system for scientific research, to replace patents and the grant system (which I think drastically slow innovation in general).
We’re each a living book in Library of Alexandria of human life. Let's find a way tell stories of a length of our own choosing, rather than the cruel page count set by Mother Nature.
Thomas, Kas. "Taeuber's Paradox and the Life Expectancy Brick Wall”
Assert True. February 25, 2013. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/02/taeubers-paradox-and-life-expectancy.html#
Pedro de Magalhães, João. "Social Implications of curing aging.” Senesence. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://www.senescence.info/immortal_society.html
Skinner, Brian. “Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates.” Gravity and Levity. July 8, 2009.
Accessed September 8, 2016
https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/
Smart, John. 2016. Accessed September 8, 2016.
http://www.brainpreservation.org/