Initial Synthesis of Ideas

I should start this blog by articulating what I believe to be the most pressing issues for myself and people relevantly like me (e.g. non-AGI experts) to follow and work on.

I am working to focus more on life extension issues and less on partisan politics. However, the politics of the external environment can matter a great deal to one’s prospects for extending biological lifespan and internal experience, as well as the lifespans of those one knows and cares for in the world. I will try to balance surveys of the environment with projections for biological life extension. The emergence of superintelligent artificial general intelligence might considerably alter the relevant dynamics but I will focus on more knowable futures including those in which superintelligent AGI takes a very cautious, hands-off initial approach to influencing the world.

Ultimately, I think that the primary focus in life extension should be on survivability for humans (in some form) and intelligent, sentient beings, including AGI. Although there are important considerations regarding the meaning and nature of life and death I believe that life extension and health maintenance – in biological as well as robustly “uploaded” formats – is the most important agenda following overall survival of intelligent beings and civilization, characterized by Nick Bostrom as “existential risks” or risks of extinction as well as large scale disasters. Both callous abstraction from the suffering of particular individuals and blind or unscrupulous protection of people closest to ones’ own heart (perhaps including even oneself in some cases) seem to be extremes to avoid in contemplating and striving to reduce existential risks.

Jamais Cascio is an excellent source for conceptual frameworks regarding civilization survival and sustainable culture. Although current proposals involve many risky unknowns I agree with Cascio that at this point it seems that even drastic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent significant climate change and “geoengineering” projects will be needed to help slow and control the process. Although I am intrigued by newer, less brittle economic models discussed by Cascio, I’m inclined to think the next decade will be shaped most by the familiar combination of party Liberalism and Corporatism, and the latter force will only adopt green tech as it becomes cost competitive with older technology. I think “bright green” market-oriented, consumer-driven technology will need to be the basis for much progress though private initiatives and public incentives will be needed to accelerate the process.

Cascio may be right that eventually, if we manage to avoid dystopian nightmares, we may realize “resilience economics” leading to islands of “just-in-time socialism” and eventually even a “basic income guarantee” society as robots take over most jobs. Between now and then, it would seem well advised to make oneself as independently valuable as possible, and there is hardly a better industry for that than life extension as it provides an appealing benefit to consumers as well as to society at large (given that members can work longer at higher capacity).
A less impersonal life extension agenda is striving to realize a “longevity escape velocity” a process in which one lives long enough to benefit from the technological advances that enable escaping death from what currently are considered “natural causes.”

Here is part of an E-mail I received from Micheal Rae in response to an inquiry concerning the progress of biogerontology and the role of nanotechnology in achieving radically longer lives:

" Certainly, it's likely that in the short term, we'll be using some of what we might call "conventional" nanotech as part of tissue engineering, in bioMEMs, immunoisolated tissue/organ constructs, etc. However, these certainly won't be *indispensible* or even central elements of the *immediate* goal of "longevity escape velocity" (LEV). Rather, more advanced, 'blue sky' "Drexlerian" nano (hard-core molecular manufacturing devices/nanobots), will become necessary at some time in the future, as part of that ultimate, comprehensive panel of rejuvenation treatments (whereas the first generation will be entirely composed of foreseeable biotechnology). For instance, one can see that a very strong ("Drexlerian") form of nanotechnology, which could maintain a mutliply-redundant copy of the genome, compare it to the genes in a given cell, and directly repair errors (having thus the crucial ability to look in on a given cell's genome from without, instead of being limited to comparing one DNA strand to the other as our endogenous repair mechanims are), might be expected to be a powerful and effective approach.

More on Dr. de Grey's speculation on the role of molecular manufacturing in future age-reversing biotech here:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/108
http://www.foresight.org/challenges/health002.html

-Michael”

I intend to start learning more about Dr. Grey’s work and how I can support it.