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astazangasta[dead post] ◴[] No.12508638[source]
Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives.

The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our economic lives around feudal holdovers like land titles. Who gives a shit if Elon Musk can connect his brain to the Internet and live forever as a sentient AI, while the rest of humanity drinks ditch water and lives small, dull lives?

JoshTriplett ◴[] No.12508735[source]
The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place?

And with that in place, thousands of other smaller problems evaporate along with it.

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idlewords ◴[] No.12508765[source]
Much more likely than a hotfix for death is a world where there are very, very expensive treatments that allow wealthy people to extend their lives by some significant amount.

That's not going to be a fun world to live in, especially if the treatments requires biological raw materials that the destitute can sell.

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emmett ◴[] No.12508857[source]
Historically, expensive treatments for the rich have become universal treatments for everyone over time.

What makes you believe that life extension will be any different? Or, if you disagree that expensive treatments generally stay expensive, what are your examples?

I agree we could have a temporary awkward period in the middle, say 20 years, where it's not cheap yet. But on the scale of history that's a short period of time...I'll admit that's cold comfort to those who die in the meantime.

(See: antibiotics, insulin, appendectomies, lasik, ...)

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idlewords ◴[] No.12508989{3}[source]
My counterexample is a facelift.
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1. TeMPOraL ◴[] No.12509043{4}[source]
It's something that's not widely needed or desired, therefore a luxury product. Market forces can be funny like that.

My counter-counter example would be dentistry, or various forms of surgery in general. Especially the latter is expensive as hell, but most of the world managed to create systems that give access to it to pretty much everyone. Even the US somewhat manages that.