[extropy-chat] My Dilemma

[Robert Bradbury]

On 7/5/06, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You could also make a case that the war in Iraq will save millions of
> lives by driving the Singularity technology forward. Research on
> robotic vehicles, robot bomb investigators, robots to go into tunnels,
> robot flying vehicles, new weaponry, new medical facilities, new
> bionic limbs, new armor technology, new radars, nano technology,
> computer systems, ..... the list goes on.


The point might be that most of these technologies are all about developing
better ways to minimize the threats posed by individuals with weapons
directed against people who would not be targets if they were not explicitly
put into harms way.  Usually these technologies are directed at wounding or
killing other people.  I've yet to see plans for a robot that can disarm a
human without causing them serious injury.  (We tried that to some extent
with nerve agents).

More importantly -- there is *little* crossover between technologies
developed to disable humans and technologies developed to prevent or
eliminate the possibility of their disablement (from natural causes).  You
might be able to stretch things by arguing that technologies developed to
repair injuries from bombs are not too distant from those involved in
dealing with automobile accidents.  But automobile accidents only kill
~50,000 people/year in the U.S. while aging related diseases kill several
million/yr.

I would also guess that the fraction of war financing that is going into R&D
is on the order between 1-5% not 10-20% and an even smaller fraction of that
is going into medically useful R&D from a lifespan extension perspective.
The bottom line in my book is that total NIH funding is significantly less
than $50B/yr while the war funding is pushing $500B over several years.  You
do the math.


Robert
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