[extropy-chat] The Immortal Class: Admissions Criteria

[Anders Sandberg]

giorgio gaviraghi wrote:
> With the same rationale, an immortality possibility,
> which by technological, economical or other conditions
> will initially have  effect in a limited amount of
> population, will not only create resentment but will
> be the fuel for more serious class revolutions that
> can affect all of us, and the entire society,
> jeopardizing the whole project and creating long term
> negative effects.

Hmm, your examples (suicide bomber terrorism, US paranoia-inefficiency)
are not really good support. The resentment bred by the US visa
stupidities is only making researchers go elsewhere and further weakening
US cultural status. The emergence of major terrorism waves is closer to a
good case: clearly a strong contributing factor is that many regions are
impoverished, tyrranized and hopeless, causing intense resentment against
a suitable external foe.

But immortality access resentment, is that truly likely to cause something
similar? We do not see AIDS access terrorism from (or within) Africa, do
we? Yet access to AIDS drugs is a matter of life and death. I think one of
the main defusing things is that it is not viewed as a totally hopeless
situation. From a militant Mid East perspective there is no realistic way
out (not that they would like to admit it), while from an African
perspective there is always a chance. People tend to accept inequalities
far more when they feel they are not permanent. The American Dream means
that it is OK that some people are richer than me since I believe that I
could become as rich with hard work, luck or help. Belief in progress does
the same thing: today only the yuppies can afford it, tomorrow the upper
middle class, next week everybody.

Hmm, this probably explains why Europe is so sceptical of transhuman
technologies. Neither the American Dream or progress are very popular. And
as I said in my other post, we know government redistribution doesn't work
well enough.


> For that reason immortality, as a possibility, must
> be, since the beginning a democratic choice, not
> limited to any country, group or association.

That is not going to work. It is a bit like saying technology X shouldn't
be introduced until everybody can afford it. Which means that nobody
should have it, since there is always someone who is too poor for it.
Attempts to limit access have the effect of making the technology both
even more elitistic (since those with enough money can usually evade the
access limitation), increasing prices and reducing the speed of
development.

A better approach would be to state the goal of making technology X as
widely accessible as possible, and use the democratically available funds
to speed its spread. Sure, at first only the richest will use it (after
the tens of thousands of volunteers in medical studies, of course - the
testing of life extension technologies is going to be a logistical
nightmare), but that will pay for a lot of development. During this time
the best thing to do is to speed up development and spread, for example by
distributing scarce treatments by a age-weighted lottery (why weighted?
Because older people cannot wait as long as younger). This defuses quite a
bit of the resentment problem. Sure, some people buy immortality and
others are given it, but the people who buy it are also contributing to
its development.


Unfortunately I don't think this approach will work across national
borders because health care altruism is so tribalistic.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University