[ExI] Should the US fund life-extension research?

[Anders Sandberg]

On 24/06/2012 23:39, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> You know what burns up and wastes a lot of the passion
> that we could be using to actually get stuff done?
>
> Internet petitions.

Very true. Tonis Tonisson pointed out in his excellent handbook "Power 
as a hobby" that mass demonstrations don't impress people with power 
much. They are a demonstration that somebody has organisational skill, 
nothing more. What tends to get them impressed is when they get letters 
from people of importance who support or object to something.

The book was written before the Internet, but the lesson is still true. 
A million supporters or petitioners online isn't even a fraction as 
impressive as a small march to Washington. The "organiser" is after all 
just software and word-of-mouth.

However, while the impact of the letter from the titans of 
industry/academia/religion/whatever is big, one should not underestimate 
the impact of ordinary letters too. A friend worked at a newspaper 
internal to a big political party, and he remarked that if they got two 
independent letters to the editor about the same issue, they tended to 
take notice and maybe run a story about it. There are leverage effects 
in sending signals to the right places.

For life extension I think getting the people who set the agenda for the 
NIH and NIA is a key project. If they can be made aware that a direct 
attack on ageing solves a lot of their problems and that a lot of 
important people care about the issue, then they might put some pressure 
on actual research on fixing ageing and not just stopgap measures.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University