One note: this post, like Gawande's book, seems to assume that death is inevitable and that longevity projects will definitely fail. I don't find that surprising for Gawande, but I do find it more surprising for you, given that your interests (eg, in AGI x-risk) seem to have more overlap with the Less Wrong memeplex. Do you think that the probability of (a) brain preservation/cryonics or (b) longevity escape velocity working is so low as to be negligible? If so, what makes you think that? Or perhaps you are just not discussing that here. Of course, no pressure to respond if you'd rather not discuss this, but I'm just commenting because I'm curious.
As a side note, the central point of this article is devoid of good data: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/. The notion that doctors do not want more interventions towards the end of their lives is not consistent with my experience. I think it is probably not true.
Thanks for this comment, Andy. I don’t think that death is inevitable or that longevity projects will definitely fail (and especially not in the context of advanced AI possibly speeding up science a lot). But I didn’t want to get into that topic for this post in particular.
And thanks for your skepticism re: “how doctors die” — seems like the main claim there could well be false.
Interesting post and important topic!
One note: this post, like Gawande's book, seems to assume that death is inevitable and that longevity projects will definitely fail. I don't find that surprising for Gawande, but I do find it more surprising for you, given that your interests (eg, in AGI x-risk) seem to have more overlap with the Less Wrong memeplex. Do you think that the probability of (a) brain preservation/cryonics or (b) longevity escape velocity working is so low as to be negligible? If so, what makes you think that? Or perhaps you are just not discussing that here. Of course, no pressure to respond if you'd rather not discuss this, but I'm just commenting because I'm curious.
As a side note, the central point of this article is devoid of good data: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/. The notion that doctors do not want more interventions towards the end of their lives is not consistent with my experience. I think it is probably not true.
Thanks for this comment, Andy. I don’t think that death is inevitable or that longevity projects will definitely fail (and especially not in the context of advanced AI possibly speeding up science a lot). But I didn’t want to get into that topic for this post in particular.
And thanks for your skepticism re: “how doctors die” — seems like the main claim there could well be false.