How much money would it take to engineer biological immortality for at least half of the world's population, within 20 years, with 99% confidence?
We all know that human pregnancy doesn't scale. We all know that some other problems do scale. So I really don't understand those 18 points to the comment. One can always think up many different analogies leading to different conclusions. Even if we ignore scaling issue, sigma of duration of pregnancy is smth like a week perhaps. However other processes like creative thinking or inventing new ideas might have sigma comparable to mean.
We all know that human pregnancy doesn't scale. We all know that some other problems do scale
I'm not sure what you mean by "scale." When you say that some problems "do scale," I assume you mean that there are tasks where if you double the resources thrown at them, the amount of time to complete the task will be cut in half.
If you look at large, complicated projects involving new technologies, there seem to be at least several aspects to the project: First, the creative brilliant thinking; second, actual construction, manufacturing, and assembly; and third, the small and large failures which occur along the way, which require rethinking, redesigning, and re-manufacturing various components and concepts.
It is this third aspect which concerns me. Because it appears to be an iterative process which will suck down a minimum amount of time no matter how clever you are and no matter how much resources you throw at a problem.
Not only that, there is also the problem of coordination and communication. Common sense says that this will result in diminishing returns.
Of course nobody knows just what's involved in creating practical immortality, but I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that for the above reasons it will necessarily require a good deal more than 20 years no matter how much of a priority it is.
So I really don't understand those 18 points to the comment.
Probably people thought it was cool that I made reference to The Mythical Man Month.
However other processes like creative thinking or inventing new ideas might have sigma comparable to mean.
If it were just creative thinking or inventing new ideas, I would be inclined to agree. But there is still the iterative process of engineering, building, testing, revising, etc. And there's a lot that can go wrong with a human body so presumably there are a lot of problems to solve.
I would estimate approximately
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM ...
Is it permissible to write III^^^III ?
How much money would it take to engineer biological immortality for at least half of the world's population, within 20 years, with 99% confidence?
More than the entire world's GDP.
Really, though, 99 % confidence is too big of a number to be throwing around when we're talking about problems that are this hard to solve. Also, things like "how is the money being spent" matter a lot, too.
I do want anti-aging research to work. It's just that even a 2% chance that there's a sufficiently difficult short-term roadblock to engineering anti-aging tech would guarantee that no amount of resources could spur us to engineer biological immortality for that many people with 99% confidence in the next 20 years.
The biggest money should be spent not on research, but on lobbing, by the way.
One of the ways to do it is to change regulation which will allow to create "human brainless clones" and a technology to transfer a brain from old body to the new one. (Now both technologies are banned, and head transplants banned even on rats).
Head transplant technology is now in its infancy but large investment could make it cheap and safe.
But other large scale investments in antiaging, cryonics, artificial organs digital immortality would also help.
Creation of safe AI in the next 20 years will also solve the problem.
I guestimate 1 trillion dollars a year for all it or even less.
My naive linear model is that ~$400 billion research funding currently spent per year buys about 1 year increased lifespan per decade, so it would take about $4 trillion per year spent on research to stop aging, or a one-time investment of $80 trillion. For 99% confidence I'll add a safety factor of 4, yielding a one-time payment of $320 trillion, or $16 trillion per year. In other words, this back-of-the-envelope guess suggests the entire economic output of the United States would be just sufficient to discover and maintain an aging cure.