* Half a million people die each year and 400 million fall ill [with malaria]
* 70% of them are children under 5
* #1 killer of pregnant women
* Malaria is preventable
Malaria nets cost $2. Antimalarial drugs are dirt cheap in the developing world. If you want to impact human suffering and increase human health, this is a good place to start. Not with trying to extend the long and already pleasant lives of rich people in the West.
The short answer is that there are lots of people and lots of resources. It’s not going to hurt if some of those resources work on problems that you don’t think have a high priority.
I bet you can find plenty of people who aren’t working to solve any problems. Why don’t you berate them instead of someone who picked a problem that you think is less important.
> It’s not going to hurt if some of those resources work on problems that you don’t think have a high priority.
Probably not for most problems, but even ignoring the QALY calculations, pathogenic diseases (like malaria) are kind of unique amongst the landscape of global issues right now, in that you can actually permanently solve them with some level of attention, at which point they no longer require any donations but continue to provide benefits forevermore.
Polio is just... gone. We don't need to fight it any more. But that's only true because we (or rather, our governments) spent a whole lot of money over a very short period. If they had spread that money out over a longer period (equivalent to what would happen if fewer people were donating), polio would still be here, and not just because we "killed it slower"—it would still be thriving, because it was only being fought with half-measures. If someone only has enough money to pay for half a course of antibiotics, they may as well not take any.
Pathogens are the best justification we have for "focus firing" public resources toward a single goal. It really is a case of "we should be spending money on nothing else until we've solved this." (At least, if we're bothering to spend any money on the problem at all. 100% or 0%, but don't bother in between.)
Once we run out of "easily"-eradicable pathogens, though, the calculus of comparative advantage resumes, and it makes sense again to donate to a variety of things.
I think if you run the numbers, there aren’t many cases of malaria in the developed world. Treating the causes related to aging will save a lot more money.
There are major efforts to treat malaria, for example. Bill Gates is putting in billions.
Depends on your time scale. Solving malaria “early” might make a few decades’ difference in when we start seeing an explosion of developed, first-world African nations (as is theorized that introducing outhouses precipitated the productivity boom in the southern US, due to a generation born without parasite exposure.) And those African nations would be more sources of scientific talent to solve problems like aging.
On the other hand, aging is unique in that solving it (or even just pushing it back a bit) gives multiplicative effects to productivity against any problem that requires decades of expertise, because it lets researchers have more productive decades and/or spend more years learning to be productive and yet still spend just as many years being productive. Malaria, at this point, isn’t quite the type of problem this would help—but there certainly are many problems where more grabbing out more productive researcher man-years from the aether would be extremely helpful.
It’s rather interesting to think in these terms: trying to figure out which advance will have “unblocked the tech tree” the most 50 years down the line. I rarely see this kind of analysis being done, though, which I find disappointing; surely there are people far better equipped than I to do it.
I alway like to consider unlocking the tech tree the most. That’s why we want a lot of people working on a lot of problems. We can’t predict which discoveries will make the most difference.
Consider all the problems you need to solve to “cure death”.
The US GDP is $17 trillion. If people starting spending billions on a more youthful old age, we’d get more research. More venture capital would go to aging research.
That assumes your goal is to maximize utility with all humans as interchangeable. On the other hand, I'm more interested in my own life and longevity than people with malaria, as a result I'm more interested in this type of work.
It's also, in a sense, an unfair argument. You could say the same thing about any other startup. "Oh your goal is to create some new app/service/software? Why not instead focus your efforts on preventing malaria?" The fact that this startup is focused on longevity should not make it more deserving of your above criticism.
No, it's not. Any interaction you have in the world can be measured against a counter-factual of interacting with the world in such a way to improve the plight of others.
Life pro-tip: your utility is correlated with the utility of a poor person in Africa. No really, it is. Climate change, war, disease, famine -- these things are directly connected to global poverty. And they are going to affect your life too, no matter where you live, no matter how insulated from them you feel in the developed world.
Separate from your argument, I find your lead-in of "life pro-tip" here to be offensive and condescending. It implies that you are an accomplished professional at living, while 'natalyarostova' is but an unthinking amateur. Did you intend it this way? Or was it meant to be humorous? Or does it serve another purpose that I'm missing?
In my experience, people who proudly evince callous indifference to the suffering of others are usually one or more of a) privileged, b) sheltered, or c) quite young. In other words, naiveté. Rarely is it due to actual, willful malice. So yes, I meant it.
My answer was a rarely honest report on my actual interactions with the world. We live in a time where give well estimates something on the order of a few thousand dollars can save a life, through malaria donations etc. How much of my income do I actually donate to these people? About 5% I guess. How much would I pay for my own longevity? Way more than that.
Would you? If given the option between extending your life to the age of 200 through yearly payments of $10,000 -- or instead donating that money to save countless lives a year, which would you do? Maybe you would donate it, I don't know you, and I won't presume the answer. But is it a callous indifference to pick yourself instead? Maybe it is, and if so, I'm callously indifferent.
We could play with those numbers though, to see how you would value an additional year of your life vs. saving a year for one of the world's poor. Would you value them the same? It's only natural to value your life, and your family's life, higher than others. What's the number where it's not callous indifference? It's worth thinking about, although I don't think the answer to these questions is pure nihilism or anything, we should definitely work to improve the world, and certainly donate more than we do now.
But the point I'm arguing against is that this doesn't mean we also need to put on hold work to improve longevity of our lives.
(It's also worth noting that this entire argument is far more nuanced and second order than the simpler one I offered above, which is that holding this business to a different standard than, say, Facebook, doesn't make sense. Any time you choose to start a business or work, you can always instead choose to go work for a firm with a mission to help the world's poor.)
As for your previous claim that it's in my direct interest to support the world's poor, that's true, but it's also not weighing it against the appropriate benchmark. The appropriate benchmark being what else could I do with that money that would benefit me.
Here's what I don't understand. You are trying to convince someone that they are being "callously indifferent to the suffering of others" by telling them that "their utility is correlated with the utility of a poor person". Sounds like you both seem to have comparable goals, just that you believe that your "way" of accomplishing the goal is superior (i.e. help others to help yourself, rather than just helping yourself)
At risk of violating some HN etiquette about memes, "pro-tip" is a word of fuzzy and common meaning since it was memed back in the ancient era of memes ("Pro-Tip: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot it until it dies.")
This is how most people work. They value their own lives and their own happiness over that of others. They will gladly buy their luxuries and let dozens of people die as long as they don't have to see them suffer. We all know this.
Just don't fool yourself. The reason we value our own happiness over the lives of others is because we are weak. That's something we have to live with, but it doesn't make it good.
>You could say the same thing about any other startup.
I don't know the answer to that. Am I weak? Is it wrong that I'm on a vacation right now, when I could have donated that money instead? Some EA say just donate 10% or so of your money and don't feel bad, which is a wonderful social convention, but it is just a convention.
If you say the same about other startups, then at least you're being consistent, and it's the inconsistency that irks me.
I don't know if I'm weak or if I should be comfortable with my selfishness. I donate, but not as much as I could. I'm not sure I'll ever know the answer. I find that wrestling with the question, at least, prevents me from going down the path of buying luxury goods and signalling, so I guess it's somewhat useful.
Serious question: where do you draw the line? At what point does life stop being a personal experience between life and death and start becoming a min-maxing of maximal utility on the planet?
While I totally understand your point, I think that the associated value judgment (you are weak if you value your own happiness over that of others) is misguided. Is strength to be solely associated with selfless altruism? What is the end-game of this ethic?
The way we think of flu in the west is roughly similar to how Africans think of malaria: a pain in the butt but not the end of the world.
Imagine what we would do if rich Africans arrived and started handing out face masks during flu season. We'd probably do what Africans do with malaria nets: say thanks and throw them in a drawer.
>The way we think of flu in the west is roughly similar to how Africans think of malaria: a pain in the butt but not the end of the world. Imagine what we would do if rich Africans arrived and started handing out face masks during flu season. We'd probably do what Africans do with malaria nets: say thanks and throw them in a drawer.
That's incredibly misleading, ignorant, and even disrespectful. First of all, malaria is a scourge that's not even comparable with common flu (even thought the latter, through sheer virulence, rivals the former in number of anual deaths). Secondly, you are absolutely talking out of your butt when you say "Africans throw our nets in the drawer"; much to the contrary, these sort initiatives are constantly shown to be one of the most effective ways to reduce malaria infections, indeed one of the most effective ways to prevent suffering in general.
Malaria nets have been shown by many organizations as being one of the most effective use of funds possible. There are very few ways to more easily and effectively reduce pain and suffering in this world. Your comparison is ridiculous.
For those who don't know, Givewell is a charity devoted to evaluating charities and writing recommendations for the most efficient and effective use of your donation money.
So my counter to that is that Givewell only recommends causes which have published evidence demonstrating their efficacy. It completely misses these more speculative “fat tail” causes, such as life extension or existential risk reduction.
There are a lot of charities handing out mosquito nets in a driveby fashion. There are not many charities working closely enough with local communities to ensure that those mosquito nets will actually be used, and they won’t be turned into fishing nets instead. If you donate to malaria prevention, make sure it’s a truly hands-on charity.
Thank you for the information. I have no connection to the charity I linked (except I think I may have given them $50 once), and I don't know which charities, if any, are effective at preventing malaria. Maybe they should be giving out fishing nets as well. It's telling that for the communities receiving these nets, they see starvation as a more immediate threat.
Anyway, my point is just that if you're looking to make optimal use of money to save or improve human lives, there are many things that should be higher priorities than stopping people dying "of old age" in the West.
Clean water is an exponentially larger problem than any single disease. From Flint, MI to Malawi, no one is going to listen to any aid worker about anything else if they’re dying due to lack of clean drinking water.
> “There are two ways to make the world a better place. You can decrease the suck, and you can increase the awesome… And I do not want to live in a world where we only focus on suck and never think about awesome.” - Hank Green
You are advocating for a crude, and disturbing, form of utilitarianism here. Ultimately, I’m a moral relativist, so I even though I can’t say another point of view is “more correct” when it comes to morality, I think engaging some effort and discernment in choosing a moral system is “good.”
That said, connecting this utilitarian reasoning to the guidelines of what research to pursue, never mind the moral aspect would lead to an impoverished field of science.
On the everyday perspective, if one is suffering from ill health, but not from poverty and malaria, the idea that concern for your suffering should be set aside until the numeric quantification of the suffering of other populations is brought in line with your own, lacks compassion.
Value systems that lack compassion defeat their own purpose.
* Half a million people die each year and 400 million fall ill [with malaria]
* 70% of them are children under 5
* #1 killer of pregnant women
* Malaria is preventable
Malaria nets cost $2. Antimalarial drugs are dirt cheap in the developing world. If you want to impact human suffering and increase human health, this is a good place to start. Not with trying to extend the long and already pleasant lives of rich people in the West.