>The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostrom, et al. don't is that sometimes even if something is extremely important or significant the lack of any reasonable approach to it makes it an unattractive thing to expend effort on. At least until a solution is more tractable.
Further, the idea that women dying in childbirth is some great tragedy is only true in the philosophy Bostrom and others have adopted. It is one of massive egoism and human-centrism that I think is misplaced. These same people then reject any philosophies that lessen the devastation of women dying in childbirth on the grounds that they are the fictions of lesser minds attempting to placate themselves over their impending death during childbirth. But there is no objectively true philosophy. The whole point of philosophy is to invent a fiction that lets you cope with reality in a productive way.
I find your conception of philosophy unsatisfactory. Furthermore there are reasonable angles of attack we have on aging. We are making great strides in understanding metabolic pathways of aging in animal models, but we need the research funding to attract the researchers to get the work done. We will make significant progress when you can expect to have a bountiful academic career working on it. Longevity research is currently a career dead end.
> Longevity research is currently a career dead end.
Ouch, that's my career ;)
But the current trick to do longevity research in a way that will be funded is to point out how major diseases have age as a major risk factor, and that to tackle cancer, heart disease, etc, we need to understand more about aging. And that the median age in the US is increasing, therefore age-associated diseases will cause more of a health care cost burden.
In absolute terms, our society spends a pittance on this important problem. But relative to other biomedical researchers, aging researchers don't have that hard a time. You just have to be careful not to make overly bold claims and be lumped in with de Grey et al.
To summarize my thoughts on this article, I will add that I independently came to much the same conclusions as the OP, and that's why I'm doing what I am. I don't think I could make web apps all day or do 99% of careers because of this very absurdity. In fact, I am constantly surprised at the ability most people seem to have to go to a completely meaningless job every day.
> Longevity research is currently a career dead end.
David Sinclair[0] is wealthy and well known for his work in longevity. He Sold his company to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million.
D Sinclair's earlier work was on resveratrol, and there's some more products coming. Well, actually one has arrived—in the US at least: http://www.elysiumhealth.com/
nothing you said changes the incentives in front of researchers. Grant money is there in the billions for cancer research, obesity research etc. There is essentially no grant money there for basic longevity research. I say this having spoken with people trying to get funding for basic longevity research.
Maybe there's just less longevity researchers. The absolute funding makes little difference from an individual career perspective–even if it does have a large effect on the field as a whole.
I've linked to a page of academics from top institutions[0]. If you're at Harvard researching longevity, then you're doing OK career-wise, imho.
If you sell your company for $720 million, you're doing OK career-wise, imo.
I find your conception of philosophy unsatisfactory. Furthermore there are reasonable angles of attack we have on aging. We are making great strides in understanding metabolic pathways of aging in animal models, but we need the research funding to attract the researchers to get the work done. We will make significant progress when you can expect to have a bountiful academic career working on it. Longevity research is currently a career dead end.