This is a strong case for requiring insurance to cover egg freezing and storage, since social changes sometimes bring changes in medical needs as well. I've seen the heartbreak of friends who waited too long.
Humans often have a strong psychological bias against thinking practically about their aging and mortality, however. I wonder how we can overcome that? Maybe if insurance framed this as just a regular part of medical care. We can have people celebrate "Egg Retrieval Day" on TikTok...
I completely agree! Yes I think that bias is hard to get around, but as you suggest framing egg freezing as “normal” (at least for women who want to pursue career or other goals before children), rather than something done out of desperation could be a big part of it. Like I said, I was really surprised by the discomfort some people expressed when I mentioned I was doing it. Plus how many people acted like it was weird to do it at my age, even when I had my costs covered. I think normalizing talking about these things would be a step in the right direction.
Interesting argument with regard to concerns about depopulation. Are there any economic models that aren't predicated on growth of population forever? At times it can almost feel like our economy only works because it is like a Ponzi scheme. Could technology/automation relieve the need for endless human growth?
The reason I ask is while technology has allowed much more humans to be supported than would have originally been calculated based on our pre-tech carrying capacity will that hold 1000 years, 10,000 years, 5 million years into the future?
We are already it appears into a serious mass extinction some dub the anthropocene. Can population growth forever also allow room for other species (where habitat loss is one of the main drivers) or do they have to be a necessary casualty of the need to grow to keep our economic model working?
Yes, I think AI could relieve the need for human growth but I don't know about models that aren't predicated on growth in general... as in the AI would allow for continuous growth without more humans. But the bigger question is whether growth itself is required for systems to be functional. Obviously for most of human evolution we were not experiencing growth, so it seems like we shouldn't require growth for stability or life satisfaction, but since the enlightenment we've been accustomed to constant growth and to our lives looking much better than those of our great grandparents.
Still, it seems like there must be some maximum amount of utility that a human can experience, so I don't know that AI can improve the average standard of living beyond some point. But hypothetically it could allow for maximum human utility for as many humans as we can find space and resources for (which would also be massively expanded in this friendly AI world).
As to the extinction of other animals, from the EA point of view the question is how to create a future where we can have much more positive conscious experience. And assuming you think human lives are net positive the anthropocene led to far more new humans than we lost in terms of other animals, which means it would be seen as a net positive from the utilitarian perspective. That said, some people have aesthetic or other arguments for preferring less humans and more animals, or they think that in the very long run humans are also better off if we don't lose the animals.
This is a strong case for requiring insurance to cover egg freezing and storage, since social changes sometimes bring changes in medical needs as well. I've seen the heartbreak of friends who waited too long.
Humans often have a strong psychological bias against thinking practically about their aging and mortality, however. I wonder how we can overcome that? Maybe if insurance framed this as just a regular part of medical care. We can have people celebrate "Egg Retrieval Day" on TikTok...
I completely agree! Yes I think that bias is hard to get around, but as you suggest framing egg freezing as “normal” (at least for women who want to pursue career or other goals before children), rather than something done out of desperation could be a big part of it. Like I said, I was really surprised by the discomfort some people expressed when I mentioned I was doing it. Plus how many people acted like it was weird to do it at my age, even when I had my costs covered. I think normalizing talking about these things would be a step in the right direction.
Interesting argument with regard to concerns about depopulation. Are there any economic models that aren't predicated on growth of population forever? At times it can almost feel like our economy only works because it is like a Ponzi scheme. Could technology/automation relieve the need for endless human growth?
The reason I ask is while technology has allowed much more humans to be supported than would have originally been calculated based on our pre-tech carrying capacity will that hold 1000 years, 10,000 years, 5 million years into the future?
We are already it appears into a serious mass extinction some dub the anthropocene. Can population growth forever also allow room for other species (where habitat loss is one of the main drivers) or do they have to be a necessary casualty of the need to grow to keep our economic model working?
Yes, I think AI could relieve the need for human growth but I don't know about models that aren't predicated on growth in general... as in the AI would allow for continuous growth without more humans. But the bigger question is whether growth itself is required for systems to be functional. Obviously for most of human evolution we were not experiencing growth, so it seems like we shouldn't require growth for stability or life satisfaction, but since the enlightenment we've been accustomed to constant growth and to our lives looking much better than those of our great grandparents.
Still, it seems like there must be some maximum amount of utility that a human can experience, so I don't know that AI can improve the average standard of living beyond some point. But hypothetically it could allow for maximum human utility for as many humans as we can find space and resources for (which would also be massively expanded in this friendly AI world).
As to the extinction of other animals, from the EA point of view the question is how to create a future where we can have much more positive conscious experience. And assuming you think human lives are net positive the anthropocene led to far more new humans than we lost in terms of other animals, which means it would be seen as a net positive from the utilitarian perspective. That said, some people have aesthetic or other arguments for preferring less humans and more animals, or they think that in the very long run humans are also better off if we don't lose the animals.