Containing 160+ essays from over 40 contributors, this edited volume of essays on the science, philosophy and politics o...
LONGEVITIZE! ESSAYS ON THE SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY & POLITICS OF LONGEVITY
EDITED BY: FRANCO CORTESE
© 2013 Center for Transhumanity ISBN: 978-0-9919824-2-4 Published by Center for Transhumanity Cover: “Oak fractured by a lightning bolt. Allegory on wife's death.” (1842) by Maxim Vorobiev Cover Design by Wendy Stolyarov
This volume is dedicated to the 36.5 million people that will have died this year from agecorrelated diseases that are in principle preventable and unnecessary.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITOR’S PREFACE___
PART ONE: LONGEVITY’S POSSIBLE PROBLEMS___
1. WON’T MINDCLONES ONLY BE FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS?
MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D, MBA, J.D. 2. DESIGN AS BIOLOGY: MORE SUSTAINABLE CITIES FOR A GROWING POPULATION
RACHEL ARMSTRONG, PH.D. 3. FUTURE OF URBAN FARMING: MORE FOOD FOR LONGER-LIVING PEOPLE
FREIJA VAN DUIJNE, PH.D. 4. IF IMMORTALITY CREATES HORRIBLE OVERPOPULATION, WHAT NEW ZONES SHOULD WE
COLONIZE? IMMORTAL LIFE DEBATE FORUM 5. SUPERLONGEVITY WITHOUT OVERPOPULATION
MAX MORE, PH.D 6. LONGEVITY LOGISTICS: WE CAN MANAGE THE EFFECTS OF OVERPOPULATION
FRANCO CORTESE 7. OVERPOPULATION & EXTINCTION
DAVID KEKICH
PART TWO: LONGEVITY PHILOSOPHY___
8. IMMORTALISM: ERNEST BECKER AND ALAN HARRINGTON ON OVERCOMING BIOLOGICAL
LIMITATIONS JASON SILVA 9. REFUTING THE “INDEFINITE LONGEVITY WILL SLOW PROGRESS” CRITICISM
FRANCO CORTESE 10. LAZARUS LONG
JOHN ELLIS , PH.D. 11. TECHNO-IMMORTALISM 101: WHAT ARE MINDFILES?
MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D., MBA, J.D. 12. LONGEVITY AND THE INDIAN TRADITION
ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D 13. WHENCE COMETH DEATH? JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D 14. DEAD AS A DOORNAIL?
PETER ROTHMAN 15. THE OBJECTIVIST-EXTROPIAN SYNTHESIS G. STOLYAROV II 16. “LET A THOUSAND TURTLES FLY” IN THE FACE OF IMMORTALITY
GIULIO PRISCO 17. ARE THERE TRANSHUMANS AMONG US?
DAVID KEKICH 18. THE IRRATIONALITY OF THE VIEW THAT LIFE IS SOMETIMES NOT WORTH LIVING
G. STOLYAROV II 19. BIO-PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR HUMAN BIOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL., 20. TRANSHUMANISM AND MIND UPLOADING ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS
G. STOLYAROV II 21. THINK
MILE 22. LONGEVITY AND JEWISH TRADITION ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D 23. I-NESS: WHAT DOES AND DOES NOT PRESERVE THE SELF?
G. STOLYAROV II 24. HOW CAN A MINDCLONE BE IMMORTAL IF IT’S NOT EVEN ALIVE?
MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D., MBA, J.D. 25. CLEARING UP COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION & SUBSTRATE
INDEPENDENCE FRANCO CORTESE
26. CAN CONSCIOUSNESS SURVIVE PHYSICAL DISCONTINUITY?
G. STOLYAROV II 27. IS YOUR BRAIN “YOU”? DAVID KEKICH 27. PEOPLE WHO JUSTIFY AGING ARE PROFOUNDLY WRONG MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 28. COPING WITH DEATH: THE COSMIST THIRD WAY
GIULIO PRISCO 29. DEATH IS NOT MY BRAIN’S FRIEND - I BELIEVE IN NEUROLOGY, NOT IN GOD GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D 30. THERE IS NO EXPERIENCE WORTH DYING FOR
G. STOLYAROV II 31. TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW?
ERIC SCHULKE 32. DESIRING IMMORTALITY
JASON XU 33. THE SUFFERING OF WHICH YOU SPARE YOURSELF THE SIGHT MILE 34. MY FRIENDS BREAK MY HEART DAVID KEKICH
35. THE ADVANTAGES OF IMMORTALITY
G. STOLYAROV II 36. IMMORTALITY IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME!
B.J. MURPHY 37. HOW WILL LIFE EXTENSION CHANGE RELIGION? G. STOLYAROV II 38. ASK THE AGED IF THEY SUFFER
MILE 39. AN ATHEIST’S RESPONSE TO PASCAL’S WAGER
G. STOLYAROV II 40. PROGRESS, HOPE & HUMAN LONGEVITY DAVID KEKICH 41. REFUTING THE “TECHNICAL INFEASIBILITY” ARGUMENT FRANCO CORTESE 42. NATURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND – BUT TRANSHUMANISM IS!
ROEN HORN 43. LONGEVITY IN THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D 44. COULD RELIGIONS COME TO ADOPT A NATURALISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON RESSURECTION AND JUDGEMENT? G. STOLYAROV II
45. WHAT WILL LIFE-EXTENSION DO TO RELATIONSHIPS?
LINDA GAMBLE 46. WHAT WILL LIFE EXTENSION DO TO CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT?
G. STOLYAROV II 47. HUMANITY’S NATURE IS TO TAKE ON PROBLEMS LIKE DEATH
MILE 48. THE GLOBAL BRAIN & ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN BIOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL., 49. LIFE IS WORTH LIVING – FOREVER!
G. STOLYAROV II 50. AMALGAMATION OF INDEFINITE LIFE EXTENSION AND TRANSCENDENCE AS WE MOVE
TOWARD THE FUTURE JAMESON ROHRER 51. DEATH COSTS THE WORLD A LOT OF OPPORTUNITY
ERIC SCHULKE AND VIOLETTA KARKUCINSKA 52. LIFE AND LIBERTY: WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT?
G. STOLYAROV II 53. OCCAM’S RAZOR & THE SOUL
YANIV CHEN 54. EVOLUTION: BIOLOGICAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, SOCIETAL
G. STOLYAROV II 55. REJUVENATION RE RELIGION FRANCO CORTESE
PART THREE: LONGEVITY POLITICS___
56. DEBATE FORUM: WHICH WILL BE THE FIRST NATION TO OFFER STATE-SUBSIDIZED
IMMORTALITY TO ITS CITIZENS? IMMORTALLIFE.INFO DEBATE FORUMS 57. THE LONGEVITY PARTY MANIFESTO
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 58. THE LONGEVITY PARTY – WHO NEEDS IT? WHO WANTS IT?
ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D 59. PRIVATE OR GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR INDEFINITE LIFE-EXTENSION?
G. STOLYAROV II 60. LETTER TO SERGEY BRIN
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 61. STUDY GERONTOLOGY! THIS FRONTIER PROVIDES HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
ERIC SCHULKE 62. DEATH IS TERRORISM
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 63. INTERNATIONAL LONGEVITY ALLIANCE MANIFESTO
ILA 64. LIBERTY THROUGH LONG LIFE G. STOLYAROV II 65. HOW MUCH DOES AGING COST YOU?
DAVID KEKICH 66. WHAT IS THE BOTTLENECK FOR PROGRESS IN BIOMEDICAL GERONTOLOGY? FRANCO CORTESE 67. HOW TO COMMUNICATE THE LIFE EXTENSION AGENDA
PETER WICKS 68. SUPPORT LIFE, NOT WAR
TOM MOONEY 69. HOW TO GET THE WORLD TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT DEATH MILE 70. EVERYONE MUST MAKE THEIR OWN TRANSHUMANIST WAGER ZOLTAN ISTVAN 71. STRATEGIES FOR HASTENING THE ARRIVAL OF INDEFINITE LIFE EXTENSION G. STOLYAROV II 72. TAKE ACTION!
ILA 73. TRANSHUMANISM AS A GRAND CONSERVATISM
G. STOLYAROV II 74. INVERTING A TECHNOPOLITICAL TROPE: ON THE HUBRIS OF NEO-LUDDISM FRANCO CORTESE 75. TALKING TO PEOPLE ABOUT LIFE EXTENSION: IF THEY SAY NO MILE 76. DEFEATING AGING AND DEATH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AND URGENT GOAL FOR HUMANKIND
GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D. 77. INTERNATIONAL LONGEVITY ALLIANCE INITIATIVES ILA 78. PROBLEMS WITH NIA FUNDING DISTRIBUTION
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 79. A LIBERTARIAN-TRANSHUMANIST CRITIQUE OF JEFFREY TUCKER’S “A LESSON IN
MORTALITY” G. STOLYAROV II 80. DOES THE WORDS “IMMORTALITY” & “FOREVER” DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR OUR
CAUSE? JOHN R LEONARD 81. HOW TO CONVINCE SKEPTICS & FENCE-SITTERS
ERIC SCHULKE 82. THE COALITION TO EXTEND LIFE
TOM MOONEY
83. WHY BIOTECH IS UNLIKELY TO BE THE WAY
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL., 84. IT’S ABOUT LIFE-EXTENSION, NOT ENDING PAIN AND DEBILITATION MILE 85. MAXIMUM LIFE FOUNDATION CAPITOL WHITE PAPER DAVID KEKICH
PART FOUR: LONGEVITY PRAGMATICS___
LIFESTYLE___
86. DEBATE FORUM: WHAT IS THE BEST LONGEVITY EXERCISE?
IMMORTAL LIFE DEBATE FORUM DEBATE 87. LONGEVITY LIFESTYLE
DAVID KEKICH 88. LONGEVITY RUNNING: LIFE EXTENSION SCIENTIST BILL ANDREW’S 138-MILE HIMALAYAN
ULTRAMARATHON JASON SUSSBERG 89. LONGEVITY & EXERCISE
DAVID WESTMORELAND 90. THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP YOUR WEALTH INTACT: KEEPING YOUR HEALTH INTACT
DAVID KEKICH
91. ENDURANCE EXERCISE STUDY SAYS 40 IS THE NEW 80
MARC RANSFORD 92. 3 WAYS ANIMAL PROTEINS JUST MIGHT KILL YOU
JONATHAN BECHTEL 93. RULES OF THUMB FOR ESTIMATING YOUR BIOLOGICAL AGE
DAVID KEKICH 94. VEGETARIANISM & LONGEVITY
JOERN PALLENSEN 95. THE CHINA STUDY: VEGANISM & LONGEVITY
JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D 96. 20 HEALTH BENEFITS OF MEDITATION
DAVID KEKICH 97. RUNNING & WEIGHTLIFTING FOR NEUROGENESIS & LIFE-EXTENSION ALEX LIGHTMAN 98. “NATURAL” ANTI-AGING IS AN OXYMORON
JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D.
TECH___
99. CHEMICAL BRAIN PRESERVATION: CRYONICS FOR MIND-UPLOADERS
GIULIO PRISCO
100. MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY & LONGEVITY
DICK PELLETIER 101. PREVENTATIVE TESTING FOR AGING
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 102. 3D-PRINTED CYBERNETIC APPENDAGES
JAMESON ROHRER 103. ORGAN AND TISSUE REPLACEMENT COULD END AGING BY 2020
DICK PELLETIER 104. CREATION OF ARTIFICIAL CELLS DEALS FATAL BLOW TO VITALISM G. STOLYAROV II 105.MEDICINE WILL TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF BIOLOGY
DAVID KEKICH 106. SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY’S PROMISE
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 107. LONGEVITY & THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY DICK PELLETIER 108. LONGEVITY, DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING & VIDEO GAMES
G. STOLYAROV II 109. NANOTECH TO END DISEASE, AGING & POVERTY
DICK PELLETIER 110. BIOHACKING 101: WHY SELF –EXPERIMENT?
WINSLOW STRONG 111. DIY NANOTECH DOUBLES LIFESPAN IN MICE!
GRINDHOUSE WETWARES 112. CRYONICS 101
JAMESON ROHRER
PHARMA___
113. TELOMERASE HISTORY & TIPS
DAVID KEKICH 114. SUPPLEMENTAL SKINNINESS JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D. 115. ASTRAGALUS: IS THIS ANCIENT CHINESE HERB THE TELOMERE-ENABLER OF THE FUTURE? JONATHAN BECHTEL 116. EXCITING DISCOVERY OF 2,000 YEAR-OLD TIBETAN ROOT
JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D. 117. THE SEARCH FOR A MIRACLE LONGEVITY DRUG TO SLOW, HALT OR REVERSE CELL
SENESCENCE DAVID KEKICH 118. BRAIN CHEMISTRY AND LIFESPAN JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D.
RESEARCH ___
119. POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS OF TELOMERE BIOLOGY
WILLIAM H. ANDREWS, PH.D 120. LONGEVITY: WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
DAVID WESTMORELAND 121. EXTREME LIFESPANS THROUGH PERPETUALLY EQUALIZING INTERVENTIONS
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL., 122. DR. DAVID SINCAIR MAKES PROGRESS IN THE WAR ON BIOLOGICAL AGING
G. STOLYAROV II 123. 14 KNOWN MECHANISMS OF AGING AND THEIR SOLUTIONS
DAVID KEKICH 124. ALZHEIMER’S IS A PROBLEM OF IMBALANCE, NOT TOXICITY
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 125. THE DEMOGRAPHIC THEORY OF AGING
JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D 126. EXTREME LIFE EXTENSION THROUGH EXPOSURE TO INFORMATION
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL., 127. JOY IS 60% OUT OF OUR CONTROL
DAVID WESTMORELAND
128. SQUARING THE MORTALITY CURVE OR EXTENDING LONGEVITY? DAVID KEKICH 129. PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY IS POSSIBLE: ASK TURRITOPSIS NUTRICULA!
G. STOLYAROV II 130. AN EXCEPTION TO SEVERAL THEORIES OF AGING: THE NAKED MOLE RAT
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 131. THE INTEGRATION OF STEM CELL MEDICINE
DAVID KEKICH 132. THE OCEAN QUAHOG: A CLAM THAT CAN LIVE FOR OVER 400 YEARS
G. STOLYAROV II\ 133. AGING IS AN ACTIVE PROCESS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D
PART FIVE: THE ART OF LONGEVITY___
134. HEY KIDS, DON’T FORGET TO TAKE MY BRAIN OUT OF THE FREEZER!
HANK PELLISSIER 135. QUESTIONS TO A TRANSHUMANIST
GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D 136. RE-LIVE/RE-BOOT B.J. MURPHY 137. 2033 IMMORTALIST FICTION CONTEST WINNER
G. STOLYAROV II 138. OPEN LETTER TO THE CLOSED CASKET
FRANCO CORTESE 139. I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO BE IMMORTAL HANK PELLISSIER 140. JONATHAN SWIFT'S STRULDBRUGS, IMMORTALITY, AND NEGLIGIBLE SENESCENCE
G. STOLYAROV II 141. IMMORTALIST REMIX: I HAVE A DREAM
ERIC SCHULKE 142. CYBERNETIC LOVE POEM
GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D. 143. MONOLOGUE OF IMMORTAL MAN G. STOLYAROV II 144. JOIN IMMORTALISM, OR DIE!
HANK PELLISSIER 145. IMMORTALIST HIPHOP
MAITREYA ONE 146. HOME IS WARE THE HEARTH IS
FRANCO CORTESE 147. TRANSHUMANIST REVOLUTION
ZOLTAN ISTVAN
PART SIX: LONGEVITY POPCULTURE, PROGRAMS & EVENTS___
148. BILL GATES WANTS TO BE IMMORTAL?
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 149. SURPRISING HEALTH HABITS OF THE ULTRA-WEALTHY
DAVID KEKICH 150. LONGEVITY & THE TRANSHUMAN CLYDE DESOUZA 151. GOOGLE WANTS TO FUND LIFE-EXTENSION START-UPS MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 152. WILL GOOGLE’S RAY KURZWEIL LOVE FOREVER?
DAVID KEKICH 153. TRANSHUMANIST MEDIA CONTENT MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC. 154. IMMORTAL LIFE INTERVIEW WITH R.U. SIRIUS, BIOGRAPHER OF TIM LEARY
HANK PELLISSIER & R.U. SIRIUS 155. ANTI-IMMORTALIST CINEMA B.J. MURPHY 156. BAD CINEMA
MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
157. INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT ETTINGER GIULIO PRISCO & ROBERT ETTINGER 158. GF2045: MORE ACTION, LESS TALK! RANDAL A. KOENE, PH.D 159. GLOBAL FUTURE GONGRESS 2045, NEWYORK CITY WINSLOW STRONG 160. GF2045: WHAT WILL WE LOOK LIKE IN 2045? DAVID KEKICH 161. HELP CONQUER DEATH WITH CITIZEN SCIENTIST GRANTS & RESEARCH FUNDING FROM
LONGECITY! FRANCO CORTESE 162. SILICON VALLEY TRANSHUMANIST ESTABLISHES “RESURRECTION GROUPS”
JASON XU 163. THE MOVEMENT FOR INDEFINITE LIFE-EXTENSION (MILE): THE NEXT STEP FOR HUMANKIND
G. STOLYAROV II 164. CYPRUS SYMPOSION – “PATHWAYS TO INDEFINITE LIFESPANS”
MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL.,
CONTRIBUTORS
APPENDIX I: ORGANIZATIONS & INSTITUTIONS OF INTEREST COMPILED BY FRANCO CORTESE
APPENDIX II: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON LONGEVITY COMPILED BY G. STOLYAROV II
EDITOR’S PREFACE
The eradication of involuntary death via science and technology will be the defining feat of our century. Involuntary death and suffering is nothing less than the crisis of our times, and the complete abolishment of involuntary aging as quickly as possible is a moral imperative if there ever was one. 100,000 real, living people die per day from age-correlated disease and functional decline; 3 Million people lost per month to causes that are not inevitable, but instead have specific material causes that can be remediated and even reversed through a variety of medical therapies already visible on the developmental horizon. Look at what humanity has done with and on this earth – the myriad ways in which we have whorled the very world itself to betterembody our values and desires. To say that continually increasing human lifespans is technically infeasible is to laugh in the face of history, and 3 Million in-principal preventable human deaths per month – 36.5 Million deaths per year – is an untenable situation in a civilization as capable as ours. Indefinite longevity has been a long time coming. Death’s final defeat can arguably be seen as inherent, or at least embryonic, in the rise of modern medicine, which made it increasingly apparent that the causes of physical disease and functional decline were physical and procedural rather than moral and metaphysical. If the body and mind were material systems amenable to physical changes, then what was to stop us from keeping the body in a healthy condition through the correct series of physical manipulations, potentially indefinitely? A body in full functional optimality has a certain set of phenotypic correlates. A body in functional decline (i.e. having sustained accumulated damage from aging) has an alternate set of phenotypic correlates. If we can sustain and perpetuate the phenotypes correlating with functional optimality, then what, really, is to stop us from doing so potentially indefinitely – in other words, from removing and reversing any deviation from the phenotypes correlative with functional optimality? The 20th century witnessed the convergence of multiple alternative approaches to indefinitelyextending human lifespans. We see the formulation of increasingly precise tools for making changes to the body on the molecular scale – genetic engineering, recombinant DNA and gene therapies, regenerative medicines (e.g. bio-printing, stem-cell replacement therapies) and synthetic biology. These tools progressively developed into what can be considered the biotechnological approach to indefinite life-extension, epitomized by Aubrey de Grey’s Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, which locates 7 major causes of “aging” (that
is, age-correlated functional decline for individuals, and an increase in the mortality rate as a function of age for populations) and posits 7 distinct biomedical approaches to either reversing the effects of those seven “deadly causes” or making their effects negligible. We also see the conceptual formulation of nanotechnology – first by Richard Feynman in his seminal 1959 lecture “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” and later developed more formally in K. Eric Drexler’s Nanosystems, which described his notion of “mechanosynthesis” – that is, configuring molecules through mechanical manipulation at the atomic scale rather than through chemical reaction. This paved the way for Robert A. Freitas’s groundbreaking work in Nanomedicine – although Drexler did lay a conceptual foundation for the health and medical use of nanomachines in his popular book Engines of Creation. With machines small enough to fit inside not only our bloodstreams, but our very cells, we would appear to be able to fix almost any sort of structural, connectional or procedural damage – i.e. phenotypic deviation – leading to or correlating with aging. Indeed, with the nanotechnological approach we needn’t even necessarily understand the mechanisms underlying the formation, regulation and growth of the disease or phenotypic (e.g. structural or procedural) correlate(s) of functional decline; if we know the molecular structures and procedural-parameters correlating with functional optimality, and we have machines capable of atomically-precise molecular manipulation, then we can simply revert any such phenotypic deviations to normality (i.e. to the phenotype(s) correlating with optimal or normative functionality), recurrently, regardless of their ultimate or underlying cause(s). The 20th century also witnessed the conception of a third broad approach to reversing the effects of aging, recurrently and potentially indefinitely: ‘Mind-Uploading’, or the notion of transferring the mind residing in or embodied by one’s brain into a computer. This concept appears to have been first introduced by J.D Bernal in The World, The Flesh and the Devil, where he wrote “…for even the replacement of a previously organic brain-cell by a synthetic apparatus would not destroy the continuity of consciousness…”, and continued forward by Arthur C. Clarke, who envisioned a transfer from brain to computer in his 1956 novel The City and the Stars. The notion was further developed by Hans Moravec in his 1988 book Mind Children, and later by Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near. The notion eventually evolved into the contemporary intellectual movement of Substrate Independent Minds and the academic discipline of Whole Brain Emulation, explored by such projects and groups as Randal A. Koene’s CarbonCopies.org., the 2045 Avatar Project, Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project and the similarly-aimed recent US BRAIN Initiative. But while progress has been and is being made, progress does not make itself. Some think that the best approach to take is to wait it out while living as healthily as one can until the breakthroughs are made. But progress is not some external force or thing – progress is us. We are the prime mediators of progress. Jow long it takes to achieve continually-extended lifespans is
determined by how much attention, demand and funding it receives today and tomorrow. The bottleneck for progress in biomedical gerontology may be funding, but the bottleneck for funding is demand, desire, advocacy and lobbying. You can have an impact on the fight to end the finality of death as a non-scientist and non-technologist. You can write a letter to your local politician. You can spread the word that death’s final death is finally on the developmental horizon. You can publicly advocate for more government research initiatives, policy reports, and feasibility studies. You can volunteer at such non-profit organizations as LongeCity or the International Longevity Alliance. And considering that the amount of time it takes to achieve continually-increasing longevity is a function of how hard we work for it, which is in turn a function of how hard we demand it, advocate it and lobby for it, then working to hasten the birth of an ageless age is one of the most ethical and noble ways that one could spend their time, in terms of the number of involuntary-deaths prevented and the amount of suffering preemptivelynegated. Longevity cannot be left solely to the scientist and technologist – because it is larger society that determines what is worthy of science’s surveyance, what problems are important and should get funding – in short, the scope and extent of science. We need longevity to enter the arena of politics, of activism, of art. We need men and women of every craft to take in hand their chosen tool and demand the right to increasingly-longer life. We need every layman to stand up and say ‘Down with the childhood lies of death’s inevitability, or dignity, or naturality; down with the obscene lie that we have no choice but to lie down at long last. We are human – we, who have stood up to raise ourselves up from the very beginning. We are the species defined by our proclivity to deny and defy definition, to say doom to duty, and finally, to say death to death.’ Accordingly, this volume considers longevity from a variety of viewpoints: scientific, technological, philosophical, pragmatic, artistic. In it you will find not only information on the ways in which science and medicine are bringing about the potential to reverse aging and defeat death within many of our own lifetimes, as well as the ways that you can increase your own longevity today in order to be there for tomorrow’s promise, but also a glimpse at the art, philosophy and politics of longevity as well – areas that will become increasingly important as we realize that advocacy, lobbying and activism can play as large a part in the hastening of progress in indefinite lifespans as science and technology. The contributors of this volume are taking part in this most righteous of plights, the fight to finally end the fickle final night and sickly-sanctified oblivion called involuntary death. This volume is entirely indebted to their contributions. These men and women, along with the many researchers, advocates, activists, artists and supporters of indefinite longevity who have not found their way into the present volume, are the true heroes of our time. And it is never too late to join them.
FRANCO CORTESE
PART ONE: LONGEVITY’S POSSIBLE PROBLEMS OVERPOPULATION, RESOURCE SCARCITY, THERAPY-AVAILABILITY & ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
LACE AND GHOSTS (1856) BY VICTOR HUGO
WON’T MINDCLONES ONLY BE FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS? BY: MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D, MBA, J.D.
1987 was the first year in which one billion people boarded airline flights. In that year the world’s population hit 5 billion, meaning approximately 20% of all people experienced a fantastic luxury not available to history’s wealthiest monarchs. By 2005 two billion people were boarding airliners each year, and the world’s population had grown to 6.5 billion. In the short span of years between 1987 and 2005, airline flight grew from being a right of 20% to a right of 31% of humanity, from barely a fifth to almost a third. Even assuming more frequent flights by the wealthier, this is startling evidence of the democratization of technology. 1987 was also noteworthy as the first year mobile phone sales hit one million units. A tool for the rich? Twenty-two years later, in 2009, half the world’s population owned their own mobile phone. From one million to three billion in 22 years. Even assuming some rich people have two or more mobiles, this is undeniable evidence of the democratization of technology. As with flying and phoning, so it will be with mindcloning. At first just a few. Almost overnight it will be almost everyone. Technology democratizes. That’s what it does. I can’t think of a technology that does not democratize. Heart transplants? The first was in 1967, and currently thousands of poor and middle class people are getting them each year, mostly in countries such as the United States (including at least one impoverished prisoner), but also countries such as Vietnam and India (where the first recipient was the wife of a handkerchief vendor). The improvement of eyesight? Eyeglasses are almost universally available, and in wealthier countries even those in the lowest wealth deciles of the population routinely wear contact lenses or have corrective eye surgery. Even in totalitarian countries, technology democratizes. Citizens of non-capitalist or nondemocratic countries rarely lack TVs or radios, even if they have little interesting content available. Aside from sub-Saharan Africa, 90% or more of all urban populations worldwide have access to electricity, and even 50% or more have access in rural areas.[1] Even in Africa, wracked by impediments to technological development, two-thirds of city dwellers and a quarter
of villagers have electricity.[2] Not one single person, monarch or mendicant, had access to the magic of electricity for over 97% of recorded history. Yet, in that last three percent of recorded history since the technology arose, it has been made available to over half the species, including the poor in the great majority of countries. Facts such as this demonstrate that mindcloning technology will rapidly be available to the masses. What possible reason would there be for mindcloning technology to be a unique exception to the overwhelming tendency of technology to democratize, especially information technology? It would have to be something uniquely related to mindcloning. It could not be anything such as mindcloning involving storage of a lot of personal data – many companies have already democratized that function. The only thing really unique about mindcloning is that it creates a new form of life, vitological life. In fact, though, there are many examples of democratized technology for creating new forms of life. From biologically-produced new kinds of medicine (ie, creating new kinds of bacteria that make pharmaceutical ingredients), to transgenically-produced new kinds of crops and animals, new forms of life have in every instance been rapidly made available to far greater populations than the rich. Perhaps it is the fact that the mindclones will be sentient life that will be used as an argument to restrict them to the rich? Not a chance. Humans produce sentient life by the mega-ton, from pets to pregnancies, and there is no possible way for the rich to corner the market (nor would there be any reason to do so). Or maybe it is the fact that the mindclones might be so smart that the rich will want to keep all of that intelligence for their own quest to get ever richer? While I do not doubt that they would, if they could, the historical record shows that they can’t, and hence they shan’t. The supercomputers of 20 years ago are less powerful than the laptops of today. Indeed, a run-of-the-mill MacBook Pro is over 1000 x more powerful than the legendary Cray-1 supercomputer. In other words, any effort by the rich and powerful to control mindclone technology would be as fruitless as an effort to control the Cray supercomputers of the late 20th century – other companies’ technologies will swirl around the controlled technology, like a rushing river around boulders in its riverbed. I don’t believe there is any doubt as to why technology always democratizes. It is as simple as this: (1) people want what makes life better for other people (generally this entails technology), (2) satisfying popular wants is in the self-interests of those who control technology (both technology originators and government regulators), and (3) over time the magnitude of these two factors overwhelm any countervailing forces (such as cultural bugaboos or fears of losing control). The wanted technology becomes available, either because scales of production make it
cheaper, innovation makes it more accessible [3], or officialdom finds its interests better served by channeling rather than blocking the wanted technology. There are two further reasons why mindcloning will be rapidly democratized. The first is that the marginal costs of providing mindfile storage and mindware vitalizations to the billionth, two billionth, three billionth and so on persons are virtually nil. The second reason is that it is in the economic interests of the persons having mindclone technology to share it as broadly as possible. Each reason will be considered in more detail below. Let’s first think about the costs of mindcloning. There are four main elements: (1) the cost of storing a person’s mindfile, estimated in Question 1 as about a gigabyte a month based on Gordon Bell’s experience, (2) the cost of running that mindfile through vitalizing mindware to set its consciousness parameters, (3) the cost of transmitting mindfile data and mindclone consciousness, and (4) the cost of user electronics for accessing mindclones. Because the costs of these elements are amortized across tens of millions if not billions of users, the incremental costs of these for each person are negligible. For example, if it costs a billion dollars to create mindware, the costs per person are but one dollar for a billion people and fifty cents for two billion people. Assume the cost of building out a high-speed transmission network with capacity for six billion mindclones is $6 billion. In that case, the cost is $2/mindclone for three billion mindclones, but only $1/mindclone for six billion mindclones. There has never been an easier thing to place in the hands of the masses than information. Shortwave radio broadcasts cover every human in the world for the same cost as if there were only 1% as many humans spread throughout the world. Consequently, the cost of shortwave radio per person is less the more people who listen. The Sirius XM Satellite Radio project I launched in the 1990s cost over a billion dollars. In a way that was the price that one very wealthy person would have had to pay for the enjoyment of satellite radio. It was possible to offer the service only to rich people, say for a million dollars a year, so that they could show off their exclusive and amazing audio toy. But nobody considered doing that for even a millisecond. Instead we priced the service around $10 a month and today over 20 million people listen. That billion dollar project, which grew to over two billion dollars, when divided by 20 million listeners, comes out to just $100 per person. It will be much the same way with mindcloning. Mindclone technology is simply the shortwave or satellite radio of tomorrow. Instead of someone sending commoditized information down the airwaves to the masses, in the form of broadcasts, for matriculation and selection within the brains of those masses, someone will send individualized information down the cyberchannels to the masses, in the form of mindclone consciousness, for refinement and enhancement via interaction with the brains of those masses.
The second factor forcing democratization of mindfile technology is the economic interests of its creators. The more people who create mindfiles, the wealthier will be those who create mindfile technology. This is really just Google on steroids (or Facebook, or Twitter, or Tencent, or a dozen other competitors). It is in the economic interests of Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on to share their technology as broadly as possible. The more people who use a social media site, the more valuable the owner of that site becomes. This is because more people, more human attention, translates, some way or another, into more money. And so it will be with mindfiles. The sites, or sources, that we go to for our mindware, or for tune-ups of our mindware, or for storage of our mindfiles, or for organization of our mindfiles, or for housing of our mindclones, or for socializing of our mindclones – those sites and sources will be valuable to the people and companies who want to sell things to us…things like virtual real estate, and things like realworld interfaces.
DESIGN AS BIOLOGY: MORE SUSTAINABLE CITIES FOR A GROWING POPULATION BY: RACHEL ARMSTRONG, PH.D.
Wafer thin artificial leaves separate with the rising sun, as buildings wake up. They continue to follow its path over the course of the day, sucking dew and carbon dioxide out of the air. These substances are then filtered into the fleshy fabric, within the walls of our homes, which are not dead spaces but active processors, like stomachs that are packed with thriving microbial colonies. They generate heat, recycle grey water and filter effluents to produce rich, native soil that has a commercial value and is used to grow plants in green plots, or window boxes. We are now producers, not consumers. There are no more infertile stretches of asphalt sprawled over our urban rooftops but an expanse of vegetation that processes the city’s rich chemical landscapes – and it is no longer possible to tell which of these vibrant structures are artificial, or natural. Visionary ideas about our near-future cities help develop new approaches to underpin human development without necessarily being constrained within the limits of what is already possible. Modern cities are run and populated by machines to such an extent that we no longer really notice them. And while machines are useful, they consume fossil fuels and transform them into energy, carbon dioxide and industrial pollutants – which, on an industrial scale, produces a world that Rachel Carson noted is ‘not quite fatal’. In recent years we’ve looked to renewables to avoid the need for using fossil fuels – but the percentage of our energy provided by these alternatives remains small compared with our overall consumption. Yet, there is an alternative technology available to us, which we have barely begun to apply in its full potential. Nature provides a rich portfolio of, sometimes unlikely, living technologies that may shape our near-future lifestyles in new ways. The practice of biomimicry already taps into Nature’s ingenuity, where – for example, the Venus flower basket sponge, which has a lattice exoskeleton, inspired the famous hexagonal skin of Norman Foster’s Gherkin Tower. While these solutions are currently realized through industrial processes we have reached a point at the start of the 21st century, where we do not have to copy Nature but can directly design and engineer with her processes with such precision and on a range of scales - that we can think of them new kind of technology. Living technologies have unique properties that may enable us to imagine and realize our urban spaces in new ways since they are adaptable, robust and have an
incredible ability to transform one thing into another. Think of how trees share common technologies (leaves, trunk, roots) that are adapted to different kinds of environments and use of a range of resources. For example, needle-leaved Canadian evergreens make the most of scant sunlight and their leaf litter feeds the acidic soils that nurture networks of microorganisms, such as, nitrogen fixing bacteria, which in turn, enriches the food for the trees. In the near future, we will begin to tap into the technological potential of this ‘metabolic’ diversity and strategically use it within the fabric of our cities. While trees are complex organic structures that require substantial infrastructures and resources to nurture them, biotechnology has revealed that multicellular organisms can perform the same kinds of processes but even more powerfully. Although these creatures cannot be seen with the naked eye, they are much easier to keep and much more vigorous than trees. Indeed, architects are already suggesting that microorganisms may power our cities. For example, Alberto Estevez’s ‘Genetic Barcelona’ proposes that using the techniques of ‘synthetic biology’ - which enables us to grow organisms that do not exist in Nature by manipulating their DNA – trees would be engineered to produce a natural light-producing protein usually found in jellyfish. So, not only would we be able to enjoy the mood-elevating wavelengths the light emitted by these plants but we would also benefit from not having to rely on fossil fuels and central power grids to provide street lighting. In the near future our buildings may also be ‘grown’ by industrial-strength microorganisms. Some of these may form the basis of self-healing materials such as, Henk Jonker’s ‘biocrete’, where hardy bacteria are mixed into traditional cement and form plugs of solid when they are activated by water, from micro fine cracks in the material. Other projects such as, Magnus Larsson’s ‘Dune’ is more ambitious and harnesses the metabolic powers of a sand-particle-fixing species of bacteria to produce sandstone or marble in deserts, thought to be too hostile to live in. Within modern cities, the value of harnessing the transformational powers of communities of microorganisms, called bioprocessing, is being realized in wastewater gardens. These may be thought of as bacterial cities within our own, which are fed with our waste organic matter and transform it into useful substances. Rather than being noxious sumps of filth and disease, these sewage plants are popular visitor attractions - odorless greenhouses with the look and feel of a botanical garden. Bioprocessing units may be designed to house different kinds of ecologies to suit particular habitats. For example, in estuary environments ‘oystertecture’, where shellfish are farmed on sculptural metal structures, could be used in bioprocessing systems to filter impurities, improve water quality and increase biodiversity. These developments in living technology suggest that we will evolve solutions using the transformational properties of natural systems. Living technologies build upon traditional skills
working in combination with new scientific knowledge. Importantly, since biology is everywhere, these approaches are not confined to Western societies. Increasingly DIY bio communities are learning how to ‘hack’ natural systems and diversify living technology applications. This may streamline global human development with biospherical processes so that our lifestyles are more sustainable, less environmentally disruptive and ultimately means that our cities are better places to live. Perhaps the future of our urban environments will not be about designing buildings, as we know them, but to produce synthetic ecosystems, which improve the quality of our lives.
FUTURE OF URBAN FARMING: MORE FOOD FOR LONGER-LIVING PEOPLE BY: FREIJA VAN DUIJNE, PH.D.
Over many centuries, attempts have been made to get food production out of the cities. Produce comes from the land and is transported into the cities. In most western cities, abattoirs have disappeared. Markets are still there, but no longer have a central role in our shopping. This image is starting to change again. Urban farming is emerging in all sorts of shapes. A few examples from the Netherlands: offices that use their roof for rooftop farming, volunteer gardens with a restaurant, like Hutspot Hotspot in Rotterdam, urban farm companies like Uit je eigen stad, high tech indoor growing systems like Simbi City, or Plantlab. Which types of urban farming would be around in 2020? SCENARIOS FOR URBAN FARMING Scenarios for the future of urban farming may help us think about the directions for urban farming. Also it helps us thinks about ways to support different developments. Here are the basic scenarios that we came up with. They are still in a preliminary stage. And we welcome all suggestions for further elaboration. What do you think that might happen in these scenarios? THE URBAN FOOD PRODUCER LED technology, sensor technology and all sorts of ICT applications are affordable to apply for indoors, layered crop production. This takes place in formerly empty buildings, for which no other use has been found. Various companies have demonstrated to be economically successful in producing fruits and vegetables. These are high end produce, for which a good price is being paid by restaurants and private consumers in the cities. Businesses have started off with small production units. After the first successes, they could make further investments and grow their business. Suppliers, service providers and other businesses have settled next to each other to make use of each other (waste) streams, products
and services. Consumers are involved through social media. They have Apps to see which types of produce are available and shop directly. There are virtual supermarkets which offer the products of several urban food producers. Products can be delivered at home through a peer to peer deliverance service. But a network of drones for deliverance is coming up soon. THE URBAN FARMER The dream of the urban farmer is to reconnect city people with making food. The urban farmer wants to share his knowledge and craftsmanship with the young and the old. Their business is a multifunctional farm with fruits, vegetables and animals. They have various revenues. People can subscribe to weekly food packages. There is a restaurant and catering. Crowd funding allows people to have a share in the company. In exchange for that they receive products and they are invited for events on the farm. For their personnel, urban farmers rely on volunteers in addition to their regular employers. That makes up an interesting mix of people and cultures. The urban farmer also has a function in maintaining the public greens near the farm. Thanks to their close connection to the people in the neighborhood, the farmer knows their demands and wishes in relation to green areas in the city. THE CITIZEN GROWER Lots of people who live in cities share the wish to be active in food production. Kitchen gardens are popular among young and old. The barren grounds and rooftops look tempting to these gardeners. People start to ask the city government if they could use these parcels for growing food. Some cities have pro-actively responded to this demand and made maps of available parcels and rooftops. People use the food that they grow to sell on neighborhood markets. Near a garden complex there is often a restaurant, where meals are served made from fresh neighborhood produce. The unemployed start off as waiters and other personnel in the restaurant, making it easier for them to find a paid job later on. Schools and children are involved. They are physically active and learn about healthy food. City councils are happy with this movement and develop additional education programs to help people learn about the nature of food. They also facilitate the growers’ movement in all sorts of ways, for instance by making it easier for businesses to donate or act as barter in a project. In this
way the city, businesses and citizens connect through the growing of food. THE URBAN FOOD DEVELOPER With the latest technology the possibilities for urban food production systems have come closer, at least in theory. This could be a solution for food supply in the cities. This means a new use for empty building, environmental benefits through lower energy use and small food miles. These new urban food production systems, and the knowledge to build them, could be important for mega cities in emerging economies. This is recognized in vision documents of regional and national governments. Public-private initiatives aim at system solutions for high-tech large scale urban food production. Projects aim at knowledge development and deliverables such as new applications for the design of food production systems. One aspect of these projects concerns the dialogue with society about new food production technologies and food production facilities in downtown neighborhoods. Governments also use these projects for demonstration purposes. These types of food production systems are very innovative. Their development is an important contribution to the branding of the region or country an innovative agri&food producer with great export potential.
IF IMMORTALITY CREATES HORRIBLE OVERPOPULATION, WHAT NEW ZONES SHOULD WE COLONIZE?1 BY: IMMORTAL LIFE DEBATE FORUM
Although the essay by Max More included in this volume provides reasons why radical life extension would not lead to horrific overpopulation, many critics of Superlongevity still list this as a primary reason for they oppose significantly extending human life. Let’s just assume that population will keep increasing… if that happens, where would humans live? Do any of the options below appeal to you? 1. Colonize the oceans, with floating islands and immense ships. 2. Colonize Antarctica and other uninhabited regions, with glass-domed temperaturecontrolled communities. 3. Colonize the ocean floor. 4. Dig underground, and into mountains, like moles- build immense subterranean cities. 5. Colonize the Moon. 6. Colonize Mars. 7. Build huge satellites that each provide habitation for 100,000 people, that circumnavigate the Earth. 8. None of the above, just ban breeding, or make people “cue up” for permission to multiply. ____________________ My own preference would be to colonize tropical oceans, as soon as desalination is efficient. Aquaculture would be easily available as both a food source and an economic option. My second choice would be “gophering” into mountains.
1
Debate Question and introductory discussion by Hank Pellissier.
By GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI on Mar 14, 2013 at 3:21pm ____________________ Of course the premise is wrong since population growth is inversely proportional to Kilowatt usage per capital but - if I must assume population growth then the answer would be to genetically modify ourselves to be 6 inches tall so that we could support 60 billion with no problem on Earth. By JAEAME I. KOYIL on Mar 14, 2013 at 3:53pm ____________________ “if I must assume population growth then the answer would be to genetically modify ourselves to be 6 inches tall so that we could support 60 billion with no problem on Earth.” And be eaten by rats and cats? I say Mars is the place to go—if possible. By ALAN BROOKS on Mar 14, 2013 at 8:24pm ____________________ Any or all of the above, once those options become technically feasible and have been properly risk-assessed. But we need to think about our messaging here. One of the more credible accusations that technosceptics tend to hurl at Transhumanists is that we are all gung-ho technoenthuasiasts, naïvely dreaming our techno-utopian dreams and woefully underestimating the risks. I can easily handle people telling me that defeating the aging process is “not natural”, but when they worry about overpopulation I’m more inclined to sympathise, and to the extent that I still want to convince them I’d be more inclined to try to tease out what other concerns they might have and respond to them, rather than hitting them with a bunch of “we’re going to colonise other planets”-type ideas. Well, maybe I should read that Max More article… By PETER WICKS on Mar 14, 2013 at 11:43pm ____________________ Of all terrestrial locations to locate massively swelling populations the deserts seem smartest - all
exotic locations require considerable investments, deserts require the least. What is smartest and most affordable is to dig a broad channel in a deep groove or canyon and let people live in apartments on either side of the channel. That would filter out harsh desert sunlight and it would mean access to straight linear roadways, and flowing water - and desert on either side to cultivate plants and solar energy. By letting such a canyon meander through the desert landscape it would be easy to house millions sustainably. Travel up and down the canyon would be easy by monorail. By KHANNEA SUNTZU on Mar 15, 2013 at 5:28am
SUPERLONGEVITY WITHOUT OVERPOPULATION BY: MAX MORE, PH.D
Proponents of superlongevity (indefinitely extended life spans) have been making their case for the possibility and desirability of this change in the human condition for decades. For just as long, those hearing the arguments for superlongevity have deployed two or three unchanging, unrelenting responses. The question: “But what would we do with all that time?” is one of them. Another is the “But death is natural!” gambit. The final predictable response is to conjure up the specter of overpopulation. Despite strong downward trends in population growth since this issue gained visibility in the 1960’s, the third concern remains an impediment. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb [1], ignited a trend in which alarmists routinely ignored data and reasonable projections to scare the public. Those of us who see achieving the indefinite extension of the human life span as a central goal naturally find this behavior quite irritating. If baseless fear wins out, we will gain little from our personal programs of exercise, nutrition, or supplementation. Widespread fear leads to restrictive legislation legislation that in this case could be deadly. Although the volume has been turned down a little on the population issue, it continues to reverberate and deserves a response. The purpose of this essay is to address the essential concerns, provide current facts, and dispel the errors behind the overpopulation worries. VALUES FIRST As I will show, we have little reason to fear population growth with or without extended lives. However, to bring into focus an ethical issue, I will pretend for a moment that population growth is or will become a serious problem. Would this give us a strong reason for turning against the extension of human lifespan? No. Opposing extended life because, eventually, it might add to existing problems would be an ethically irresponsible response. Suppose you are a doctor faced with a child suffering from pneumonia. Would you refuse to cure the child because she would then be well enough to run around and step on the toes of others? On the contrary, our responsibility lies in striving to live
long and vitally while helping others do the same. Once we are at work on this primary goal, we can focus more energy on solving other challenges. Long, vital living at the individual level certainly benefits from a healthy physical and social environment. The superlongevity advocate would want to help find solutions to any population issues. But dying is not a responsible or healthy way to solve anything. Besides, if we take seriously the idea of limiting life span so as to control population, why not be more proactive about it? Why not drastically reduce access to currently commonplace medical treatments? Why not execute anyone reaching the age of seventy? Once the collective goal of population growth is accepted as overriding individual choices, it would seem hard to resist this logic. IT IS HOW MANY, NOT HOW LONG, THAT MATTERS Limiting population growth by opposing life extension not only fails the ethical test, it also fails the pragmatic test. Keeping the death rate up simply is not an effective way of slowing population growth. Population growth depends far more on how many children families have, as opposed to how long people live. In mathematical terms, longer life has no effect on the exponential growth rate. It only affects a constant of the equation. This means that it matters little how long we live after we have reproduced. Compare two societies: In country A, people live on average only to 40 years of age, each family producing 5 children. In country B, the life span is 90 years but couples have 4 children. Despite the much longer life span in country B, their population growth rate will be much lower than that of country A. It makes little difference over the long term how many years people live after they have had children. The population growth rate is determined by how many children we have, not how long we live. Even the short-term upward effect on population due to a falling death rate may be cancelled by a delay in child bearing. Many women in developed countries choose to bear children by their early 30’s because the obstacles to successful pregnancy grow as they age. As the last few decades have already shown, extending the fertile period of women’s lives would allow them to put off having children until later, until they have developed their careers. Not only will couples have children later, we can expect them to be better positioned financially and psychologically to care for them. Almost certainly, the first truly effective technologies to extend the maximum human life span will come with a significant cost of human development and application. As a consequence population effects would first be felt in the developed countries. This points to another flaw in the suggestion that extended longevity will dramatically boost population growth. The fact is, superlongevity in the developed nations would have practically no global or local population impact. The lack of global impact is a consequence of the small and falling share of the global
population accounted for by the developed nations. No local population boom drama can realistically be expected because these countries are experiencing very low, zero, or negative population growth: The share of the global population accounted for by the developed nations has fallen from 32 percent in 1950 to 20 percent currently and is projected to fall to 13 percent in 2050. [2] If we look just at Europe, we see an even more remarkable shrinkage: In 1950, Europe accounted for 22 percent of the global population. Currently it has fallen to 13 percent, and is projected to fall to 7 percent by 2050. [3] To put this in perspective, consider that the population of Africa at 749 million is now greater than that of Europe at 729 million, according to UN figures. Europe’s population growth rate of just 0.03 per cent will ensure that it will rapidly shrink relative to Africa and other developing areas. In Eastern Europe, population is now shrinking at a rate of 0.2 percent. Between now and 2050, the population of the more developed regions is expected to change little. Projections show that by mid-century, the populations of 39 countries will be smaller than today. Some examples: Japan and Germany 14 percent smaller; Italy and Hungary 25 percent smaller; and the Russian Federation, Georgia and Ukraine between 28-40 percent smaller. [3] For the United States (whose population grows faster than Europe), the bottom line was summed in a presentation to the President’s Council on Bioethics by S.J. Olshansky who “did some basic calculations to demonstrate what would happen if we achieved immortality today”. The bottom line is that if we achieved immortality today, the growth rate of the population would be less than what we observed during the post World War II baby boom. [4] Low fertility means that population trends in the developed regions of the world would look even milder if not for immigra-tion. As the 2000 Revision to the UN Population Division’s projections says: “The more developed regions are expected to continue being net receivers of international migrants, with an average gain of about 2 million per year over the next 50 years. Without migration, the population of more developed regions as a whole would start declining in 2003 rather than in 2025, and by 2050 it would be 126 million less than the 1.18 billion projected under the assumption of continued migration.” All things considered, countries fortunate enough to develop and make available radical solutions to aging and death need not worry about becoming overpopulated. In an ideal scenario, life extension treatments would rapidly plunge in cost, making them affordable well beyond the richest nations. We should therefore look beyond the developed nations and examine global population trends in case a significantly different picture emerges.00 GLOBAL POPULATION FLATLINING
We have seen that we have no reason to hesitate in prolonging life even if population were to grow faster due to higher fertility rates. But does the developing world, with or without cheap, ubiquitous life extension, have much to fear from a population explosion? Are populations growing out of control in those regions? The fad for popular books foretelling doom started in the 1960’s, at the tail end of the most rapid increase in population in human history. Since then, the poorer countries, well below us in the development cycle, have also been experiencing a drastic reduction of population growth. This is true despite major relative life extension - the extra decades of life bestowed by medical intervention and nutrition. Taking a global perspective, the numbers reveal that the average annual population growth rate peaked in 1965-1970 at 2.07 percent. Ever since then, the rate of increase has been declining, coming down to 1.2 per cent annually. That means the addition of 77 million people per year, based on an estimated world population of 6.1 billion in mid-2000. [3] A mere six countries account for fully half of this growth: India for 21 percent; China for 12 percent; Pakistan for 5 percent; Nigeria for 4 percent; Bangladesh for 4 percent, and Indonesia for 3 percent. China has markedly reduced the average number of births per woman over the last 50 years from six to 1.8. Starting from the same birth rate at that time, India has fallen much less, although still almost halving the rate to 3.23 percent. If these trends continue up to 2050, India’s population will exceed that of China. [5] Despite the fecundity of these top people-producers, the overall picture is an encouraging one: The total fertility rate for the world as a whole dropped by nearly two-fifths between 1950/55 and 1990/95 - from about 5 children per woman down to about 3.1 children per woman. Average fertility in the more developed regions fell from 2.8 to 1.7 children per woman, well below biological replacement. Meanwhile total fertility rates in less developed nations fell by 40 percent, falling from 6.2 to 3.5 children per woman. [6] We can expect population growth to continue slowing until it reaches a stable size. What size will that be? No one knows for sure, but the best UN numbers indicate that population may peak at as low as 8 billion people, with a medium projection of 9.3 billion and an upper limit projection of 10.9 billion. [2;7] The medium projection also points to global population peaking around 2040 and then starting to fall. I wrote the first version of this paper in 1996. In revising it, I found it interesting that, less than a decade ago, the higher projection allowed for 12 billion or more. Demographers had continued their long tradition of over-estimating population growth. This effect seems to have been reduced, but take all projections (especially those longer than a generation) with a healthy dose of skepticism.
FORCES OF POPULATION DECELERATION Why, though, should we expect people in less developed countries, even given contraceptives, to continue choosing to have smaller families? This expectation is not merely speculation based on recent trends. Sound economic reasoning explains the continuing trend, and makes sense of why the poorer nations are only just beginning to make the transition to fewer births. Decelerating population growth appears to be an inevitable result of growing wealth. Early on in a country’s developmental curve, children can be regarded as ‘producer goods’ (as economists would say). Parents put their children to work on the farm to generate food and revenue. Very little effort is put into caring for the child: no expensive health plans, special classes, trips to Disneyland, X-Men action figures, or mounting phone bills. As we become wealthier, children become ‘consumer goods’. That is, we look on them more and more as little people to be enjoyed and pampered and educated, not beasts of burden to help keep the family alive. We spend thousands of dollars on children to keep them healthy, entertain them, and educate them. We come to prefer fewer children to a vast mob of little ones. This preference seems to be reinforced by changing tastes resulting from improved education. The revenue vs. expense equation for extra children further shifts toward having fewer offspring as populations become urbanized. Children cost more to raise in cities and can produce less income than in the country. Fertility declines for another reason: As poorer countries become wealthier, child mortality falls as a result of improved nutrition, sanitation, and health care. Reduced child mortality in modern times can come about even without a rise in income. People in poorer countries are not stupid; they adjust their childbearing plans to reflect changing conditions. When child death rates are high, research has shown that families have more children to ensure achieving a given family size. They have more children to make up for deaths, and often have additional children in anticipation of later deaths. Families reduce fertility as they realize that fewer births are needed to reach a desired family size. Given the incentives to have fewer children as wealth grows and urbanization proceeds, reduced mortality leads to families choosing to reduce family size. Economic policy helps shape childbearing incentives. Many of the same people who have decried population growth have supported policies guaranteed to boost childbirths. More than that, they boost childbearing among those least able to raise and educate children well. If we want to encourage people to have more children, we should make it cheaper for them to do so. If we want to discourage fertility, or at least refrain from pushing it up, we should stop subsidizing it. Subsidies include free education (free to the parents, not to the tax-payers), free child health care, and additional welfare payments to women for each child they bear. If parents must personally bear the costs of having children, rather than everyone else paying, people will tend to have just the number of children for whom they can assume financial responsibility.
Even if there were a population problem in a few countries, extending the human life span would worsen the problem no more than would improving automobile safety or worker safety, or reducing violent crime. Who would want to keep these deadly threats high in order to combat population growth? If we want to slow population growth, we should focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining deaths. If we want to reduce births, we might voluntarily fund programs to provide contraceptives and family planning to couples in poorer countries. This will aid the natural developmental process of choosing to have fewer children. Couples will be able to have children by choice, not by accident. Women should also be encouraged to join the modern world by gaining the ability to pursue vocations other than child-raising. OVERPOPULATION DISTRACTS FROM REAL PROBLEMS Major downward revisions in population growth - throughout the UN’s sixteen rounds of global demographic estimates and projections since 1950 - have drained the plausibility of any overpopulation-based argument against life extension. We can better understand the real problems that are talked about in relation to overpopulation instead as issues of poverty. Poverty, in turn, results not from having too many people, but from several major factors including political misrule, continual warfare, and insecurity of property rights. As Bjorn Lomborg points out, we find many of the most densely populated countries in Europe. The region with the highest population density, Southeast Asia, has about same number of people per square mile as the United Kingdom. Although India has a large, growing population, it also has a population density far lower than that of The Netherlands, Belgium, or Japan. Lomborg also notes that Ohio and Denmark are more densely populated than Indonesia. [3] We should also recognize that most population growth takes place in urban areas, which provide a better standard of living. As a result, most of this planet’s landmass will not be more densely populated than it is today. Over the next three decades, we can expect to see almost no change in the rural population of the world and, by 2025, 97% of Europe will be less densely populated than today. [8] We should celebrate the urbanization trend since even the urban poor thrive better than they would in the country. The causes of this include better water supplies, sewage systems, health services, education, and nutrition. [9] Oddly enough, serious infectious diseases like malaria are less threatening the closer buildings are together (and so the smaller the space for swampy areas beloved of mosquitoes and flies). [10] SUSTAINABILITY AND THE GREAT RESTORATION The future could be far brighter than the eco-doomsters have long portrayed it. As Ronald Bailey [11] reports:
Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, believes the 21st century will see the beginning of a ‘Great Restoration’ as humanity’s productive activities increasingly withdraw from the natural world. If world farmers come to match the typical yield of today’s US corn growers, ten billion people could eat amply while requiring only half of today’s cropland. This is one way in which technological advance in farming will allow vast expanses of land to revert to nature. Transgenic crops could also multiply today’s production levels while solving several significant environmental challenges. [12] Visions that emphasize human ingenuity and opportunity have a far more impressive historical record than those that emphasize human passivity and helplessness. Paul Ehrlich is a classic case of the latter type and you have only to browse his dark, alarming books to recognize how consistently bad he has been at making environmental predictions. In a 1969 article, Ehrlich predicted the oceans dead from DDT poisoning by 1979 and devoid of fish; 200,000 deaths from ‘smog disasters’ in New York and Los Angeles in 1973; U.S. life expectancy dropping to 42 years by 1980 because of pesticide-induced cancers, and U.S. population declining to 22.6 million by 1999. [13] Ehrlich famously lost a ten year bet against cornucopian economist Julian Simon (and refused to renew the bet). In 1974, Ehrlich recommended stockpiling cans of tuna due to the certainty of protein shortages in the USA. And so on. As Bailey explains [13], contrary to Ehrlich: Instead, according to the United Nations, agricultural production in the developing world has increased by 52 percent per person since 1961. The daily food intake in poor countries has increased from 1,932 calories, barely enough for survival, in 1961 to 2,650 calories in 1998, and is expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030. Likewise, the proportion of people in developing countries who are starving has dropped from 45 percent in 1949 to 18 percent today, and is expected to decline even further to 12 percent in 2010 and just 6 percent in 2030. Food, in other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant. This is reflected in its price. Since 1800 food prices have decreased by more than 90 percent, and in 2000, according to the World Bank, prices were “lower than ever before”. A reading of economic and social history quickly makes one thing plain: throughout history people have envisaged overpopulation. Even the great nineteenth century social scientist W. Stanley Jevons in 1865 claimed that England’s industrial expansion would soon cease due to the exhaustion of the country’s coal supply. [15] However, as shortages developed, prices rose. The profit motive stimulated entrepreneurs to find new sources, to develop better technology for finding and extracting coal, and to transport it to where it was needed. The crisis never happened.
Today, the USA has proven reserves sufficient to last hundreds or thousands of years. [16] If one resource does begin to run low, rising prices will encourage a switch to alternatives. Even a vastly bloated population cannot hope to exhaust energy supplies. (Solar energy and power from nuclear fission and soon fusion are practically endless.) So long as we have plentiful energy we can produce substitute resources and even generate more of existing resources, including food. Even if population were to grow far outside today’s highest projections, we can expect human intelligence and technology to comfortably handle the numbers. Human intelligence, new technology, and a market economy will allow this planet to support many times the current population of 6.2 billion - it can support many more humans than we are likely to see, given trends toward lower birth rates. Many countries, including the USA, have a rather low population density. If the USA’s population were as dense as Japan - hardly a crowded place overall - our population would be 3.5 billion rather than 265 million. If the USA had a population density equal to that of Singapore, we would find almost 35 billion people here, or almost seven times the current world population. New technologies, from simple improvements in irrigation and management to current breakthroughs in genetic engineering should continue to improve world food output. Fewer people are starving despite higher populations. This does not mean they are feeling satisfied. Millions still go hungry or are vulnerable to disruptions in supply. We need to push to remove trade barriers, abolish price controls on agriculture (which discourage production and investment), and pressure governments engaging in warfare and collectivization to change their ways. POLLUTION Nor should we expect pollution to worsen as population grows. Contrary to popular belief, overall pollution in the more developed countries has been decreasing for decades. In the USA, levels of lead have dropped dramatically. Since the 1960’s levels of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and organic compounds have fallen despite a growing population. Air quality in major urban areas continues to improve, and the Great Lakes are returning toward earlier levels of purity. [17] This is no accident. As we become wealthier, we have more money to spare for a cleaner environment. When you are longing for food, shelter, and other basics, you will not spare much thought for the environment. So long as mechanisms exist for converting desires for cleaner air and water and space for recreation into the things themselves, we can expect it to happen. Most effective at spurring the positive changes are markets - price signals creating incentives for moves in the right direction. If polluters must pay for what they produce because their activity intrudes on the property rights of others, they will search for ways to make things with less pollution. Pollution problems do exist. Most of them can be traced to a failure to enforce private property rights, so that resources are treated as free goods that need not be well managed. Fishing
in unowned bodies of water is an example of this. The desertification of collectively or government owned land in Africa is another. We can be reasonably confident that the trend towards less pollution with greater population will continue. However, complacency is out of place. We should press for responsible management of resources by privatizing collectively owned resources to create incentives for sound management and renewal. So long as we continue to allow freedom to generate more wealth and better technology, we can expect pollution to continue abating. More efficient recycling, production processes that generate fewer pollutants, and better monitoring and detection of polluters, along with economic incentives making each producer responsible for their output, will allow us to continue improving our environment even as population grows. Assuming that we achieve complete control of matter at the molecular level, as expected by nanotechnologists, we will have the keys to production without pollution. Another product of molecular manufacturing will be the disappearance of most large-scale, clumsy machinery. Less and less land will need to be used for manufacturing equipment, making more room for people to enjoy. Some manufacturing will be moved into space. The result of these and other changes (some of which are already underway) will be the freeing of the Earth from unwanted, but previously necessary, means and by-products of manufacturing. The population issue raises numerous factual, economic, and ethical concerns. I urge the interested reader to check into the sources listed in the References, especially the essays by Jesse Ausubel [18] and the books by Bailey, Lomborg, and Simon. [3;19;20-25] I have only sketched lines of thinking showing that we would be severely misguided not to push for extended life out of fear of overpopulation. Let us move full speed ahead with extending life span: Once we have vanquished aging, I would expect other threats to life, such as war and violent crime, will become even less acceptable. We can look forward to a long-lived society better off than previous generations; not only in economic well being, but also in security of life and health. REFERENCES [1] Ehrlich, Paul R; The Population Bomb (1968); Sierra Club-Ballantine [2] World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision (2001a); United Nations Publications [3] Lomborg, Bjorn; The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001); Cambridge University Press. [4] Olshansky, SJ; “Duration of Life: Is There a Biological Warranty Period?” in: The President’s Council on Bioethics (2002) Washington, DC. [5] World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision, Additional Data (2001c); United Nations Publications. [6] Eberstadt, Nicholas; “Population, Food, and Income: Global Trends in the Twentieth Century” in: Bailey (1995). [7] World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision, Annex Tables (2001b); United Nations
Publications [8] World Urbanization Prospects: The 1996 Revision (1998); United Nations Publications [9] The Progress of Nations (1997) UNICEF. [10] Miller, Jr. Tyler G; Living in the Environment: Principles, Connections, and Solutions (1998); Wadsworth Publishing Company. [11] Bailey, Ronald; “The End Is Nigh, Again” in: Reason (2002); June 26. [12] Rauch, Jonathan; “Will Frankenfood Save the Planet?” in: The Atlantic Monthly (2003); October. [13] Bailey, Ronald; Eco-Scam (1993); St. Martin’s Press. [15] Jevons S; The Coal Question: An inquiry concerning the progress of the nation and the probable exhaustion of our coal mines (1865); Kelley Publishers. [16] http://www.eia.doe.gov/ [17] Taylor, B et al. “Water Quality and the Great Lakes” in: Michigan’s Opportunities and Challenges: Msu Faculty Perspectives, Michigan in Brief: 2002-03. Public Sector Consultants, Inc. [18] Ausubel, Jesse; “The Great Restoration of Nature: Why and How” in: Challenges of a Changing Earth (2002); pg.175-182 // Proceedings of the Global Change Open Science Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2001, 10-13 July) edited by Steffen, W & Jaeger, J & Carson, DJ & Bradshaw C; Springer http://phe.rockefeller.edu/sthubert/hubert.pdf // Ausubel, Jesse; “Where is Energy Going?” in: The Industrial Physicist (2000); [19] The True State of the Planet (1995); edited by Bailey, Ronald; The Free Press [20] Simon, Julian L; “Resources, Population, Environment: An Over-Supply of False Bad News” in: Science (1980, Vol. 280); pg.1431-1437 [21] Simon, Julian L; The Ultimate Resource (1981); Princeton University Press [22] Simon, Julian L; “Forecasting the Long-Term Trend of Raw Material Availability,” in: International Journal of Forecasting (1985, Vol. 1); pg.85-109. [23] Simon, Julian L; Population Matters (1990); N.J.: Transaction [24] Simon, Julian L; “Bunkrapt: The Abstractions that lead to scares about resources and population growth,” in: Extropy (1993, Vol. 11); Summer/Fall 1993, pg.34-41. [25] The Resourceful Earth (1984); edited by Simon, Julian L & Kahn, Herman; Basil Blackwell, Inc.
LONGEVITY LOGISTICS: WE CAN MANAGE THE EFFECTS OF OVERPOPULATION BY: FRANCO CORTESE
By far the most predominant criticism made against indefinite longevity is overpopulation. It is the first “potential problem” that comes to mind. But fortunately it seems that halting the global mortality rate would not cause an immediate drastic increase in global population; in fact, if the mortality rate dropped to zero tomorrow then the doubling rate for the global population would only be increased by a factor of 1.75 [1], which is smaller than the population growth rate during the post-WWII baby-boom. Population is significantly more determined by birth rate than by death rate, simply because many people have more than one natural child. This means that we should not see an unsustainable rise in population following even the complete cessation of death globally for a number of generations. We will run into problems 3 or 4 generations hence – but this leaves us with time enough to plan for overpopulation before we’re forced to resort to more drastic solution-paradigms like procreation-bans and space colonization. Moreover, there are a number of proposed, and in some cases implemented, solutions to existing, contemporary problems that can be utilized for the purpose of minimizing overpopulation’s detrimental effects on living-space and non-renewable resource constraints. These contemporary concerns include climate change and dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and they are only increasing in the amount of public attention they are attracting. While these concerns and their potential solutions were not created by overpopulation or with overpopulation in mind, the potentially negative effects of an increasing global population can be effectively combatted all the same using such contemporary methods and technologies. Thus we can take advantage of the solution-paradigms developed for such contemporary concerns as climate change and dependence on non-renewable resources, and borrow from such movements as the sustainability movement and the seasteading movement, so as to better mitigate and effectively plan for the negative repercussions of a growing global population caused by the emergence of effective longevity technologies. In a session with The President’s Council on Bioethics (as it was composed during the Bush Administration), S. Jay Olshansky [2] reported calculations he performed indicating that complete cessation of the global morality rate today would lead to less population growth than resulted from the post-WWII “Baby Boom”:
This is an estimate of the birth rate and the death rate in the year 1000, birth rate roughly 70, death rate about 69.5. Remember when there's a growth rate of 1 percent, very much like your money, a growth rate of 1 percent leads to a doubling time at about 69 to 70 years. It's the same thing with humans. With a 1 percent growth rate, the population doubles in about 69 years. If you have the growth rate — if you double the growth rate, you have the time it takes for the population to double, so it's nothing more than the difference between the birth rate and the death rate to generate the growth rate. And here you can see in 1900, the growth rate was about 2 percent, which meant the doubling time was about five years. During the 1950s at the height of the baby boom, the growth rate was about 3 percent, which means the doubling time was about 26 years. In the year 2000, we have birth rates of about 15 per thousand, deaths of about 10 per thousand, low mortality populations, which means the growth rate is about one half of 1 percent, which means it would take about 140 years for the population to double. Well, if we achieved immortality today, in other words, if the death rate went down to zero, then the growth rate would be defined by the birth rate. The birth rate would be about 15 per thousand, which means the doubling time would be 53 years, and more realistically, if we achieved immortality, we might anticipate a reduction in the birth rate to roughly ten per thousand, in which case the doubling time would be about 80 years. The bottom line is, is that if we achieved immortality today, the growth rate of the population would be less than what we observed during the post-World War II baby boom. We would eventually run into problems, of course, a century down the road, but just so you know the growth rates would not be nearly what they were in the post-World War II era, even with immortality today.
In other words we will only have increased the doubling-time of the global population by a factor of 1.75 if we achieved indefinite longevity today (e.g. a doubling time of 140 years in 2000 compared to a doubling time of 80 years). This means that we will have two to four generations worth of time to consider possible solutions to growing population before we are faced with the “hard choice” of (1) finding new space and resources or else (2) limiting or regulating the global birthrate. An alternate study on the demographic consequences of life-extension concluded that “population changes are surprisingly slow in their response to a dramatic life extension”. The study applied “the cohort-component method of population projections to 2005 Swedish population for several scenarios of life extension and a fertility schedule observed in 2005,” concluding that “even for very long 100-year projection horizon, with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at all after age 60), the total population increases by 22% only (from 9.1 to 11.0 million)” and that “ even in the case of the most radical life extension scenario, population growth could be relatively slow and may not necessarily lead to overpopulation.” [2]. The total population increase due to the complete negation of mortality given by this study is significantly lower than the figure calculated by Olshansky. Finding innovative solutions to new and old problems is what humanity does. We have a variety of possible viable options to increase the resources and living space available to humanity
already. Moreover, there are several other contemporary concerns that are invoking the development of technological and methodological solutions that can be applied to our own concerns regarding the effects of overpopulation. Surely we can conceive of optimal solutions to these problems (and the more pressing a given problem is, the more funding it receive/s and the faster it is accomplished) – and take advantage of the growing methodological and technical infrastructure being developed for related and convergent problems – within the time it will take to feel overpopulation’s effect on living space and resources. We could, for instance, colonize the oceans [3, 4, 5], drawing from the engineering, construction techniques used to build, maintain and safely inhabit contemporary VLFSs (Very-LargeFloating-Structures). 75% of the Earth’s surface area is, after all, water. This would increase our potential living space 3-fold – and I say potential because we surely don’t currently maximize living space on the 25% of the Earth’s surface occupied by land. Furthermore, humanity has as yet barely ventured beyond the surface of the earth – which is a sphere after all. There is nothing to prevent society building higher and building deeper. Indeed, with contemporary and projected advances in materials science and structural engineering, there is no theoretical limit to the height of structures we can safely build – the space elevator being a case in point. And while there will indeed be a maximum size wherein building higher becomes economically prohibitive (a limit determined to a large extent by the materials used), contemporary megastructures [6] indicate that very large structures can be built safety and cost-effectively. Underground living [7, 8, 9, 10] is another potential solution-paradigm as well; underground structures require less energy, are protected from weathering effects and changing temperatures to a much greater extent than structures exposed to the elements, and are less susceptible to damage from natural disasters. Furthermore, there are a number of underground cities in existence today [11], with existing techniques and technologies used to better facilitate contemporary underground living, which we can take advantage of. In fact, the problem of limited living space is a contemporary problem for certain nations like Japan, and active projects to combat this growing problem have already been undertaken in many cases. This means that there will be an existing host of solutions, with their own technological and methodological infrastructures, which we can benefit from and take advantage of when the problematizing effects of growing global population become immediate. Not only can we take advantage of the existing engineering-methodologies developed for use in the construction of VLFSs, but we can also take advantage of the growing body of knowledge pertaining to megastructural engineering and even existing proposals for floating cities [12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18]. Another possible solution is artificial islands [19]. Furthermore, in recent years the topic of Very-Large-Floating-Structures [21, 22] has experienced a surge of renewed interest occurring in tandem with the increasing interest in seasteading [23, 24], – that is, the creation of very-large-floating-structures for reasons of
political sovereignty as well as to allow corporations to get around the laws of a given nation by occupying an area outside of exclusive economic zones. This renewed interest can only increase the amount of attention and funding these concepts receive, in turn increasing the viability of VLFS-design and their underlying structural-engineering and energy-production concerns. Another contemporary movement that will prove advantageous for our own concerns with the effects of overpopulation on living-space, working-space and resource-space is the growing green movement and sustainability movement. The problem of resource scarcity is already upon us in many areas, and there exists contemporary motivation for finding more resource-efficient ways of making energy and producing goods, and for lessening our dependency on nonrenewable energy sources. Climate change has only become an increasingly predominant concern in international politics, and many incentives exist to lessen our dependence on nonrenewable energy sources as well as to lessen the environmental impact of contemporary civilization, which is itself another oft-touted problematic-concern possibly resulting from overpopulation. Developments in these areas are only set to continue, for reasons wholly unrelated to the effects of overpopulation, and when those effects come to the fore we will have a collection of existing methodologies that can then be harnessed to lessen the impact of overpopulation on living space and resource scarcity. The predominance of these problems, as well as the amount of attention and funding they are expected to receive (and thus the viability of their potential solutions), will only increase as we move forward into the future. The solutions we have to the potential problems of overpopulation – namely resource scarcity and lack of living space – will not only increase as the effects of overpopulation get closer, but the technological and methodological infrastructures underlying those solutions will also become more tried, tested and robust, fueled by contemporary concerns over decreasing living space, climate-change and resource scarcity. While space colonization is the most frequently-proffered technological solution to the possibility of future overpopulation, I think we will turn to various Earth-bound solutions to increasing humanity’s available living space, as well as the space available for agricultural labs, that is the manufacture of food-stuffs, or indoor farming systems [25, 26, 28], before colonizing the cosmos becomes an economically-optimal option. I think these sorts of solutions will be employed long before humanity if forced to either regulate the birthrate or move into the cosmos. Moreover, people who wish to have children will have incentive to support politicians running on policies promoting new solutions to decreasing living-space. Consider the number of U.S. taxpayer dollars spent during the Space Race, with no immediate material or scientific benefit (other than to prove it could be done, as well as to maintain rough militaristic equality with the USSR to some extent, as the state of rocket technology was indicative of the state of ballistic technologies like missiles). If humanity is forced to choose between having children and
receiving the medical treatments that will keep them from dying, surely people will be motivated to fund initiatives and projects aimed at solving the problems of decreasing living space and increasing resource-constraints due to a growing global population. It is important to remember that the largest increase in life-expectancy we have experienced historically was followed by a drastic decrease in birthrate over the next few generations thereafter. Before the industrial revolution, English women had on average 6 children. In 2000 the average was less than 2.
Figure 1: English Fertility Rates in England, 1540-2000
Note: GRR = Gross Reproduction Rate, NRR = Net Reproduction Rate Source: Wrigley et al. (1997) p. 614. Office of National Statistics, United Kingdom.
The drop in birthrate following the industrial revolution has several causes. Chief among them is the fact that children were considered to some extent as assets, helping with maintaining the family livelihood, often by doing agricultural work on a family farm or to help with household chores (which were much more extensive then). Another large determining factor is a high rate of child mortality; thus families would have multiple children in anticipation of losing some to death. But with a rise in living conditions, the child mortality rate dropped drastically – and as a result we stopped having more kids in anticipation of some of them dying. Moreover, we started treating children less as assets and more as people to nurture and raise for their own sake. Longer lives, and less susceptibility to death in general, appears to have made us better parents.
Thus it is not only possible but probable that we will see a similar drop in the birthrate as a consequence of a significant future increase in average lifespan, with people having children much later in life, when they are more financially stable and when they have done all the commitment-free things they’ve always wanted to do. Without a looming limit on one’s available reproductive lifespan, there will be no pressing motivation to have children “before it’s too late” – and this alone could very well facilitate an unprecedented decrease in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the global population. Evidence indicates that the drop in birth rate was neither limited to England, nor an isolated result of the Industrial Revolution. A net drop in the TFR seems to be a longer-term trend concurrent across the globe. It is likely that the drop in the TFR is due to the same factors as the drop in birth rate following the Industrial Revolution – increasing life expectancy and continually-improving living conditions allows people to have children without expecting a portion of them to be lost to child, to have them for the sake of having children rather than as assets to aid in maintaining the family livelihood, and to have children later in life due to the increase in one’s reproductive lifespan that comes with increasing life-expectancy. The fact that the drop in TFR is not an isolated historical event is advantageous because the global population is affected by birth rate much more than by the mortality rate. Hence we may see a continuing decrease in the TFR occur in tandem with increasing life expectancy, leveling out the imbalance created by a mortality rate of zero by a larger than has been heretofore anticipated.
Source: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook.
Let us suppose, for a moment, the worst: that indefinite longevity is achieved and we completely ignore (i.e. fail to plan for) overpopulation until its effects start becoming readily apparent. Even
in this seeming worse-case scenario, overpopulation is not likely to result in any great tragedies. In such a case we would be forced to limit the global birthrate until we are able to implement the solutions that would allow us to sustainably procreate again. If people have a strong enough desire to continue having children, then they will express their demand and politicians will consequently base their policies upon deliberative initiatives to increase available living and agricultural space – and get elected if the desire to freely procreate is strong and widespread enough. Failing to plan for overpopulation will simply be a wake-up call, letting us know that we should have been planning for its effects from the beginning, and that we had better start planning for them now if we want to continue to freely procreate. Thus while overpopulation is the most prominent and most credible criticism against continuallyincreasing lifespans, and the one that needs to be planned-for the most (because it will eventually happen, but it will lead to sustainability, resource and living space problems only if we do nothing about it), it is in no way insoluble, nor particularly pressing in terms of the time available to plan and implement solutions to shrinking living-space and resource-space (i.e. the space occupied by resources such as food, energy-production, workplaces, etc.). We have a host of potential solutions today, ones we can use to increase available living space without regulating the global birthrate, and decades following the achievement of indefinite lifespans to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the various possible solutions, to develop them and to implement them. So then: wherefore from here? Overpopulation is still the most prominent criticism raised against indefinite longevity, and if combatted, it could lead to an increase in public support for the Longevity movement. You might think that the widespread concern with overpopulation due to increasing longevity won’t really matter, if they turn out to be wrong, and overpopulation isn’t so insoluble a problem as one is inclined to first presume. But this misses a crucial point: that the time it takes to achieve longevity is determined by and large by how widespread and strongly society and the members constituting it desire and demand it. If we can convince people today that overpopulation isn’t an insoluble problem, then continually-increasing longevity might happen much sooner than otherwise. At the cost of 100,000 deaths due to age-correlated causes per day, I think hastening the arrival of indefinite longevity therapies by even a modest amount is somewhat imperative. Hastening its arrival by one month will save 3 million lives, and achieving it one year sooner than otherwise will save an astounding 36.5 Million real, human lives.. Thus, we should work toward putting more concrete numbers to these estimates. How much more living space can be feasibly created by colonizing the oceans? How deep can we really dig, build and live? How high can we safely build? Is there a threshold height or depth where building higher or deeper becomes too economically-prohibitive to be worth the added living, working or resource-space? What are the parameters (e.g. material strength/cost ratio, specific
structural design) determining such a threshold? First, we need to collect and analyze the feasibility studies that have already been undertaken on floating cities, artificial islands, VLFSs and the new solution-paradigms that are emerging to combat the contemporary concerns of sustainability and resource scarcity. In short, we need to compile data from the feasibility studies that have already been done, and the projects already implemented. Then we need to plan and commission further feasibility studies, undertaken by engineers and geologists, to build upon the work already accomplished in feasibility studies pertaining to existing designs for floating cities and other Very-Large-Floating-Structures. We need to put some numbers to the cost the additional space for food, resources, work and livingspace necessitated by widely-available life-extension therapies. We need to do some hard calculations to show that the effects of overpopulation are problems that can be solved using existing megascale-engineering and construction techniques and materials, safely and economically. We need to show the world that it has more space than it ever thought it had, and that such solution-paradigms as cosmic colonization and procreative regulation are neither the only ones, nor necessarily the most optimal ones. We need in short to show them that, in this case, where there’s a will there’s a way, and that the weight of waiting is too high a price to pay. REFERENCES:
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OVERPOPULATION & EXTINCTION BY: DAVID KEKICH
Will we be the next endangered species? Yes and no. Every time a radical new idea or trend emerges, naysayers spring from the woodwork, wringing their hands over all the dangers these changes will carry with them, and try to rally the masses to stand in the way of progress. The concept of conquering death may frighten them more than even the Industrial Revolution. If you read your history, you’re aware of the ridiculous predictions of mass unemployment and widespread starvation. Of course the same history books show the exact opposite results. And so it is with super longevity. “What are we going to do with all the people?” “A bigger population will chew up our resources until there’s nothing left for anyone.” And of course there are more objections. On the surface, these knee-jerk reactions seem logical (assuming letting billions die to make room for even more future victims is a moral and rational solution). Let’s look at the logic behind these objections: Take overpopulation, which according to conventional “wisdom,” would result in disappearing resources. Eliminating death, at least from biological malfunctions, could eventually lead to extinction, if, and only if, open-ended lifespans end up meaning a swelling population won’t sustain itself with the ability to produce enough food, energy, etc. to manage the growth. We need to either control our environment or control growth. Unless we don’t produce enough to sustain life, it will wither and die… and we will as a species, disappear from the face of the earth.
And the Luddites (those opposed to many new technologies) love to point this out to all who will listen. But we will sustain life and possibly manage population growth as well (uncontrolled population growth is almost certainly overstated too). In fact, the very technologies that will allow us to overcome aging should solve the perceived problem of limited resources. The same was true for the technologies which sprung from the Industrial Revolution. Our sights are set higher now too. Where the power loom was all the rage in the 19th Century, now we’re on the verge of space colonization. The universe may be infinite too. If so, it would allow for limitless growth. Even if the universe is finite, it’s unimaginably large. And if we did some day see that continued growth would ultimately mean death, then we should be smart enough by then to preserve our existence. The most glaring observation of history is that it repeats itself. Are we doomed to not learn from history and keep making the same mistakes? Or will enhanced wisdom accompany our prospects of super human intelligence? I wonder what the Luddites will scream about tomorrow if Luddism survives intelligence enhancement. Now let’s get back to the question of whether humans will be the next endangered species. That depends on your definition of human. Were our distant ancestors human? Evolution has taken us from root-grubbing grunting hominids, fighting it out with the other primitive animals, to 21st Century meatbags reaching for the stars. Now that we started down the path of accelerating self-driven evolution, in the next hundred years, humans may change more than we did in the last million. Then does that mean we won’t be human? This evolvement is typically referred to as transhumanism which leads to posthumanism. So the question is, will we still be human? Since it depends on your definition of human, you decide. The point is, we’ll be better in nearly every way. For those who don’t agree, they can choose to be left behind.
PART TWO: LONGEVITY PHILOSOPHY
THE DREAM [PAOLO AND FRANCESCA] (1909) BY UMBERTO BOCCIONI
IMMORTALISM: ERNEST BECKER AND ALAN HARRINGTON ON OVERCOMING BIOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS BY: JASON SILVA
The mindset of an Immortalist is pretty simple and straightforward: death is an abhorrent imposition on a species able to reflect and care about meaning. Creatures that love and dream and create and yearn for something meaningful, eternal and transcendent should not have to suffer despair, decay, and death. We are the arbiters of value in an otherwise meaningless universe. The fleeting nature of beautiful, transcendent moments feeds the urge for man to scream: “I was here; I felt this and it matters, goddamn it!” In the face of meaningless extinction, it’s not surprising that mankind has needed to find a justification for his suffering. Man is the only animal aware of his mortality –- and this awareness causes a tremendous amount of anxiety, anxiety that we have to do something about. As a child I wanted to understand the world. Nothing much has changed. The sense of urgency has not dissipated. I’m still running around desperately trying to understand things. To have emerged –- to be self-aware, to know that I know that I am –- all these things were troubling mostly because they fueled the panic over having some semblance of control over my experience. When I first understood what love was, on a visceral level — that was when I first grasped the concept of death. Death felt real when I pondered losing someone I loved. It was unbearable to imagine that everything and everyone I loved was temporary, even as a young child. Very early on, I comprehended mortality intellectually. I suppose many of us repress this awareness and comfort ourselves with stories, orthodoxies, and songs – but I couldn’t. That felt like a cop out. We can dance, skydive, travel, drink wine, get high… But when we pause for just a moment –- a faint disquiet begins to intrude. The philosophy that accepts death must itself be considered dead, its questions meaningless, its
consolations worn out.” - Alan Harrington, The Immortalist “If we lacked humor, given the fundamental terrorizing incongruity of mortality awareness in creatures who dream of immortality, it is questionable whether human beings would have survived at all.” - Neil Engee, Laughing At Death “The common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to possess it; and yet our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful, but rather to lay a permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies. We want to give our experience of the sublime weight in our lives.” - Alain de Botton “A person spends years coming into this own, developing his talent, his unique gifts, perfecting his discriminations about the world, broadening and sharpening his appetite, learning to bear the disappointments of life, becoming mature, seasoned – finally a unique creature in nature, standing with some dignity and nobility and transcending the animal condition, no longer a complete reflex, not stamped out of any mold – and then the real tragedy: That it might take sixty years of incredible suffering and effort to make such an individual, and then he is good only for dying.” - Ernest Becker discussing Andre Malraux Not that my life isn’t sunny and lusty, packed with fascinating hours. It is. Everybody has the chance to turn his span into an adventure, filled with achievement and love-making. We can dance, skydive, float in space, build marvelous jetliners, travel, drink wine, get high, write poems together, and more. We’ve never had such a variety of music, art, and dance as today. But when we start to grow a little older –- and when we pause for just a moment –- a faint disquiet begins to intrude on all our scenes. Alain de Botton, in his book The Art of Travel, says, “If our lives are dominated by the search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest — in all its ardor and paradoxes — than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might actually be about, outside the constraints of work and the struggle for survival.” I would go further and say that when we travel we are so immersed in the present moment; so fully stimulated by the newness of the here and now – that for a while we step off the moving walkway that carries everyone else towards death. Movies like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise always made me feel this way. It involved two people falling in love while traveling and exploring a new city – and it was intoxicating. That one night tasted like forever. That was a sampler of immortality, and sadly, it ended all too soon. The psychologist Ernest Becker wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death, that in the face of an acute and agonizing awareness of his mortality, man has developed three main devices to sustain his sanity: the Religious, the Romantic, and the Creative. These illusions
act as temporary solutions to the problem of death. Let’s take a look at each one of these in turn. THE RELIGIOUS SOLUTION – “GOD WILL SAVE US” The Religious Solution has man inventing the concept of God and projecting onto it the power to grant us what we all really want –- the ability to bestow eternal life on ourselves and our loved ones, and to be free from disease, decay and death. The belief in an all-powerful God made perfect sense during the dark ages when people lived short, miserable, disease-ridden lives. With no explanation for their suffering, people were better able to bear their hardships by having faith in God and believing that –- in the end –- their God would “save” them. However, God never came. Suffering persisted, and people lived and people died. In an age of science and reason, however, the Religious Solution has all but become obsolete. The irrationality of religious dogma has become clear in our modern time of scientific enlightenment, and – rather than alleviating our anxiety – it has only served to exacerbate it. In his book The Immortalist. Alan Harrington wrote, “Anxiety increases with education. As we grow more sophisticated, ever more ingenious rationalizations are needed to explain death away.” Man still needs something to believe in, it seems. THE ROMANTIC SOLUTION –- “LOVE IS ETERNAL” Enter the Romantic Solution –- the second illusion identified by Becker. When we no longer believe in God, we then turn our lovers into gods and goddesses. We idolize them and write pop songs about being saved by their love. For a little while, we feel immortal – like gods beyond time. “Once we realize what the religious solution did, we can see how modern man edged himself into an impossible situation,” says Becker. “He still needed to feel heroic… to merge himself with some higher, self-absorbing meaning, in trust and in gratitude…Yet if man no longer had god, how was he to do this?” The answer to Becker’s question is simple. Man did it by turning his beloved into god: “If the love object is divine perfection, then one’s own self is elevated by joining one’s destiny to it,” Becker continues. All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be “purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.” And the Oedipus complex can now be understood for what it really is, says Becker, “… another twisting and turning, a groping for the meaning of one’s life. If you don’t have god in heaven, an invisible dimension that justifies the visible one, then you take what is nearest at hand and work out your problems on that.” Harrington offers his own take on the Romantic Solution to demonstrate how romance manifests itself. “Sensuality may turn into a feverish hunt for rebirth,” says Harrington. “In carrying on this
search, men and women depend increasingly on sexual symbolism. The sexual partner turns into a stand-in for various dream figures, phantasms in a stage-managed resurrection. These figures are all agents of immortality to be conquered or succumbed to many times over, in order that the pilgrim without faith may symbolically die and live again.” We all know how this feels. Jose Ortega y Gasset calls it the “beaming forth of a favorable atmosphere.” But it goes way further than that. When in love, Becker says, “man can forget himself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvelously quickened in the experience.” We are temporarily relieved from the drag of “the animality that haunts our victory over decay and death.” When in love, we become immortal gods. But no relationship can bear the burden of godhood. Eventually, our gods/lovers reveal their clay feet. It is, as someone once said, the “mortal collision between heaven and halitosis.” For Ernest Becker, the reason is clear: “It is right at the heart of the paradox of man. Sex is of the body and the body is of death. Let us linger on this for a moment because it is so central to the failure of romantic love as the solution to human problems and is so much a part of modern man’s frustrations.” This is the revelation we all come to in a romantic relationship when sex is revealed to represent “species consciousness” –= a mere process of reproduction in service of propagation, rather than in the service of “man as a special cosmic hero with special gifts for the universe…” Man is revealed to be a mere link in the chain, with no lasting purpose or significance. Passionate love then tends to transition into housekeeping love –- boredom and routine coupled with the impossible standards we have for our lovers collides in a flurry of disappointment, and perfection begins to show its cracks. This is why most marriages end in divorce and why love doesn’t ever quite seem to last forever. THE CREATIVE SOLUTION – “MY ART WILL LAST FOREVER” At this point in his analysis, Becker identifies the last illusion man has devised — the Creative Solution. He explains our urge to leave a legacy –= to create a great work of art that has lasting impact and value, something that carries our signature and lives on after we’re gone. “This is the artist’s way of scribbling ‘Kilroy was here’ on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must one day pass,” Harrington explains. This is quite touching and clever, and not surprising, but ultimately it fails where it counts: you still die. The absurdity and ache of our condition can be summed up by the opening line from the awardwinning 2006 documentary Flight From Death narrated by Gabriel Byrne, “To have emerged from nothing; to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feeling; an excruciating yearning
for life and self-expression. And with all this; yet to die. Human beings find themselves in quite the predicament. With our minds we have the capacity ponder the infinite, seemingly capable of anything, yet we’re housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping, decaying body. We are godly, yet creaturely.” Here’s the trailer for Flight from Death: The rationalization of death as a “good” thing is no more than a complacent nodding resignation unto nothingness –- just another device to justify and put the absurdity of our mortality out of our minds. Religion often goes farther in this glamorization of oblivion. In his essay, “The Ideology of Death,” the philosopher Herbert Marcuse explains our bizarre rationalization of death, “The exhortation to make death one’s own is hardly more than a premature reconciliation with unmastered natural forces. A brute biological fact, permeated with pain, horror, and despair, is transformed into an existential privilege. From the beginning to the end, religion has exhibited this strange masochism.” Neil Engee, in his essay “Laughing at Death,” amplifies this theme, “The dread of death is terrifyingly magnified when we consider the possibility that our life and death could be insignificant in a meaningless indifferent universe. Participation in the transcending cultural drama lends us meaning and enables us to keep such dark concerns out of mind, unconscious, suppressed by the security blanket of social verities enfolding us in comforting embrace.” There are other ways we hide from mortality in contemporary life. “The disco has become an electric art form,” Harrington rails. “We loosen our anxieties with the help of enormous guitars in a temple of fragmentation.” These assaults on our senses all have one purpose, “to smash the separateness of everyone present; to expose feeling and break through thinking; to make us live, in the phrase of Alan Watts, ‘a perpetual uncalculated life in the present’… all this too amounts to one more attempt to hide from the end; a sort of electronic Buddhism in place of sequential perception.” THE IMMORTALIST SOLUTION – “OVERCOMING BIOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS” The Immortalist Solution is simply this: the time has come for man to get over his cosmic inferiority complex. To rise above his condition – and to use technology to extend himself beyond his biological limitations. “We must never forget we are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order that kills everybody,” says Harrington. While Ernest Becker identified our need for heroism and our extensive attempts to satisfy it symbolically, Alan Harrington proposes that we move definitively to engineer salvation in the real world. He proposes that we move directly to physically overcome death itself, “Spend the money, higher the scientists and hunt down death like an outlaw.” Where some cry heresy and gasp in protest at the pretense of “playing god,” Harrington simply states, “The truth is, of
course, that death should no more be considered an acceptable part of life than smallpox or polio, both of which we have managed to bring under control without denouncing ourselves as pretentious.” Harrington also suggests that what must be eliminated from the human drama is, “the inevitability of death as a result and natural end of the aging process.” He is speaking of the inescapable parabolic arching from birth to death, “being alive now, ungoverned by span, cycle or inevitability. …Civilized man’s project will no longer be, as Freud suggested, to recover his lost childhood, but rather to create the adult equivalent: an immortal present free from the fear of aging and death,” Harrington continues. Harrington also rails against any philosophy that teaches complacency. “All philosophical systems insofar as they teach us sportingly to accept extinction are a waste of time,” he writes. “The wisdom of philosophers may nearly always be found trying to blanket our program to conquer death.” He critiques men that propose surrendering to the “eternal now,” stating, “Alan Watts and Norman O. Brown write passionately, with intimidating erudition, about the unimportance of erudition. Supremely self-conscious and egocentric men advance themselves, their systems and anti-systems, never stop talking, all the while insisting that the mind should be retracted, the intellect forsaken, and that everyone should instead worship the sensuous present.” Harrington then continues by critiquing those who embellish “nothingness.” He says, “Voices preaching false consolation will not help us, no matter how skillfully and soothingly they arrange nothingness.” This includes thinkers like Alan Watts, who claims, “… death seems simply to be a return to that unknown inwardness out of which we were born.” Harrington dismisses such statements as verbal valium when he states, “This may be appraised as fine writing, but it serves also to glamorize death, and therefore, in the context of humanity’s mission to conquer death, to weaken and tranquilize our rebellion.” Harrington is not the only one who thinks this way. “Eternity, eternity! … that is the supreme desire! The thirst of eternity is what is called love among men… nothing is real that is not eternal,” says Miguel de Umamuno in his book “The Tragic Sense of Life.” Our anguish as human beings is articulated by this rant. Unamuno continues, “The world is made for consciousness… A human soul is worth all the universe.” IN SUMMARY The Immortalist point of view can be summarized as a project that uses technology to “Individualize eternity, to stabilize the forms and identities through which the energy of conscious life passes.” This is hardly a stretch for human beings, says Harrington: “We have long since gone beyond the moon, touched down on mars, harnessed nuclear energy, artificially
reproduced DNA, and now have the biochemical means to control birth; why should death itself, ‘the last enemy,’ be considered beyond conquest?” Once again, to quote Harrington, “Salvation belongs to medical engineering and nothing else; man’s fate depends first on the proper management of his technical proficiency; we can only engineer our freedom from death, not pray for it. The beautiful device of tragedy ending in helplessness has become outmoded in our absurd time, no longer desirable and not to be glamorized. The art that embellishes death with visual beauty and celebrates it in music belongs to other centuries. Anything that celebrates or bemoans our helplessness has gone as far as it can. We are done teaching accommodation to death and granting it static finality as the ‘human condition’.” In closing, I want to leave you with this biting and eloquent passage I read somewhere on the Internet: “There is nothing about death that is less than abominable. I am forever bewildered by the placating palaver wasted in efforts to quell this irrational horror. The cessation of all that is, the chasm that devours every memory, every fleeting intellection, every redeeming fragment of meaning and love and lust and friendship and hunger and hopeless vitality, and reduces it all to the inconceivable cosmic ash of nothing—That is my enemy.”
REFUTING THE “INDEFINITE LONGEVITY WILL SLOW PROGRESS” CRITICISM BY: FRANCO CORTESE
We are all still children. As far as the Centenarian is concerned, the only people to have ever lived have been children – and we have all died before our coming of age. What if humans only lived to age 20? Consider how much less it would be possible to know, to experience, and to do. Most people would agree that a maximum lifespan of 20 years is extremely circumcising and limiting – a travesty. However, it is only because we ourselves have lived past such an age that we feel intuitively as though a maximum lifespan of 20 years would be a worse state of affairs than a maximum lifespan of 100. And it is only because we ourselves have not lived past the age of 100 that we fail to have similar feelings regarding death at the age of 100. This doesn't seem like such a tragedy to us – but it is a tragedy, and arguably one as extensive as death at age 20. Another reason informing our concern with death at age 20 and our relative ease with death at 100 is the notion of living long enough to do enough. Death at age 20 for the most part seems to preclude such experiences as parenthood, to birth a child and watch him grow into personhood. Thus whereas a 100 year old will have had enough time to have children, to watch them grow, to work and to enjoy the fruits of their labor through leisure in retirement. Our ignorance regarding the real scope of possibility, of possible experience and possible modes of existence also informs our relative unconcern with death at age 100. We feel that there is a limited number of things for one to do in life, or at least things that are qualitatively unique enough to be considered as being truly distinguishable from the rest. But we couldn't be more wrong. It's hard to step outside culture sometimes, and easy to naively look upon a foreign culture as embodying but a very limited number of archetypes and stereotypical caricatures of their true depth and diversity. There are more contemporary cultures, traditions and conditions that can be practiced and experienced than years to actually do so. Likewise, there is more history to learn about than time available. The current breadth and depth of the world and its past are far too gargantuan to be encompassed by a mere 80 years. If you really think that there are only so many things that can be done in a lifetime, you simply haven't
lived long enough or broadly enough. There is more to the wide whorl of the world than the confines and extents of our own particular cultural narrative and native milieu. More than this, the startling diversity of the world and stark heterogeneity of history is only set to continue its upward growth into spaces unknown as we move into the plethora of futures before us. More information is being produced than can be kept up with. Culture has always been changing, but today the pace of that change is swifter than ever before. The thought that boredom would ever be an issue to longer living people is simply laughable. Not only does the world currently contain more than it is possible to know in a single century, but it is accumulating ever more depth and diversity every day, and at an accelerating pace. You couldn't catch up with history in the first place, and you're sure to gain more ground to cover than you can possibly encompass, faster than you can get a hold of it, as life expectancy experiences further increases. Another condition informing our concern with death at 20 and our relative unconcern with death at 100 is the decline of function as we age. Bodily suffering and functional decay increase as one grows with age, and often we look upon the elderly as beings more defined by their encumbrance, by what they have lost, than by what they still possess. What will life be like, we wonder, when bodily motion becomes a battle, and when the simple experience of motion in an embodied world is complimented at every turn and twist by heat, friction, and pain? When living as we once did when young becomes a labor, and leisure is really just that? Or perhaps worse, when our minds begin to fall out from under us, to fail, as we are left to look on in horror from the inside-out looking-in. Lucky for us, we're wrong; and even if we weren't, we are still lucky that it is a transient tragedy, a temporary and ultimately remediable one. These men and women are more than the sum of what they have lost. They are living, breathing, thinking and valuing beings. They are! It's as simple and stunning as that: they exist! To think that they might be better off, happier, in the rest of death and quiet of last breath – to think that they are beings defined most fundamentally by suffering, and by a comparison of what they no longer are, is not only wrong but perverse. They are living, and life so long as it's lived should never be defined by suffering, by a lack or comparison of what it isn't, but rather by what it is and still is. There are exceptions of course; rapidly debilitating disease, unremitting pain, incomprehensible horror at the slow decay of mind. But I would argue confidently that the elderly are not in constant woe of that which they can no longer do. Like living beings, they deal with it and continue on in the business of being. To consider the elderly as “waiting for the rest and peace of death” is a dangerous and ugly notion, and one very far from the truth. Luckily, functional decline as a correlate of age is on the way out. We will live to 100 not in a period of decline upon hitting our mid-twenties, but in a continuing period of youthfulness. There are no longevity therapies on the table that offer to truly prolong life indefinitely without actually reversing aging. Death and aging are not separate things or processes; death is when
aging has won the battle. Aging is slow death, and a truly-indefinite delaying of death ipso facto necessitates a reversal of aging, and a remediating of the physiological conditions that ultimately lead to death (i.e. what we colloquially call aging). To think that we will be prolonging our lives not as youthful beings of whatever physiological age we so desire but instead as elderly, ageravaged beings patching new holes and bracing old crutches is to some extent mistake the cause for the symptom. If we prolong life significantly, we will prolong the healthy portion of our lives first and foremost. The centenarians of next century will look as healthy as the 20-year-olds of last. Thus, one of the impediments preventing us from seeing death at 100 as a tragedy, as dying before one’s time, will be put to rest as well. When we see a 100 year old die in future, they will have the young face of someone who we feel today has died before their time. We won't be intuitively inclined to look back upon the gradual loss of function and physiological-robustness as leading to and foretelling this point, thereby making it seem inevitable or somehow natural. We will see a terribly sad 20 year old, wishing they had more time. We will be able to envision with vivid viscerality the bright and buoyant things they could be doing were they not bedridden and stricken with sickness unto death. Moreover, that gradual decline into visually-apprehensible old age also highlights another impediment to seeing the elderly as continually-growing beings with a future to look forward to rather than fight against. The gradual decline of our mental faculties makes it seem that we would be accumulating experience and memory at a deficit, cumulatively losing the ability to think, judge, remember and experience. Thus old age conjures to mind more senility than wisdom for many people. This too is less true than delusive. Again, this type of thinking is engendered by comparing what they seem to be with what they aren’t or once were. In any case, it will be even less true in the future, when longevity therapies restore our mental health to its youthful glory. Then, the prospect of ever-continuing experience and personal growth, ever-accumulating wisdom and knowledge, ever sharper consideration and discernment is not so intuitively-improbable. The claim that we can in fact continue to grow in how smart, ethical, knowledgeable and deliberative we are will not be so easily balkable when one’s physiological state ceases to be an indicator of their chronological age. Another common criticism of indefinite longevity in regard to the downfalls of old age comes from Max Planck’s statement that science progresses one funeral at a time; that men and women of a given generation become so attached to their theories that they remain attached in the face of contrary evidence, and it takes their very death for new theories to be embraced by new generations unencumbered by the consideration that “after all this time I might actually be wrong after all”. From this sentiment follows the criticism that significantly extending the average
human lifespan will slow progress in science by preventing the death those grafted unflinchingly to a given theory. I would argue that such a sentiment stems from the view of the elderly previously defined and defied, namely as beings more defined by what they have lost than by what they have, as beings fighting against the grain of growth. To view the elderly as continually growing beings forces one to see this criticism as somewhat naïve. Along another line of argumentation, if we assume that this observation is correct and elderly academics refusing to let their own cherished theories die at the hands of the new is a real concern only aggravated by the coming of longevity therapies, then we still have reason to believe that longevity therapies can change the nature of the game by a large enough extent to negate these problematic concerns. If someone refuses to consider in light of new evidence or perspective that their theory is wrong, refuses to allow the series of thought leading to the realization that all they have worked for is of lesser importance now, the most obvious cause of discontent would seem to be the notion of their own onrushing death. “If my theory is wrong, there isn’t time – or perhaps just youthful vigor – enough to do it all over again from scratch”. Someone worked his lifetime to achieve recognition in his field, and with his death so close around the corner, he faces the prospect of having all that work and worth be devalued by new developments. A scary thought, and the notion that people willingly or subconsciously refuse to consider facts that undermine their theory, and its perceived worth in their field, is least conceivable under such conditions. Thusly considered, Planck’s notion doesn’t as naïve as it first seemed. But this is the very concern set to be alleviated by longevity therapies. If the concern with being wrong is most impacted by one’s impeding death, and the fact that one wouldn’t have the time or energy to create another groundbreaking paradigm upheaval in their chosen field should their namesake-theory prove to be mistaken, then the arrival of longevity therapies should not only fail to exacerbate and aggravate this situation, but indeed may even ameliorate or negate it, allowing people to let their theories go under the comforting thought that they have all the time in the world to do it again. My friend and peer Gennady Stolyarov II combats this criticism admirably, arguing that such instances occur due to the functional decline that comes with graceless old age, due to senility and a loss of mental flexibility. I think there is definitely some weight and worth to this consideration. And luckily, this too is a concern that is alleviated rather than aggravated by the introduction of longevity therapies. Longevity therapies will increase our healthy lifespans rather than stretch out the slow rot of our old age, as remarked earlier. Thus the longevity therapies that many critics argue could exacerbate this progress-stalling state of affairs could, along yet another line of argumentation, constitute the very thing that jolts this state of affairs into reform. If senility and loss of mental flexibility contributes to Planck’s notion that life (or more properly
the absence of timely death) forestalls scientific progress, then longevity therapies may constitute the source of senility’s demise and mental flexibility’s restoration. In any case, even if we accept Plank’s notion as true, and conclude that indefinite longevity will aggravate rather than alleviate this state of affairs, faster progress in the sciences or the humanities is no justification for simply doing nothing to negate physically-remediable sources of death and disease. It seems to me a truism that we get smarter, more ethical and more deliberative as we age. To think otherwise is in many cases derivative of the notion that physiology and experience alike are on the decline once we “peak” in our mid-twenties, downhill into old age – which does undoubtedly happen, and which inarguably does cause functional decline. But longevity therapies are nothing more nor less than the maintenance of normative functionality; longevity therapies would thus not only negate the functional decline that comes with old age, and with it the source of the problem arguably at the heart of the concern that longer life will slow progress even more, but might even constitutes the only foreseeable fix to the problem by definition, because indefinite longevity is defined as (or more properly, synonymous with) the maintenance of normative functionality, a.k.a. the indefinite prevention of functional decline. There is no reason to expect that, in a time where we age without functional decline, the ethicacy and experience of each human being wouldn’t increase as we age just as they arguably do as we age from two to twenty to thirty. Increasing longevity will not bring with it prolonged old-age, a frozen decay and decrepit delay, but will instead prolong our youthful lives and make us continually growing beings, getting smarter and more ethical all the time. Indefinite longevity will not slow progress, it will accelerate it! Instead of the having thinking, being beings die after ten-score decades, they can continue to think and be. They can build upon the edifice of their existence and experience continually, reaching height unheralded in flighty fits and bounds. Moreover, increasingly more and more people may very well be a boon to the momentum of progress. It could be argued that the increasing rate of progress was aided by the increase in global population that preceded it, providing not only more people to have more thoughts, but more people to challenge existing thought and to feedback accordingly in forward fashion. Statistically speaking, more people should mean more ideas, and more ideas should mean more good ideas, all else being equal. Thus indefinite longevity will better progress, not deter it, and will do so on the scale of both self and society. We will continue to grow, to learn and to yearn. But more than that – we will continue to be – and that in itself is cause for good pause. In all our worry about stalled progress and boredom, we forget that even if indefinite longevity didn’t bring with it a host of advantages and boons to the boom of progress and exalted strife intrinsic to life, the ability to simply
continue being is incommunicably better than the alternative, which does nothing but put an end to all other alternatives.
LAZARUS LONG BY: JOHN ELLIS , PH.D.
Arguments about the future are barred in philosophy as unprovable. This bars most religions, and futurism. In Transhumanist “religions” mysticism is replaced by science-fiction & speculation. 80% of people have a deep capacity for complex irrational belief. Society needs to satisfy this, or they will descend into mental illness. THE LAZARUS LONG DELUSION (i.e., I am old and I don’t want to resurrect.) Unbiased judgment is only possible in a state of well-being, on the whole. The mind in a suffering body deludes itself of its impartiality. A surprising number of people don’t want resurrection because they are unaware of this delusion. I have found only two reasons for this: 1. When young they realized that death was inevitable and so they have programmed themselves to accept death. Challenging death causes revolution in their psyche which is stressful. 2. They are unaware of the body’s effect on their reasoning. They haven’t read Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. Lazarus Long is centuries old and commits suicide. Before the suicide is complete, police ‘bots find and rejuvenate him. He feels great and wants to live again. This must happen to everyone, I believe, because we are beings bonded by biological urges that filter into us as our mind. Nature has built us with a progressive death wish as we age, to make our degeneration into death
bearable. Some Freudians call it “Thanatos.” Libido, the opposite, is what you see in young animals bouncing around. When you are resurrected (to youth) your body will be full of libido and you will want to live. People confuse death with the cessation of suffering. You don’t need Death to stop suffering: to stop suffering, you need full health and peace. The only honest way to test it is to try both states: 1. Try being Dead and… 2. Try being young again. See which you prefer! I’m not kidding. That should be possible in systems well within the skills of quantum archaeology. Some people are locked in ego and may find it hard to believe their essential tastes and drives are products of biology, biology of chemistry and chemistry of physics. Some organized groups centuries old will challenge this, but my experience in studying them is that they change when and how they have to, in order to survive. They are already doing it. When people are resurrected in front of your eyes, false assumptions will crumble and the prodeath memberships will ebb away. The profound change in our psyche is that death can’t exist, since science is likely to resurrect us in an infinite multiverse, where anything that can happen, and does happen. Soon aging and ill health as we know it won’t exist, and everything we have accepted as immutable facts will be laughed at: “In those days you know, people used to DIE.” The word DEATH will have to take on a new meaning. Life-ism is not a challenge to morality; it is one of the most moral attempts so far using man’s technology.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T COMMIT SUICIDE 1. Because suffering is going to be reversed. You won’t have had it. The present you is not the final judge of reality. Like winding a film of history back, history is likely to be changed and the suffering taken out, without any loss of identity. This is a hard area in philosophy and outside the scope of this essay. 2. Because you won’t have any say in what the world will become. 3. Because suicide doesn’t give you rest, or relief: you think you’ll just cease to exist, but actually, you’ll be resurrected. If you die, you will probably be resurrected, but the world in which you surface will be built by other people using artificially intelligent machines. Your return is unlikely to be unconditional at first: you may have to obey the laws that have evolved while you were not there. The maximum game strategy is to survive as long as you can. Many will not have to die, but just get rejuvenation. They will be able to control investments and some may influence policy. Suicide might only be useful as last resort but attempting it is illegal in many nations. Feeling you don’t want to live is a normal part of the spectrum of human emotions. Depressed, we have the “Lazarus Long” delusion – that life isn’t worth it. When we’re not depressed, we don’t feel that at all. If depression persists you could have a treatable illness and should seek help. Over the counter anti-depressants can lift someone out of suffering quickly. There is a cost/benefit judgment of living/not living, but life-ism certainly could be part of that process. Logically, there is no longer a terminal illness. We are immortal whether we like it or not!
TECHNO-IMMORTALISM 101: WHAT ARE MINDFILES? BY: MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D, MBA, J.D.
A mindfile is the sum of saved digital reflections about you. All of the stored emails, chats, texts, IMs and blogs that you write are part of your mindfile. All of the uploaded photos, slide shows and movies that involve you are part of your mindfile. Your search histories, clicked selections and online purchases, if saved, are part of your mindfile. Your digital life is your mindfile. Gordon Bell, a computer pioneer, has been digitally documenting every aspect of his life for years. He wears a device around his neck that photographs his surroundings every time there is a change, logs his GPS coordinates and records his voice and certain medical parameters. His entire mindfile is accreting at the rate of about one gigabyte per month. In 2010 a gigabyte of memory costs less than a dollar, so an entire lifetime mindfile costs less than a month’s rent in most apartments. Most people do not want all of their life going into a mindfile. But virtually everyone wants some of their life mindfiled. Common sense says to safely store your precious photos in a server elsewhere rather than risk their loss in a plastic photo album. Lists of friends and dates are so much more convenient stored digitally than on scraps of paper. So long as the digital reflections of our lives cannot be used against us or to annoy us – such as by the government or advertisers— we are happy to let an ever-larger mindfile of us accumulate. Your mindfile is accumulating regardless of your awareness of it. A reasonable estimate is that people send or answer a few hundred emails a month, excluding spam. In addition, we all regularly make at least a dozen or so online searches, purchases, and banking transactions. Some of us share a photo a day; others of us perhaps five a month. Over the course of a decade, these thousands of emails and other digital samples of your behavior create a mindfile more detailed than the most researched biography. An expert team would know you almost as well as you know yourself if they had this mindfile to peruse. They could predict what you would probably do, how you would likely react and whom you might be thinking about. From your mindfile, they would have your profile. Your mindfile leads to your profile in large part because we all live in a cultural context. We all
share a large body of common knowledge with those who live in our same place, or have our same job, or are part of one of our social networks. If you live in LA, you know what freeways are, and you hate getting stuck on them. This is true for you even if you never mentioned it in your blog. But if you liked freeways, there would be evidence of that oddity in your uploads into your mindfile, such as a text or twitter message. Hence, piggy-backed onto our mindfiles are vast assemblages of common cultural information. Now it is certainly the case that much of the information that would be in our mindfile is continually erased. Text messages are rarely stored, search engine companies have been pressured to erase identifiable information, and some people declare email bankruptcy by simply deleting all their messages in exchange for a fresh start. On the other hand, much more information is accreting to our mindfile than is being erased. We store lifetimes of information on flashdrives, memory sticks, laptops, external hard drives and distant “cloud” computer server farms. Our mindfiles may be as scattered as our brains, but they are there just the same. Were we motivated, we could merge into a master mindfile the digital reflections of our lives scattered across dozens of devices and websites. Organizations are now forming to hoover-up our dispersed digitalia. Numerous photo-sharing and video-sharing sites provide us the opportunity to upload, organize and comment upon our imagery. Social networking sites enable more photo and video uploading, as well as running conversations with friends and connections to different sub-networks of interests that define our life. Blogging companies have digitally immortalized the ‘dear diary’ journal that is so essential to biographers’ efforts to determine the personality and motivations of their subjects. Companies such as Apple and Google offer us the option to co-locate or back-up all of the above mindfiles in their safe ‘computing cloud’ – a mindfile on a magic carpet ride. Finally, there are organizations specifically devoted to helping people create a single coherent digital back-up of their mind. These purposeful mindfiles, at websites such as glogger.net, lifenaut.com and cyberev.org, handle not only photos, video, friends, and journals, but also psychological tests, lists of favorites and other personality profile tools. Why would anyone want to back-up their entire mind, as opposed to simply saving their favorite pictures, movies and conversations? There are at least five different kinds of motivations. For some the reason is to create a kind of living memorial of themselves, for the benefit of children, grandchildren, and friends. These purposeful mindfile websites offer a customizable avatar (animated image), combined with a “chatbot” (conversational software program), that uses all of the information uploaded about a person to chat online the way the creator would chat if he or she were online. The customizable avatars even give the same kind of facial expressions and mannerisms as would their human creator. These mindfile websites allow someone to say “I was here” with the best tools that consumer technology has to offer.
A second reason people use mindfile websites is that they simply enjoy the creative process of making a digital replica of themselves. Rather like scrapbooking on steroids, mindfile creation is an artistic hobby centered on your own life. The goal of the endeavor is for your mindfile-based avatar or chatbot to be the most realistic one about, the one able to win praise from other mindfile aficionados and perhaps even contest awards. The mindfile websites offer an array of personality tests, conversational learning tools and memory repositories so that the mindfile hobbyist can create an ever-more realistic cybernetic portrait. Third, mindfile websites are being marketed to busy people as email screening, web crawling and online shopping tools. Once you create your mindfile on these sites, and set its parameters, it can begin screening and even answering your email, very much as you would personally. In a similar fashion your mindfile can handle other virtual tasks for you without anyone being aware (or caring) that they are dealing with your cyberspace agent rather than yourself. The more time you spend building up your mindfile agent, the more useful it will be to you. Fourth, there are the gloggers. These are committed believers in sousveillance, the practice of streaming the video of one’s every waking moment to a massive social networking site for gloggers everywhere. Sousveillance entails everyone watching everything, a horizontal and thus democratic form of digital monitoring. It is quite unlike surveillance, which involves “Big Brother” watching everyone else, as is the case with most CCTV and security monitoring systems. Gloggers generally wear souped-up glasses (or goggles) with built-in audio-video recording capability that sends whatever it is you see and hear to your mobile phone or a hard drive, from which it is transmitted onward to the glogger.net website. It is argued that everyone will be safer, and freer, in a sousveillance society. Unfortunately, one of its pioneers, Prof. Steven Mann of the University of Toronto, has faced numerous legal challenges to his insistence on keeping his goggle-based video running in public lavatories, police stations and other camera-unfriendly spaces. In his view this amounts to discrimination against the differently abled, which in his case is being wedded to a cybernetic appendage. Clearly, though, gloggers have the most extensive mindfiles. Finally, geek futurists are motivated to use mindfile websites. These (mostly) guys realize that intelligent avatars are the next wave. They are early-adopters who want to be among the first people to sport a software agent that looks, acts and even thinks just like they do. They realize that software which actually thinks like a human – known as mindware – is not yet available. However, geeks can tell by the trends in software capability that mindware will be here soon. Mindfile development and testing is as close as we can get to the real thing today. It is like toying with personal computer building kits in the 1970s before Apple and other companies sold consumer desktops in the 1980s.
It should be noted that it takes no more effort than a daily hour in the gym to create a purposeful mindfile more reflective of you than the best biography. For example, in one hour a day, over a period of five years, you would have 2000 hours of your life on video or 100,000 uploaded and described photos. A leading social scientist, William Sims Bainbridge, has created over 100,000 online questions, and associated psychometric analytical software, that he believes represents a person’s entire general set of feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values. Each question asks how positively or negatively you feel about a topic, and how important that topic is to you. Completing just 50 of these a day – about an hour’s effort at most – would complete them all in five years. A daily mindfile workout might consist of a short video, a few uploaded photos and a few Bainbridge questions. After a decade or so, your mindfile would be quite complete. Alternatively, you will get to pretty much the same place if you are a regular online social networker. It’s just like the difference between people who stay fit with a machine-driven routine and others who do so with regular pick-up games. So, we are all creating voluminous mindfiles, albeit haphazardly, unintentionally and dispersed among IT companies. Some of us are centralizing our mindfiles, such as with a single provider of cloud computing services. A few of us are focusing on making our mindfiles as true to our minds as possible. This can be done with online personality profile and avatar training tools. It is a revolutionary development that much of the content of most people’s minds is being saved outside of their bodies. Even more fundamental is the prospect that these mindfiles can, with mindware under development, be used as the basis for recreating the mind from which they came.
LONGEVITY AND THE INDIAN TRADITION BY: ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D
Does the pursuit of longevity, or even radical longevity, have future in India? The following article will consider this question mainly in ideological, cultural and historical terms, rather than in terms of analyzing current technological and demographic trends. In demographic terms, as was also noted earlier, the life expectancy in India is still relatively low compared to other countries (about 65-66 years), yet it is clearly on the rise [1] and no limit can be set for this increase. Important innovative initiatives for research of aging and longevity are on the way, such as International Longevity Center India [2], whose purpose is “To work towards healthy, productive and participatory aging” [in other words for healthy longevity]. Also the future of general biomedical research in India, including longevity research, looks bright. According to one analyst, “India is a promised land, offering much in the medical and scientific research [3].” Yet, apparently, the biomedical research of aging and longevity, has not yet received a considerable attention in India, judging from the absence of dedicated research institutes or governmental, or even large private, programs to address this issue [4].One suggestion why this negligence happens was that the research of aging and longevity is somehow incompatible with Indian traditional values. It is sometimes assumed that Indian cultural beliefs are opposed to preservation of the material body, due to the belief in the transience of the body and reincarnation. The belief in the supremacy of the spirit and mind over matter and body supposedly makes maintenance of the body unimportant. As formulated by Prof. Kalluri Subba Rao, Hon.
Coordinator for Center for Research and Education in Aging (CREA) University of Hyderabad [5]: “The summary of [this] argument was simple and straightforward. In India we have the faith that this life is only a transitory phase of never ending cycle of birth and death. Everyone who is born is certain to die. In fact, according the Indian ethos, everyone should strive to attain janmarahityam or moksha a state where one becomes free from the cycle of birth and death. Under these circumstance why to worry that we are aging which inevitable? Instead, one should adopt vanaprastha and indulge in such activities that might take one nearer to moksha or even to moksha itself. Therefore, it is silly for any nation to spend a good chunk of its resources on finding out how we become old and die.” Yet, apparently the above argument against longevity research presents a very incomplete and even distorted view of Indian cultural tradition. As a matter of fact, in Indian tradition, particularly in the religious tradition of Hinduism (or rather in the variety of religions of India designated by this term), the pursuit of longevity and even radical life extension has been a persistent theme since a very early time. EXEMPLARY CASES: The entire Book 9 of The Rigveda (c. 17001100 BCE) is dedicated to praises of the immortality-giving “Soma” plant [6].(The plant is called “Haoma” in ancient Iranian (Aryan) religious sources, such as Avesta, c. 1200-200 BCE.) In India, the immortal Rishis, Arhats, and the Ciranjivas (the “extremely long-lived persons”) are revered to the present. Their extreme longevity is often attributed to “Amrit” –
– or the “nectar of immortality” – a
revered and desired substance. The traditional Indian medicine of Ayurveda, or “the science of (long) life,” includes a special field of Rasayana, mainly dedicated to rejuvenation.
According to one of the earliest Ayurvedic texts, The Sushruta Samhita (Sushruta’s Compilation of Knowledge, c. 800-300 BCE) [7]: “Bramha was the first to inculcate the principles of the holy Ayurveda. Prajapati learned the science from him. The Ashvins learned it from Prajapati and imparted the knowledge to Indra, who has favored me [Dhanvantari, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the protector of life and the giver of Ayurveda on earth] with an entire knowledge thereof.” This knowledge was in turn “disclosed by the holy Dhanvantari to his disciple Sushruta.” (Notably, within the Trimurti – Hindu Trinity: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer – the deity mainly associated with Ayurveda is Vishnu the preserver, while some of his devotees, such as Narada can live even through destruction and creation of worlds. A following incarnation of Vishnu is said to be Kalki, the “machine man [8].”) According to the Sushruta Samhita, human life can be normally prolonged to 100 years. Yet, with the use of certain Rasayana remedies (such as Brahmi Rasayana and Vidanga-Kalpa), life can be prolonged to 500 or 800 years. And the use of the “Soma plant, the lord of all medicinal herbs (24 candidate plants are named), is followed by rejuvenation of the system of its user and enables him to witness ten thousand summers on earth in the full enjoyment of a new (youthful) body.”
Churning the Ocean of Milk” – Asuras and Devas working together to prepare the “elixir of immortality”
Also according to another foundational text of Ayurveda, The Charaka Samhita (Charaka’s Compilation of Knowledge, c. 300-100 BCE), the normal human life-span is 100 years. Yet, the users of an Amalaka Rasayana could live many hundreds of years and the users of the Amalakayasa Brahma Rasayana could reach the life-span of 1000 years. The great sages, who grasped perfectly the knowledge of Ayurveda, “attained the highest wellbeing and nonperishable life-span [9].” The ancient Indian tradition abounds in medical achievements, which are perceived as positive and desirable! In the ancient Indian epic of the Ramayana (often dated c. 400 BCE, and sometimes purported to relate to events occurring 4,000 and even 5000 BCE), the monkey king Hanuman uses the Sanjeevani plant (translated as “One that infuses life” and commonly identified as the lycophyte Selaginella bryopteris, growing at the Dunagiri (Mahodaya) mountain in the Himalayas) to revive Rama’s younger brother Lakshman, severely wounded by Ravan [10]. Also according to the Ramayana, the mutilated nose and ears of the asura princess Surpanakha, sister of Ravan and Khara, could be restored [11]. Actual methods of skin transplantation to adhere severed earlobes and restore mutilated noses are described in the Sushruta Samhita [12]. According to the epic of Mahabharata (commonly dated 400-500 BCE and attributed to Vyasa), the body of the Magadha king Jarasandha, could be fused from two halves and completely regenerated [13]. Thus life-extending, rejuvenative and regenerative technologies have been vividly envisioned in Hindu tradition. Buddhism too has a strong connection to the pursuit of longevity. The Great Buddha who grants Longevity is Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, also known as Amitāyus, the Buddha of Infinite Life. Those who invoke him will reach longevity in this realm, and will be reborn in Amitabha’s PureLand (Sukhāvatī or Dewachen in Tibetan Buddhism) where they will enjoy virtually unlimited longevity. This pure and egalitarian land of longevity was created by Amitabha’s avowed devotion and perseverance. One of the mantras in Amitabha’s praise is “Om amrita teje hara hum” (Om save us in the glory of the Deathless One hum). Many Buddhist mantras for longevity are recited, dedicated to the great healers of old, so that a portal to their wisdom may be opened and, through their compassion, suffering will be
abolished and health and longevity reached in this world. Yet also, material means for rejuvenation and life-extension have also been developed by Buddhist physicians [14]. Of course many methods of traditional and Ayurvedic medicine currently practiced yet require thorough testing [15]. Crucially, the vision of advanced medical technology and the idea of a significant, even radical extension of healthy life-span, in this world, are deeply entrenched in Indian cultural tradition. These positive tendencies need to be recalled and reawakened, so the vision of the golden age of extended health and longevity will be implemented in the present time using advances of modern science. The pursuit of healthy longevity is not an “all or nothing” pursuit, but any incremental improvement in this direction may be expected to be beneficial for India and its population. The research of aging and longevity will be required to find the path toward the practical achievement of healthy longevity, and the original inspiration for this pursuit may come from Indian cultural heritage. In summary, one can but agree with Prof. Kalluri Subba Rao’s conclusion, regarding the importance of aging and longevity research for India: “YES. India must in its own interest promote research on aging and associated diseases in a big way. There are always some discordant, perverted voices projecting the distorted Indian Wisdom. India’s march towards becoming a global leader should not be allowed to be disturbed by vested and disgruntled arguments.” Several practical measures were proposed by Prof. Kalluri Subba Rao to advance the goals of healthy longevity in India. Once again, a person interested in promoting this objective in India can only agree and endeavor to support this initiative. “Concrete steps and inputs are necessary. One such step is to establish one or more (in view of the vastness and diversity of the country) Institutes or Centers for a multidisciplinary scientific study of the phenomenon of aging and the associated diseases/problems. Such Institutes would also prepare a database for the clinical and biological profiles of the populations around particularly of the senior citizens to begin with.” One of the missions of the proposed Centers/Institutes would be to “conduct high quality research on the process of aging – at genetic, molecular, clinical, biochemical and behavioral levels” as well as study “disabilities and diseases, including neurological disorders, associated with age and more prevalent in the aged”; in addition to “psychosocial aspects of the aged with a special emphasis on the special and peculiar needs of the aged”, and finally, “connectivity
between the laboratory findings and the community to promote health among the aged and to make use of the healthy ‘aged’ to the societal needs.” Similar goals are now promoted all across the world [16]. Let us hope that with our joint efforts, healthy longevity for all will be advanced in India and everywhere. REFERENCES: [1] http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-16/india/29548151_1_life-expectancyindian-woman-indian-man; http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/india-life-expectancy; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy; http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/leis20120201 [2] International Longevity Center India [3] http://www.kitesindia.org/the-advances-of-indian-research-in-the-new-millennium.php [4] Ashok BT, Ali R, Aging research in India, Experimental Gerontology, 2003 Jun;38(6):597603, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12814794 [5] Prof Kalluri Subba Rao. Should India Promote Scientific Research on Aging? [6] The Hymns of the Rigveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith, E.J. Lazarus and Co., Benares, 1891, Book 9, pp. 361-412, the 1896 edition is reprinted at http://www.sacredtexts.com/hin/rigveda/, http://www.avesta.org/ka/yt9sbe.htm.) [7] An English translation of the Sushruta samhita, based on original Sanskrit text, Edited and published by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, Calcutta, 1907, 1911, 1916, Vol. 1, Sutrasthanam (Fundamental principles), Ch. 1, p. 8, Vol. 2, Chikitsasthanam (Therapeutics), Ch. 27, p. 518, Ch. 28, p. 525, Ch. 29, pp. 530, 536. Available at http://chestofbooks.com/health/india/SushrutaSamhita/index.html#.Uag6GNKnxvA and http://archive.org/details/englishtranslati03susr. [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narada; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki; [9] Charaka Samhita. Handbook on Ayurveda, edited by Gabriel Van Loon, Durham NC, 2003, vol. 1, Cikitsasthana 1.1.75, p. 446, Cikitsasthana 1.3.3-6, p. 455, Sutrasthana 1. 27-29, p. 107, http://www.rencapp.com/TamilCube_Charaka_Samhita.pdf, http://archive.org/details/CharakaSamhitaHindiVolume1. [10] Ramayan of Valmiki, Translated Into English Verse by Ralph T. H. Griffith, 1870-1874,
Book 6, Canto CII “Lakshman Healed,” reprinted at http://www.sacredtexts.com/hin/rama/index.htm. [11] Ramayan of Valmiki, Translated Into English Verse by Ralph T. H. Griffith, 1870-1874, Book 3, Cantos 18-19, reprinted at http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/index.htm. Also in Kampan’s version of the Ramayana, according to Kathleen M. Erndl, “The Mutilation of Surpanakha,” in Paula Richman (Ed.), Many Rāmāyanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991, p. 75, http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/. [12] An English translation of the Sushruta samhita, based on original Sanskrit text, Edited and published by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, Calcutta, 1907, Vol. 1, Ch. 16, pp. 141-154. [13] The Mahabharata, Book 2: Sabha Parva, Kisari Mohan Ganguli, tr., 1883-1896, “Rajasuyarambha Parva,” Section 17, “Jarasandhta-badha Parva,” pp. 40-41, Section 24, pp. 5354, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m02/index.htm [14] See for example, http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/medicine-buddha.htm; See also Derek F. Maher, “Two Wings of a Bird: Radical Life Extension from a Buddhist Perspective,” in Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher (Eds.), Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, Macmillan Palgrave, New York, 2009, pp. 111-121; Luis O. Gomez, The Land of the Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, 1996.); As well as, Jeffrey Lidke and Jacob W. Dirnberger, Churning the Ocean of Milk: Imaging the Hindu Tantric Response to Radical Life Technologies, in Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher (Eds.), Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, Macmillan Palgrave, New York, 2009. [15] Anand Chaudhary, Neetu Singh, and Neeraj Kumar. Pharmacovigilance: Boon for the safety and efficacy of Ayuvedic formulations. J Ayurveda Integr Med. 2010 Oct-Dec; 1(4): 251–256, [16] http://longevityalliance.org/; http://www.sens.org/
“LET A THOUSAND TURTLES FLY,” IN THE QUEST FOR JOYFUL IMMORTALITY
BY: GIULIO PRISCO
Terasem has a huge potential to bridge the gap between the 1960s and the 2010s, the gap between cosmic visions and technology, spirituality and transhumanism, hard and soft rationality. Hank Pellissier recently published an article titled “My Favorite H+ Philosophers - David Pearce, Martine Rothblatt, and Ursula K. Le Guin.” Hank’s article should be a wake up call for the transhumanist community. He says: “Transhumanism isn’t a viral phenomenon… The rest of the world – most of our family and friends, right? – don’t grok our enthusiasm. ‘Read the books!’ we suggest. ‘Boring,’ they retort. ‘Not my thing.’” Hank proposes to complement the aseptic, ultra-rationalist, hard-technology oriented “traditional” formulation of transhumanism, with alternative softer, fuzzier and cozier formulation for Social Empaths (SEs): those (a large majority) who want: “A softer, cuddlier, easier, gooier, goofier, happier Future. They want a culturally rich world that values aesthetics, modulations in tone, nuance, fantasy, intuition, satire and lyrical metaphor. [They] want to share and process feelings. SEs want to communicate intimately, with delicious, extravagant language. SEs want to be sensitive, tender and occasionally childlike.” I am an unrepentant, in-your face, old-school transhumanist who looks forward “to abandon the meatbag and jump rapturously into The Singularity with a chemically-preserved brain ensconced inside a metallic Russian 2045 cyborg [Hank’s words].” This IS my thing. But, like Socrates, I know that I don’t know, and I try to be honest enough to admit it. In particular I don’t know how to give our ideas the immediate, powerful emotional appeal that they deserve. But others do. Hank says: “Already, we have several writers with the words and wisdom we need for this
purpose; we just haven’t been listening to them,” and lists three of them: the great science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, and our teachers and friends David Pearce and Martine Rothblatt, the founder of Terasem. I have been associated with Terasem for a few years, and I formally joined in 2011. I think the nice and warm new-age look and feel of Terasem is our best chance to build bridges to the very large, scattered communities of spiritually oriented persons. Terasem offers a formulation and interpretation of transhumanism more emotionally appealing to persons with artistic and spiritual inclinations, which will help communicating our beautiful ideas in a simple and effective format and give happiness, hope, a sense of wonder, a sense of purpose and peace-of-mind to a multitude of seekers. At Terasem meetings, both online and in brickspace, these powerful feelings are communicated also with the help of yoga, readings, music, poetry and songs, which create a stimulating “magic” experience for all participants. Ultra-rationalist “bureaucrats of philosophy” usually dismiss “hippie new-age attitudes”, but we should not forget that the hippie new-age attitude of the 60s shaped the Internet technology revolution. Perhaps we had the right attitude in the beautiful, visionary anti-authoritarian 60s, and we should recover it to shape new transhumanist technology revolutions. My experience with new-agers is that, yes, they are easily deluded or scammed, and yes, they move from a guru to a new guru, from crystal therapy to energy pyramids and then to pyramid scams, but they are intellectually and spiritually alive, perhaps more alive and awake than others; they seek something beautiful that they cannot define. Terasem offers good answers to the big spiritual questions of life, death, immortality, meaning, and our place in the awakening universe, yet its worldview and philosophy are firmly rooted in science with no concession to “supernatural” realms beyond science. I think Terasem has a huge potential to bridge the gap between the 60s and the 10s, cosmic visions and technology, spirituality and transhumanism, hard and soft rationality. I cultivate the excellent habit of rationality and consider it as a very useful tool. But rationality is indeed a tool (a useful means to achieve a desired result), and not an end in itself. Rationality is an excellent screwdriver, a powerful tool to work with screws, but it is not the best tool to work with nails. Open-minded soft rationality is a much better approach to life than dull, fundamentalist rationalism. Spiritually oriented New Age seekers often have powerful intuitions, beyond what current science can analyze. Their visions form an aesthetic layer that colors their (and then our) perception of the universe and, even when they are not entirely correct, inspire scientists and engineers to turn visionary dreams into actual reality.
For example many mystics, and some scientists, believe in telepathy and extrassensory perception (ESP), and many scientists think that it is all crap. I am open to the possibility that some yet undiscovered science may provide solid theoretical foundations and experimental evidence for ESP, and I am also open to the possibility that ESP may not exist. In science, we let experiment decide. But ESP will exist. Soon we will have brain implants linked to our thoughts and to the Internet. These implants will give us instant telepathic communication with others, and the ability to access the Internet in our minds and see what happens elsewhere. Brain implants will also permit influencing, by thought alone, physical objects in remote places via appropriate actuators. So, regardless of whether or not we possess native ESP abilities for telepathy, remote vision and psychokinesis, the mystics are right anyway. If we have no native ESP, we will engineer ESP someday soon. See the recently published Human+, a novel about transhumanism and spirituality by Martin Higgins, for a fascinating fictional account. Many mystics believe in supernatural phenomena beyond the reach of science. Many ultrarationalists believe in a soon-to-be-found Theory of Everything to explain all that happens in the universe with a few elegant formulas. I think they are both wrong: nothing is beyond the reach of science, but Shakespeare’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” may remain true forever. You can count up to any number, and there will still be infinite numbers beyond. Similarly, our growing scientific understanding of the universe may always find new fractal depths of unexplained phenomena, to be explored by future scientists, in an endless explosion of diversity. The balance of diversity and unity, in the quest for joyful immortality, is one of the key intuitions of Terasem. In 2002, while viewing a Space Shuttle launch from a Florida beach, Martine found inspiration in a remarkable vision, which she subsequently composed in writing and published as “Truths of Terasem” (ToT). See the annotated transcript from the Terasem Podcast produced by Fred and Linda Chamberlain (below), which is also available as an audio podcast, with the other 100 episodes of Fred and Linda’s Truths of Terasem podcasts, the most comprehensive writings about Terasem so far: “I’ll share some personal part of Terasem’s beginnings! It really began in March, 2002 when I was out, on the beach, up on the Space Coast of Florida, doing a morning meditation, at 6 a.m., and suddenly, I felt two ‘presences’ around me, so I immediately opened my eyes, and I witnessed, quite to my surprise, the blastoff of the Space Shuttle STS-109, on its way to the
Hubble telescope. This was Columbia. I then felt a presence, immediately behind me, and I turned around, and found myself eye to eye, with a large Lanternback sea turtle, which was clearly trying to make its way back into the sea. And I was in its way. So, this was kind of startling, because it was pretty much dark, still, and an epiphany poured into me, through the triangular vector of the shuttle’s light blasting across the sky, and the Lanternback turtle’s consciousness, streaming into my own, and I felt a very strong, triangular force of energy between the shuttle, the sea turtle, and myself. An epiphany surged through me, that there were three principles, or three values, which united all life, all reality, indeed the entire multiverse, and these were that the purpose of the multiverse, the solution to the multiverse, was to balance diversity with unity, in the quest for joyful immortality; that the shuttle, Columbia, was a balance of diversity and unity in the quest for joyful immortality; that the Lanternback turtle, was a balance of diversity and unity, in the quest for joyful immortality; that everything was a balance of diversity and unity, in a quest for joyful immortality. I slid myself out of the way, of the Lanternback turtle, and it slowly, but without delay, pushed itself toward the sea, which wasn’t far away. As it did, the shuttle quickly arced out of my sight, smaller and smaller although the contrails were visible as the sun began rising, and again the triangular energy between the turtle and the shuttle remained connected to me, and downloaded to me the entire gist of the Truths of Terasem. It was like I received this multi-gigabit download that still had to be processed, in the way one uploads a video but you can’t see it yet because it’s processing, or uploading a file and it still needs to be processed. I was totally blown away. I stood up, and it was like I was walking on air. I walked a couple of hundred feet to where my soul-mate and partner Bina was resting, up above the seashore. I shared with her what’s happened, and we slid right into the most wonderful, the most erotic lovemaking that anyone could imagine, and it was through this erotic lovemaking that those Truths of Terasem that were downloaded to me in an epiphany, channeled by the shuttle and the turtle, became written into my soul, just as suredly as a file is written into a digital or magnetic medium. I spent the rest of 2002 trying to print out what was in my mind and soul from that March 1st morning, and it took me the rest of 2002, and some final pieces only really made sense late in October 2002, when my partner Bina experienced extraordinary pain, and somehow that pain jelled the remaining pieces of the Truths of Terasem. Since that time, I’ve been committed to spreading the message of the Truths of Terasem, about diversity, unity and the quest for joyful immortality, and the spreading of it, I feel, has been really wonderfully successful.”
Mystics throughout the ages have had the powerful intuition that everything in the universe is deeply connected to everything else to the point that, in a fundamental sense, everything is one. Today’s science seems to confirm it: the correlations between two entangled particles with a space-like separation (each is out of the light cone of the other), which cannot be explained by speed-of-light signaling between two separate parts of the physical universe, tell us that the two particles are really one in some sense that our everyday intuition is not equipped to visualize. As long as the two entangled particles are not observed, each one is in a weird quantum state (for example a superposition of spin-up and spin-down). According to the popular Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, this weird quantum state “collapses” as soon as it is observed. So the first observation (for example of particle A) defines the result of a future observation of the other particle. But if the separation between A and B is space-like, according to Einstein there is another, equally valid frame of reference, where the observation of B comes first. So we cannot say which observer, A or B, collapses the system. This seems to say that, in some sense, also the two observers are really one. The last two paragraphs are probably difficult to follow, but many mystics have contemplated the fundamental unity of consciousness. In my Terasem joinership video I say “I am You, You am I, and We are One,” parts of the collective consciousness of Terasem. The physics above shows that this is not only a poetic image, but also a scientific concept. Imagine a room with many windows. From one, you see a busy city street. From another, you see a quiet, green garden. From another, snowy mountains. The perceptions are different, but the Mind who perceives is One. When a person dies, the blinds of a window go down, but the Mind has many other windows to look at the world from. When we die, we will just continue to live as someone else. Actually, we will continue to live as everyone else, and we are everyone else right now (don’t hurt others, because you would hurt another you). Note: there is a simple way to formulate this concept that does not involve weird physics, based on the observation that “I am,” the bare feeling of existence, may be the same for everyone. I first encountered this intriguing thought in Rudy Rucker‘s Infinity and the Mind. Some wise persons find this enough. But most of us cherish our individuality (memories, experiences, thoughts, and feelings) and we don’t want to accept personal death. The diversity of individual minds is an important part of the unity of Mind, and must be preserved. Terasem supports cryonics, the preservation of temporarily departed persons’ bodies and brains at very low temperatures until they can be revived by future technologies. It also supports, via its LifeNaut and CyBeRev projects, personal data storage services for biological samples and “mindfiles,” that will preserve one’s individual consciousness so that it remains viable for possible uploading with consciousness software into a cellular regenerated or
bionanotechnological body by future medicine and technology. Mindfiles (there are about 12,000 so far) are stored online. Future AI programs, Terasem believes, will use a mindfile and a person’s DNA to create a digital clone of that person that can interact with future family members and others, and subjectively think and feel that (s)he is the continuation of the original. Terasem is open to the possibility of future resurrection of the dead (even those who did not leave mindfiles behind) by “copying them to the future” with exotic future science. We can find hints in the Truths of Terasem, for example: “Souls of our ancestors come back to life when we emulate their lives and their environment.” I am persuaded that a ‘Third Way’ synthesis of science and spirituality, open to the possibility of technological resurrection, is very appealing to both the mind and the heart. In summary, and in reply to Hank’s article, Terasem extends the aseptic, ultra-rationalist, hardtechnology oriented “traditional” formulation of transhumanism with compassion, love, and spirituality. I wish to invite all transhumanists who find the traditional formulation limited and restrictive to take a look, and I am persuaded that the Terasem formulation has much more potential to appeal to the masses.
DEAD AS A DOORNAIL?
BY: PETER ROTHMAN
Brave thee! ay, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too. Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more. -
Cade in King Henry VI, William Shakespeare
DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE BINARY CONDITION. Black or white. Alive or dead. Right? In reality death is not well defined and the definition of death has changed substantially over time. H.P Lovecraft famously wrote, “That is not dead which can eternal lie. Yet with strange aeons even death may die.” This amounts to a pretty good summary of our current philosophical understanding of death. Death is simply the condition wherein you can not be brought back to life. If you can be brought back, then you weren’t really dead. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides us a few examples of more nuanced definitions, for example one might suggest that death is “the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning” or the “ irreversible loss of personhood.” These amount to circular definitions that really don’t tell us anything specific about how to decide when someone is dead. What is “organismic functioning” and how do we know when it is happening? Personhood is of course mostly a legal definition pertaining to rights which are terminated upon death. But if you are brought back to life, you weren’t really dead. And we’ve been burying people alive for a long time.
According to Wikipedia, “A safety coffin or security coffin is a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that they have been buried alive. A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 19th centuries and variations on the idea are still available today.” During epidemics some people would fall into coma and appear to be dead. Methods for determining when someone was dead where however crude at best. For example, in 1899 a law was introduced in New York state requiring all mortuaries to maintain a room where apparently dead people were to be “kept for a certain time” to help prevent premature burial. If you woke up during this time you weren’t dead. Determination of death consisted of simply waiting to see if the person spontaneously woke up. Of course the method was far from foolproof so safety coffins were developed to allow people that were mistakenly buried alive to call for help and escape. But things are not much better today. How does a doctor decide when you are actually dead? It has been known since antiquity that some people will present as if they are dead, but later will awaken. This can result from injury or disease. Throughout history various measures have been used to determine when a person was truly dead therefore. Initially tests for responsiveness such as yanking on the person’s nipples. Tobacco smoke enemas were also used for this purpose. The idea was of course advanced with the invention of the stethoscope such that person’s with very weak heartbeats could now be determined to still be alive. Previously, many people were treated as if they were dead while their heart still beat. But for a long time death was associated with the cessation of the audible beating of the heart and breathing. Further developments included the ECG or EKG for measuring the heart’s electrical activity. The definition of death became the well known “flatline” or asystole. Stopped blood circulation has historically proven irreversible in most cases. Wikipedia states, “Prior to the invention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), defibrillation, epinephrine injection, and other treatments in the 20th century, the absence of blood circulation (and vital functions related to blood circulation) was historically considered to be the official definition of death.” But the advent of these technologies cardiac arrest came to be called “clinical death” rather than simply “death” to reflect the possibility of post-arrest resuscitation. Further developments allowed for measurement of activity in the brain via the EEG. This led to the modern view which is to look instead at the activity in the brain not the heart. We now know that people with entirely non-functional hearts can be kept alive for extended periods of time. So the brain is the right place to look, but the brain is complex and what exactly constitutes death in the brain is correspondingly unclear.
The Whole Brain Standard requires that organismic functioning and activity cease across the entire brain for a person to be dead. This is the current medical consensus view in the United States and it is understood to be opposed to the organismic view where functioning would have to cease across the entire organism including but not only limited to the brain to diagnose death. The Brain Stem Standard used in some cases in the United Kingdom allows the diagnosis and certification of death ”when consciousness and the ability to breathe are permanently lost, regardless of continuing life in the body and parts of the brain“. The thesis is that death of the brain stem alone is sufficient to produce this state. The Higher Brain Standard or Progressive Standard states “human death is the irreversible cessation of the capacity for consciousness”. Death is a diagnosis. REALITY CHECK: WHETHER YOU ARE ALIVE OR DEAD DEPENDS IN PART ON WHERE YOU ARE AT THE TIME AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE. AND IT WON’T BE YOU. Whomever gets to decide for you (most likely a doctor somewhere you may not even know today) it is unlikely this person has access to the technical tools they really need to decide if you are finally and irreversibly dead. The exact boundary of life and death isn’t really known by science. Apparently unresponsive or “brain dead” patients may for example show the ability consciously respond to commands. In a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness, it is reported that “Of the 54 patients enrolled in the study, 5 were able to willfully modulate their brain activity. In three of these patients, additional bedside testing revealed some sign of awareness, but in the other two patients, no voluntary behavior could be detected by means of clinical assessment.” Until now, these people would be considered “dead” by all of the above brain standards. This research shows that the answer of what constitutes someone being “brain dead” is a bit more complex than previously thought. (For an interesting counter argument, see Cogito Ergo Sum by MRI.) SUMMARY One of the most controversial Transhumanist objectives is entirely overcoming death and achieving immortality. Instead what should be controversial is our current methods of diagnosing death, our poorly specified working definition of death, and of course the lack of funding for scientific research about the death process. “Death” is actually a legal term with a debatable scientific basis as evidenced by the fact that the definition of death has changed substantially over the past 200 years. The definition has changed as technologies for measuring what is happening in the organism have changed. Therefore our definition of death will continue to change as our technology advances. It might be quite hard to say where the boundary should finally be drawn.
More practically, how should doctors decide when someone is dead and cannot be brought back by any available method? What measurements should be required to support this diagnosis? There isn’t a global consensus on this. Rapid advances in emergency medical practice, neuroscience, the quantified self, resuscitation technologies, and cryobiology (both cryopreservation and cryosurgery) mean that people previously left for dead will be “brought back” through possibly novel medical techniques. With very rapid advances in all of these areas not all individual medical practitioners will be aware of the latest possibilities. Unless additional funding is provided to study the boundary of life and death, educate medical practitioners, and broadly advance the state of the art we will sadly continue to prematurely bury and dispose of people that are still alive or could have been.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Defining Death http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deathdefinition/ Defining Death http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/past_commissions/defining_death.pdf Medical Diagnosis of Death in Adults http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/MedicalDagnosisOfDeatheathAdults.pdf
THE OBJECTIVIST-EXTROPIAN SYNTHESIS
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
My aim here is nothing less than the union of two intellectual worlds. These two worlds have too often been dubbed by their adherents as mutually exclusive, as a result of certain bilateral misinterpretations among many Objectivists and Extropians/Transhumanists. I shall endeavor here to show how Objectivism, the fundamental ideological system developed by Ayn Rand, and the Principles of Extropy, established by Max More and comprising a prominent part of the body of ideas known as Transhumanism, are compatible with one another and integral to fully achieving each other’s goals. In addition, anyone belonging to the libertarian movement at large will find numerous arguments, concepts, and methodologies in both systems to aid the extension of individual liberty in a broad sense. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF OBJECTIVISM Objectivism is an intellectual system remarkably integrated by lengthy expositions and chains of argument performed by Ayn Rand in her fiction and nonfiction works. Thus, to do it full justice in a brief treatise is, admittedly, impossible. I shall attempt here to present a brief skeletal outline of Objectivism, upon which I shall elaborate as pertains to its relationship with Extropian thought. Ayn Rand was once asked to explain the fundamentals of her system standing on one foot. Her response was as follows: “1. [Metaphysics]: Objective Reality. 2. Epistemology: Reason. 3. Ethics: Self-Interest. 4. Politics: [Laissez-Faire] Capitalism.” (Ayn Rand, Introducing Objectivism, p. 3) In other words, man inhabits an absolute, knowable universe, which he can fathom by the use of his individual rational faculty. His ultimate moral value is his own life, and, to achieve it, he
should establish a social system absolutely free of the initiation of force by one human being against another. In her discoveries, Rand also developed a theory of esthetics that she had outlined in The Romantic Manifesto. Rand saw art as the “technology of the soul,” the intellectual fuel needed to inspire the rational man and motivate him to further productive endeavors, a reflection of his values in some concrete medium. All of these aspects of Objectivist thought are of potentially immense use to the Extropian and libertarian movements, as shall be further demonstrated. The Principles of Extropy Extropy, defined as “the extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement,” is a broad term covering a vast array of human aspirations and objectives. Dr. Max More, the architect of the Principles of Extropy, does not consider them a fully self-contained intellectual structure. Rather, in his most recent version of the Principles’ formulation, he dubs them “an evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition.” Dr. More conceives of the Principles as postulates to guide individual thought and inspire intellectual progress—a purpose compatible with Objectivism, since it does not purport to replace the Objectivist hierarchy of ideas, and also harmonious with libertarianism stemming from any fundamental value system, so long as a sincere commitment to individual freedom, life, and progress is present on the part of the person examining the Principles. The Principles are intended to be enduring, underlying ideals and standards. At the same time, both in content and by being revised, the Principles do not claim to be eternal truths or certain truths. I invite other independent thinkers who share the agenda of acting as change agents for fostering better futures to consider the Principles of Extropy… as a shared vocabulary – to make sense of our unconventional, secular, and life-promoting responses to the changing human condition. (Max More, “The Principles of Extropy, Version 3.11”) Of the Principles of Extropy, there are seven, each of which is perfectly compatible with and complementary to the Objectivist fundamentals: 1. Perpetual Progress 2. Self-Transformation 3. Practical Optimism 4. Intelligent Technology 5. Open Society 6. Self-Direction
7. Rational Thinking Perpetual Progress is the continual improvement of the human condition, and the removal of biological, social, mechanical, and intellectual factors impeding human advancement. Perpetual Progress finds its validation in the Objectivist virtue of Productiveness, which follows from individuals’ rational self-interest. Rand defines Productiveness as “the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement [Italics mine] and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values [Italics mine]” (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 29). Thus, the Randian system not only allows but elevates to the level of a moral imperative the continual removal of human limitations and the continual extension of human efficiency. Max More’s Principles of Extropy take the virtue of Productiveness to its logical conclusion: Valuing perpetual progress is incompatible with acquiescing in the undesirable aspects of the human condition. Continuing improvements means challenging natural and traditional limitations on human possibilities. Science and technology are essential to eradicate constraints on lifespan, intelligence, personal vitality, and freedom. It is absurd to meekly accept "natural" limits to our life spans. Life is likely to move beyond the confines of the Earth — the cradle of biological intelligence — to inhabit the cosmos. (Max More, “The Principles of Extropy, Version 3.11”) To fully adjust his environment to himself, man must not accept the ravages of disease as inevitable, nor consider himself perpetually chained to a single celestial sfere; he cannot content himself with painstakingly slow learning speeds and false sensations, following which subverts the ultimate value of his life (such as, for example, the sensation of hunger, which urges man to eat beyond his energetic requirement, since this impulse was inherited from prehistoric times, when man’s food supply was never assured). Above all, man must never reconcile himself with the “inevitability” of death by senescence. If the individual’s life is his ultimate value, as Rand claimed, and Perpetual Progress is the logical means to benefit this life, then death is the ultimate obstacle to both. Were it removed or substantially delayed, the individual would have far ampler abilities to continually develop his faculties in every possible respect. Man would also rise to prodigious heights of intelligence and infuse a richness into his life unthinkable given its transitory nature today. Consider an intelligent individual who is capable of reading a single book every day. Let us suppose that this individual has set it as his goal to read the entire collection of books available at
his local library, about 100,000 books. Assuming that he is fortunate enough, in the status quo, to live for 100 years, he will only have read 36,500 books, or little over a third of one library. But, were he to possess indefinite life, how many libraries would he be able to intellectually consume? As a result, how competent in terms of his reasoning, wealth of ideas, and technical skills will he become, if he is given ample time to implement his newly-found learning as well? The Principles of Extropy view man as he is presently as a transitional stage in his advancement to what he could be and should be, which is whatever his reason and self-interest dictate. Perpetual Progress implies that man ought to depart increasingly from the animal realm whence he had evolved, and increasingly assume full, conscious control of aspects of life that the animals leave to “instinct” (i.e. fallible, automatic reaction) and sheer chance. The Principles of Extropy consider this departure a transition from man as we know him to the “transhuman,” an entity fully liberated from animal limitations. The transhuman stage can be considered a result of rapid artificial evolution by which the men of the future will fully part with their animal origins, just as natural evolution had once brought about the divergence of animals from plants from fungi from protists from primitive bacteria. Rand also alludes to the desirability of “transhumanity” by her insistence that men lead lives fully directed by the one faculty the animals lack: volitional consciousness, from which man’s rational faculty and his ability to transform his environment to suit his needs are derived. “Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice” (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 25). Rand’s own stance in support of technology is unambiguous, and implies that, the more advanced his technology, the higher the quality of man’s life and the degree of his fulfillment will be. In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. [Ayn Rand (1971), "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," Return of the Primitive, 277.] To achieve the goal of indefinite life, many scientists and intellectuals inspired by the Principles of Extropy have endeavored to achieve practical success in this field. Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge University biogerontologist, has pinpointed seven principal causes of human senescence, eliminating or reversing which would extend man’s lifespan to the point where the pace of further human senescence will be slower than the rate of technological progress needed to combat bodily decay at each subsequent stage. Dr. de Grey estimates that, with sufficient scientific attention, the reversal of aging (and thus the attainment of indefinite or at least
extremely long human lifespans) can occur in approximately thirty years. The first step of this process involves attaining the necessary technological knowledge as well as proving to the public the feasibility of the life extension effort by artificially prolonging the life expectancy of mice from three to five years (or 180 mouse-years), for which purpose Dr. de Grey and the entrepreneur David Gobel have established the Methuselah Mouse Prize, modeled after the immensely successful X Prize for private space flight. The Methuselah Mouse Prize has already attracted six teams of researchers to compete for it. The inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil agrees with Dr. de Grey’s predictions and additionally foresees the development in thirty years of nanoscopic robots that will be embedded in the human body and brain, to provide for more efficient biological functions, the combating of senescence, and the artificial enhancement of human intelligence. While many “traditional” value systems do not provide support for the desirability of such advances, the Principles of Extropy, assisted by the firm, interrelated conceptual hierarchy of Objectivism, make it possible to argue in their favor on the most fundamental moral levels and reverse the prevailing mainstream paradigm which holds that such radical technological advances are either undesirable or impossible. Libertarians of all stripes should rejoice at the proximity of these opportunities, as well as their immensely beneficent implications for individual freedom. As I explained in my science fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, resistance by governments, criminals, and irrationalist intellectuals against individual liberty and initiative will be futile once indefinite life is attained. Let the irrationalists then prate about the unworthiness of man, or of the need to curtail his ambitions. They would have nothing with which to curtail, no means of wielding their clubs efficiently, as the pain would be nullified and the damage repaired in almost an instant. They would be able to put forth no de facto threat, no practical intimidation by which to harness the titans of the mind and force them to grovel before the witch doctors’ shriveled animate carcasses. The forces of reason and progress would have won their ultimate battle. After centuries of shielding themselves against the tide of mystic maggots, they would have devised the surefire repellant at last. (G. Stolyarov II, Eden against the Colossus, p. 360) If indefinite life is achieved, no longer will governments be able to claim that men are not intelligent enough to govern themselves, that, left on their own, they would not properly attend to their health and vitality, that man’s technology is better left mired in a morass of regulations instead of being allowed to show its full potential in a free market of goods and ideas. Moreover, governments will lose one of their ultimate means for wielding their power, Social Security, since senescence itself will wither away, and there will be no excuse for government’s use of taxpayer funds to support those who can take care of themselves.
As already shown, Extropian thought and laissez-faire capitalism are splendidly aligned. The Open Society Principle of Extropy implies, according to Max More, “supporting social orders that foster freedom of communication, freedom of action, experimentation, innovation, questioning, and learning… opposing authoritarian social control and unnecessary hierarchy and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power and responsibility… preferring bargaining over battling, exchange over extortion, and communication over compulsion.” A society committed to this principle must tolerate dissent, diversity, and competition and acknowledge in individuals the full choice to associate with whom they will, to exchange ideas how they will, and to make the material innovations they will, reaping either the rewards of their productive work or the consequences of their failure. Max More recognizes that societal controls imposed by cliques of government bureaucrats are unable to sustain a system in which individuals are allowed to pursue their highest values through the autonomous use of their reason: ”No group of experts can understand and control the endless complexity of an economy and society composed of other individuals like themselves. Unlike utopians of all stripes, extropic individuals and institutions do not seek to control the details of people’s lives or the forms and functions of institutions according to a grand over-arching plan.” Rand’s affirmation of laissez-faire capitalism, and its elevation to the fourth pillar of Objectivist doctrine, follows from precisely this recognition as well. According to Rand, “… intelligence does not work under coercion… man’s mind will not function at the point of a gun.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 141). In a remarkably similar passage to Dr. More’s words above, Rand writes of an ideal capitalistic society: “No one has the power to decide for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself ‘the voice of the public’ and to leave the public voiceless and disenfranchised.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 48). Analysis of the other Principles of Extropy demonstrates how More’s defense of capitalism has foundations similar to those employed by Rand. The principle of Rational Thinking implies that one “not accept revelation, authority, or emotion as reliable sources of knowledge. Rational thinkers place little weight on claims that cannot be checked. In thinking rationally, we rely on the judgement of our own minds while continually re-examining our own intellectual standards and skills.“ How reminiscent this is of Rand’s recognition that there can be no ultimate authority except the reasoning mind of the autonomous individual, that feelings, visions, and commandments, or any other “extra-rational” methods are not legitimate tools of cognition! Both Rand and More agree that reason is an exclusively individual tool for dealing with reality, and, from this, follows the need to leave man free to develop and apply his own rational ideas, for no one can ultimately interpret and work with the external reality better than he in the context of improving his own situation. Thus, no external agency, public or private, should be permitted to
coerce an individual into an action that his autonomous will would oppose. What logically follows from this is the absolute separation of the State from the economy and from the private decisions of individuals. Moreover, both Rand and More recognize another fundamental pillar for the defense of capitalism: selfishness, or the holding of one’s own life as the ultimate value. More devotes three Principles of Extropy, Practical Optimism, Self-Transformation, and Self-Direction, which closely correspond to the Objectivist ethics. Practical Optimism suggests that “living vigorously, effectively, and joyfully, requires prevailing over gloom, defeatism, and negativism. We need to acknowledge problems, whether technical, social, psychological, or ecological, but we need not allow them to dominate our thinking and our direction.” In other words, this is a view which holds the universe to be fundamentally open to man’s creative accomplishment, and the proper attitude with regard to man’s work to be the radiant, heroic pursuit of success against all obstacles. The man of Practical Optimism refuses to demean or diminish himself, and the man embodied by the Objectivist virtue of Pride would agree. According to Rand, Pride means “never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own selfesteem. And, above all, it means one’s rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty” (The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 29-30). The principle of Self-Transformation “implies not self-absorption but a continued attempt to understand others and to work toward optimal relationships based on mutual honesty, open communication, and benevolence.” This parallels Rand’s trader principle as the guide for human interaction. Men, according to Rand, ought to treat one another not as masters or slaves, but as mutually respected individuals who communicate to exchange value for value, be it in a material or an intellectual sense. Honesty is an explicit Objectivist virtue, as is Integrity. Both imply the refusal to fabricate reality and the sincerity of individuals in manifesting their genuine thoughts and motives to others in such a manner as may best serve their selfish interests in the objective reality. Post-Randian Objectivists, such as David Kelley, have further explored the virtue of Benevolence and the ways in which mutual politeness, respect, and toleration can foster more efficient value trading. Max More agrees. “Benevolence implies a presumption of common moral decencies including politeness, patience, and honesty. While self-direction cannot mean getting along with everyone at any cost, it does imply seeking to maximize the benefits of interactions with others.” The principle of Self-Direction holds that each individual ought to have the freedom to determine what will ultimately become of his life and character, and the corresponding responsibility of choosing to control his inner capacities and directing them for worthy purposes. This requires that each man use his autonomous mind as his ultimate judge of deciding which aspects of his life and character to change, which to keep the same, which risks to engage in, and which
associations to make. The more each man employs this autonomy, the less susceptible he becomes to the tendency to unconditionally obey others. Antithetical to this Self-Direction is the attempt by others to regulate a man against his own will. Coercion of mature, sound minds outside the realm of self-protection, whether for the purported "good of the whole" or for the paternalistic protection of the individual, is unacceptable. Compulsion breeds ignorance and weakens the connection between personal choice and personal outcome, thereby destroying personal responsibility. Extropy calls for rational individualism – or cognitive independence, living by our own judgment, making reflective, informed choices, profiting from both success and shortcoming. (Max More, “The Principles of Extropy, Version 3.11”) Or, to paraphrase Rand, when one uses compulsion, one locks man in a deadly double bind. He has the choice of obeying authority and defying the conclusions of his reason (linked to the external reality) and facing the punishment of reality, or of obeying his own mind, and facing the punishment of authority. Man cannot exercise self-direction at the point of a gun. ”A free mind and a free market are corollaries” (Atlas Shrugged). MUTUAL VALUE TRADING As they stand today, neither Objectivism nor Transhumanism, when left entirely to themselves, represent the entire range of their logical implications, often due to their willful separation by their respective adherents into needlessly warring camps. Certain Objectivists, for example, take Rand’s insistence that each entity necessarily follows its own nature to imply that man is consigned to follow some set, static, immutable “human nature” which dictates finitude of lifespan. However, this is not a fundamental conflict between Objectivism and Transhumanism, as the Objectivists in question have simply misinterpreted Rand. Rand’s sole prescription for man’s nature was that he is a being of volitional consciousness, with reason as his sole guide in discovering and applying truth. The “transhuman” will retain these fundamental characteristics, while departing only from those that are not human nature, i.e., those aspects of susceptibility to “natural” perils that modern man still, unfortunately, shares with the animals. Any flaw, fallibility, or vulnerability in man is not a defining trait of his nature qua rational, volitional entity. This, of course, includes senescence, an affliction that is indeed common among man and most animal species. Certain Transhumanists commit errors with regard to their perception of Objectivism as well. Mark Plus, a member of the Immortality Institute has claimed, for example, that Objectivists are detached from “pro-survival goals” since “their lives are organized around constructs like ‘heroism,’ ‘self-esteem,’ ‘romantic love’ and other make-believe that distract us from our real problems.” But, if man were not to esteem himself, how would he be able to effectively deal with
the problems of mortality, disease, and intellectual limitations that currently plague him? How would he be able to proudly assert his capacity to overcome these evils, instead of cowering before them submissively? If man did not have the potential to be heroic, what would he be? Mediocre? Unable to function as the conquering master of his environment and the intellectual creator that he must become in order to fulfill both the Objectivist virtues and the Principles of Extropy? If man did not conceive of his love romantically, what would separate his sexual relationships from crude, unthinking animal lust (i.e. precisely the condition that a transhuman would not exhibit)? The Extropians’ focus on practical problems afflicting man is commendable, but it should not act to the detriment of moral values and a radiant affirmation of human life through abstract principles such as self-esteem and romantic love. Rather, advocates of Extropy should seek counsel in the words of Rand: “The practical is the moral.” Each follows from the other, binding the two inextricably under a fully rational, integrated worldview. Neither practicality nor morality, the stuff of the body and mind, can exist severed from one another. As Rand would say, morality detached from practicality, a mind without a body, is a ghost, and practicality detached from morality, a body without a mind, is a corpse. To integrate practicality and morality, an association between Objectivists and Extropians would be of utmost benefit. Objectivism has, since the days of Rand, developed an immense body of written works containing prescriptions from abstract theory to current events, as well as a growing abundance of rational painting, sculpture, and music. The Extropian movement, on the other hand, has produced a flowering of innovative scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs, whose visions of a technological future have the potential of becoming the concrete manifestations of Objectivist theory. Objectivist art and written works can serve as the intellectual fuel to guide these creators in their endeavors and recall to them man’s potential for competence and efficacy, while the practical innovators can encourage the Objectivist theorists, writers, and artists to furnish further masterpieces by giving them vast scientific accomplishments to analyze, glorify, and depict. The worldviews of both of these intellectual movements can be broadened substantially by extending the scope of Objectivism’s influence in the sciences, and Transhumanism’s power in the humanities. Furthermore, each side can find in the other intellectual arguments in favor of laissez-faire capitalism, from various scientific and humanitarian perspectives, to supplement their already existing arsenals. As for the libertarians examining both movements, but not explicitly belonging to either, I recommend that they extract the best from both worlds, adopting whatever principles their autonomous minds are ready to accept. No matter to what degree these ideas penetrate the mainstream culture and amplify the intellectual stockpiles of individuals, their effect will be a beneficent one.
WHENCE COMETH DEATH? BY: JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D
How natural selection has fashioned aging and death; why "natural" isn't the last word in healthy foods and lifestyles; and some observations on objective science pursued by subjective humans.
The notion that our bodies are programmed to self-destruct with age is profoundly unsettling to many of us. One does not have to entertain faith in an omnipotent deity to be invested in the idea that Nature is benevolent. We know that all creatures fall victims to decrepitude and death, so we imagine our fate to derive from some immutable physical law, to which our bodies eventually succumb despite their best efforts to keep us strong and healthy... But aging is no physical necessity, nor is it an accident; it is a part of life's developmental program, following birth, growth, maturation, and reproduction as night follows day. This fact is becoming clear to developmental biologists, as the mechanisms of aging are elucidated in the laboratory. Some of these mechanisms can act precipitously, bringing quick death to annual plants such as marigolds, or animals like the Pacific salmon. Some mechanisms are as old as sexual reproduction, which is to say that they have been selected and preserved over 500 million years of biological evolution. Most can be modulated at will by metabolic signals, as when halfstarved mice live to extraordinary life spans. And some recent laboratory investigations have located single genes that seem to have no other purpose than to act as a time bomb, assuring the bearer's demise. The body of evidence indicating that aging is an adaptation, crafted as if "on purpose" by natural selection, has baffled evolutionary biologists. It's a message they resist on theoretical grounds that the academic community has adopted quite sensibly, but applied perhaps too rigidly. The history of the evolutionary science of aging is more interesting than it ought to be; it illustrates the thesis that the world's establishment of academic scientists - though arguably the fairest and most objective arbiter of truth that humanity has yet devised - is still influenced by politics, and subject to the excesses of fad and fashion. Discredited ideas may linger for decades. Man's earliest conception of aging was that the process was akin to physical wear and tear. Knives get dull - why shouldn't our teeth? Wheels get rusty and squeak when they turn - isn't that
what happens to our joints? It's a theory with a great deal of intuitive appeal. But after the midnineteenth century, when the intuition that Things Wear Out was codified as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, this position became untenable. The Second Law is indeed related to the reason why knives gets dull and bearings rust; but living matter is not subject to the same constraint. A living organism extracts energy from its environment, and thereby is able to maintain - even to increase - order within itself, while dumping its entropy back into the environment. The total entropy, organism plus environment, is bound by the Second Law to increase; but as long as it can take in food and unload its waste, the living organism performs a magic that non-living things cannot match: it can grow, it can repair, it can even build itself from scratch, starting with a DNA-blueprint and necessary nutrients. Continually replenished by food or by sunlight, there is no physical necessity for anything about it to deteriorate with age. Every living metabolism includes highly-developed machinery for repair and maintenance. You know that when you break a leg, the bone grows back together. It's less obvious that the DNA in your cells is constantly being checked for errors: specialized molecules creep along the length of the DNA strand, searching for pieces out of place and repairing them on the spot. You can recover completely from a cut in your finger, but if the finger is severed from your hand, you'll never grow a new one; this limitation is standard in mammals. But a squid can replace a severed tentacle, and if a starfish loses an arm, not only does the starfish grow another arm, the arm will grow a whole new starfish! Imagine how complete and how robust is the starfish's system of regeneration - then consider that the starfish ages and dies, with a lifetime of about eight years. Now the inadequacy of the theory that Things Wear Out becomes apparent: Evolution has devised for all of us a system of maintenance and repair that is remarkably efficient. It's a genuine curiosity that Evolution, after creating such intricate and comprehensive systems of repair, refuses to deploy them in a way that would maintain the body in a state of peak performance. This is the classical problem of aging, the problem that has baffled and confused generations of evolutionary theorists. In the 1890's, when the two sciences of thermodynamics and evolution were yet new, August Weismann realized that there was no physical necessity for the body to degrade over time. Weismann was the first to speculate that the evolutionary reason for aging and death has something to do with the good of the species. He called it "making room" in the environment. When their lease was up, the old would have the good grace to pack their bags and vacate the premises, leaving space for the young. The constant turnover of the population would help to maintain its diversity, and make the species more adaptable to changing circumstances. But as evolution grew up as a quantitative science, Weismann's hypothesis began to seem untenable. In the early part of the twentieth century, the concept of fitness was first quantified, and fitness was identified with an individual's rate of reproduction. How could aging and death
make a positive contribution to an individual's reproductive success? If there is any benefit to aging, it accrues not to the individual but to the population as a whole. In the 1960's, evolutionary theorist George Williams argued that evolution was in the business of testing random mutations that first arose in a single individual. The first test for any new trait would be whether it could progress from the individual in which it arose to achieve prevalence in a small group; only traits that passed this test could ever be tested in competition group-against-group. Hence individual selection will trump group selection every time, Williams said. Aging and the imposition of a finite lifespan may well help to maintain population diversity, that is to say they may have benefits for the species, but so what? The effect on individual fitness was the first test imposed by natural selection, and by definition aging harms the individual, curtailing his prospects for reproduction; hence aging can never be selected as an adaptation. This interdict on arguments from group effects in evolution became a powerful current of evolutionary thought from the 1970's onward. It was difficult for a generation of naturalists trained in observation and classification to assimilate the quantitative methods of the new biology; but it was perhaps too easy to absorb, undigested, the message of Williams's book: Selection sees only individual reproductive rate. Group selection is not a viable evolutionary force. How, then, could the anti-group-selectionists explain the evolution of aging? How would they account for its prevalence in the world of higher plants and animals? Williams himself put forth a theory that aging was an epiphenomenon, a side-effect of selection going for broke in its quest for faster reproduction. His theory of pleiotropy posited that reproduction and aging were genetically linked. In 1977, it was Thomas Kirkwood who put that hypothesis into its most common sensical and appealing form, which remains popular among evolutionists to this day. Everything the body does requires energy: activity, metabolism, reproduction, repair and maintenance. The body must ration the limited supply of available food energy, and myriad generations of natural selection have taught the body how to balance its energy budget to best effect. In any such tradeoff, no one demand can be fully provided; it follows that the body does a pretty good job of repair and maintenance, an adequate job to get the body through the period of intense reproduction. But thereafter, the evolutionary payoff for keeping the body in good repair becomes smaller, so damage is permitted to accumulate. Eventually, this compromises the capacity of the system to get anything done - including repair. This theory of aging was called by Kirkwood the Disposable Soma, a name which derives from the fact that the individual's reproductive output and not its own body is the basis of the target function of natural selection: The individual is willing to trade even his own body for enhanced reproductive prospects. The Disposable Soma is a good theory. Straightforward and common sensical, it invokes nothing abstruse or mysterious, and it accounts for the universality of aging within the context of pure individual selection. The Disposable Soma has been king of the roost, the prevailing theory
among experts in the evolution of aging for almost a generation. But there are deep problems with the theory that are becoming more and more difficult to ignore. These are indications that aging is not a side-effect but a full-blown program of nature. The evidence may be leading us right back to Weismann's abandoned idea that the old are removing themselves to make way for the young. These new hints that proponents of the Disposable Soma and other related theories may be on a dead end path come from three places: First are the intriguing examples of ways that the body can circumvent aging when it is ecologically appropriate, as when the system is stressed. Second is the universality of aging mechanisms: some of the biochemical pathways of aging are common to such diverse species as man and baking yeast! Third is the smoking gun, the discovery in recent years of "aging genes" which can be disabled in laboratory tests, causing animals to live long beyond their natural life spans. First, the body's capacity to forestall aging under stress suggests that in "normal" times the body may actually be engaged in a strategic surrender. We're all so familiar with the idea that physical exertion promotes a healthier heart, lower risk for some cancers, and a longer life, that we may no longer pause to think how curious a phenomenon this is. When it is not distracted by the rigors of aerobic exercise, why is the body less able to deal with the ravages of age? Plants succumb to aging just as animals do, and nowhere are the results more visible than in the annuals we plant in our gardens. At summer's end a marigold bush will wither and die after its flowers have all gone to seed, but if the flowers are snipped, the plant is reinvigorated to blossom again and again and again. It seems almost as though the plant finds security in the knowledge that it has passed on its genetic legacy, and only then can it surrender to death's beckoning. The kind of accelerated aging that we observe in marigolds is typical of semelparous organisms, whose life histories culminate in a single act of reproduction. There are semelparous animals as well, including Pacific salmon and octopi, whose lifespans are subject to experimental manipulation. After laying her eggs, the female octopus stops eating and slowly starves to death. Lest anyone doubt this is an example of programmed death, the locus of the program has been discovered in the animal's "optic gland". This organ can be surgically removed, after which the animal no longer knows she is supposed to starve herself; hence she survives to breed another season. But recently an even more striking experimental fact about aging has emerged from the backwaters of gerontological laboratories into the popular science press: The less an animal is fed, the longer it lives. With a diet rich in vitamins and minerals, while drastically reduced in caloric content, laboratory animals from crabs to monkeys have been observed to live almost twice as long as their fully-fed siblings. These animals not only live longer, they are more active and more resistant to disease, and the closer they are to starvation, the more resilient and robust
they are! It is not difficult to guess the evolutionary provenance of this adaptation - it is essentially that populations under stress avail themselves of every possible advantage to avoid the finality of extinction. But the body's behavior under caloric stress highlights the converse question: how is it that when stress is absent, the body cares less well for itself? When resources are plentiful, why should the metabolism be trying less hard to forestall death? Experiments in caloric restriction (CR) are a challenge for any of the "tradeoff" theories of aging, but the Disposable Soma theory is particularly vulnerable, exactly because it is premised on a tight calorie budget. The essence of the theory is that there's never enough food energy to do a perfect job of everything, so the body's allocation for repair and maintenance will always be shortchanged. How can the theory accommodate the fact that when energy is least available, repair and maintenance are at their most efficient - even as expenditures for activity and for immune function are also at their peak? The second source of evidence that aging is an adaptation - a "deliberate" creation of natural selection - comes from newly discovered data on the universality of aging mechanisms. Bacteria and algae do not age, because their life cycle is so primitive that there is nothing to distinguish young from old cells; but higher one-celled organisms like the amoeba and paramecium do experience aging. Much larger than the bacteria, single-celled protists are distinguished by a more complex metabolism and DNA that is concentrated in a nucleus. Protists carry the mother of all aging mechanisms, a replication counter that will kill a cell line after it has procreated a fixed number of times. The tally is maintained in a repetitive tail on the end of every DNA strand, called the telomere. The DNA replication that takes place whenever a cell divides omits a stretch of that tail, and the chromosome becomes shorter with each cell division. The telomere is a buffer zone, completely expendable, so for awhile the shortening has no effect on the daughter cells' viability. But eventually the telomere is used up, the chromosome's integrity is in danger, and the cell, in fact, refuses to replicate. One curious thing about this process is that it appears to be entirely avoidable. All eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus, including protists and all animals and plants) carry the gene for the enzyme called telomerase. In the presence of telomerase, the entire chromosome is faithfully replicated, and the tail doesn't lose any length. A bit of reflection makes it clear that this capability is absolutely essential to the long-term continuity of life. But in replication of protist cells, the gene for telomerase is silenced, just as it is needed most; instead, the telomeres are permitted to shrink with each replication. They are only replenished when the protist is joined with another in sexual union. The primitive form of sex enacted by protists is called conjugation, and it is entirely separate from the reproductive process. Two protists (of the same species) come together, their cell walls dissolve at the boundary, and they join temporarily as one unit. Within the double cell, the two
nuclei merge, and each chromosome bonds along its full length to its counterpart from the other cell. Then the chromosomes come apart, the two nuclei separate, and the double cell once again becomes two. The two individuals have lost their identity; the cells that emerge each contain a blend of cytoplasm from the two original cells, and, what is more important, the genes in the nuclei have been thoroughly mixed and exchanged. And by the way - the telomeres are restored to their full and original length in this process, so each organism is authorized another several hundred rounds of asexual reproduction. The purpose of this process, (identical to the purpose of sex in higher plants and animals) is to exchange genetic material, giving selection an opportunity to work on new combinations of traits. The telomeres must be seen as a policing agent, enforcing the injunction to share. Each cell is endowed with the mandate to go forth and multiply, but subject to the proviso that it must find a mate and commingle its genetic legacy, at least every few hundred generations, on pain of death. There can be no doubt that this is an adaptation, a mechanism that has evolved because it serves a purpose. Since conjugation creates new gene combinations, the purpose appears to be the imposition of diversity on every colony of protists, via an imperative of genetic exchange. Reproductive success is rewarded up to a point; but no single cell line is permitted to dominate the culture, no matter how much better adapted it happens to be to the specific set of circumstances that happen to prevail at present. Were the colony to lose that genetic diversity, it might be sorry tomorrow. The environment is constantly in flux, and if some novel adaptation is universally adopted in response to a transient change in the environment, the danger is that the environment may return to its former condition at a time when the adaptations perfect for that condition have been lost forever. The need for diversity in a population may seem to be a technicality, a detail too small to support a phenomenon as ancient and ubiquitous as aging; but diversity is in fact the fuel for evolutionary change. Without diversity, there is no natural selection, indeed there are no choices from which to select. There is deep appreciation in the scientific community for the importance of diversity, going all the way back to Charles Darwin. (Darwin understood the ongoing need for population diversity, but was mystified about the mechanism that was able to sustain it. This is a celebrated footnote in the history of science: unaware of the concurrent researches of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, Darwin had no concept of the genetic laws of heredity. He thought the traits of each offspring were some kind of average between those of the father and the mother. But in an averaging process, the extremes would be lost, and each generation would tend to be more homogeneous than the last. How was it that diversity in nature did not collapse from all that averaging, bringing evolution to a screeching halt? This was a subject of passionate concern to Darwin, and a frequent refrain of his early scientific critics. Mendel's revelations would have resolved the issue handily, but busy and successful Darwin never found time to read the postal missives from the modest Franciscan.)
The story of telomeres may be a hint that population diversity is the fundamental meaning, the evolutionary purpose of aging and obligatory death. All higher life forms evolved from the protists, and retain their reproductive counting mechanism as the first aging mechanism. In higher life forms, there are other mechanisms of aging, and it is uncertain whether telomeres contribute substantially to the process; but every cell in our bodies, every animal and plant cell in the world, is still programmed by its telomeres to reproduce only a finite number of times before it dies. Evolution has evinced an extraordinary capacity to generate variety while conserving that which is essential. If an aging mechanism has been conserved since the very first eukaryotes emerged 500 million years ago, this may be taken as a sign that aging is essential to some basic life function. But the fact that aging is fundamentally destructive, and offers no benefit to the individual presents us with a paradox and a mystery. What is the nature of this essential benefit? It is a good guess that it has to do with the viability of populations and the maintenance of diversity as fuel for the ongoing process of evolution. The third story line in support of aging as an adaptation comes from the gene splicing technology that is just now maturing. The tiny roundworm C. elegans embodies an aging process that is uniquely flexible: when food and water are plentiful, its normal lifespan is just ten days, but under stress it can enter a state akin to hibernation and survive as a dauer for many weeks. Ten years ago, experiments with these worms first hinted at the genetic basis for their aging mechanism and their means of long-term preservation. A single gene was found that could be silenced, with the result that the worm lived to several weeks without becoming a dauer. The animals seem to suffer no ill effects from the change. So here is direct evidence for the existence of aging genes in nature. The meaning of this discovery was not lost on the community of genetic scientists from whence it emerged, but evolutionary biologists were more skeptical. Perhaps the existence of this gene has something to do with the peculiar two-phase life strategy of the roundworm, and should not be ascribed a general significance. But soon a gene was discovered that is connected with the insulin metabolism of yeast cells, the removal of which caused the cells to live longer. Remarkably, the insulin metabolism of yeast and of man are clearly related, and the analogous human gene was quickly identified. Then, in 1998 a Cal Tech laboratory found an aging gene in fruitflies, the workhorses of experimental evolution. The next year, discovery of the first aging gene in a mammal was announced by an Italian genetic laboratory. Mice were reported to live 30% longer when the p66 gene was disabled, and, like CR mice, the genetically altered mice evinced an enhanced resistance to stress. What is more provocative yet, the function of the p66 gene is known to be related to programmed cell death, or apoptosis. Apoptosis is such an orderly and well-behaved process that it is widely recognized as an adaptation; but it had always been assumed that apoptosis was triggered only in infected cells or in cancerous cells, in order to protect the rest of the organism from spread of disease. The suggestion that apoptosis of normal, healthy cells could be a mechanism of aging is tantamount to acceptance of aging as a purposeful life function, an evolutionary adaptation. And the
existence of any single gene that extends life span without deleterious side effects poses an essential difficulty for the tradeoff theories, including Disposable Soma. All these indications that aging is a developmental program have been well-received, and gradually integrated into the thought of developmental biologists, geneticists and ecologists; but evolutionary biologists still resist the message, because it essentially contradicts their beliefs about group selection. A new theoretical framework is needed, in which the subtle power of natural selection is acknowledged, in which populations and perhaps entire ecosystems may be conceived as engaging in coordinated evolution. The solution may soon be at hand. In a developing paradigm shift, the whole rationale for the primacy of individual selection is coming under attack from two directions. The evolutionary ecologist David Wilson has for nearly thirty years been building a case that group selection is more viable than naïve theory would indicate, and of late his followers seem to be gathering force. His Multilevel Selection Theory offers a framework within which individual and group selection may wax and wane. Year after year in the evolutionary literature, the circumstances under which group selection may make its effects felt seem to be expanding. To ecologists, this must come as no surprise; indeed if the breadth and the ubiquity of cooperative phenomena in nature is a reliable indication, then group selection must be a primary force of nature. The other attack on the proscription of group selection comes from computer simulations. With the rise in power and availability of computers in recent years has come an explosion in computer modeling of evolutionary processes. It was a tide of rigorous mathematical thinking that brought the population geneticists to supremacy over the old school of descriptive naturalists a generation ago, and it may be that the next wave will elevate the computer modelers, with their messages from the school of chaos theory. In the old-style analysis, the spread of a gene or a lineage was described as a smooth and gradual process, incrementally taking over a population. The computer simulations are better able to model the randomness and the uniqueness of genetic mutations, as well as the complexity of interactions among individuals spread out on a landscape. In computer models, individuals have been observed to organize spontaneously into loose, temporary groupings, enhancing the prospects of any trait that benefits others at the expense of the self. This is the essential insight of chaos theory: that a small number of discrete, random events may determine the outcome of a process, and that outcome may be different from what one would conclude from tracking a smooth and gradual progression of population averages. It may turn out that analysis and simulation are complementary tools, each offering a different set of insights into evolutionary dynamics. Will next year's computer model demonstrate ways in which populations with limited lifespans are more diverse and robust, so that they win out in competition with hypothetical age-less populations? This would signal a renaissance for Weismann's century-old idea that the old are bowing out to make room for the young.
If we come to realize that evolution cares not just about individuals but about communities, if we deeply absorb the message that evolution has designed our bodies to degrade with age and to die, martyrs all to the communal cause, how does that affect the way we think about ourselves and our relationship to nature? For one thing, we may revise downward our opinion of "natural" foods and remedies. We may never have thought about it in this way, but at root the appeal of the natural comes from faith in evolution: What is natural is part of the environment in which man and his ancestors evolved; hence we are presumed to be well-adapted to it. If natural foods are better for us, it is because they are the foods that evolution has equipped our bodies to assimilate. Sometimes nature wants what's best for us individually, but sometimes she conspires with our bodies to do us in (all for the common good, of course). To extend human life beyond our "natural" lifespan - even to address classic ailments of old age - may require drugs or treatments far removed from anything found in nature. If you're a nonsmoker, eating less may be the most effective step you can take to enhance your health and extend your life; but you'll seek in vain for the "natural" instinct that supports your willpower when you're denying the body's appetite. Evolution has designed us to enjoy food so that we will put away a comfortable layer of fat for the lean winter which may ever be just around the corner. Nature wants us to eat when there's food to be eaten, but nature wants us to die after a programmed life span. If you or I have our own ideas about how long we want to live, we may have to play some very un-natural tricks, or even to do battle with nature in order to get there. The story of evolution and aging offers another moral, an uplifting and hopeful message of cooperation. The economic culture of our generation has embraced unbridled individual competition; for a few, this has unleashed a restless quest for the accumulation of wealth, while the many suffer a disquieting economic decline. Perhaps the parallel trends in scientific and political thought are no accident: just as our nation has discovered that pure competition is the one perfect economic system, the academic establishment of evolutionary biology has decreed that natural selection knows only what's good for the individual, that there is no such thing as "group selection", and that "evolutionary altruism" is really an illusion engendered by the gene's selfish interest in aiding those copies of itself that live within close relatives. Both these intellectual trends may prove ephemeral. Then perhaps we can learn from evolution's insistence on tempering pure competition with universal mortality that diversity of the population is essential to the long-term health of a community. Perhaps this message can help us to strip away the illusion that our life's purpose is individual achievement, and restore to us a sense of our common destiny The cycle of life and death can only have meaning in the context of a great evolutionary progression that will carry our descendants into realms of being and experience far beyond our
present imaginings. It is inspiring to reflect that in the deep past, evolution has learned to design her children to live communally, to share and to love, and when our number is up, to sacrifice our very lives that the community might continue to change and to evolve.
ARE THERE TRANSHUMANS AMONG US? BY: DAVID KEKICH
You've seen this term bandied about, but do you know what it means? Some are scared by it, visualizing all kinds of freakish Frankensteinian beings. Most people think transhumans are far off in the future. Before we go on, let's define transhumanism. First, let's see what H+ Magazine says about it: "Transhumanism takes a multidisciplinary approach in analyzing the dynamic interplay between humanity and the acceleration of technology. In this sphere, much of our focus is on the development and ethical use of biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial general intelligence. Our theoretical interests focus on posthuman topics of the singularity, extinction risk, and mind uploading. Many of these ideas are contemplated in books and other publications produced at Humanity+ Press." H+ Magazine is one of my all-time favorite websites. http://hplusmagazine.com Now let's take a look at how Wikipedia defines transhumanism: "Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal at fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman". "The contemporary meaning of the term transhumanism was foreshadowed by one of the first
professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews transitional to "posthumanity" as "transhuman". This hypothesis would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990, and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement. "Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives. Transhumanism has been characterized by one critic, Francis Fukuyama, as among the world's most dangerous ideas, to which Ronald Bailey countered that it is rather the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity". Does this comfort you? Well, maybe a little, but let's take a closer look. I am transhuman. The chances are, so are you. In fact, the vast majority of the human population are transhumans. The human race started down the transhuman path long ago. My grandparents, who all died a couple of generations ago, were transhumans. How can that be? After all, they were born in the 1800s. Well, they overcame their limitations with eyeglasses, dentures and other dental work and drove or rode in automobiles and public transportation. If you use a smartphone, tablet, electronic reader or laptop, you are a very much advanced transhuman. The same is true if you had a joint replacement, prosthetic, laser surgery, cochlear or other chip implant… or any other implant as well. We began transcending our human limitations as soon as we fashioned clothing and developed tools. Language was one of the more important transhuman advances. But we didn't have a name for it until recently. Now that we do, most people react negatively to the term, and thus the concept. However, now that you know that you are transhuman, isn't transhumanism a little more comforting? Some people understand all this, recognize that they are transhuman, and still get scared by it. Don't for a minute think they'd like to scurry off to the forest and scavenge for food for the rest of their years. Oh no, their perfectly content to embrace just some transhumanism, but not too much.
What scares them is the increasingly rapid rate of change. They think it's bad for humanity, and they wrap their fear mongering in a "gentle" term that they use to describe themselves – "ethicists." Since I have opinions on most issues, I'll share mine with you on these types of ethicists. They are mass murderers. At least, they are making their best attempt at mass murder. And of course, attempted murder is a felony. The reason I say that is, if they are successful in restricting human enhancing technologies, hundreds of millions of people who would be denied these technologies will die unnecessarily. And that might include you and me fellow transhuman. It's tough enough raising funds for research without some influential deathists pulling in the opposite direction. Some are influential because they are on government payrolls (your tax dollars at work), and some are widely published. Be alert as to what you may read, see or hear, and always ask what authors' and spokespersons' agendas are. In short, transhumanism is simply improving the human condition.
THE IRRATIONALITY OF THE VIEW THAT LIFE IS SOMETIMES NOT WORTH LIVING BY: G. STOLYAROV II
In behavioral finance, there is a well-known tendency of many people to consider themselves worse off after a financial net gain that happens under certain circumstances. For instance, if person A wins $10 million but then loses $8 million, he might consider himself worse off than he would have seen himself as being if he had simply won $1 million. Even though in absolute terms A is twice as wealthy in the first case as he would have been in the second, A will see his current position mostly in relation to the $10 million he once had and will thus consider himself to be in dire straits. This is, of course, an entirely irrational mindset; $2 million is clearly better than $1 million, all other things equal. I think many people are afflicted by a similar mentality with regard to life itself. It is likely that even a majority of people think that life is not worth living under certain conditions. These conditions are virtually always worse than the conditions of those people’s lives at present – and so a descent into such conditions would entail a diminution of the quality of life. However, people who think that life is sometimes not worth living do not venture to make the proper comparison of lower quality of life to no quality of life. Rather, they compare some hypothetical or actual lower quality of life to a former higher quality of life – even though both are better than an absence of life altogether. In despair over their losses of liberty, privilege, health, loved ones, or any other values, they are willing to abandon everything else of value that they have by choosing to succumb to death. This is as irrational as a person who lost $8 million out of $10 million burning the other $2 million out of the belief that wealth is just not worth having unless there is a certain amount of it.
BIO-PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR HUMAN BIOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY BY: MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL.,
When you eliminate the reason for aging, there will be no reason that denies ’non- aging’. aging does not happen by default – it only happens because there is a deep-rooted underlying reason. When this reason is eliminated, there would be no reason why aging needs to continue. The reason for aging has been known for some time. Ultimately, aging happens due to a discrepancy between the rate of biological damage and the rate of repair. The rate of biological repair mechanisms tends to become progressively compromised as a function of age, resulting in accumulation of damaged biological material that reduces useful function. The underlying cause of this is lack of energy resources - these are being diverted, by Darwinian forces, from the somatic repair to the repair of the germ-line. Any intentional attempt which improves the input of potential energy into an organic system makes the equalization of the rate of damage vs. repair more likely, and thus ultimately must result in retardation of aging [ aging equals loss of energy and thus loss of complexity. Non- aging is virtually stable energy and thus higher complexity]. In this case, the reason for aging is essentially removed. If there is no reason why aging must happen, then it will not happen. BIOLOGY ‘CONSTRUCTS’- PHYSICS ‘DESTRUCTS’ Or: Energy is a medium used by Biology in order to thwart Physics. Entropy is a medium used by Physics in order to thwart Biology. (Here, I deliberately take an animistic stance, attributing human-like characteristics to inanimate patterns. I use notions based on action ontology in order to make my ideas easier to understand.) Biology has a general tendency to advance from simple to complex, whereas Physics have an opposite tendency, from complex to simple. In other words, biology is likely to increase potential energy, biological sophistication and redundancy (an Intentional Stance, see Dennett), whereas
Physical laws seek a state of lowest energy, minimal uncertainty and minimal entropy (the Intentional Stance with regards to Physics is the tendency towards minimum potential energy). In this context, the term Physics refers to classical Physics (friction, gravity, tension etc.) and thermodynamics, rather than to all branches of Physics such as relativity or quantum theories. Of course, I acknowledge that Physical theories are merely descriptions of what we observe empirically, and are not describing definitive reality. Therefore, it can be said that Biology and Physics are entangled in an eternal confrontation, each leaning towards its own respective ‘aims’, but maintaining an overall balance, resulting in life with predefined limits, (i.e. a human lifespan of 80-120 years). In order to influence this balance (and increase our odds of living well beyond this limit) we need to reduce the impact of physical laws and/or strengthen our biological assets. As it is hitherto impossible to change the laws of Physics*, one way to tip the balance in our favor is to enhance the laws of Biology. * Nevertheless, the laws of Physics are not as immutable as we think, being just representations of our observations. Ultimate reality may be different from observed reality. According to Eric Chaisson, the expansion of the universe (a process described by Physics), is responsible for the rise of complexity in biological and other systems. As the universe expands, it makes energy easily available for use by any system (including a biological and thus a human) in order to increase its complexity. Complexity declines with age and this is due to the accumulation of damage that it is not repaired because of limited energy resources. Any process that increases available energy would be able to reverse this decline and so aging will slow down or virtually stop. Therefore, it appears that Physical laws if applied in a suitable manner may ultimately enhance Biology. In Chaisson’s opinion, Darwinian evolution is only a small subset within a wider Cosmic Evolutionary framework, and it could be possible that Darwinian evolution will be superseded by other, more effective forms of evolution. Evolution by natural selection is the main obstacle to defeating aging and thus bars HBI (Human Biological Immortality), because it requires the survival of the germ-line and thus diverts resources from somatic repair. If/when evolution by natural selection begins to weaken, the restriction of energy resources upon the soma will be eased, the soma will have improved resources for its repairs and thus it will live longer. Based on the assumption that Biology tends to progress ‘from simple to complex’ it is reasonable
to suggest that, if there is a way that increases biological complexity or sophistication, then this would have an impact upon health/longevity (because it will enhance biological assets and allow biology to continue its tendency for increased complexity). I believe that aging is due to loss of complexity of biological systems (increased entropy over time). In order to counteract this, we must input more energy into the system in the form of cognitive stimulation, i.e. informational energy, which activates many biological processes. This has been proven in many experiments. During everyday life we are exposed to random unintentional challenges and stimulation (cognitive challenges, novelty of the environment, new ideas and situations). This helps our brain function well. Against this, we lose energy (increasing entropy), which eventually causes death because the degree of information input tends to zero with time, whereas entropy tends to infinity. I propose to introduce another variable, the sum of intentional cognitive stimulation (i.e. intentional stimulation, special brain exercises, sense exercises, goal-oriented behavior, seeking novelty and excellence etc.) which adds robustness into the equation. If entropy increases with age (obeying physical laws), this will have no meaningful impact because we can increase the amount of intentional brain stimulation. This model accommodates the concept of Free Energy Rate Density (FERD) roughly the degree of density of energy flowing through a unit space of a system. The higher the FERD, the higher the complexity and intelligence of a system. For example, the Sun has 4 ergs per second per cubic cm, whereas the human brain has 150,000 ergs per second per cubic cm. This means that the Sun, despite its enormous reserves of energy, is considerably dumber than a human brain. This supports the view that energy must be maintained high in order to maintain intelligence (something biology does naturally for us), and when complexity declines due to physical constrains, we need to try and increase it by increasing FERD parameters. Therefore, there is a need to reach an optimum between intentional increase of neuro-cognitive stimulation, against the increase of entropy, in order to achieve long life. The more we keep this system going, the longer the lifespan. Remember that intelligence is ultimately the ability to make consistently correct selections from available choices. This means that one has to be in a position that contains (is forced to contain) challenges that need resolving, and choices that need to be made. Routine, monotony and regularity do not account for increased need to select, whereas variability, irregularity and uncertainty maximize our need to select (and thus increase intelligence) and thus increase informational energy.
The assumption is that there is an upwards ‘endeavor’ aiming to increase complexity, sophistication and intelligence, with the highest step being that of pure global intelligence (spirit). METAPHYSICAL CONTEXTS In metaphysical terms, “spirit” has acquired a number of meanings. One of these is: 1.An incorporeal but ubiquitous, non-quantifiable substance or energy present individually in all living things. Unlike the concept of souls (often regarded as eternal and sometimes believed to pre-exist the body) a spirit develops and grows as an integral aspect of a living. I am suggesting that it is possible to work towards this stage by intentionally increasing external inputs, and by optimizing and enhancing the usage of internal cognitive signals. This touches on the religious, i.e. the search for higher, pure metaphysical states, via meditation and religious rituals/practices. It also touches on the philosophical, with the search for excellence. Both the religious search for spiritual purity and the philosophical search for excellence are merely disciplined and intentional enhancements of external cognitive information and maximal use of internal cognitive powers (meditation, mental discipline). In the biological realm, this translates to a search for higher intelligence (here intelligence is defined as an ability to repeatedly make appropriate selections from a list of available options). For this there is a need to optimize the use of information by the brain, i.e. to make informational inputs use metabolic energy optimally. It is necessary to work stepwise: first increase external cognitive inputs, then use these in an optimal way to work towards achieving more abstract stages such as excellence and awe (Kazantzakis calls this ‘Holy Terror’, the highest point of human mind can achieve). WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD STIMULATION OR CHALLENGE? A Positive Challenge is a condition that requires action (see F. Heylighen) because it represents an opportunity to be exploited. These can be planned/anticipated or unexpected/unintended. My advice is to follow a program of planned positive challenges. This is essentially a problem that needs resolving, and the brain is forced to make a decision one way or the other. It is forced to SELECT the best option among a number of others. A suitable/appropriate selection itself creates information (Shannon’s reduction of uncertainty). Meaningful Information (knowledge, experience, wisdom, excellence), via expressive activation of appropriate brain mechanisms
(sensory to cortex and other areas) activates (increases the energy available to, or the potential energy of) biological patterns and agents that then improve repair and maintenance, thus nonaging. In this respect, challenge (accumulation of useful information) can prevent regress, i.e. reduce the rate of entropy increase. According to Shannon, entropy increase is associated with loss of information, so more information equals a reduced rate of loss of thermodynamic energy. Increased entropy destroys organization. However not all information is useful, and not a lot of information is beneficial, so it is necessary to filter it in order to avoid information overload. Suitable information is necessary in order to improve problem solving (by our biological processes). This will be achieved if the biological process can make the appropriate selection when confronted with a challenge. The increased power of selection means that the best choices will be chosen for the ultimate benefit of the organism. The information must be analyzed and judged by an active process, and not just accumulated in a disorganized manner. It has been shown in some experiments that information can be transformed into energy (Experimental demonstration of information-to-energy conversion and validation of the generalized jarzynski equality. A Toyabe et al. Nature Physics vol. 6 p988-992, 2010). Also, the informational transfer process is associated with decrease entropy (Coherent informational energy and entropy. A. Avramescu J Documentation 1993 36(4)293). The benefits of challenge are derived not only from external information but also from internally created abstract thoughts, meditation, awe etc. Intentional cognitive enhancement should be distinguished from a mere passive cognitive stimulation. The generation of entropy over an average lifespan (around 80 years) was found to be in the region of 11,404kJ/K (Degrees kelvin) (Silva AC, Annamala K. Entropy Generation and Human Aging: Lifespan Entropy and Effect of Physical Activity Levels. Entropy 2008, 10; 100-123). No entropy generation equals death. Any reduction in the entropy production would therefore result/be associated with an increased lifespan (longer dt). Also, any increase of meaningful energy into the system would have the same result. HOW TO CHOOSE AN IDEAL DEGREE OF CHALLENGE
Here, consider Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’. Essentially, the concept describes how a challenge that matches one’s skills and abilities causes well-being. If the challenge is over one’s ability then it causes anxiety. If it is below, it causes boredom (see equation above where the values of Ai are above or below k). This is similar to Blascovich’s ideas of ‘challenge versus threat’. A challenge is a situation that matches your resources to deal with it. A threat is when your resources are below what is necessary to deal with it (causing anxiety). So, if a mental challenge causes excessive stress or anxiety, is unlikely to be beneficial in aging. If it is of such a low intensity that causes boredom, then it will not be beneficial either. It has been suggested that the frequency, duration, type and level of the challenge has a power law distribution (see Le Corre), meaning that low intensity and frequent challenges must be occasionally enriched with infrequent high intensity ones. According to Le Corre: “The variation between a low and a high level challenge is likely to mobilize biological resources and activate defense mechanisms that can ultimately increase biological redundancy and improved damage repair rates. This implies that there must be a continuous variation of challenging stimuli, without ever reaching a stage of exhaustion” (in this case, mental exhaustion).”
TRANSHUMANISM AND MIND UPLOADING ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS BY: G. STOLYAROV II
In what is perhaps the most absurd attack on transhumanism to date, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com equates this broad philosophy and movement with “the entire idea that you can ‘upload your mind to a computer’” and further posits that the only kind of possible mind uploading is the destructive kind, where the original, biological organism ceases to exist. Adams goes so far as calling transhumanism a “death cult much like the infamous Heaven’s Gate cult led by Marshal Applewhite.” I will not devote this essay to refuting any of Adams’s arguments against destructive mind uploading, because no serious transhumanist thinker of whom I am aware endorses the kind of procedure Adams uses as a straw man. For anyone who wishes to continue existing as an individual, uploading the contents of the mind to a computer and then killing the body is perhaps the most bizarrely counterproductive possible activity, short of old-fashioned suicide. Instead, Adams’s article – all the misrepresentations aside – offers the opportunity to make important distinctions of value to transhumanists. First, having a positive view of mind uploading is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a transhumanist. Mind uploading has been posited as one of several routes toward indefinite human life extension. Other routes include the periodic repair of the existing biological organism (as outlined in Aubrey de Grey’s SENS project or as entailed in the concept of nanomedicine) and the augmentation of the biological organism with non-biological components (Ray Kurzweil’s actual view, as opposed to the absurd positions Adams attributes to him). Transhumanism, as a philosophy and a movement, embraces the lifting of the present limitations upon the human condition – limitations that arise out of the failures of human biology and unaltered physical nature. Max More, in “Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy”, writes that “Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies such as neuroscience and neuropharmacology, life extension, nanotechnology, artificial ultraintelligence, and space habitation, combined with a rational philosophy and value system.” That Adams would take this immensity of interrelated concepts, techniques, and
aspirations and equate it to destructive mind uploading is, plainly put, mind-boggling. There is ample room in transhumanism for a variety of approaches toward lifting the limitations of the human condition. Some of these approaches will be more successful than others, and no one approach is obligatory for those wishing to consider themselves transhumanists. Moreover, Adams greatly misconstrues the positions of those transhumanists who do support mind uploading. For most such transhumanists, a digital existence is not seen as superior to their current biological existences, but as rather a necessary recourse if or when it becomes impossible to continue maintaining a biological existence. Dmitry Itskov’s 2045 Initiative is perhaps the most prominent example of the pursuit of mind uploading today. The aim of the initiative is to achieve cybernetic immortality in a stepwise fashion, through the creation of a sequence of avatars that gives the biological human an increasing amount of control over non-biological components. Avatar B, planned for circa 2020-2025, would involve a human brain controlling an artificial body. If successful, this avatar would prolong the existence of the biological brain when other components of the biological body have become too irreversibly damaged to support it. Avatar C, planned for circa 2030-2035, would involve the transfer of a human mind from a biological to a cybernetic brain, after the biological brain is no longer able to support life processes. There is no destruction intended in the 2045 Avatar Project Milestones, only preservation of some manner of intelligent functioning of a person whom the status quo would instead relegate to becoming food for worms. The choice between decomposition and any kind of avatar is a no-brainer (well, a brainer actually, for those who choose the latter). Is Itskov’s path toward immortality the best one? I personally prefer SENS, combined with nanomedicine and piecewise artificial augmentations of the sort that are already beginning to occur (witness the amazing bebionic3 prosthetic hand). Itskov’s approach appears to assume that the technology for transferring the human mind to an entirely non-biological body will become available sooner than the technology for incrementally maintaining and fortifying the biological body to enable its indefinite continuation. My estimation is the reverse. Before scientists will be able to reverse-engineer not just the outward functions of a human brain but also its immensely complex and intricate internal structure, we will have within our grasp the ability to conquer an ever greater number of perils that befall the biological body and to repair the body using both biological and non-biological components. The biggest hurdle for mind uploading to overcome is one that does not arise with the approach of maintaining the existing body and incrementally replacing defective components. This hurdle is the preservation of the individual’s unique and irreplaceable vantage point upon the world – his or her direct sense of being that person and no other. I term this direct vantage point an individual’s “I-ness”. Franco Cortese, in his immensely rigorous and detailed conceptual writings on the subject, calls it “subjective-continuity” and devotes his attention to techniques that could achieve gradual replacement of biological neurons with artificial neurons in such a
way that there is never a temporal or operational disconnect between the biological mind and its later cybernetic instantiation. Could the project of mind uploading pursue directions that would achieve the preservation of the “I-ness” of the biological person? I think this may be possible, but only if the resulting cybernetic mind is structurally analogous to the biological mind and, furthermore, maintains the temporal continuity of processes exhibited by an analog system, as opposed to a digital system’s discrete “on-off” states and the inability to perform multiple exactly simultaneous operations. Furthermore, only by developing the gradual-replacement approaches explored by Cortese could this prospect of continuing the same subjective experience (as opposed to simply creating a copy of the individual) be realized. But Adams, in his screed against mind uploading, seems to ignore all of these distinctions and explorations. Indeed, he appears to be oblivious of the fact that, yes, transhumanists have thought quite a bit about the philosophical questions involved in mind uploading. He seems to think that in mind uploading, you simply “copy the brain and paste it somewhere else” and hope that “somehow magically that other thing becomes ‘you.’” Again, no serious proponent of mind uploading – and, more generally, no serious thinker who has considered the subject – would hold this misconception. Adams is wrong on a still further level, though. Not only is he wrong to equate transhumanism with mind uploading; not only is he wrong to declare all mind uploading to be destructive – he is also wrong to condemn the type of procedure that would simply make a non-destructive copy of an individual. This type of “backup” creation has indeed been advocated by transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil. While a pure copy of one’s mind or its contents would not transfer one’s “Iness” to a digital substrate and would not enable one to continue experiencing existence after a fatal illness or accident, it could definitely help an individual regain his memories in the event of brain damage or amnesia. Furthermore, if the biological individual were to irreversibly perish, such a copy would at least preserve vital information about the biological individual for the benefit of others. Furthermore, it could enable the biological individual’s influence upon the world to be more powerfully actualized by a copy that considers itself to have the biological individual’s memories, background, knowledge, and personality. If we had with us today copies of the minds of Archimedes, Benjamin Franklin, and Nikola Tesla, we would certainly all benefit greatly from continued outpourings of technological and philosophical innovation. The original geniuses would not know or care about this, since they would still be dead, but we, in our interactions with minds very much like theirs, would be immensely better off than we are with only their writings and past inventions at our disposal. Yes, destructive digital copying of a mind would be a bafflingly absurd and morally troubling undertaking – but recognition of this is neither a criticism of transhumanism nor of any genuinely promising projects of mind uploading. Instead, it is simply a matter of common sense, a quality which Mike Adams would do well to acquire.
THINK
BY: MILE
Thinking is profoundly fulfilling and transcending when done right. The thoughts that you keep coursing through your head throughout the days are the controllers of the robotic limbs you have attached to you that form and shape the world around them. Just one robot, just one person, you, can shape the world in big or small ways. Wernher von Brauns neurons caused his limbs to help us get to the moon faster. If Charles Martel hadn’t hammered back the Muslim invasions that came at the height of the power of the Ummayad Empire, the largest Empire on the planet since the fall of the Roman Empire a few hundred years before it, if not for Martel understanding the growing danger in the Muslim threat and routing his efforts from his Saxon feuds, the Muslim world might have conquered all of Europe. If the Armenians and the Persians hadn’t kept the Romans at bay to the East, and Armenius before them in the North, then how far might the plague of Christianity have spread at the sword tips of Constantine’s superstition powered dominions? What additional solid grips of trained willful ignorance and propensity for use of fallacy with reckless abandon might the destructively viral meme of religion have on us today? What kind of pioneering human transcendence would take place in a world with assertion of as-of -yet still not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, supernaturalism and superstition comprising a great deal of its foundation? It doesn’t compose the foundation of the one I stand on or those of most of the people that I associate with, and we have thinking to thank, in very large part, for that. Millions of pioneers and builders owe their amazing opportunities to thinking. After people used their ingenuity to move us all into agriculture, and more time was bought for everybody, the great thinkers and philosophers of the early Greek States and others, laid the groundwork that powered the series of innovations that would come at increasing paces, from many parts of the world, for centuries to come. The increasing precision in ship and castle building, the manuscripts written, inventions created - from the clock to the printing press - from
the lighter than air machine to the Space Shuttle, thinking is responsible for the transcendence of the human condition. People are part of world changing projects all the time. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people around the world working to make a difference, working to pioneer the boundaries of human existence and understanding, every day. They toil to uncover the mystery, to fight back the plagues of misery that sweep the world in the forms of things like poverty, disease, pollution, greed, selfishness, the various unnecessarily restrictive confines of fallacy, lack of reasoning skills like an understanding of how to spot fallacy out of thinking and discussion, etc., and you can too, we all can; follow their lead. Continuously work to improve your thinking, encourage people to think right, keep up the brain work for yourself and to help lead the way. Continue learning, continue pushing your boundaries, continue working to understand more; go further. Do it to see and do more, to understand more of the big picture of what is going on in this incredible, amazing universe and existence. Think.
LONGEVITY AND THE JEWISH TRADITION BY: ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D
In the quite famous essay of 2001, “L’Chaim [“To Life”] and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” the American bioethicist Leon Kass notoriously placed a limit on the possibility and desirability of life extension, claiming that “the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not.” He presented such a view as truly and pristinely Jewish. Speaking in the name of true wisdom and true Judaism, he claimed that “the unlimited pursuit of longevity cannot be the counsel of wisdom, and, therefore, should not be the counsel of Jewish wisdom. L’Chaim, but with limits.”[1] Yet, I would argue that this is only one of many possible interpretations of the Jewish tradition with relation to life-extension, and interpretations other than Kass’s may be both better grounded in Jewish sources and more beneficial for individual and social well-being. In fact, the pursuit of life-extension, and even radical life extension, has strong roots in the Jewish religious tradition, insofar as in Judaism, human life has been an absolute and supreme value. Thus the principle “ve-chai bahem” – – וחי בהםviz. the obligation to live by the commandments and not to die by them, is strongly emphasized (Leviticus 18:5; Talmud – Masechet (Tractate) Sanhedrin 74a; Talmud – Masechet Yoma 85b).[2] The value of human life is illustrated by the saying that “whosoever preserves a single soul [any soul, according to most manuscript versions of the Talmud], scripture ascribes merit to him as though he had preserved a complete world” (Talmud – Masechet Sanhedrin 37a). The obligation to preserve life (“pikuach nefesh”) is so important that it overrides all other obligations and observances (such as Shabbat, Fast, etc.), in fact it overrides all commandments of the Torah. As the Talmud states, “there is nothing that can stand before the duty of saving life.”[3]
The only exceptional cases, in which a person is said to be obliged to sacrifice one’s life, but not transgress, are: idolatry, forbidden sexual practices, and murder. Yet, in some attenuating circumstances and according to some Rabbis, even the former two prohibitions can be excused to preserve life. In contrast, murder of innocent people (for example to use their body parts to sustain one’s life) is prohibited under any circumstances, as it contradicts the very principle of the preservation of life (to be distinguished from the killing of an aggressor in self defense which is permitted). A related principle is “ein dokhin nefesh mipney nefesh” – “do not reject a soul for another soul” (Mishnah – Ohalot 7:6). That is, one cannot curtail some person’s life to preserve another person’s life. It can be added that an implication of this is that one cannot reject the preservation of life for the aged in favor of the preservation of life in other diseases. All causes of death are equal, and one cannot reject one for another.[4] In the Jewish religious rules of conduct – the Halakhah – “tumah” (the unholiness, evil or impurity) means simply “the negation of life,” hence the prohibition of murder and of bloodshed, and the laws of “tumah ve’taharah” (or ritual purity).[5] Moreover, the Talmud equates between evil, Satan and death: “Satan, the evil prompter, and the Angel of Death are all one” (Talmud - Baba Bathra 16a). According to the Talmud, “the sins will cease” but not “the sinners.”[6] That is to say, human sins need to be eliminated, but not people who commit the sins; the people need to keep on living. All these concepts are directly supportive of life-extension, insofar as life-preservation, lifesaving and life-extension are logical equivalents.
Reaching farther, super-longevity, rejuvenation, and even immortality and revival, are prominent concepts in the Jewish tradition: Mortality, the main tragedy of the Fall, was not the original and inexorable destiny of humankind (Genesis 3:17-24). The extreme longevity of antediluvian patriarchs is admired, ranging from 365 years for Enoch to 969 years for Methuselah (Genesis 5:1-32). According to the Talmud, “Until Abraham there was no [signs of] old age” (Talmud – Masechet Sanhedrin 107b). In the Torah, longevity is the main prize for observing the commandments (without a direct mentioning of an afterlife – Exodus 20:12, Leviticus 26:3, Deuteronomy 5:33). In other books of the Tanakh (Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim – Torah, Prophets and Writings – the corpus of what has been sometimes called “The Old Testament”), the prophet Elijah attained physical immortality (the ascension in the chariot of fire – 2 Kings 2:11). Ezekiel could revive the dead (the vision of the resurrection of dry bones – Ezekiel 37:1-14; also in the Talmud – Masechet Sanhedrin 92b). The prophecy continues: “And David, my servant, will be their prince forever” (Ezekiel 37:25).[7] King David (conventionally dated c. 1040-970 BCE) practiced rejuvenation (by proximity to
young maidens – 1 Kings 1:1-4). “Tchiat Hametim” (resurrection in the flesh) is among the Thirteen Articles of Faith of Maimonides (1135-1204) – one of the greatest Jewish intellectual authorities, a theologian as well as a physician.[8] Furthermore, resurrection is a subject of the daily prayer (Amida): “Blessed are you, O Eternal, Who Resurrects the Dead.” And it is given the same weight in the prayer as “Blessed are you, O Eternal, Who Heals the Sick.” According to many great Rabbis, such as Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882-942), Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman/Nachmanides (1194-1270) and Rabbi Abraham Bibago (1446-1489), the resurrection is to be followed by physical immortality.[9] These examples may appear far-reaching, mystical and mythical, yet they demonstrate that in the Jewish intellectual tradition (as in many others), the pursuit of life does not seem to have any limits. Essentially, the preservation of life is not something just to pray for, but to work for. There is a work by Maimonides – “The Responsum on Longevity” – which is definitive of the pro-active principle for the prolongation of life. Maimonides believed that there is no predetermined limit to human life, and therefore efforts toward the prolongation of life are justified. In the “Responsum on Longevity,” Maimonides stated directly: “For us Jews, there is no predetermined end point of life. The living being exists as long as replenishment is provided [for that amount of] its substantive moisture [i.e. bodily humors] that dissolves.” In agreement with the theoretical perception that if something can be broken, it can also be fixed, Maimonides appeared to be quite pro-active: “It is written: ‘When you build a new house, you should make a parapet for your roof so that you bring not bloodshed upon your house should any man fall therefrom” [Deut. 22:8]. This phrase proves that preparing oneself, and adopting precautionary measures – in that one is careful before undertaking dangerous enterprises – can prevent their occurrence. … This demonstrates, however, that there is no firmly determined time for death. Moreover, the
elimination of harmful things is efficacious in prolonging life, whereas the undertaking of dangerous things is the basis for shortening life.”[10] Indeed this passage does not explicitly speak of immortality, but only implies the possibility of indefinite life extension. Elsewhere in the Jewish oral tradition, the concept of potential physical immortality is explicit. There is even foreshadowing of regenerative biotechnology. Thus, for example, there is an extensive Jewish oral tradition about the “Etzem Luz” – – עצם לוזthe bone of resurrection, the indestructible part of the human body from which the resurrection will proceed. “Luz” (almond) is a very fraught mystical concept, denoting the source of resurrection and regeneration, as well as an endocrine gland and a sprout. Jacob used “Luz” (almond) rods for “bioengineering,” to change the color of his sheep (Genesis 30:37-39). “Luz” is also the name of the blessed land of the immortals. It may be sufficient to quote a remarkable article on “Luz” from Jewish Encyclopedia to illustrate how deeply rooted is the concept of potential immortality (and even its laboratory testing) in the Talmud and Midrash (orally transmitted legends): “LUZ - Name of a city in the land of the Hittites [a territory restricted to the hills of CanaanIsrael or broadly referring to Anatolia-Asia Minor], built by an emigrant from Beth-el, who was spared and sent abroad by the Israelitish invaders because he showed them the entrance to the city (Judges i. 26). "Luz" being the Hebrew word for an almond-tree, it has been suggested that the city derived its name from such a tree or grove of trees. Winckler compares the Arabic "laudh" ("asylum"). Robinson ("Researches," iii. 389) identifies the city either with Luwaizah, near the city of Dan, or (ib.iii. 425) with Kamid al-Lauz, north of Heshbon (now Hasbiyyah); Talmudic references seem to point to its location as somewhere near the Phenician coast (Sotah 46b; Sanh. 12a; Gen. R. lxix. 7). Legend invested the place with miraculous qualities. "Luz, the city known for its blue dye, is the city which Sennacherib entered but could not harm; Nebuchadnezzar, but could not destroy; the city over which the angel of death has no power; outside the walls of which the aged who are tired of life are placed, where they meet death" (Sotah 46b); wherefore it is said of Luz, "the name thereof is unto this day" (Judges i. 26, Hebr.). It is furthermore stated that an almond-tree with a hole in it stood before the entrance to a cave that was near Luz; through that hole persons entered the cave and found the way to the city, which was altogether hidden (Gen. R.l.c.).” Luz is also “Aramaic name for the os coccyx, the "nut" of the spinal column. The belief was that, being indestructible, it will form the nucleus for the resurrection of the body. The Talmud
narrates that the emperor Hadrian, when told by R. Joshua that the revival of the body at the resurrection will take its start with the "almond," or the "nut," of the spinal column, had investigations made and found that water could not soften, nor fire burn, nor the pestle and mortar crush it (Lev. R. xviii.; Eccl. R. xii.). The legend of the "resurrection bone," connected with Ps. xxxiv. 21 (A. V. 20: "unum ex illis [ossibus] non confringetur" - [one of those bones is unbreakable]) and identified with the cauda equina [horse tailbone] (see Eisenmenger, "Entdecktes Judenthum" [Judaism discovered], ii. 931-933), was accepted as an axiomatic truth by the Christian and Mohammedan theologians and anatomists, and in the Middle Ages the bone received the name "Juden Knochlein" (Jewbone; see Hyrtl, "Das Arabische und Hebraische in der Anatomie" [The Hebrew and Arabic elements in Anatomy] 1879, pp. 165-168; comp. p. 24). Averroes accepted the legend as true (see his "Religion und Philosophie," transl. by Muller, 1875, p. 117; see also Steinschneider, "Polemische Literatur," 1877, pp. 315, 421; idem, "Hebr. Bibl." xxi. 98; idem, "Hebr. Uebers." p. 319; Low, "Aramaische Pflanzennamen" [Aramaic plant names] 1881, p. 320). Possibly the legend owes its origin to the Egyptian rite of burying "the spinal column of Osiris" in the holy city of Busiris, at the close of the days of mourning for Osiris, after which his resurrection was celebrated (Brugsch, "Religion und Mythologie," 1888, pp. 618, 634). Bibliography: Jastrow, Dict.; Levy, Neuhebr. Worterb. K.” (Emphasis added.)[11] The latter statement about potential immortality being “accepted as an axiomatic truth by the Christian and Mohammedan theologians and anatomists” is of particular interest, showing the compatibility of the religions with the concept of radical life-extension.[12] In more recent times, Jewish thinkers have expressed an agreement with life-extensionist goals and with biotechnological interventions generally. Thus, in March 2000, the International Symposium “Extended Life – Eternal Life” took place in Philadelphia.[13] The Russian journalist Michael Ettinghoff thus summarized the symposium discussion: “Christians are against immortality. Jews are for it.” The Conservative American Rabbi Neil Gilman is quoted as saying at the conference that he would be ready to break Shabbat and Yom Kippur, even if they occur on the same day, for the preservation of life.[14] According to the Conservative American Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, radical life-extension ties with Jewish expectations of the Messianic Era. At the same time Dorff did express some concerns that radical life extension will make us “even more blind to the importance of other values, such as family, enjoying life, fixing the world, and connecting with God” and it will “likely bring a variety of yet unseen problems to thwart the arrival of the Messianic era” as it will exacerbate the “overpopulation” problem. Yet, ultimately, he asserted that imaginative thinking will “prompt us
to exert yet more effort in achieving the ideal world, and may we succeed!”[15] The Society for Jewish Science (a part of Reform Judaism), established in 1916-1921 by the American Rabbis Alfred Moses and Morris Lichtenstern, believing in the power of “affirmative” prayer for healing and longevity, exists to the present time.[16] There has also been pronounced interest in physical immortality in the literature of Chabad (a branch of Orthodox Hasidic Judaism, deriving the name from Chochmah, Binah, Daat – Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge).[17] Thus, as can be seen, the Jewish religious tradition is perfectly supportive of the pursuit of life extension, even radical life extension, perceiving it as a high manifestation of the valuation of life. Let the works of the Jewish tradition inspire more people to become enthusiasts (Hasidim) of the rational and scientific pursuit of the prolongation of human life, among Jews and non-Jews alike!
[1] Leon Kass, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things, 113, 17-24, May 2001, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/lchaim-and-its-limits-why-not-immortality-36. [2] The translation of the Talmud used here is English Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz, Rabbi Dr. I Epstein, et al. (Eds.), Talmudic Books, 2012, at http://halakhah.com/. [3] Talmud – Masechet Yoma 82a; also Talmud – Masechet Yoma 84b-85b; Talmud – Masechet Sanhedrin – 74a. [4] “Pikuach Nefesh” (Saving a life), in Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics (Hebrew), compiled and edited by Abraham Steinberg, The Shlezinger Institute, Jerusalem, 1996, vol. 5, pp. 390-392, 404-406. [5] “Tameh met” (unholiness of death), “Tumah” (unholiness), in Talmudic Encyclopedia. A Digest of Halachic Literature and Jewish Law from the Tannaitic Period to the Present Time (Hebrew), edited by Rabbi Meyer Berlin, Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, Jerusalem, 1997, vol. 19, pp. 450-507. [6] Talmud [Gemara] – Masechet Berachoth [Tractate on Blessings], 10a. [7] The text used here is The Bible: New International Version. [8] Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (the Rambam), Perush Hamishna, Masechet Sanhedrin 10 -
Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishna, Tractate [Masechet] Sanhedrin, Chapter 10. Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Judaism Halacha Lemaaseh [Practical Halakhah]. The Oral Tradition (Hebrew), Dfus Pele, Givataim, Israel, 1988, pp. 370-371. [9] Dov Schwartz, Messianism in Medieval Jewish Thought (Hebrew), Bar-Ilan University Press, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 1997, pp. 36, 105, 142-143, 218-219. [10] Fred Rosner, “Moses Maimonides’ Responsum on Longevity,” Geriatrics, 23, 170-178, October 1968, reprinted in Fred Rosner, The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides, Ktav, Hoboken NJ, 1998, pp. 246-258, quotes on pp. 255, 258. [11] Kaufmann Kohler, “Luz,” Jewish Encyclopedia, in 12 volumes, 1901-1906, online reprint, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=635&letter=L. [12] See also, Fred Rosner, Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud, Ktav, Hoboken NJ, 1995 (1977), particularly the articles “The Balm of Gilead” and “Therapeutic Efficacy of Chicken Soup,” pp. 132-139; James Joseph Walsh, Old-Time Makers of Medicine. The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages, Fordham University Press, NY, 1911, Ch. III “Great Jewish Physicians,” Ch. IV “Maimonides,” pp. 61108, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20216/20216-h/20216-h.htm. [13] www.extended-eternallife.org [14] Argumeny I Fakty, 41/322, 2000, http://gazeta.aif.ru/online/health/322/z41_13 . [15] Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, “Becoming Yet More Like God: A Jewish Perspective on Radical Life Extension,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, Edited by Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher, Macmillan Palgrave, New York, 2009, pp. 63-74. [16] http://www.appliedjudaism.org/; http://www.irenedanon.com/Rabbi.htm. [17] See, for example, Prof. Yirmiyahu Branover, “The Immortality Enzyme,” Chabad World Magazine, 10/22/2009, http://www.chabadworld.net/; Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov, To Live And Live Again. An Overview of Techiyas Hameisim Based On The Classical Sources And On The Teachings Of Chabad Chassidism,” 1995 [5756], Ch. 10, “Life after the Resurrection,” http://www.sichosinenglish.org/books/to-live-and-live-again/.
I-NESS: WHAT DOES AND DOES NOT PRESERVE THE SELF? BY: G. STOLYAROV II
When we seek indefinite life, what is it that we are fundamentally seeking to preserve? I begin by observing that I perceive the world as myself – Gennady Stolyarov II – and not as any other person. That is, while I may be able to envision another person’s perspective, I cannot directly assume another person’s physical sensations and thoughts; I cannot become another person. At the same time, my own sensations and thoughts, as I experience them directly, are what constitute my being, or – since “being” is too general a term – my “I-ness”. Consider what would happen if a scientist discovered a way to reconstruct, atom by atom, an identical copy of my body, with all of its physical structures and their interrelationships exactly replicating my present condition. If, thereafter, I continued to exist alongside this new individual – call him GSII-2 – it would be clear that he and I would not be the same person. While he would have memories of my past as I experienced it, if he chose to recall those memories, I would not be experiencing his recollection. Moreover, going forward, he would be able to think different thoughts and undertake different actions than the ones I might choose to pursue. I would not be able to directly experience whatever he choose to experience (or experiences involuntarily). He would not have my “I-ness” – which would remain mine only. Now suppose that instead of GSII-2 being my contemporary, he was created in some dystopian future where I had already died of some misfortune or another, but someone found a way to reconstruct the latest healthy state of my body, including my mind, atom for atom. The situation with regard to preservation of my self would not change; GSII-2 would be able to live as if he had my past knowledge and experiences – but my “I-ness” would still be gone; it would not transfer to him simply because the original Gennady Stolyarov II had died. Indeed, the I who had died would never be aware in any manner of GSII-2’s existence or any experiences he might have in this future time. What is, then, this “I-ness” which can be preserved through some transformations and not through others? For instance, it is true that every atom comprising one’s body now is not the same as the corresponding atom that comprised one’s body seven years ago. Nonetheless, if one
remains alive, one’s “I-ness” is clearly preserved. How can that be? It is so because the replacement does not occur all at once. Rather, at any given time, only a small fraction of the atoms in one’s body are being replaced as old cells and their components take in energy, replicate, die, and are replaced by others. Thus, the continuity of bodily processes is preserved even as their physical components are constantly circulating into and out of the body. The mind is essentially a process made possible by the interactions of the brain and the remainder of nervous system with the rest of the body. One’s “I-ness”, being a product of the mind, is therefore reliant on the physical continuity of bodily processes, though not necessarily an unbroken continuity of higher consciousness. This can shed some light on which situations would allow for the preservation of one’s “I-ness” and which would not. SITUATIONS THAT ALLOW FOR PRESERVATION OF “I-NESS” Sleep – Sleep is often not even a suspension of consciousness; dreams, for instance, are cases of the consciousness turning in on itself, examining and remixing data that have already been absorbed from the external world. Deep, dreamless sleep, where the passage of time is not noticed by the sleeper, also does not involve a cessation of bodily activity – and certain subconscious areas of the brain continue to work during it as well. General Anesthesia – General anesthesia induces a temporary completely unconscious state in a patient, but it does not shut down the body completely; essential mechanisms, including the heart, continue to operate. Consciousness that is suspended and then revived, with the other bodily processes having remained continuous in the meantime, will not become an entirely different consciousness with a different “I-ness” but will rather preserve its previous “I-ness”. Having once been under general anesthesia, I can say with certainty that my “I-ness” had not been terminated in the process. Comas and Vegetative States – During a coma or a vegetative state, basic, largely involuntary, bodily processes continue to function. If full functionality of the brain is eventually restored, the underlying system in which the “I-ness” emerges would still have functioned uninterrupted in the meantime. Some recovered coma patients, however, have also reported being aware of their surroundings during the coma, suggesting that aspects of higher consciousness can also be preserved without interruption in such a condition. Rescues from the Brink of Death – Situations where individuals have had close brushes with death may involve cessation of functionality for some bodily systems but not for all. At least with current technology, the affected systems can only be “restarted” because some of the body’s systems have not yet completely failed. This means that nothing about such experiences would preclude the continuity of one’s “I-ness”.
Incremental Organ Replacement – An artificial organ that is incorporated into a functioning bodily system will not disrupt the continuity of that system. Before, during, and after the transplant, the body continues to execute numerous important functions, and the new organ – provided that the transplant is accepted by the body – becomes just a new part of the same continuous system. As with atoms all being replaced over time, it is at least conceivable that – via a series of gradual replacements – all of a person’s organs, including the brain, could be exchanged for artificial varieties without disrupting the continuity of that person’s identity. This, of course, would only be the case provided that the organs were replaced one or a few at a time. With replacing the brain in this fashion, particular care would need to be taken to ensure that the replacement is not a situation of simply taking out the existing brain and putting a new one in its place. Rather, the new brain would need to start as an addendum to the existing brain, so that the existing brain could integrate its contents with the new brain before parts of the existing brain (for instance, a physically diseased or irreparably damaged brain) are taken out of commission. If a gradual replacement is performed, it might even be possible for an individual to eventually have a fully electronic brain that still preserves that individual’s “I-ness”. SITUATIONS THAT WOULD NOT PRESERVE “I-NESS” Reanimation After Full Death – Suppose, instead of creating an identical atom-for-atom replica of a dead individual, that individual’s fully dead corpse were instead exhumed and rehabilitated by restoring all bodily systems to a functional level and in configurations exactly replicating the dead individual’s last healthy state. While, here, the individual’s actual body would be worked on, in terms of the preservation of “I-ness”, this situation is no different from the case of a perfect replica of a deceased person having been made from scratch. The reanimated individual would possess the knowledge and memories of the dead individual, but the dead individual would not be aware of the reanimated individual’s existence and would not experience the reanimated individual’s subsequent interactions with the world. There may, of course, be tremendous value for others in reanimating already dead people, as the reanimated individuals’ personalities and mental states (shaped by the dead individuals’ actual past, which the reanimated individuals would perceive the illusion of having experienced) could be invaluable in improving the world. Moreover, the reanimated individuals would certainly be happy to be alive and would be as fully human and entitled to the same rights as would have been the dead individuals on whom they were modeled. However, while the reanimation of already dead people would be a fascinating breakthrough, it would do nothing for preserving the “I-nesses” of those who had already died. With practices such as cryonics – where the hope is to eventually reanimate currently clinically dead individuals by placing their bodies in biological stasis in the meantime – the issue of whether “I-ness” would be preserved is a bit more challenging to address. Cryonics relies on the premise that the current definition of death – based on what situations of bodily decay today’s
medicine would be able to reverse – would not be the same as the definition of death prevalent in the future, when many more conditions would hopefully be reversible. If an individual who is clinically dead by today’s definition but would not be clinically dead by a future definition is “frozen” today in a particular condition, the hope is that future technologies would – even by their routine application – be able to revive that person. However, in order to accomplish the preservation of the body up to that time, cryonics relies on suspending the physical processes within the body as much as possible. If these processes were not suspended, then their natural operation would lead to further decay of the body to the point where it might be extremely difficult or impossible to recover even using future technologies. While the cryonically preserved individual is not fully dead, at least under a future definition, it is not clear what the implications of putting an entire body (including all physical systems, not just some) in stasis and later reanimating that same body would be for the preservation of “I-ness”. Moreover, I can only speculate as to whether cryonic preservation would still involve some extremely low-key uninterrupted functioning of bodily systems – or whether it would require a complete shutdown of all systems. In the latter case, a cessation of “I-ness” would appear to be much more likely than in the former. “Uploading” of Consciousness – Particular caution should be taken with regard to any proposals to “upload” an individual’s mind, personality, or memories onto a computer or an Internet-like network. I can conceive of ways where such “uploading” might be safe with regard to not disrupting an existing “I-ness”, but I strongly doubt that the “uploaded” consciousness could serve as itself a perpetuator of the same “I-ness”. Assuming that it would become possible to encode all the information in a person’s brain in a similar manner as files can be written to a portable drive and then copied to a computer, this would only create a copy of mental configurations. That copy might even have advanced interactive functionality, but it would not and could not replace the person of whose mind the copy was made. This situation might even be compared to the simultaneous existence of an individual and an identical replica of that individual in the body; just as these two people would have two different “I-nesses”, so would the original bodily consciousness of the individual whose mind had been “uploaded” have a different “I-ness” from the “I-ness” of the “uploaded” mind (and I do not rule out the possibility of a non-organic entity of sufficient complexity being self-aware). The “uploading” situation I described is similar to making an interactive archive of one’s mind – which might, in its more advanced implementations, also be self-aware. I recognize numerous potential benefits to such an approach, provided that it does not destroy or presume to replace the bodily mind which is being “uploaded”. The much more dangerous version of the “uploading” ambition perceives the “uploading” as a sort of migration of the consciousness from a corporeal (be it organic or inorganic) environment to a virtual environment. Any cessation of the corporeal person’s bodily processes as a consequence of such a “migration” would destroy that person’s “I-ness” – just as dying and having a bodily replica of oneself built afterward
would. It would be tragic indeed if people for whom indefinite self-preservation is the foremost goal inadvertently destroyed their essential vantage points in the attempt to perpetuate them. “Merging” of Consciousnesses – Some futurists have expressed the desire to eventually connect multiple individuals’ consciousnesses via electronic means – much as computers can be connected to one another. Such connections are supposed to facilitate individuals’ abilities to sense directly the experiences of the other individuals to whom their minds are connected. But such an undertaking – depending on how it is implemented – may also have destructive effects with regard to the “I-nesses” of the individuals being connected. I can conceive of two qualitatively different scenarios where individual consciousnesses might be connected. Scenario 1 would appear to be innocuous. To understand how it might work, suppose that it became possible to upload copies of an individual’s thoughts and experiences onto a portable medium – much as one might upload a file from a computer onto a portable drive without destroying the original file. If it becomes possible to directly convey thoughts and experiences in an electronic medium, then such copying and transfer from one mind to another might also become possible. Taken one step beyond a portable medium that can be “plugged into” one conscious system and then transported to another, one might envision a more continuous mechanism for doing so – similar to a wireless Internet connection over which information is transferred. But it is important to recognize that, while this linkage might enable Mind X to experience what Mind Y experiences, the two experience sets would still be perceived by the separate “I-nesses” of Mind X and Mind Y. If Mind Y obtained the experiences of Mind X and Mind X were to be physically destroyed, the “I-ness” of X would not be transferred to Y. This scenario has a parallel in currently available technologies such as explorer robots which have entered narrow shafts in Egyptian pyramids and traversed the surface of Mars, sending back continuous live images of what their cameras recorded. These images enable a human observer to experience the environment of the robot without being in that environment. However, if that robot were instead a conscious being, the transmission of images and even other sensory stimuli from this being would not equate to an extension of the being’s “I-ness” to the observer. This scenario would, presumably, allow for each individual participating in the sharing of information to select which information to share or to keep to oneself, much as a computer connected to the Internet does not need to share all of the files on it with other computers in the network. However, another scenario – call it Scenario 2 – with regard to “merging” consciousnesses could not avoid destroying the “I-nesses” of those involved. This scenario would constitute a complete merger, where the aim is for every consciousness to be able to directly assume the vantage point of every other and to control the actions of the others directly – without any meaningful separation possible among the minds involved. If two “I-nesses” were to merge in this manner, then they would probably become a single “I-ness” based on the combined sensations of the previous “I-nesses”. But, just as mixing two fruits together in a blender and separating the results
into two halves would not yield the original fruits, neither would combining two “I-nesses” and then separating them (assuming this would be technically feasible) result in the original “Inesses”. At best, there would be two “hybrid” “I-nesses” and, at worst, no “I-nesses” at all, because the new combined “I-ness” might be destroyed by division just as the “I-ness” of every biological individual today would be eliminated via any attempt to split it into components. Every human observation and experience to date suggests that the human individual is the basic unit of rational, conscious activity – and that physically separating the mind into sub-components destroys the emergent system of rational consciousness. If the desire is to preserve the individuality of each person – which necessarily implies preserving that person’s self-awareness and vantage point, as directly experienced by that person – the kind of “merging” involved in Scenario 2 should be avoided as contrary to that aim. However, the “file sharing” situation of Scenario 1, where each “I-ness” remains compartmentalized within the individual and experiences are only shared at each individual’s discretion, might be a useful and, if safety precautions are taken, harmless future means of extremely direct communication. TRUE PRESERVATION OF SELF Where does this discussion leave the advocates of literal – as opposed to figurative – immortality who are interested in preserving the actual “I-ness” of each individual, as opposed to simply a memory or record of that individual, however complete and interactive – or creating a functioning replica of that individual in the future? Two general conclusions can be drawn which, while they may be considered somewhat grim, can guide the quest for genuine immortality. (1) There is no way to resurrect the “I-ness” of a fully dead individual. (2) There is no way to preserve the “I-ness” of an individual without preserving the spatiotemporal continuity of that individual’s physical body, allowing for incremental modifications to that body. Facing uncomfortable truths can indeed be a prerequisite to genuine, life-reinforcing progress. The conclusions above do indeed suggest that the quest for indefinite life is more difficult than some might have thought, as only the preservation of the uninterrupted functioning of an individual’s body could bring it about. Individuals who have already fully died (leaving aside the ambiguities and uncertainties entailed in cryonic preservation) have, unfortunately, already irreversibly lost their “I-nesses”, although it is still conceivable that future technologies will render their past experiences of immense benefit to others. The focus of life extension should therefore be the elimination of disease and senescence, the repair of the body, and its gradual, piecewise augmentation via biotechnology, nanotechnology, and electronic technology. The result of such endeavors could, in fact, be compatible with some of the projections of futurists like Ray Kurzweil, who envision a world where human consciousness is improved via electronic
means to be orders of magnitude more powerful than it is today. Provided that the underlying system that facilitates the “I-ness” is preserved as a separate system and allowed to function continuously amid a sequence of incremental improvements, there is no reason why human faculties and durability could not be enhanced without bound. We who are still alive can still reap the fruits of potentially limitless future progress, if we manage to survive to see the breakthroughs.
HOW CAN A MINDCLONE BE IMMORTAL IF IT’S NOT EVEN ALIVE? BY: MARTINE ROTHBLATT, PH.D, MBA, J.D.
Mindclones—consciousness in post-biological media—will feel as full of life as we biological creatures. It is amazing that out of the countless trillions of ways molecules can be arranged, only a few million ways result in things that can reproduce themselves. The biologist E.O. Wilson estimates there are about 13 million species, broken down as follows: Insects 9 million Bacteria 1 million Fungi 1 million Viruses 0.3 million Algae 0.3 million Worms 0.3 million Plants 0.2 million Protozoa 0.2 million Echinoderms 0.2 million Mollusks 0.2 million Crustaceans 0.2 million Fish 30 thousand Reptiles 10 thousand Birds 10 thousand Amphibians 5 thousand Mammals 5 thousand It has been estimated that since the Pre-Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago, during which the predecessors of most of these species arose, upwards of 90% of all species are extinguished each 100 million years due to environmental catastrophes. Hence, even counting the ways life might have been organized in the distant past, not more than a few hundreds of millions of
molecular patterns have worked. In comparison, a practically infinite number of molecular patterns are possible given the dozens of atomic building blocks nature has to work with and the astronomical number of possibilities for stringing these atoms together in three-dimensional space. Far, far less than one in a thousand molecular patterns will result in something that lives. It is not just about the magic of the DNA and RNA molecules. Most forms of even those molecules would not result in organisms that felt obligated to eat, excrete and respond to stimuli. Only the rare special cases of viable DNA and RNA molecules can do that. Very precise nucleotide sequences are needed to organize random atoms into protein building blocks that work together so symphonically that a reproductive being results. Life is a miracle because it is so unlikely. Yet, we are inundated with life. Our skins crawl with bacteria, and our planet teams with skins. This is because life works very well. No matter how rare it is in theory, once it occurs it multiplies, for that is what life does. Rocks crumble and aggregate, but lives copy and proliferate. Most importantly, life also mutates. This is because the process of copying DNA is imperfect. Mutations result in diversity among life forms, and this diversity is crucial to life’s success. Diversity enables life to keep trying out new forms of molecular organization. Forms that work well spread and ones that don’t become rare or extinct. The lesson of life is just this simple: no matter how unlikely something is in the first place, once it occurs it will become prevalent in those niches in which it continues reproducing versions of itself. Life owes its improbable existence to an exceedingly rare kind of code. This life-code does two things unique to life. First, it enables self-replicating order to be structured out of disorder. Second, it enables that order to be maintained (for a while) against all the forces that make things fall apart. Wow yourself with this: life-codes are merely a mathematical sequence, like a formula, that shazam-like transforms randomness into purpose and entropy into organization. Life-codes are a real-world Harry Potter incantation, expressed in numerical silence. Any string of numbers that can God-like summon beings out of inanimate dust is as amazing as this universe gets. Mathematics is invisible. We see its shadow when it gets expressed in something tangible. DNA is a molecule of life because it expresses a mathematical code that organizes viable patterns of molecules out of the inert chemical soup surrounding us. The patterns are viable because they self-replicate and they maintain their order, for a time, against Nature’s forces of disorder. The patterns are visible as nucleotide sequences, but their capabilities are based upon the arithmetic of the sequences – the specific numbers of A, T, G and C molecules that are required to direct the assembly of a specific protein needed to maintain a life process.
From the mathematical underpinning of biochemistry we can state an elegant definition of life: the expression of a code that enables self-replication and maintenance against disorder. Rocks are not alive because they are not the expression of a code. But the algae that covers a rock is. Microsoft Word is not alive because it doesn’t self-replicate (humans copy it). But software that could self-replicate and maintain itself against degradation would seem to be as alive as algae. The genius of Darwin was to see a continuous chain of life in an immense scattering of broken shards of separated links. We can build on Darwin by presenting a continuous chain of life-codes in what otherwise looks like disparate phenomena. Specifically, RNA, DNA and software lifecodes are links in an evolutionary chain. It is the chain of mathematical sequences capable of organizing self-replicating and self-maintaining entities out of inert building blocks. This view is consistent with the so-called “disposable soma” theory of evolution, “soma” being the Greek word for body. The theory says that bodies are DNA’s way of making more DNA. I’m taking the theory one level higher: somas are math’s way of making new self-replicating codes. Nature surprises us with new life-codes just as she surprises us with new variations on existing life-codes. Nature will select new life-codes that are superior self-replicators in their niche just as she selects the best replicating variations on existing life-codes. Life-codes that give rise to many adaptable variations will become more dominant, just as phyla that give rise to many adaptable species become more prevalent. It is simply a step-up of scale to understand that evolution operates on types of life-codes as well as on the offspring of life-codes. DNA, as a type of lifecode, is itself subject to a struggle for survival just as are the millions of species that use it as their code for organizing order out of raw nature. It is exciting to be alive at the time that new kinds of life-code, based in software rather than molecules, make their initial appearance. WE BRING IMPROBABLE THINGS TO LIFE The numbers of ways to write software are as unlimited as the ways to string molecules together. It might seem as unlikely for software to become alive as it was for molecules to become alive. Yet while it took eons for earth’s first molecules to self-replicate, people have already hit upon certain strings of software code that reproduces itself. We call them software viruses. People have also organized lines of code into sequences that respond to stimuli. These programs are familiar to any gamester or avatar user. Humans endlessly mutate (“hack”) software the way cosmic rays and random chemistry mutate our genetic codes. A good argument can be made that these hacks have already produced software with most if not all the qualities of life. Just like life, software is organized, and exchanges energy with the environment. It takes in electricity and sheds heat via its hardware, much as a genetic code takes in nutrients and sheds waste via its body. As with living molecules, living software can reproduce, respond to stimuli,
develop and adapt. Programs are written that go out onto the web, find compatible freeware, cut and paste it into the original code and continue developing. Humans and other life forms develop analogously: we go out into our natural environment, incorporate food and compatible experiences. There are of course many differences between organic life and software that has characteristics of life. But the simple lesson of life remains the same: No matter how unlikely living software is, once it occurs it will become prevalent in its niche if it can continue reproducing itself. Now, these are undeniable facts: there is universal fascination with software (e.g. applications), software has a gigantic stake in the economy (e.g. chips) and the energies of hackers worldwide are mind-boggling (e.g. web apps). These forces are as prolific in producing living software prototypes as Mother Nature was in producing living RNA/DNA prototypes. Organic life clicked “on” then, and cybernetic life is clicking “on” now. Improbability becomes inevitability when numbers get large. There are a very large number of people working on imbuing software with the characteristics of life. The differences between organic and cybernetic life are less important that their similarities. Both are mathematical codes that organize a compatible domain to perform functions that must ultimately result in reproduction. For organic life, the code is written in molecules and the domain is the natural world. For cybernetic life the code is written in voltage potentials and the domain is the IT world. We call organic life biology. It seems fitting to call cybernetic life vitology. In biology the mathematically coded nucleotides organize nearby atoms into ever-larger molecules. These molecules, such as proteins, do life’s work of reproducing by bulking up and (if sufficiently evolved) trying to stay safe. In vitology the mathematically coded voltage levels organize nearby sub-routines into ever-larger programs. These programs do life’s work of reproducing by occupying more firmware and (if sufficiently evolved) trying to stay safe. It is interesting to recall that molecules also depend upon electron-based voltage levels to stay connected. Atoms bind into molecules via either covalent or ionic electron coupling. Hence, at the most general level, vitology is a life-code that requires only electrons, while biology is a lifecode that requires atomic nuclei as well as electrons. The electron-based life-codes of vitology must be seated in compatible computer hardware, while the atom-based life-codes of biology must be seated in a compatible nutrient milieu. The main point is that biology and vitology are each abstract mathematical codes that spell out the path to self-replication in organic and IT environments, respectively. Thus, stripped to its essence, all life is but the expression of selfreplicating codes.
WHAT IS LIFE? Many experts have tried to lasso the definition of life. They often disagree: some emphasize biology, others physics, some requirements are Darwinian, others spiritual. They are all talking about pretty much the same things we think of as being alive – plants, animals, and microbes. The problem is that none of the definitions are consistent and complete to everyone’s satisfaction. Some definitions exclude sterile worker bees, while others exclude flu viruses. Every boundary falters at its edge. So, why bother trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all definition of life? There are no philosophically compelling reasons to define life. The reasons are all utilitarian. Humans are passionate about categorizing things, for much the same reason they like to build fences. It stakes out a territory that can be used for one’s benefit. Defining organic life as biology empowers biologists to be the source of expertise on the organic aspects of life. I’ve just suggested a new kind of life, vitology, because software is arising that has the functions of life, but not the substrate of biology. As this living software evolves some versions will unambiguously seem to be alive, and soon thereafter other versions will aggressively claim to be sentient and conscious. All life forms try out, via mutation, different shapes and behaviors – software won’t be any different. If these sentience or consciousness claims are helpful to survival, we can expect seeing more software adopt the same position. It is not necessary to posit that the vitological software “wants” to survive for this to occur, any more than it is necessary to posit that bacteria “want” to survive. It is simply that things that do survive become more prevalent and things that don’t tend to disappear. We can either deny vitological claims of consciousness, or broaden membership in the huge family of life. To do the former is to incite a long, unpleasant conflict. Think slavery and its disavowal of African humanity. To do the latter requires more than the biologist’s expertise. Hence, avoiding a conflict amongst substrates – flesh versus firmware, wet versus dry, natural versus artificial, DNA coded versus digitally coded – this is a reason to (re)define life. Biologists purport to be the experts on defining life. They believe it is something that is (1) organized, (2) exchanges matter and energy with the environment, (3) reproduces, (4) responds to stimuli, (5) develops and (6) adapts. If something meets these criteria, then biologists will study it. Physicists have also tried to define life. Physicists are the experts on physical reality, of which life is certainly a part. To these scientists, life is something that – for a while— runs counter to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law says that everything in the universe is becoming more dis-ordered and random. Since life actually builds and maintains order in a defined area, it
alone seems to defy physics and thus gives it a unique defining characteristic. In the words of Erwin Schrödinger: “A living organism [like everything else in the universe] continually increases its entropy – or, as you may say, produces positive entropy – and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy [thermodynamic equilibrium, when nothing moves], which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e., alive, by drawing from its environment negative entropy [which means order or structured things]….” Physicists will concede, however, that their definition also has exceptions. Nobody feels that stars or galaxies are alive, and yet these objects build and maintain order at the expense of the cosmic things they suck up. Many of these environmental intakes would qualify as “negative entropy”, or ordered things, such as when a galaxy grows by swallowing another galaxy. The growth of a star by accretion of atoms blasted into space by supernovae is not so different in terms of Schrödinger’s definition than the growth of bacteria by assimilation of terrestrial carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. We’ve sent several spacecraft to the surface of Mars with sensitive equipment to detect whether or not there were chemical signs of life in the Martian soil. The results were ambiguous. Even the top exo-biologists could not agree on whether the chemical signs we measured in the Martian soil were signs of life. It is tough, if not impossible, to come up with a consistent and complete definition of life. For most people life is something “natural” that “acts alive.” We think something “acts alive” if it moves under its own power, like a stick that suddenly makes us jump because it turns out to be one of the three thousand species of insectoid walking sticks (Phasmatodea). We think something is “natural” if it is not man-made at all, or man-made only from living components. For example, a new breed of dog may be man-made, but we don’t doubt the Labradoodles are alive since they are made by hybridizing labradors and poodles. Similarly, baby humans are man-and-womanmade, but from things that act alive, like sperm and egg cells. On the other hand, the best manmade robot came from things like silicon and rubber that are not considered living. Hence, we don’t think robots are alive. The Martian experience highlights a problem with another possible criterion for defining life: does it possess DNA or RNA? These are the molecular codes for making the forms and functions of everything we think of as living. Scientists feel that we can’t assume life evolved these same molecular codes off the earth. Furthermore, there are things such as viruses that possess RNA and yet are not admitted into the textbooks of life. This is because they are inert unless and until they are brought inside a cell.
The peculiarity of RNA and DNA could be circumvented by defining life as “anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to a code that is subject to natural selection.” Natural selection requires a code to replicate with some incidence of mutation (error) so that alternate versions of a life form can have a differential chance to thrive in new or changing environments. Under this definition, everything that biologists call life would be life because all those species have a code subject to natural selection, i.e., DNA or RNA. In addition, some things that biologists do not call life, such as viruses, would be considered alive because their code is subject to natural selection when it is in a compatible environment (a cell). On the other hand, things that are not called life, such as crystal rocks or neutron stars, are not alive because they are not operating in accordance with a replicable code. An important feature of this all-encompassing definition is that it would include software viruses and other programs that either propagate, or disappear, in accordance with their environmental compatibility. In this case, the environment is information technology such as hardware, firmware and software. A software program is a code, much like DNA or RNA. It instructs other software to do things as DNA instructs other molecules to do things. If software codes can make many copies of themselves, they will become prevalent, just as is the case for DNA-based beings. If software codes fail to significantly self-replicate, they will become “missing links”, disappearing from reality over time. If software codes mutate, such as by inaccurate copying, they will usually not function at all, or not function differently. Similarly, most DNA mutations are either benign or fatal. Sometimes, however, a software mutation could be beneficial in its original or in a new computing environment. In such rare cases, that software mutation would become the preferred form of the program, and would proliferate. Again, it is the same situation with DNA. It is thanks to millions of rare beneficial DNA mutations out of a countless greater number of dysfunctional ones that plants and animals arose from simple cells. Schrödinger recognized the key role of DNA/RNA-based chromosomes in providing the source of order by which living things uniquely defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics: “An organism’s astonishing gift of concentrating a ‘stream of order’ on itself and thus escaping the decay into atomic chaos – of ‘drinking orderliness’ from a suitable environment – seems to be connected with the presence of the ‘aperiodic solids’, the chromosome molecules, which doubtless represent the highest degree of well-ordered atomic association we know of – much higher than the ordinary periodic crystal – in virtue of the individual code every atom and every radical is playing here.” The order of the chromosome that Schrödinger sees as behind the uniqueness of life is not different in function from order of self-replicating, self-maintaining software code.
Consequently, life is that which has an order-constructing code enabling the entity to maintain itself against disorder. The requirement for self-replication, or Darwinian selection, simply extends this code-based definition of life into multiple generations. In essence, the living “entity” that is doing battle against disorder becomes the species rather than a member of the species. Humans, for example, are alive because they are members of a species that have a code (DNA) enabling order to be fabricated out of the environment for the benefit of maintaining the species’ battle against disorder (staying alive long enough to create subsequent generations that do the same thing). Combining these considerations, we can answer the question of what is life as follows: Life is anything that creates order in a compatible environment pursuant to a Darwinian code. If the code is Darwinian (subject to natural selection) then it must be self-replicating and it must structure a host (Schrödinger’s ‘negative entropy’) for itself that lasts long enough to selfreplicate. As Joel Garreau has observed, chickens are the egg’s tool to make more eggs. BIOLOGY VERSUS VITOLOGY: A SIXTH KINGDOM, FOURTH DOMAIN OR SECOND REALM Our consistent and complete definition of life will not satisfy everyone. Biologists will not see their commonality with software engineers, even though the simplest and most elegant definition of life includes both their subject matter. To solve this problem it might be necessary to admit that there are two different kinds – or realms—of life: biological life, and vitological life. Biological life is anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to a DNA or RNA code. Indeed, the current taxonomical division of life into three domains (archaea, bacteria and eukaryota) is mostly based upon systematic differences in these codes. (Despite these systematic differences, the most advanced eukaryota, mammals, have one-third of their genome in common with the most primitive domain, archaea.) Previously, biological life was sub-divided into five kingdoms (monerans, protists, eukaryotes, fungi and animals) based on the structure and function of each group’s cells. If software-based forms of life were to be accommodated within the current domain-based vision of life, the resulting phylogenetic tree might look something like the following figure, created by biologist and cyberlife pioneer Nick Mayer. A fourth domain, “digitaea” would accompany archaea, bacteria and eukaryota. Note that digitaea branches off of animals and hominids just as those groupings branched off of plants and fungi long ago. Three species of digitaea are suggested: stemeids that are mindclone continuations of hominids, nanoids that are new life forms assembled from self-replicating nanotechnology, and ethereates for new purely software-beings, lacking any physical
instantiation. In fact, it is awkward to categorize vitology using biology’s domains and kingdoms since both DNA and cell structure is irrelevant to purely code-based life forms. Vitological life is anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to an electronic code that is subject to natural selection. The limitations to Darwinian and electronic codes is to emphasize that we are talking about life-like beings – things that are part of a class that can self-replicate, compete for resources and survive – and to codes that are written in 0 and 1 energy states in pieces of technology. Vitological and biological life are developing radically differently. Vitological life is in many respects more primitive than prokaryotic cells, which lack even a nucleus. A software virus is about as functional as a biological virus. On the other hand, there are software modules such as web crawlers and navigation routines that can outsmart the cleverest animals on the planet. These modules are not alive, for they lack any drive to self-replicate, but they could be cobbled into a larger program that did meet most or all of the expectations of life. Most remarkable is that all these jigsaw pieces of vitological life popped into being within a few decades. Meanwhile, biological life continues to change so slowly that we marvel at the genius of a Darwin to see the continuity amidst all the extinct pieces. Mutations arise, and specie dominance changes, especially amongst bacteria. But everything is incremental. There are no fundamental new biological capabilities popping into being analogous to navigational guidance software. Vitology benefits from Lamarckism, the ability of offspring to inherit characteristics acquired during the life of its parents, whereas biology generally does not. Acquired characteristics cannot be biologically inherited, but they can be (and usually would be) inherited by copying software forms of life. This difference greatly accelerates the evolution of vitological life. It is also perhaps the clearest way to demarcate the vitological from the biological realms of life. There is no a priori reason why living things should not inherit in a Lamarckian manner, but it is a fact that biological beings generally do not while vitological beings generally will. Giraffes are not able to rewrite their DNA code to incorporate useful characteristics they acquired, such as a more muscular neck, but must instead await random genetic mutations that lengthen the neck. A cyber-Giraffe, however, would necessarily have changed its code to cyber-muscularize its neck, and would thus necessarily pass onto its cyber-offspring the lengthened neck. Vitology is proceeding as if the brain, the eye, the limbs, the vital organs and the basic cell all developed at once, but as separate entities. None really looked alive except maybe the basic cell – the rest were just really cool tools without a future or a past. A Darwin could see the inevitability of software hacks that would stitch the entities together into a piece of life par
excellence. He would realize that once such hacks occurred, the resultant being would selfreplicate like crazy. That is what life’s program would tell it to do. It would have the smarts to carry out that program despite obstacles and enemies. It is obvious that vitology is developing millions of times faster than biology. Vitology is parallel processing in decades what biology serially processed over epochs. This difference of phylogeny, their unique domains of competence and their customized tools for achieving reproduction are what makes it unobvious that they are just two different approaches to life. But squint at that mutating self-replicating code at the core of it all, and at the common life-like functions they share, and it becomes clear that strings of digits spell life just as well as can strings of molecules. Mindclones are alive, just not the same kind of life that we are accustomed to. They are functionally alive, albeit with a different structure and substance than has ever existed before. Yet, that is the story of life. Before there were nucleated cells, eukaryotes (of which we are comprised), such things had never been seen before – not for nearly two billion years. That is time duration that bacterium had an exclusive claim to life on earth. Before there were multicellular creatures there were only single cell creatures – from their perspective, the first slime molds were not so much a life form but a community of single cell creatures. And so the story goes, down through the descent of man. We must judge life based upon whether it streams order upon itself – self-replicates pursuant to a Darwinian code and maintains itself against the tendency to dissemble – and not get picky over what it looks like or what flavor of Darwinian code it uses. Using this objective yardstick, vitology will be alive. Mindclones, sitting at the apex of vitology, will feel as full of life as we do from our perch atop the summit of biology. Aware of themselves, with the emotions, autonomy and concerns of their forbearers, mindclone consciousness will bubble as frothily alive as does ours.
CLEARING UP COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION & SUBSTRATE INDEPENDENCE BY: FRANCO CORTESE
This article attempts to clarify four areas within the movement of Substrate Independent Minds and the discipline of Whole-Brain-Emulation that are particularly ripe for ready-to-hand misnomers and misconceptions. Substrate Independence: It is Substrate Independence for Mind in general, but not any specific mind in particular. The Term “Uploading” Misconstrues More than it Clarifies: Once WBE is experimentally-verified, we won’t be using conventional or general-purpose computers like our desktop PCs to emulate real, specific persons. The Computability of the Mind: This concept has nothing to do with the brain operating like a computer. The liver is just as computable as the brain; their difference is one of computational intensity, not category. We Don’t Want to Become The Machines – We Want to Keep Up With Them!: SIM & WBE are sciences of life-extension first-and-foremost. It is not out of sheer technophilia, contemptuous “contempt of the flesh” or wanton want of machinedom that proponents of Uploading support it. It is, for many, because we fear that Recursively Self-Modifying AI will implement an intelligence explosion before Humanity has a chance to come along for the ride. The creation of any one entity superintelligent to the rest constitutes both an existential risk and an antithetical affront to Man, who sole central and incessant essence is to make himself to an increasingly greater degree, and not to have some artificial god do it for him or tell him how to do it. SUBSTRATE INDEPENDENCE The term substrate-independence denotes the philosophical thesis of Functionalism – that what is important about the mind and its constitutive sub-systems and processes is their relative function.
If such a function could be recreated using an alternate series if component parts of procedural steps, or can be recreated on another substrate entirely, the philosophical thesis of Functionalism holds that it should be the same as the original, experientially speaking. However, one rather common and ready-at-hand misinterpretation stemming from the term “Substrate Independence” is the notion that we as personal selves could arbitrarily jump from mental substrate to mental substrate, since mind is software and software can be run on various general purpose machines. The most common form of this notion is exemplified by scenarios laid out in various Greg Egan novels and stories, wherein a given person sends their mind encoded as a wireless signal to some distant receiver, to be reinstantiated upon arrival. The term substrate independent minds should denote substrate independence for the minds in general, again, the philosophical thesis of functionalism, and not this second, illegitimate notion. In order to send oneself as such a signal, one would have to put all the processes constituting the mind “on pause” – that is, all causal interaction and thus causal continuity between the software components and processes instantiating our self would be halted while the software was encoded as a signal, transmitted and subsequently decoded. We could expect this to be equivalent to temporary brain death or to destructive uploading without any sort of gradual replacement, integration or transfer procedure. Each of these scenarios incurs the ceasing of all causal interaction and causal continuity between the constitutive components and processes instantiating the mind. Yes, we would be instantiated upon reaching our destination, but we can expect this to be as phenomenally discontinuous as brain death or destructive uploading. There is much talk in the philosophical and futurist circles – where Substrate Independent Minds is a familiar topic and a common point of discussion – on how the mind is software. This sentiment ultimately derives from functionalism, and the notion that when it comes to mind it is not the material of the brain that matters, but the process(es) emerging therefrom. And a corollary of the claim that almost all software is designed to as to be implemented on general purpose (i.e. standardized) hardware is that we should likewise be able to transfer the software of the mind into a new physical computational substrate with as much ease as we do software. While we would emerge from such a transfer functionally isomorphic with ourselves prior to the jump from computer to computer, we can expect this to be the phenomenal equivalent of brain death or destructive uploading, again, because all causal interaction and continuity between that software’s constitutive sub-processes has been discontinued. We would have been put on pause in the time between leaving one computer, whether as static signal or static solid-state storage, and arriving at the other. This is not to say that we couldn’t transfer the physical substrate implementing the “software” of our mind to another body, provided they were equipped to receive such a physical substrate. But this doesn’t have quite the same advantage as beaming oneself to the other side of Earth, or
Andromeda for that matter, at the speed of light. But to transfer a given WBE to another mental substrate without incurring phenomenal discontinuity may very well involve a second gradual integration procedure, in addition to the one the WBE initially underwent (assuming it isn’t a product of destructive uploading). And indeed, this would be more properly thought of in the context of a new substrate being gradually integrated with the WBE’s existing substrate, rather than the other way around (i.e. portions of the WBE’s substrate being gradually integrated with an external substrate.) It is likely to be much easier to simply transfer a given physical mental substrate to another body, or to bypass this need altogether by actuating bodies via tele-operation instead. In summary, it is substrate independence for mind in general, and not for a specific mind in particular (at least not without a gradual integration procedure, like the type underlying the notion of gradual uploading, so as to transfer such a mind to a new substrate without causing phenomenal discontinuity.) THE TERM “UPLOADING” MISCONSTRUES MORE THAN IT CLARIFIES The term “Mind-Uploading” has some drawbacks and creates common initial misconceptions. It is based off terminology originating from the context of conventional, contemporary computers – which may lead to the initial impression that we are talking about uploading a given mind into a desktop PC, to be run in the manner that Microsoft Word is run. This makes the notion of WBE more fantastic and incredible – and thus improbable – than it actually is. I don’t think anyone seriously speculating about WBE would entertain such a notion. Another potential misinterpretation particularly likely to result from the term Mind-Uploading is that we seek to upload a mind into a computer – as though it were nothing more than a simple file transfer. This, again, connotes modern paradigms of computation and communications technology that are unlikely to be used for WBE. It also creates the connotation of putting the mind into a computer – whereas a more accurate connotation, at least as far as gradual uploading as opposed to destructive uploading is concerned, would be bringing the computer gradually into the biological mind. It is easy to see why the term initially came into use. The notion of destructive uploading was the first embodiment of the concept – the notion of gradual uploading so as to mitigate the philosophical problems pertaining to how much a copy can be considered the same person as the original, especially in contexts where they are both simultaneously existent, came afterward. In the context of destructive uploading it makes more connotative sense to think of concepts like uploading and file transfer.
But in the notion of gradual uploading, portions of the biological brain – most commonly single neurons, as in Robert A. Freitas’s and Ray Kurzweil’s versions of gradual uploading – are replaced with in-vivo computational substrate, to be placed where the neuron it is replacing was located. Such a computational substrate would be operatively connected to electrical or electrochemical sensors (to translate the biochemical or more generally biophysical output of adjacent neurons into computational input that can be used by the computational emulation) and electrical or electrochemical actuators (to likewise translate computational output of the emulation into biophysical input that can be used by adjacent biological neurons). It is possible to have this computational emulation reside in a physical substrate existing outside of the biological brain, connected to in-vivo biophysical sensors and actuators via wireless communication (i.e. communicating via electromagnetic signal), but this simply introduces a potential lag-time that may then have to be overcome by faster sensors, faster actuators or a faster emulation. It is likely that the lag-time would be negligible (especially if it was located in a convenient module external to the body but “on it” at all times, to minimize transmission delays increasing as one gets farther away from such an external computational device – which would also likely necessitate additional computation to model the necessary changes to transmission speed in response to how far away the person is – otherwise signals that are meant to arrive at a given time could arrive too soon or too late thereby disrupting functionality) but placing the computational substrate in-vivo obviates these potential logistical obstacles. This notion is I think not brought into the discussion enough. It is an intuitively-obvious notion if you’ve thought a great deal about Substrate-Independent-Minds and frequented discussions on Mind-Uploading. But to a newcomer who has heard the term Gradual Uploading for the first time, it is all too easy to think “yes, but then one emulated neuron would exist on a computer, and the original biological neuron would still be in the brain. So once you’ve gradually emulated all these neurons, you have an emulation on a computer, and the original biological brain, still as separate physical entities. Then you have an original and the copy – so where does the gradual in Gradual Uploading come in? How is this any different than destructive uploading? At the end of the day you still have a copy and an original as separate entities.” This seeming impasse is I think enough to make the notion of Gradual Uploading seem at least intuitively or initially incredible and infeasible before people take the time to read the literature and discover how gradual uploading could actually be achieved (i.e. wherein each emulated neuron is connected to biophysical sensors and actuators to facilitate operational connection and causal interaction with existing in-vivo biological neurons) without fatally tripping upon such seeming logistical impasses, as in the example above. The connotations created by the term I think to some extent make it seem so fantastic (as in the overly-simplified misinterpretations considered above) that people write off the possibility before delving deep enough into the literature and discussion to actually ascertain the possibility with any rigor.
THE COMPUTABILITY OF THE MIND Another common misconception is that the feasibility of Mind-Uploading is based upon the notion that the brain is a computer or operates like a computer. The worst version of this misinterpretation that I’ve come across is that proponents and supporters of Mind-Uploading are claiming that the mind is similar in operation current and conventional paradigms of computer. Before I elaborate why this is wrong, I’d like to point out a particularly harmful sentiment that can result from this notion. It makes the concept of Mind-Uploading seem dehumanizing, because conventional computers don’t display anything like intelligence or emotion. This makes people conflate the possible behaviors of future computers with the behaviors of current computers. “Obviously computers don’t feel happiness or love, and so to say that the brain is like a computer is a farcical claim.” Machines don’t have to be as simple or as inadaptable and invariant as the are today. The universe itself is a machine – in other words either everything is a machine or nothing is. It also makes people think that advocates and supporters of Mind-Uploading are claiming that the mind is reducible to basic or simple autonomous operations, like cogs in a machine, which constitutes for many people a seeming affront to our privileged place in the universe as humans, in general, and to our culturally-engrained notions of human dignity being inextricably tied to physical irreducibility, in particular. The intuitive notions of human dignity and the ontologically-privileged nature of humanity have yet to catch up with physicalism and scientific materialism (a.k.a. metaphysical naturalism). It is not the proponents of Mind-Uploading that are raising these claims, but science itself – and for hundreds of years I might add. Man’s privileged and physically-irreducible ontological status has become more and more undermined throughout history since at least as far back as the Darwin’s theory of Evolution, which brought the notion of the past and future phenotypic evolution of humanity into scientific plausibility for the first time. It is also seemingly disenfranchising to many people, in that notions of human free-will and autonomy seem to be challenged by physical reductionism and determinism – perhaps because many people’s notion of free-will are still associated with a non-physical, untouchablymetaphysical human soul (i.e. mind-body dualism) which lies outside the purview of physical causality. To compare the brain to a “mindless machine” is still for many people disenfranchising to the extent that it questions the legitimacy of their metaphysically-tied notions of free-will. Just because the sheer audacity of experience and the raucous beauty of feeling is ultimately reducible to physical and procedural operations (I hesitate to use the word mechanisms for its likewise-misconnotative conceptual associations) does not take away from it. If it were the result
of some untouchable metaphysical property, a sentiment that mind-body-dualism promulgated for quite some time, then there would be no way for us to understand it, to really appreciate it, and to change it (e.g. improve upon it) in any way. Physicalism and scientific materialism were needed if we are to ever see how it is done and to ever hope to change it for the better. Figuring out how things work is one of Man’s highest merits – and there is no reason Man’s urge to discover and determine the underlying causes of the world should not apply to his own self as well. Moreover, the fact that experience, feeling, being and mind result from the convergence of singly-simple systems and processes makes the minds emergence from such simple convergence all the more astounding, amazing and rare, not less! If the complexity and unpredictability of mind were the result of complex and unpredictable underlying causes (like the metaphysical notions of mind-body dualism connote) then the fact that mind turned out to be complex and unpredictable wouldn’t be much of a surprise. The simplicity of mind’s underlying mechanisms makes mind’s emergence all the more amazing, and should not take away from our human dignity but should instead raise it up to heights yet-unheralded. Now that we have addressed such potentially-harmful second-order misinterpretations, we will address their root: the common misinterpretations likely to result from the phrase “the computability of the mind”. Not only does this phrase not say that the mind is similar in basic operation to conventional paradigms of computation – as though a neuron were comparable to a logic gate or transistor – but neither does it necessarily make the more credible claim that the mind is like a computer in general. This makes the notion of Mind-Uploading seem dubious because it conflates two different types of physical system – computers and the brain. The kidney is just as computable as the brain. That is to say that the computability of mind denotes the ability to make predictively-accurate computational models (i.e. simulations and emulations) of biological systems like the brain, and is not dependent on anything like a fundamental operational similarity between biological brains and digital computers. We can make computational models of a given physical system, feed it some typical inputs and get a resulting output that approximately matches the real-world (i.e. physical) output of such a system. The computability of the mind has very little to do with the mind acting as or operating like a computer, and much, much more to do with the fact that we can build predictively accurate computational models of physical systems in general. This also, advantageously, negates and obviates many of the seemingly dehumanizing and indignifying connotations identified above that often result from the claim that the brain is like a machine or like a computer. It is not that the brain is like a computer – it is just that computers are capable of predictively modeling the physical systems of the universe itself.
WE WANT NOT TO BECOME MACHINES, BUT TO KEEP UP WITH THEM! Too often is uploading portrayed as the means to superhuman speed of thought or to transcending our humanity. It is not that we want to become less human, or to become like a machine. For most Transhumanists and indeed most proponents of Mind-Uploading and Substrate-Independent Minds, meat is machinery anyways – in other words there is no real (i.e. legitimate) ontological distinction between them to begin with. Too often is uploading seen as the desire for superhuman abilities. Too often is it seen as a bonus, nice but ultimately unnecessary. I vehemently disagree. Uploading has been from the start for me and I think for many other proponents and supporters of Mind-Uploading a means of life-extension, of deferring and ultimately defeating untimely, involuntary death, as opposed to and ultimately unnecessary means to better powers, a more privileged position relative to the rest of humanity or to eschewing our humanity in a fit of contempt-of-the-flesh. We do not want to turn ourselves into Artificial Intelligence, which is a somewhat perverse and burlesque caricature that is associated with Mind-Uploading far too often. The notion of gradual uploading is implicitly a means of life-extension. Gradual uploading will be significantly harder to accomplish than destructive uploading. It requires a host of technologies and methodologies – brain-scanning, in-vivo locomotive systems such as but not limited to nanotechnology or else extremely robust biotechnology – and a host of precautions to prevent causing phenomenal discontinuity, such as letting each non-biological functional replacement time to causally interact with adjacent biological components before the next biological component that it causally interacts with is likewise replaced. Gradual uploading is a much harder feat than destructive uploading, and the only advantage it has over destructive uploading is preserving the phenomenal continuity of a single specific person. In this way it is implicitly a means of life-extension, rather than a means to the creation of AGI, because its only benefit is the preservation and continuation of a single, specific human life, and that benefit entails a host of added precautions and additional necessitated technological and methodological infrastructures. If we didn’t have to fear the creation of recursively-self-improving AI, biased towards being likely to recursively-self-modify at a rate faster than humans are likely to (or indeed, are able to safely – that is, gradually enough to prevent phenomenal discontinuity), then I would favor biotechnological methods of achieving indefinite lifespans over gradual uploading. But with the way things are, I am an advocate of gradual Mind-Uploading first and foremost because I think it may prove necessary to prevent humanity from being left behind by recursively self-modifying superintelligences. I hope that it ultimately will not prove necessary – but at the current time I
feel that it is somewhat likely. Most people who wish to implement or accelerate an intelligence explosion al a I.J. Good, and more recently Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, wish to do so because they feel that such a recursively self-modifying superintelligence (RSMSI) could essentially solve all of humanity’s problems – disease, death, scarcity, existential insecurity. I think that the potential benefits of creating a RSMSI are superseded by the drastic increase in existential risk it would entail in making any one entity superintelligent relative to humanity. The old God of yore is finally going out of fashion, one and a quarter centuries late to his own eulogy. Let’s please not make another one, now a little reality under his belt this time around. Intelligence is a far greater source of existential and global catastrophic risk than any technology that could be wielded by such an intelligence (except, of course, for technologies that would allow an intelligence to increase its own intelligence). Intelligence can invent new technologies and conceive of ways to counteract any defense systems we put in place to protect against the destructive potentials of any given technology. A superintelligence is far more dangerous than rogue nanotech (i.e. grey-goo) or bioweapons. When intelligence comes into play then all bets are off. I think culture exemplifies this prominently enough. Moreover, for the first time in history the technological solutions to these problems – death, disease, scarcity – are on the conceptual horizon. We can fix these problems ourselves, without creating an effective God relative to Man and incurring the extreme potential for complete human extinction that such a relative superintelligence would entail. Thus uploading constitutes one of the means by which humanity can choose, volitionally, to stay on the leading edge of change, discovery, invention and novelty, if the creation of a RSMSI is indeed imminent. It is not that we wish to become machines and eschew our humanity – rather the loss of autonomy and freedom inherent in the creation of a relative Superintelligence is antithetical to the defining features of humanity, and preserving the uniquely human thrust toward greater self-determination in the face of such a RSMSI, or at least be given the choice of doing so, may necessitate the ability to gradually upload so as to stay on equal footing in terms of speed of thought and general level of intelligence (which is roughly correlative with the capacity to affect change in the world and thus to determine its determining circumstances and conditions as well). In a perfect world we wouldn’t need to take the chance of phenomenal discontinuity inherent in gradual uploading. In gradual uploading there is always a chance, no matter how small, that we will come out the other side of the procedure as a different (i.e. phenomenally distinct) person. We can seek to minimize the chances of that outcome by extending the degree of graduality with which we gradually replace the material constituents of the mind, and by minimizing the scale at which we gradually replace those material constituents (i.e. gradual substrate replacement one
ion-channel at a time would be likelier to ensure the preservation of phenomenal continuity than gradual substrate replacement neuron by neuron would be). But there is always a chance. This is why biotechnological means of indefinite lifespans have an immediate advantage over uploading, and why if non-human RSMSI were not a worry, I would favor biotechnological methods of indefinite lifespans over Mind-Uploading. But this isn’t the case, rogue RSMSI are a potential problem, and so the ability to secure our own autonomy in the face of a rising RSMSI may necessitate advocating Mind-Uploading over biotechnological methods of indefinite lifespans. Mind-Uploading also has some ancillary benefits over biotechnological means of indefinite lifespans as well, however. If functional equivalence is validated (i.e. if it is validated that the basic approach works), mitigating existing sources of damage becomes categorically easier. In physical embodiment, repairing structural, connectional or procedural sub-systems in the body requires (1) a means of determining the source of damage and (2) a host of technologies and corresponding methodologies to enter the body and make physical changes to negate or otherwise obviate the structural, connectional or procedural source of such damages, and then exit the body without damaging or causing dysfunction to other systems in the process. Both of these requirements become much easier in the virtual embodiment of whole-brain-emulation. First, looking toward requirement (2), we do not need to actually design any technologies and methodologies for entering and leaving the system without damage or dysfunction or for actually implementing physical changes leading to the remediation of the sources of damage. In virtual embodiment this requires nothing more than rewriting information. Since in the case of WBE we have the capacity to rewrite information as easily as it was written in the first place, while we would still need to know what changes to make (which is really the hard part in this case), actually implementing those changes is as easy as rewriting a word file. There is no categorical difference, since it is information and we would already have a means of rewriting information. Looking toward requirement (1), actually elucidating the structural, connectional or procedural sources of damage and/or dysfunction, we see that virtual embodiment makes this much easier as well. In physical embodiment we would need to make changes to the system in order to determine the source of the damage. In virtual embodiment we could run a section of emulation for a given amount of time, change or eliminate a given informational variable (i.e. structure, component, etc.) and see how this affects the emergent system-state of the emulation instance. Iteratively doing this to different components and different sequences of components, in trialand-error fashion, should lead to the elucidation of the structural, connectional or procedural sources of damage and dysfunction. The fact that an emulation can be run faster (thus accelerating this iterative change-and-check procedure) and that we can “rewind” or “play-back”
an instance of emulation time exactly as it occurred initially means that noise (i.e. sources of error) from natural systemic state-changes would not affect the results of this procedure, whereas in physicality systems and structures are always changing, which constitutes a source of experimental noise. The conditions of the experiment would be exactly the same in every iteration of this change-and-check procedure. Moreover, the ability to arbitrarily speed up and slow down the emulation will aid in our detecting and locating the emergent changes caused by changing or eliminating a given microscale component, structure or process. Thus the process of finding the sources of damage correlative with disease and aging (especially insofar as the brain is concerned) could be greatly improved through the process of uploading. Moreover, WBE should accelerate the technological and methodological development of the computational emulation of biological systems in general, meaning that using such procedures to detect the structural, connectional and procedural sources of age-related damage and systemic dysfunction in the body itself, as opposed to just the brain, as well. Note that this iterative change-and-check procedure would be just as possible via destructive uploading as it would with gradual uploading. Moreover, in terms of people actually instantiated as whole-brain-emulations, actually remediating those structural, connectional and/or procedural sources of damage as it pertains to WBEs is much easier than physically-embodied humans. Anecdotally, if being able to distinguish between the homeostatic, regulatory and metabolic structures and processes in the brain from the computational or signal-processing structures and processes in the brain is a requirement for uploading (which I don’t think it necessarily is, although I do think that such a distinction would decrease the ultimate computational intensity and thus computational requirements of uploading, thereby allowing it to be implemented sooner and have wider availability), then this iterative change-and-check procedure could also be used to accelerate the elucidation of such a distinction as well, for the same reasons that it could accelerate the elucidation of structural, connectional and procedural sources of age-related systemic damage and dysfunction. Lastly, while uploading (particularly instances in which a single entity or small group of entities is uploaded prior to the rest of humanity, i.e. not a maximally distributed intelligence explosion) itself constitutes a source of existential risk, it also constitutes a means of mitigating existential risk as well. Currently we stand on the surface of the earth, naked to whatever might lurk in the deep night of space. We have not been watching the sky for long enough to know with any certainty that some unforeseen cosmic process could not come along to wipe us out at any time. Uploading would allow at least a small portion of humanity to live virtually on a computational substrate located deep underground, away from the surface of the earth and its inherent dangers, thus preserving the future human heritage should an extinction event befall humanity. Uploading would also prevent the danger of being physically killed by some accident of physicality, light being hit by a bus or struck by lightning.
Uploading is also the most resource-efficient means of life-extension on the table, because virtual embodiment not only essentially negates the need for many physical resources (instead necessitating one, namely energy – and increasing computational price performance means that just how much a given amount of energy can do is continually increasing). It also mitigates the most pressing ethical problem of indefinite lifespans – overpopulation. In virtual embodiment, overpopulation ceases to be an issue almost ipso facto. I agree with John Smart’s STEM compression hypothesis – that in the long run the advantages proffered by virtual embodiment will make choosing it over physical embodiment, in the long run at least, an obvious choice for most civilizations, and I think it will be the volitional choice for most future persons. It is safer, more resource efficient (and thus more ethical, if one thinks that forestalling future births in order to maintain existing life is unethical) and the more advantageous choice. We will not need say: migrate into virtuality if you want another physically-embodied child. Most people will make the choice to go VR themselves simply due to the numerous advantages and the lack of any experiential-incomparabilities (i.e. modalities of experience possible in physicality but not possible in VR). So in summary, yes, Mind-Uploading (especially gradual uploading) is more a means of lifeextension than a means to arbitrarily greater speed of though, intelligence or power (i.e. capacity to affect change in the world). We do not seek to become machines, only to retain the capability of choosing to remain on equal footing with them if the creation of RSMSI is indeed imminent. There is no other reason to increase our collective speed of thought, and to do so would be arbitrary – unless we expected to be unable to prevent the physical end of the universe, in which case it would increase the ultimate amount of time and number of lives that could be instantiated in the time we have left. The fallibility of many of these misconceptions may be glaringly obvious, especially to those readers familiar with Mind-Uploading as notion and Substrate-Independent-Minds and/or Whole Brain Emulation as disciplines. I may be to some extent preaching to the choir in these cases. But I find many of these misinterpretations far too predominant and recurrent to be left alone.
CAN CONSCIOUSNESS SURVIVE PHYSICAL DISCONTINUITY? BY: G. STOLYAROV II
A curious dilemma accompanies proposals to keep people alive forever by “uploading” their memories and consciousness onto a computer or outfitting them with new bodies sometime after their deaths – bodies which are identical to the originals in physical structure and the makeup of memories. Even if, hypothetically, after your death, it were possible to replicate the exact same physical structure and memories of the exact same life history as you have at present, I doubt that this individual would have the same state of awareness that you presently have of your existence and surroundings. Permit me to posit a hypothetical scenario. If a physically identical copy of you were created right now, with the same memories as yourself, you would not perceive the world from the vantage point of this person – although he, too, would consider himself to be you. Now separate this person in time from yourself at present, and you will see that it is unlikely that this person’s awareness would be a continuation of your own. He will be as apart from you, consciousness-wise, as any other person who is not you. Looking back from his vantage point, he will believe himself to have been you and to have experienced your life. However, looking forward, you cannot expect to be aware of what he experiences once his body has been constituted. I strongly suspect that only some underlying continuity of the physical processes within the same body can bring about a continuity of consciousness.
IS YOUR BRAIN “YOU”? BY: DAVID KEKICH
I recently had dinner with some close friends who live overseas. One couple live in Europe and the other in Asia. It was a year since the first couple were here and probably over two for the second. Our discussions were lively to say the least. International politics; the markets; erosions of privacy as governments grow; potential dangers from the subset of humanity who tend to be more aggressive and who subsequently tend to gain leadership positions; pathological individuals who, either lead, who are influenced by others or who act on their own, who coupled with more easily obtainable weapons of mass destruction, pose an ever-growing threat to us as individuals or to humanity as a whole. So you can see what implications this could have on life extension, right Methuselah? The conversations opened and ended with life extension as the main topic. One couple are activists in the cryonics society and the other have a foundation devoted to curing aging. The items I listed in paragraph two represent some of the existential risks we face while we are alive… but especially the risks we face if and when we are in cryonic suspension where we have lost day-to-day control over our fates. Although I still think preserving the information in our brains via cryonic suspension is our overwhelmingly best back-up plan, a safer alternative may be possible in the intermediate future. That one is plastination. Did you ever see a Body World's exhibit? One fascinating blog outlines some dramatic peeks into your possible future. Although I believe low temperature storage gives you a far better chance for reanimation than plastination today, plastination is much more affordable with the added advantage of being able to store your remains anywhere you want and at any temperature... along with the benefit of having them easily transportable. That means, your caretakers can be nimble in protecting you from potential risks. If and when plastination technology develops to where revival chances rival cryogenic storage, then it should be the clear choice. Meanwhile, I'm betting on Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
As usual, Reason from FightAging.org has cogent comments on this critical topic. Here are some excerpts: "But even under the most optimistic of scenarios, such as those in which the SENS program for rejuvenation biotechnology is fully funded starting tomorrow, billions will age to death before the research community can develop the first therapies capable of meaningful rejuvenation. "There is something that can be done to address this issue, for all that almost as little effort is made here as for ways to cure aging: long-term preservation of the dead, accomplished in ways that prevent destruction of the fine structures in the brain that store the mind. "At present, the only way to preserve your mind on death is through cryonics, or lowtemperature storage with vitrification of tissue. "They can wait out the coming decades, wait out the development of medical nanotechnologies that can reverse the processes of cryopreservation. Time is on their side in this age of rapid progress, assuming that the living community of enthusiasts and professionals can continue to ensure a long-term continuity of service. "A possible future alternative to cryopreservation is plastination, a different methodology for fixing a cell's structure all the way down to the finest details."
PEOPLE WHO JUSTIFY AGING ARE PROFOUNDLY WRONG BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
I have read this recent opinion in the New York Times “Age and Its Discontents” by author Louis Begley and it resonated so much with my personal feelings about the topic. The author vividly describes the last years of his mother’s life, who had been a widow for the previous 40 years before her death. Begley lets us feel the pain in her joints and in her heart. He obviously sees aging as nothing but misery and loneliness. But I think he misses the point – he believes his mother’s solitude is the reason of her woes, but it actually is aging, her declined health, pain and suffering – these are the real reasons of her tragedy. If she had been young she would have had no diseases, but only good looks and the opportunity to start over, but alas – instead she rots alive. Louis Begley caught the very horrifying feeling that it’s all over, no need to buy new costumes. They will not be worn for a long time and they’re not worth spending time and money. Mr. Begley was widely criticized – and by whom? Who do you think justified aging? Executive director and chief scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation wrote: Mr. Begley’s bitter portrayal of aging is neither universal nor inevitable. This is unbelievable. So wrong. In reality it’s preciselty the opposite – aging is universally debilitating and inevitable. While these type of statements are coming out of the mouths of people who are the advocates for aging research, nothing good will happen. There will be no money for research to live longer in a younger body. And the reason is the faulty idea that aging can be healthy, productive, or enjoyable. It can’t by definition. Aging is the worst thing and it’s happening to every one of us every second of our lives, sucking up our strength, youth and beauty. I want to fight this widely spread idea of how old age is full of pleasure, when your grandchildren sit on your lap. Sure, that’s nice, but it’s not even remotely enough. For example, it would be much better to have the possibility of going to a night club after your grandchildren’s visit and be able dance all night long. But this can never happen while we have leaders of Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundations saying that aging is okay. Opinion leaders have to understand how harmful justifying aging is – this position is killing us.
And I want to live. I want all the people on Earth to live. In order to achieve this everybody who is involved in the field of aging has to be more courageous. They have to speak up for themselves and for their work. They have to say that they want to fight aging, that they want life extension. Cancer researchers say that cancer is their greatest enemy, that cancer has to be eliminated and viola – the amount of money that went to cancer research from the National Cancer Institute in 2010 was almost 5.1 billion dollars – that’s roughly 5 times more than on aging. And cancer is just an individual case of an aging-related pathology. We have to learn from oncologists, cancer researchers and advocates. We are fighting aging and we have to speak about it freely and explicitly. Make no mistake – our goal is to defeat aging completely.
THERE IS NO EXPERIENCE WORTH DYING FOR BY: G. STOLYAROV II
I was once asked whether some experiences were so worthwhile as to justify a willingness to sacrifice one’s life in order to have such experiences. The question was phrased as follows: “Is it possible that a finite life with experience A is preferred to an [indefinite] life without experience A?” I do not think so and, moreover, I think the dilemma is a bit artificial. A life of indefinite duration will always give one the possibility of pursuing experience A at some point in the future. If one missed having A now, one can always catch up on it thousands or millions of years in the future. No A is worth so much to me that I would be willing to cut off my future ability to exist or to experience anything for it. I think that my argument is the one that better incorporates the idea that anything is better than nothing. If, without life, one has nothing, then anything that one has or experiences while alive is better than that nothing. Ceteris paribus, a longer life is better; that is, being able to live one’s life up to the present plus X years is always better than being able to live one’s life up to the present plus (X – Y) years, where Y > 0, no matter what happens during those extra Y years.
TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW?
BY: ERIC SCHULKE
If we woke up tomorrow on a pink planet with walking trees, birds that flew backwards singing in Latin, with rivers that flowed candy pine cones, and all kinds of marvelous spectacles and randomosities, then we would need to figure out what was going on. We would be looked upon with shame if we weren’t deeply interested in figuring it out. We wouldn’t be worthy of the senses bestowed upon us if we didn’t heed to the triggers that they pulled in our brains, outlining the baffling incomprehensible mystery that this would be. So what would you do? If you awoke on this planet then would you be indifferent to it and be content to live out the rest of your life on that planet without trying to figure it out or get back? Would you sleep on cup cake beds, fish vegetables out of the sky with nets and watch the birds fly backwards as your body slowly decayed away into oblivion? Could you be content with that? Would the big picture mysteries be less important than your leisure time, than the hobbies and habits you would develop among the scenarios? That pink planet with all of that stuff is what this earth is like, and you are still currently set to die before you can even begin to understand what is going on. Just because we have gotten used this place here, it doesn’t mean it’s normal. This existence is an off the charts, baffling, seemingly infinite mystery. In a world that doesn’t put very much time into teaching children how to spot fallacy out of theirs and others thinking, this can be easy to understand, but it is still not an excuse for death. A version of one common fallacy that people succumb to, in bowing to death without batting an eye, is called the Stockholm syndrome. Another version of a fallacy that is currently holding people back from fighting death, with science and technology’s expanding, growing, proven tools all around us, is called Plato’s cave allegory. Those of us who view our entrapment, and asof-yet inevitable decay on this earth, as unquestionably acceptable, need to realize that we have succumbed to this syndrome, are trapped in the cave. During a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, hostages were taken and held over the course of a
few days. They talked to their captors and overtime were not only endeared to their them but even defended them during the trials. This is also common during war time in which you can find many instances of captives helping out their guards, sometimes even taking guard shifts themselves. In Plato’s cave allegory, two people are trapped in a cave, shackled down and facing a wall with a fire behind them. Objects are passed in front of the fire to project shadows on the wall in front of them. Having never been outside the cave, they conceptualize the entire world and all of existence in terms of these shadows on the wall. They don’t try to find a way out or strategize ways to find any. All of the potentials outside of the cave are lost to them. We cannot afford to side with our captors of death and the diseases of aging. Like the people trapped in the cave, we cannot ever remain content to live out a life with limited understanding. We must continue to seek to uncover the mystery. We must do this until we finally know, and can decide what to do next, live or die, and other things, based on the big picture. We can’t be eager to jump into our graves. We cannot be content to let go of life based on such a limited understanding of what is going on. The Buddhist in China, the car bomber in Afghanistan, the human rights worker in Canada, the industrialist in the USA, the bushman in Zimbabwe, everybody everywhere, they all make life decisions based on a limited vision of the big picture, and they all think they are right. All of them are dying in a Stockholm cave, not working to know more of the big picture. The possibilities are endless, and its not like there isn’t anything going on out in that vast mystery. Something is going on. The mysteries of the nature of infinity, dimensions, black holes, quantum mechanics… it all dances tantalizingly out of reach. As the marvels, depths and layers of History are uncovered, will you not care? Humanity will, after all, continue to pursue the answers. We can uproot much more definitive answers to things like how people got here and how the universe got here. Do you want the answers? Mature priority setting comes from thinking about the big picture. We must seek more of it until we finally understand. We must escape the cave, we must escape our planet, we must escape traditional and form fitted thinking, we must continue to pioneer existence until we know the big picture of what it means to live, or until we are crushed by the randomosities of existence. We will never know what it truly means to exist until we figure out what is going on.
COPING WITH DEATH: THE COSMIST THIRD WAY
BY: GIULIO PRISCO
Recently on Facebook a friend asked: “Hey, atheist friends, I need your help. I would like to listen and read what do you do when you lose somebody who you loved? I have tried several ways to ease the pain, but it is still there.” He addressed his atheist friends because evidently he didn’t want to hear about a supernatural afterlife. I took the liberty to offer my vision of a natural afterlife following technological resurrection, based on science and engineering. My answer (edited): I cope with the grief from the death of loved ones by contemplating the Cosmist possibility, described by many thinkers including Nikolai Fedorov, Hans Moravec and Frank Tipler, that future generations (or alien civilizations, or whatever) may develop technologies to resurrect the dead. A related idea is that our reality may be a “simulation” computed by entities in a higherlevel reality, who may choose to copy those who die in our reality to another reality. Contemplating these possibilities is my way to cope with grief, I hope you will find your own way. I realize that these ideas may be rejected without consideration by both believers and atheists. Many believers may reject them because they are based on science and possible future technologies, without any concept of “supernatural” (whatever that means). On the other hand, those fully invested in their atheism may reject them because they sound too much like religion. Cosmism is one of those “third ways” that are often passionately rejected by those who believe in the old ways, but in my opinion it is a Hegelian synthesis of what is good in the old ways: it is firmly based on science, and at the same time it offers all the important mental devices of religion, including hope in resurrection. It is evident that hoping in an afterlife has survival value for both individuals and societies, because it gives people the strength to continue to live instead
of withdrawing (or worse) in despair. Cosmism permits hoping in resurrection without giving up the scientific worldview. THE COSMIST ‘THIRD WAY’, IN A NUTSHELL Long version: See my essay Transcendent Engineering published in the Terasem Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness. Shorter version: See my Ten Cosmist Convictions, co-authored with Ben Goertzel, originally appeared in Ben’s A Cosmist Manifestoblog, published in Ben’s book A Cosmist Manifesto. Very short version: The Manifest Destiny of our species is colonizing the universe and developing spacetime engineering and scientific “future magic” much beyond our current understanding and imagination. Gods will exist in the future, and they may be able to affect their past — our present — by means of spacetime engineering. Probably other civilizations out there already attained God-like powers. Future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Future Gods will be able to resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future.” Perhaps we will be resurrected in virtual reality, and perhaps we are already there. See also Transhumanist religion 2.0. I have written a lot about these convictions, without calling them “beliefs.” But, following William James, since I am persuaded that these convictions are scientifically plausible, and they give me happiness and drive, I choose to hold them as beliefs. As I say in a note to the Ten Cosmist Convictions, I am not using “will” in the sense of inevitability, but in the sense of intention: we want to do this, we are confident that we can do it, and we will do our f**king best to do it. You know that, if you really want to achieve a goal, you must firmly believe that you will achieve it. DARING TO HOPE IN RESURRECTION Bart Centre gives another answer in the excellent article “Dealing with death: How does an atheist cope?” His answer is “It’s enough for me to know the deceased person loved me and I loved them. Enough to know the pain of illness has subsided. Enough to know their contributions to the world will live behind them and their progeny will carry on. Enough to know that the cycle of life is unstoppable, inevitable, and is shared by all living things. It’s enough to know that the oblivion of death is no more fearful than the oblivion that was pre-life. I take comfort in that, we all should.” Bart’s answer is very good and his considerations are beautiful, soothing and inspiring in their own way, but for me they are not “enough,” because I prefer my own answers. If I were
persuaded that death is final and science will never be able to do anything about it, I would certainly take refuge in seeing our lives as small cogs in the wonderful and endless cycle of life, shared by all living things. But I think science will be able to do something about death, and I hope to be copied to the future by means of “future magic” (in the sense of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law) and to find my loved ones there. Bart Centre writes: “How easy and comforting it must be to imagine ones dead loved one running in a sunlit field in the afterlife — eternally young, physically perfect, ecstatic, and being chased by their equally ecstatic childhood cocker spaniel. Or surrounded by a few generations of previously deceased relatives who embrace them and welcome them to eternal life and introduce them to their angel friends…” It is easy and comforting indeed! How about making it true? To me, these are not supernatural beliefs, but engineering projects: we will have to engineer resurrection, and build Heaven. These are very ambitious engineering projects for the very far future, so the only things that we can do, here and now, is to try to ensure that our specie has a future out there, to avoid extinction, to develop emerging technologies, and to begin our expansion into space. The Cosmist Third Way offers not only relief from the painful grief of death, but also motivation and drive to make the world a better place, here and now. In “The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Front Line of Science,” Marcus Chown paints a scene very similar to Centre’s: “As your eyelids begin to fall, coming down like metal shutters on your life, the hubbub of the world fades to a distant murmur. You draw one last breath…” “… and it is summer and you are young again. Your favorite dog — the one you loved so much as a child and thought you would never see again — has knocked you to the ground and is licking your face furiously. Through tears of joy, you see your father and mother — long dead — standing over you. They are young — just as they were when you were ten years old — and they are laughing and stretching out their hands to you.” “What is happening? Have you died and gone to Heaven? Not exactly. You’ve been resurrected as a simulation on a computer at the end of time!” This is the beginning of the last chapter of the book, dedicated to Tipler’s theories. Also the other chapters inspire beautiful and comforting visions, and show that space-time is a strange and wonderful place, so strange and wonderful that, perhaps, our loved ones who left us can be found somewhere out there. The first chapter is titled “Elvis Lives.”
Continuing the Facebook discussion, my friend said “I don’t think I can suspend disbelief about the Omega Point idea of Tipler.” Well, other “simpler” resurrection mechanisms have been proposed, that don’t require waiting until the Big Crunch. In “The Light of Other Days”, Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who else?) and Stephen Baxter imagine a near future world profoundly transformed by the invention of a “Wormcam”: a remote viewing device that permits scanning any location at any time, including in the past, by using micro wormholes naturally embedded with high density in the fabric of space-time (every space-time pixel is connected with every other space-time pixel). Soon engineers are able to resurrect the dead: “It was possible now to look back into time and read off a complete DNA sequence from any moment in an individual’s life. And it was possible to download a copy of that person’s mind and, by putting the two together, regenerated body and downloaded mind, to restore her…” But I am afraid atheists will continue to find suspension of disbelief in possible resurrection technologies very difficult… because the concept of resurrection itself (even if based on science) will continue to sound too much like religion to them. Just a few minutes ago on the KurzweilAI Forums, another friend said “A friend of mine just died… it’s not enough for me to settle for never laughing with her again. Will we EVER be able to correct the travesty that is Death? And how soon til then?” My answer: I am very sorry for your loss. Your grief is my grief, and your hope is my hope. No, it won’t be soon. I think future scientists will be eventually able to “fish” dead people from the past via Quantum Archaeology (whatever that turns out to be) or other time scanning technologies, and copy them to their present — our future — via mind uploading, but it won’t be soon. The scientific and engineering challenges involved are so huge that I believe it will take thousands of years. Or, as Frank Tipler thinks, billions of years. But the subjective time that we have to wait is simple to estimate, and much shorter: it is the remaining time that we have to live, plus a few seconds to wake up in the future. From her subjective perspective, your friend may be already there, and waiting for you to join and laugh with her again. Can I offer this as a certainty? No, I can’t. But I can offer it as a scientifically plausible hope. Make the best of your life as your friend would have wished, and, perhaps, you will be reunited with her when the time is right.
DEATH IS NOT MY BRAIN’S FRIEND - I BELIEVE IN NEUROLOGY, NOT IN GOD BY: GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D
One of the deleterious effects of believing in a religion is in the idea that through this belief one would be assured some form of afterlife. This is a very damaging idea because it is an illusion, a fantasy, a false hope. In the past religion offered people the soothing feeling that the absurdity of a short existence would be resolved in the end. It would have been more honest to accept Reality as it is, and to have tried to do the best with a short life, contributing to the wellbeing of present and future generations. Today, we live in special times. Through fast developing information and bio-technologies, through our amazing daily breakthroughs in understanding human physiology and nature in general, we are approaching a point where we will be able to defeat death, forever. Death is not a metaphysical problem any longer; it is a technological one. We can defeat death with modern biomedicine. We can do this, just as we have accomplished many other “miracles” through science. Believing in the delusional “spiritual afterlife” that is the core of most religions, doesn’t allow people to realize that it would be much better to fund aging research than to donate to a church. If people could realize that we are close to a solution to death based on reality, they would support this research. Actually, they would demand it. Many people hope for an afterlife, but this is as delusional as believing in Santa Claus or fairies. They want it so badly that they make a complete nonsensical commitment to something that is
clearly absurd. This is paradoxical because if these people would support science, that religion often considers an enemy, they would be given all what religion falsely promised - eternal life. The repertoire of experiences that a single brain can achieve is amazingly big. However, our brains are relatively similar in size, components and biochemistry. We have the same type of neurons and neurochemicals that a rat has. What differentiates us from animals and what explains the difference in behavior and personality among people are the connections in our brain. What is different between me and you is the type of connections that you and I have, how neurons interact with each other, how they organize and get structured. In a way, we are different but in a more important way we are very similar. The human experience is differentiated more in subtle nuances than in fundamental, deeply alien ways. This why so many people like Coca Cola, and some Pepsi. Two choices but really very similar. As different as humans are, I’m always amazed at how similar our thoughts, fears, and desires are, even across cultures, time, sex, age. One can explain both how similar and how different we are in the context of modern neuroscience. The picture is not complete, not perfect yet, but we are coming closer and closer. Some time ago, I went to a lecture, at the Department of Psychiatry, at UW Madison where I worked. The lecturer was showing how the injection of this particular neurotransmitter was increasing the voluntary feeding amount of a rat. And then, how another neurotransmitter was decreasing it. He plotted a graph of the amount of the chemical substance injected in a very specific part of the brain versus the amount of feeding: he obtained a perfect straight line, indicating a perfect correlation between these parameters. Next, another region was inhibited and the opposite effect was obtained. It is just amazing, a complex behavior modulated by a simple substance. He plotted a graph of the amount of the chemical substance injected in a very specific part of the brain versus the amount of feeding: he obtained a perfect straight line, indicating a perfect correlation between these parameters. Next, another region was inhibited and the opposite effect was obtained. It is just amazing, a complex behavior modulated by a simple substance.
This is not just true for rats. The same would happen in humans under the same conditions. In fact, the scientist explained that he would like to explore the application of this finding to help people with addictions. Maybe we are a little more complex than a rat but we respond to the same chemicals, to the same stimuli. To some, it is scary that we are these physical connections between neurons, these electrical currents, these molecules… but why is this scary? These neurons, electrical forces, molecules are fascinating, beautiful in how they work and behave, and part of the miracle of existence. On the opposite end, I find that invoking spirits and elves and strange superstitions and the “soul” to explain what we are, is a shame. Why do this, when there is so much beautiful real knowledge about the nature of our beings, unfolding in front of our eyes? Every day brings new and fascinating discoveries in neuroscience. Part of what is discovered in our physical brain is that yes - love is a chemical… yes - our thoughts are electrical impulses… yes - our personality and memories are connections among neurons. If we realize that when the brain dies we die with it, then is not just true, but alright. When intelligent people who abandon a religious view of the world want to stick with the idea of “immortality of the soul” they usually invoke New Age nonsense such as, “because energy is conserved, and consciousness is a form of energy, after death my consciousness will be conserved.” I’m so tired of this false argument. Please understand what energy is and understand the fundamental second law of thermodynamics. Conservation of energy doesn’t imply conservation of the highly structured and organized form of matter and energy that supports consciousness in our brain. You need a material substratum to support a complicated, emergent property like consciousness and energy per se is not enough. The brain produces about 100 Watts of energy, like a typical electrical bulb but last time I tried to have a conversation with a light bulb it was pretty boring. That is not reason for despair - it is good news and cause for action.
We can do something even the problem of death. Science can find a way to extend life. What religion promised - Eternal Life - science can actually achieve. Maybe not today, maybe not in 100 years, but one day it can and will happen. Believing in the “after life” when it is not true, is like believing in Santa Claus simply because it would be nice if he did exist. Let’s grow up and believe in people instead.
DESIRING IMMORTALITY BY: JASON XU
Has your love for life ever transformed into a deep desire for physical immortality? My beingness, which I greatly and truly value, is something that I most certainly will want to be maintained until tomorrow. Never will there be a day where “tomorrow” is a day where I will feel that death is desirable. As finite beings, we have a grave inability to control matter, and most notably among that matter is the metabolism of our own bodies. As human beings living in the 21st century, we are faced with the grave reality that our bodies, the very substrate we were born into with no choice of our own, is preprogrammed to die due to mutations in our cells’ ability to function. We choose to call this process “aging”, occasionally “disease” when a specific cause can be identified. Wake up people! We did not choose to exist, and we did not choose to be born into aging bodies. If human beings strive to change their very bodies, the very substrates we exist in, we will change the nature of our existence from temporal to immortal. When there’s a will, there’s a way. “I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.” - Achilles The greatest deathist mistake we can mistake is to forget - in awe of every moment being a once in a lifetime opportunity - how eternal life can help us savor precious moments again and again as if each were our last without physically having to die. It is the illusion of death being imminent, not death itself, that forces us to savor each moment in life. If we live forever by ending aging, we can always savor each moment by imagining that each moment was our last. The human brain does not distinguish: We feel the thrill of a roller coaster even if it is completely safe. It is because I enjoy each moment past as if it were my last, that I endeavor to enjoy life forever.
People sometimes feel despair that on how temporal their current existence is. The human existence has been for too long had the defining characteristic of a seemingly inevitable endpoint, whether at the hands of an unnatural death or a “natural” deterioration of the body. If all of us only realized this great flaw in the continued existence of humanity and endeavored to change it, it would only be a matter of time before aging is history. For society to continue on as a cycle of birth and death can only lead to further despair for our children and grandchildren. Too often investors look at ending aging movements and foundations in an economic “cost benefit” perspective, not willing to invest in foundations such as SENS because the goal of a sustainable eternal existence for us all doesn’t seem achievable within one’s own lifetime. And to maintain this mindset is to continue the same misery that lead to the formation of that viewpoint in the first place. To contribute fully, using one’s time, energy, wealth, and scientific knowledge to eliminate aging and other forms of death is a pursuit of changing the nature of human existence for now until forever. No longer will humans ask “Why must I die?”. Any society with sufficiently advanced technology and sufficiently virtuous people is indistinguishable from heaven. If you ever feel meant for an eternal destiny, the answer is before your eyes: pursue life extension. Evangelize the world. Astutely donate to foundations attempting to reverse aging. And never lose hope. We are inspired by a vision of an “ageless society” where the human lifespan can be extended beyond the limits imposed by aging and its damage to the body. We also pledge to resuscitate each other if one of us dies and is cryonically preserved. PRIORITIES: 1) Ensuring that cryogenically frozen members are safely preserved in hopes of future resuscitation. 2) Interest-free loans to pay for cryonic suspension of members who do not have the means to be cryogenically suspended. 3) Ensuring that our intergenerational community has sufficient members and enough compassion for each other so that members desire to revive each other, and ensure a “welcome back” greeting is prepared for potentially resuscitates in case a fellow is resuscitated
4) Spread awareness of life extension to promote inherent desirability of successfully reviving cryonics patients and pursuing healthspan extension as soon as possible. 4) Promote life-logging among members to track conscious experiences, reconnecting with past life once resuscitated. 5) Fund anti-aging life extension research. Focus on areas of medicine least funded by mainstream medicine, as the all factors of aging need to be cured, and we must allocate our funding in a way that cures aging the fastest. Do not fund areas of research already well-funded by non-life-extensionists such as cancer research, but fund high-impact research projects on areas of aging with low market demand.
THE SUFFERING OF WHICH YOU SPARE YOURSELF THE SIGHT BY: MILE
“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.” - Albert Schweitzer
Life and death are in your hands. If you watch somebody put a gun to somebody’s head and then watch while they slowly pull the trigger, then you helped pull the trigger. If you support programs to help stop people from becoming killers, and to stop killers, then you are part of the global riddance of killers. It makes no difference if you can play with rocks or a sub atomic virtual reality dimension transporter if you are going to obliterate for eternity 80 short year blinks later. If somebody writes an eloquent book, binds it and then burns it, it is better to have never written the book. If a wondrous dimension exists that no consciousness, nothing, has ever known, and it is snuffed out before anything ever can then it may as well have never existed. Mummies, religion, the fountain of youth, the holy grail, sorcery, countless snake oils, afterlife’s, reincarnation, humanity has long desperately striven to put the brakes on the slow terrifying skid into obliteration. The hellish chopping block of death drips with the blood of an eternity of viciously tortured lives. The slide to that block will be stopped, and there will be a last to die on it. This is why we FIGHT for indefinite life extension. This is why, as Kahlil Gibran would say, we “rest in reason, and MOVE in passion.” This is why John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” This is why Dante wrote that, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” This is why Einstein said that, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” I walk through cemeteries to pay homage to the dead, to pay respects to their memory, times, and all they’ve accomplished and toiled through to deliver us here across the precipice of time to unlock the doors to these increasingly more fantastic worlds of fascinating wonder and opportunity. Facing that anguish in these cemeteries I visit is a difficult challenge, but it’s one that I gladly face and take on as head on as I can. We are all in this together, the good and the bad, those of us past and the present, be it through progeny and legacy or things like biology or homage. We look to make our way, figure this life out and harness it for what its worth; everything, the big picture, not just ourselves, towns, states, countries, not even our world; not the solar system, not the galaxy, not even the universe. Life is worth all of existence, and existence is unfathomably complex, diverse and teeming with opportunity. The abilities of modern people are an extraordinary scientific, technological and engineering harvest, with no end in sight, achieved through the toil of ancient beings that had the will and ability to shape the elements. There is nothing more valuable than every human soul. I fight for myself, I fight for my family and friends, the world, and I fight for all of the noble souls that have been devastated by death, reduced by the coldest, darkest disrespect down in the mulch of the earth. Life gets hard, it rains, the wind blows, but death doesn’t stop and neither does our respect for and allegiance to life, and our unyielding resolution to put an end to the devastation of death. We rest in reason, and MOVE! like we mean it
MY FRIENDS BREAK MY HEART BY: DAVID KEKICH
Did you ever try to give someone advice that you thought was sound, only to have your friends continue their old bad habits? When I see someone I love self-destruct, I’m quick to suggest ways for them to alter their course. I’m no better a psychologist than the next person, so instead of trying to analyze what leads them to destruction, I just offer the most commonsensical help I can come up with. In almost every case, it has to do with lifestyle habit advice. I failed to convince in most cases, and I believe it cost at least three of my friends their lives. A couple of weeks ago, my best childhood friend’s widow died. She was in her 60s, and her 94 year old mother attended her only child’s funeral. Her husband Bob died at age 70, less than two years ago. Bob was one of those people who pigged out at every meal and snacked in between. Junk food, fried foods, white bread, baked goods, char grilled meat, tons of mashed potatoes, beer… and two quarts of soft drinks average every day pretty much made up his diet. I warned him for 25 years to back off, or he was headed for diabetes. I told him all about the dangers of chronic inflammation and how dangerous it was. He got diabetes, and it went downhill from there. Cancer finally killed him. His wife’s diet was slightly different – but even worse in some ways. My friends with the worst habits are the ones I knew the longest. I dearly love many of them, but I have to say… I don’t necessarily respect some. In contrast, I can’t think of a friend who I have met in the past twenty years who breaks my heart. Generally, their lifestyle habits are moderately good to great. It’s not that I have any more influence over them. I just gravitate toward health conscious people now.
Several years ago, I wrote a newsletter that offended someone very important to me. It may have offended others as well. In it, I classified my close friends in two general groups. One was the miscellaneous group which includes people who are in my life for reasons other than life extension... and those who are in the second group. I went on to insinuate that the first group generally wastes my time and is not as interesting to me as the latter. I did shoot from the hip with that letter. The truth is, there are special people in group #1 who I love very much. Otherwise, they wouldn’t break my heart. Even if wellness and longevity aren’t important to them, I still cherish their friendships. You’re probably in group #2, and I do hope you pursue your healthy habits.
THE ADVANTAGES OF IMMORTALITY BY: G. STOLYAROV II
George is a regular wage laborer, industrious, but somewhat frail and easy to tire. Thus George is unable to put in 18 hours every day for running a small business or generating a vast fortune quickly. Had he lived the average human lifespan, he would likely have died owning only a small home and having a fairly marginal discretionary income. But George is fortunate, for he lives in an age where immortality has just been made a commercial product. The company that markets it has obtained a financially expedient way to maintain George's body against all damage and deterioration, and requires no payment from George; it receives its profits from the advertising companies that pay the immortality service to play its commercials for several hours a day in the minds of people like George (if immortality were possible, this would certainly be possible, too). George can go on working as he works, but indefinitely. On his 200th birthday, George buys himself a lavish mansion with an adjunct park, where he can take walks, sporting his new tuxedo suit, top hat, and gilded cane, which he would not have been able to afford had he had the average human life span. On his 500th birthday, George's prudent long-term investments have finally allowed him to start a business of his own. He can allow himself a leisurely work schedule in the meantime, since he has the means to hire a large staff. On his 600th birthday, George decides to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in order to house his expanding business. On his 800th birthday, George decides that his profits now enable him to purchase an entire planet and initiate massive resource extraction operations. He decides to spend some of the earnings creating the world's largest gallery of realist art, which he has always admired. On his 900th birthday, George decides that it is no longer enough to sponsor the arts, and seeks
to become an artist. He hires the best teachers available and begins producing paintings himself. By his 1000th birthday, George has already mastered musical composition, professional writing, sculpture, and the piloting of just about every advanced vehicle imaginable. There are hundreds of new hobbies and specialties that he would like to master, while constantly magnifying his fortune. Because he is now fabulously wealthy, he risks practically nothing when he attempts anything. However, because he understands that he no longer faces the threat of loss or death, he can truly gain and live, venturing into territory that the mortal man, with his immense frailty and susceptibility to the myriad perils of the elements, cannot conceive of. In the minds of those who think that immortality will only bring boredom, stagnation, and a lack of moral stimulus to succeed, the hypothetical case of George is inconceivable. But why? It has just been conceived of before the reader’s eyes; George begins as a “common man” with fairly common upward ambitions. What differentiates him from the “common man” today is time; George has time to work, save, and accumulate money and skills. Because he will live much longer than people today, he can afford to have longer time horizons; he can make investments that will mature in 200, 300, or 5000 years—knowing that he will be around to enjoy the rewards. If he wishes to succeed in business, he will also need to compete with other immortals who have similarly long-term time horizons and who have accumulated a similarly impressive array of skills. George cannot afford to stagnate; he must move ever upward in a world where technology, wealth, and human faculties grow exponentially. Time is man's sole true limitation. Any other resource can be compensated for by an individual's effort. If one has been bankrupted or experiences political persecution, one always has the chance of regaining one's funds or assuring enforcement of one's rights over time, so long as one is alive. But, when time saps the very energy needed to live—the very vitality of youth—from a man’s organism, such pursuits become ever more inconceivable. Contrary to the mainstream culture, senescence is not "normal." It is a gradually increasing severance of one's intellectual and physical capacities from the external reality. When this severance is complete, death results. And one cannot compensate for any lost resources when dead! There is more to life than mere avoidance of death, just as there is more to pleasure than the avoidance of pain. To claim that one has no point in gaining without the threat of losing—no point in living without the threat of dying—is a quasi-Daoist "coexistence of opposites" mentality, which the upward-aspiring rational man strongly rejects. In my science fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, I explain why the rational man can never stop pursuing values, and why immortality will ensure the utter collapse of irrationality. Religious opponents of immortality contend that immortality in this world would prevent one’s soul from achieving immortality in the next. As a man of reason, I respond that immortality in a
world which we are certain exists is superior to the uncertain promise of immortality in another world of which we have no evidence. The primary ethical difference between a man of reason and a man of faith is that the man of reason seeks to eventually create a perfect life in this world, whereas the man of faith sees the perfect life as ultimately given "elsewhere" and thus sees this world doomed to inadequacy and imperfection. Certainly, the status quo is far from perfect, but this does not mean that it is not perfectible. Another major difference between advocates of reason and faith is that the advocates of faith perceive perfection as a static condition, whereas the advocates of reason must in some manner recognize that perfection is inherently dynamic and open-ended. Perfection is a continuous process, not a stagnant plateau. Ayn Rand sought to characterize this in the persons of John Galt and Howard Roark, who—while endowed with firm, constant, and immutable moral principles that fully determine their character—continue to act for the pursuit of values in their buildings and inventions. Yet more is required for a state of this-worldly perfection: 1) perfect health, 2) unmitigated moral integrity, and 3) a ceaseless desire to create and expand. The second and third goals can be achieved in the status quo, but the first goal would require decades more of medical, scientific, and commercial progress. Every man’s life is not doomed to an eventual ultimate failure; a solution is possible in this world. I contend that any peril can be technologically remedied eventually. This means that sometime in the future—given the requisite economic and political freedoms—man will develop solutions to every known problem plaguing our time. Every disease and potential cause of accident known to us today will someday be cured. If new diseases or causes of accident should arise, they will someday be cured as well. One might ask: is there not an infinite possibility of diseases or causes of accident? Since the nature of existence does not permit simultaneous infinities, I do not see how this can be the case. If my premise—presented in “Mistakes Concerning Infinity”—is granted, there is only a finite amount of perils that can ever afflict man. Given that man’s conscious faculty is capable of perceiving and interacting with all of reality, there is no reason why it inherently cannot someday devise cures to the entirety of possible perils. Thus, it is possible that man may someday be indestructible, literally, as a result of employing his own reason. The individuals that devise cures to these perils may make permanent contracts with customers like George, whose invincibility will thus be guaranteed him, without him having to do anything but allow advertisements to be played in his head for a few hours. Some opponents of immortality might contend that this type of indestructibility is undesirable, for it would do away with the need to maintain a rational morality in order to survive. Yet this need would not be nullified by the advent of immortality.
How would immortality alter the nature of morality if reason was required to devise all these protections? It is impossible to consistently embrace a state of being while rejecting those attributes that brought it about. It is, for example, impossible to reject capitalism while embracing economic prosperity, or to reject individual liberty while embracing moral actions. Once one takes away the prerequisites, the consequences collapse like a skyscraper without a frame or foundation. This was the mistake made by the socialists—who sought to redistribute wealth that free commerce created—and by “progressive” moralists—who sought to impose certain moral actions on people while abolishing the chosen nature of such actions, which renders them moral. Both prosperity and morality collapsed once the socialists and “progressives” had their way. Any indestructibility obtained through technological immortality would still be conditional upon individual reason—upon the reason of the individuals who invent, maintain, and distribute this life-perpetuating treatment, as well as upon the reason of the individuals who receive it. These individuals must still rationally recognize that life is a value and that they want to have it forever; they must then rationally decide to initiate or continue the life-perpetuating treatment. The moment they genuinely reject reason, they will reject the treatment and will again remain susceptible to the elements. Only a rational morality would make it possible for them to even agree to be immortal and to take the necessary steps to maintain their immortality. Immortality would by no means render morality or the pursuit of values meaningless; it would amplify the need for morality and the ambition with which men pursue their values— encouraging men to have longer time horizons and higher levels of productivity in a greater diversity of occupations. The advantages of immortality are as numerous as the time it will add to individuals’ lives.
IMMORTALITY IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME! BY: BJ MURPHY
I was a bit perplexed, to say the least, when I read Big Think blogger John N. Gray’s article “Immortality is a Waste of Time.” His entire argument revolved around the notion that, because of unknown contingencies throughout life, the act of curtailing death’s inevitability and infinity is thus a waste of time, money, thought and anxiety. This is absurd. An absurdity flooded with fear-mongering imagery of our future, claiming the acts of planning for our possible deaths as being equivalent to “a society that is one of cryonic suspension, a freezer-centered society, a society in which we spend our thoughts, our desires, our passions, our incomes on tending freezers.” Tending freezers, he says? Like we tend to our graveyards, our crematoriums, and mausoleums? Examples, I might add, to which wastes precious land to accommodate the bodies and/or ashes of our long-since-deceased (or soon-to-be-deceased) loved ones. This notion that “history will go on,” all while admitting that it “makes good sense to take care of your health, to try to remain healthy for as long as possible” and that “we should use the new technologies to enhance the mortal life we have,” is contradictory and ahistorical. Was it the simple whim of society to abandon agriculture for industrialization, or to abandon feudalism for capitalism? Did life simply go on, providing us with the technological marvels we take for granted today, without the actions and efforts of so many individuals who spent (wasted?) their time, money, and thoughts to achieve such a society? John Gray would like you to believe so, yes. But then history doesn’t simply move along without a current of change enforced by its inhabitants. While Mr. Gray would like you to abandon your wishes and efforts in achieving immortality, deeming it as a waste of time, he neglects to even consider how life will go on via the actions and inactions of society’s members. How is history and life to go on in a positive direction, and how are we to use new technologies to enhance our mortal lives, without putting time, money, and thought into these very actions? An answer Mr. Gray conveniently never appears to provide.
DEATH IS A WASTE OF TIME The idea that time is to be spent without care of our future and how we and/or society will stand to the unknown contingencies, to which Mr. Gray adamantly speaks of, is completely bunk. History most certainly went on, but then the goings-on of history were determined, not by a lack of care for what our future holds for us, but by a global society who no longer saw it fit to merely live tolead age 30, or to go days without food, or to suffer from terrible diseases due to complete lack of medical aid and knowledge. Our society has spent centuries upon centuries fighting for a better world not just for themselves, but for those who’ll come after them. Maybe our efforts won’t lead to immortality in our lifetime. But then when is a good time to fight for it? Should we simply condemn our future relatives to a life – albeit one certainly going on – flooded with problems that could’ve been alleviated, if not addressed completely beforehand? This metaphysical approach to life and history is a betrayal to every single person who lived and died on this planet, fighting for the world we have today. With so much time, money, and thought put into our modern society, death becomes the only wasteful aspect of life. So for those who will be lucky enough to be born in a world in which the problems we face today no longer exist, our time, money, and thoughts will not be at waste – quite the contrary! – they’ll be used to address and destroy every single waste left on our planet and throughout the universe. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” – 1 Corinthians 15:26
HOW WILL LIFE EXTENSION CHANGE RELIGION?
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
To summarize, in my (atheistic) view, religions are generally not animating forces of societal change. Rather, they tend to be barometers of prevailing attitudes approximately one generation in the past. Often, religions get dragged along into making progress by intellectual developments outside religion – in the same way that, as a result of the 18th-century Enlightenment, various Christian denominations gradually transitioned away from providing Biblical justifications for slavery and toward denouncing slavery on Christian grounds. The impetus for this transformation was the rise of ideas of reason, individualism, and natural rights – not the doctrines of the Christian religion. I suspect that there will be a broad spectrum of responses among various religious denominations and their followers to the prospect of indefinite life extension, once most people begin to see it as within their individual grasp. In Christianity, on the cutting edge will be those Christians who interpret the message of the resurrection (a literal resurrection in the flesh, according to actual Christian doctrine) to be compatible with transhumanist technologies. (We already see the beginnings of forward-thinking interpretations of religion with the Mormon Transhumanists.) On the other hand, the more staid, dogmatic, ossified religious denominations and sects will try to resist technological change vigorously, and will not be above attempting to hold the entire world’s progress back, merely to make their own creeds more convincing to their followers. Historically, religions have served two primary societal roles: (1) to form a justification for the existing social order and (2) to assuage people’s fears of death. The first role has atrophied over time in societies with religious freedom. The second role will also diminish as radical life extension in this world becomes a reality. Religions do evolve, though, and the interpretations of religion that ultimately prevail will (I hope) be the more peaceful, humane, and progress-friendly ones. At the same time, proportions of non-religious people in all populations will rise, as has been the trend already.
ASK THE AGED IF THEY SUFFER
BY: MILE
Aging is burning us alive from the inside out. The price of stopping it is not too high. If you doubt it, ask the 36,500,000+ people that are living in the fires of aging, getting set to die in this next year. That’s an astonishing 100,000 every single day until the war on aging is won. Ask the Hospice patients across the world, desperately trying to hold onto the homes they built around themselves, watching strangers flood into their personal worlds like medics coming to the aid of the bomb torn lives in battle. Ask them whether great sacrifice for this cause is worth it. Ask the cancer patients among them that are dissolving away on the inside, wracking in pain, sweating in the empty, many times compassionless nursing rooms, which often times may as well be caves in a woods. As many of us have, I’ve watched my relatives in the final stages of disintegration in nursing homes and hospitals, in the moments before their pain riddled bodies disappeared like poofs of smoke. I remember wondering how desperate the cries for help inside my dying uncles head must have been as he laid there going through shock, as cancer continued to eat away his bones. Have discussions with aged heart disease victims, in their 80s and 90s, going under the knives, through the horrifying procedure of having their ribs sawed and cracked open, long arteries cut from their arms and legs and wrapped around their hearts with grotesque patchwork so that they may live in ever increasing enfeeblement, while they contemplate their severely deteriorated states as they wait in the flames of aging for imminent death. My grandfather went through this. You can see the sad, humbling realization of mortality painted across his now seemingly permanently downcast brow. What pain… What horror… Ask those dreamers whose joys and aspirations have been stopped short and met with their new hospital death beds. Ask them what they say. Maybe we can even help them throw out their collections, their writings, all of their ongoing projects and goals, their life’s work and all of their mementos and scrap books while we’re there. We could meditate with them about the ending of their dreams, and ask them if they want to visualize symbolically stomping them out.
Talk to those families who are being strangled by the reality of being forced to come to terms with the eternal obliteration of people they depend on to voyage through this mysterious, challenging life with. Find any of these vibrant spirits; these colorful, pricelessly unique insights of history, that are having their hard earned, original volumes ripped from their shelves, burned and buried, lost forever until the end of time, and see what they have to say. Ask them what sacrifices are enough. A walk through any of the many thousands of nursing homes around the world will help you understand how urgent this is. To quote Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a professor of philosophy at Brown University, who did a study on this, “The blanket presumption that the latter states [of poverty, pain, ill health] bring ‘misery’ that is worse than death is disrespectful to those who, having experienced them, disagree.” The movement for indefinite life extension cannot be impeded by the faint of heart, by those who would make excuses, and those who would put their own, limited, selfish interests above those of the continuation of the world as a whole, into the breathtaking, deep future. The world is being tortured in a device that is on a timer. How sadistic, how bitterly cold and viciously cruel. We must get out, and we can if we work together. This is not even that big of a challenge in the grand scheme of things. Step one is: inform the world about all the organizations and projects working toward the goal of indefinite life extension. Its not hard at all. All you have to do is like the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension page and share stuff that you may find interesting, as you see it come through your Facebook news feed. Let people know that science knows how to work on this kind of stuff, that research can figure out how to stop diseases. There are a variety of diseases we don’t have around any more and have cured. Some diseases have already been cured through genetic recombination. Technology keeps adding more powerful tools, and more tools to the mix. We don’t have to stand for involuntary death anymore. We have the means to defend ourselves now. We’re begging you to stay. The universe and all of existence is a big, incredible mysterious place that we hardly know anything about. All of humanity’s combined experience with it to date is equivalent to not even having taken it out of the box yet. Let’s stop death. Altogether, we can do it.
Indefinite life extensionists know this. They are all around you, they are in your communities. They lead you to understanding the cause; follow them and then you’ll know how to guide the way too. The torture and the opportunity cost is far, far too much to bear. It’s too much to bear for those going through it and it’s too much to bear for us to face it. And face it, we are all cruising to our death beds very quickly. To take on a threat, people can’t pretend it doesn’t exist and sweep it under the rug. We have to think about it, even when its painful and hard. Our bodies are designed to fight off threats, but not when we don’t acknowledge them. Instead of letting that horror debilitate you, instead of shutting it out, let it in and let it charge you to action. Rest assured that as you march, growing crowds of people that are also sick to death of this terrible fortune, are marching along with you.
AN ATHEIST’S RESPONSE TO PASCAL’S WAGER
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Pascal’s Wager is one of the more respectable arguments in favor of religion. As an atheist, I am nonetheless sympathetic to this argument, because it attempts to use reason to actually persuade people to believe in God, rather than circularly using the Bible as a reason to believe in the truth of the Bible. Of course, as an atheist, I also believe that Pascal’s Wager is a mistaken argument. But here I will give it the consideration it deserves. Pascal’s Wager is named after Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century mathematician and philosopher, also known for his invention of one of the first mechanical calculators. This is the essence of the argument. If one believes in God and ends up being wrong, one has nothing to lose; one’s ultimate fate is no worse than if one did not believe in God and ended up being right. On the other hand, if one believes in God and ends up being right, one has everything to gain – especially an eternal life full of bliss. Pascal is to be commended for examining two possible outcomes and their implications. However, he fails to grasp the full range of the possibilities. Pascal only explores the possible outcomes if one chooses to believe in God. He fails, however, to consider the possible outcomes if one chooses not to believe in God. So let us refine Pascal’s argument a bit and consider it then. We must consider not one but two different alternatives. One can either believe in God or not believe in God, and in each case one can either be right or wrong. So there are in fact four possibilities. Someone who believes in God and is right will go to Heaven. Someone who believes in God and is wrong will simply cease to exist after death – if it is indeed the case that death is a cessation of one’s being and individuality. Someone who does not believe in God and is wrong will go to Hell – to assume the worst-case scenario.
Someone who does not believe in God and is right, if he dies, will cease to exist just like the believer who is wrong. Even if we grant that Heaven is better than Hell, from an atheist’s perspective, Hell is not the worst possible outcome. The worst possible outcome is the one that the atheist already assumes to be the case after death. In Hell, one may suffer horribly, but one still retains one’s individuality, sensations, and thoughts. The sheer nonexistence that an atheist believes to follow death is much more frightening – so frightening that, unlike Heaven or Hell, it is not even conceivable for an existing individual. So, if I do not believe in God and happen to be wrong and go to Hell, I will still be much better off than if I believed in God and were wrong and ceased to exist. No matter how greatly God may punish me for disbelief, the punishment will pale in comparison to what I already think is coming. But it is still not enough to consider the four alternatives in terms of what happens after death. It is also important to look at how a choice to believe or not affects one’s life in terms of time spent doing particular things – attending church services, uttering prayers, and partaking in numerous ceremonies – as well as the foregone opportunities that this time could have been devoted to. This is not to mention the lost opportunities from various dietary prohibitions, prohibitions on work, and tradition-based restrictions that seem to have little to do with abstract theology. So it is not the case that someone who believes has nothing to lose; he has a tremendous amount of time and foregone opportunities to lose. I like doing work on Sundays, and the time I would spend attending church would be wasted if I believed in God and were wrong, but would be well spent if I did not believe in God and were right. This time would even be well spent if I disbelieved in God and were wrong – because I would still accomplish something real in this world during it. Believe me, all those Sundays add up. Furthermore, if non-existence after death is worse than Hell, then that, and not the possibility of Hell, is the foremost problem that needs to be addressed. If this were the year 1900, I would not have a chance of plausibly saying this, but we are on the verge of astonishing medical breakthroughs that will at the least dramatically expand the human lifespan in this world. If you are interested, I urge you to look up the work of Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil – both distinguished world-class scientists who believe that we can achieve effectively indefinite longevity within the next thirty to forty years. I can understand placing one’s bets on eternal life in Heaven during an era in which eternal life in this world was definitely out of our reach, but if the possibility of existing indefinitely in this world – a world we can be sure of – is offered, it is surely preferable to the mere faith in existing forever in another world, for whose existence there
is no evidence. So I hereby invert the Pascal’s Wager argument and offer my own version – Stolyarov’s Wager – for why you ought to exert your utmost efforts to extend your life in this world and to assist in any way you can the technological developments that make this possible. If you believe in human life extension and are right, you have everything to win – a happy, prosperous, indefinite life that you can be sure of in this world. If you believe in human life extension and are wrong, you cease to exist.
If you do not believe in human life extension and are right, you cease to exist. If you do not believe in human life extension and are wrong, it may be that the effort that you did not put in to promoting the idea was just enough for the possibility not to come to pass. Then you will cease to exist. Unlike the fully developed version of Pascal’s Wager, the choice here is clear and unambiguous. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by focusing your attention on this world and on extending your life in it.
PROGRESS, HOPE & HUMAN LONGEVITY BY: DAVID KEKICH
Shortly after college, I had a rather crude roommate. He once said “Wish in one hand and s—t in the other, and see which one gets full first.” So it is with aging. Since the beginning of history, and most likely before, aging humans wished passionately for youth. Wishing was about all they could do then. Sure, a very limited number took proactive steps to regain lost youth. Some concocted various elixirs, barbarians made sacrifices to the gods, and Ponce de Leon searched for the mythical Fountain of Youth. But it was all wishful thinking. In one way, little has changed. Today, a very limited number still take proactive steps. Maybe more now than then, but most of those are still misguided if radical life extension is their goal. For example, a famous aging multi-billionaire publicly stated that he hopes to live to 125, mainly by eating only fruits and veggies and exercising daily. He even invested $500 million in food and human cell research. I applaud his habits and motivation, but like most of us, he has about one chance in a thousand to hit 100… and next to zero chance to reach 125 without some major technological (not food) breakthroughs. His lifestyle habits should improve his odds to make the century mark, but without the longevity genes, he’ll probably die comfortably while falling more than 25 years short of his goal. In another important way though, things have changed. I know more of the leading life extension researchers than most, and the ones I hang out with tell me we are on the cusp of cracking the super longevity code. In other words, we have full rejuvenation in our crosshairs. (If you haven’t yet seen this website, go there now: www.ManhattanBeachProject.com.) But most of us won’t make it unless more of us wish less and act more.
Reason usually has excellent insights into aging related issues. I have included some of his pertinent thoughts on this week’s topic following the link to his full text below. Forecasting is really hard, especially when it involves the future - or so they say. One of Ray Kurzweil's more noteworthy achievements has been, I think, to help popularize the idea that technological progress can be predicted fairly well at the level of general capabilities (as opposed to specific implementations). This is not a new idea, but despite - or because of - the sweeping, glittering changes transforming our society, at a pace that is only getting faster, it hasn't achieved any great adoption in the public eye, at least beyond some few narrow and often misquoted instances such as Moore's law for computing power. If the outcome of technological progress only meant smaller widgets and brighter lights, then I probably wouldn't be as interested in it as I am. In the grand scheme of things, does it much matter that you can be modestly confident in predicting whether widgets will be half the size and a tenth of the cost in twenty years versus forty years? There is one branch of technology which is now of great importance to everyone, however, and that is medicine. We stand on the verge of being able to extend human life by reversing the underlying biological damage that causes aging. "On the verge" means that either you die just a little later than your parents, or you live for centuries or longer, depending on whether or not you live long enough to benefit from the first therapies capable of actual rejuvenation. The uncertainty in timelines at present all lies in how long it will take for SENS-style rejuvenation research to gather a firm, mainstream, well-funded position: once that happens then progress is inevitable and tends to unfold. Prior to that point there is much uncertainty, with things progressing in fits and starts - the standard tyranny of progress under minimal funding and participation. Thus the present goal for advocates is to persuade enough people and funds to make progress inevitable from that point on. The sooner that happens, the higher the fraction of those presently alive who will live to see and benefit from human rejuvenation. So: Hope or help. The latter is a better plan.
REFUTING THE “TECHNICAL INFEASIBILITY” CRITICISM BY: FRANCO CORTESE
One of the most common arguments made against Transhumanism, Technoprogressivism and the transformative potentials of emerging, converging, disruptive and transformative technologies may also be the weakest: technical infeasibility. While the social movement and academic discipline of life extension (a.k.a. biomedical gerontology) and Transhumanism are in no way synonymous or co-inclusive, they do share a variety of values, and converge conceptually in many areas. The “technical infeasibility criticism” is also one of the criticisms one finds most commonly raised against life-extension – though this occurs less frequently as of late, due no doubt in part by the mainstream attention garnered by Aubrey de Grey’s SENS Foundation and Dimitri Itskov’s Global Future 2045 project. Nonetheless, refuting the technicalinfeasibility argument constitutes one of the roadblocks to hastening the rate of progress in biomedical gerontology. If people believe in the feasibility of indefinite life-extension, then the appeal of biomedical-gerontological initiatives will be more widespread and thereby receive and the more funding. So attempts to refute or at least deter the technical-infeasibility argument, insofar as it pertains to both longevity in particular and to Transhumanism and Technoprogressivism more generally, merits our attention. While some thinkers attack the veracity of Transhumanist claims on moral grounds, arguing that we are committing a transgression against human dignity (in turn often based on ontological grounds of a static human nature that shan't be tampered with) or on grounds of safety, arguing that humanity isn't responsible enough to wield such technologies without unleashing their destructive capabilities, these categories of counter-argument (ethicacy and safety, respectively) are more often than not made by people somewhat more familiar with the community and its common points of rhetoric. In other words these are the real salient and significant problems needing to be addressed by Transhumanist and Technoprogressive communities. The good news is that the ones makes the most progress in terms of deliberating the possible repercussions of emerging technologies are Transhumanist and Technoprogressive communities. The large majority of thinkers and theoreticians working on Existential Risk and Global Catastrophic Risk, like The Future of Humanity Institute and the Lifeboat Foundation, share Technoprogressive inclinations. Meanwhile, the largest proponents of the need to ensure wide availability of enhancement technologies, as well as the need for provision of personhood rights to non-
biologically-substrated persons, are found amidst the ranks of Technoprogressive Think Tanks like the IEET. Moreover, one can find a fair amount of continuity-of-impetus, or a shared underlying motivation, between longevity scientists, advocates, activists and supporters, and people working to mitigate existential risk and global catastrophic risk. They both are rooted first and foremost in the prevention on involuntary and ultimately unnecessary death via the conscious and deliberative development of emerging, disruptive and high technologies. A more frequent Anti-Transhumanist and Anti-Technoprogressive counter-argument, by contrast, and one most often launched by people approaching Transhumanist and Technoprogressive communities from the outside, with little familiarity of their common pointsof-rhetoric, is the claim of technical infeasibility in turn based upon little more than sheer incredulity. Sometimes a concept or notion simply seems too unprecedented to be possible. But it's just too easy for us to get stuck in a spacetime rut along the continuum of culture and feel that if something were possible, it would have either already happened or would be in the final stages of completion today. “If something is possible, when why hasn't anyone done it? Shouldn't the fact that it has yet to be accomplished indicate that it isn't possible?” This conflates ought with is (which Hume showed us is a fallacy) and ought with can. Ought is not necessarily correlative with either. At the risk of saying the laughably-obvious, something must occur at some point in order for them to occur at all. The moon landing happened in 1969 because it happened in 1969, and to have argued in 1968 that it simply wasn’t possible solely because it had never been done before would not have been valid argument for its technical infeasibility. While the “technical infeasibility” criticism is raised equally against Transhumanism (the belief that it is possible and desirable to change the human condition via technology), technoprogressivism (the belief that it is possible and desirable to use technology to improve the conditions of our world and society) and indefinite life-extension alike, its fallaciousness is particularly stark in regards to indefinite life-extension. The 20th century witnessed the conception of 3 distinct solution-paradigms or broach approaches to achieving technologicallymediated indefinite lifespans. We have, first, biotechnological methods of making specific changes to cells at the macromolecular and genetic level, exemplifying the biotechnological route to indefinite lifespans, secondly, nanotechnological methods of making even more precise changes to cells at the molecular and atomic level, and thirdly we have cybernetic methods of functionally-replicating different components and sub-systems of the body (allowing us to conceivably replace the components of our bodies gradually, iteratively as repairs and replacement is needed, potentially indefinitely – this is exemplified by the notions of mind uploading and substrate independent minds and the field of whole-brain-emulation. The previous century saw the conception of three distinct, alternate approaches – possessing distinct and separate technological and methodological inrastructures, and operating according to distinct and
alternate operating principles and mechanisms- in other words three different technological approaches to fascilitating the continual and recurrent perpetuation of the body. In order for indefinite lifespans to be technically infeasible, not only would each different broad approach need to be uniquely infeasible on its own terms (i.e. because each possesses alternate operating mechanisms and underlying technological infrastructures), but there would also have to be a complete lack of other as-yet-undiscovered feasible approaches as well. But if history has shown us anything, it has shown us that history is a fantastically poor indicator of what will and will not become feasible in the future. Statistically speaking, it seems as though the majority of things that were said to be impossible to implement via technology have nonetheless come into being. Likewise, it seems as though the majority of feats it was said to be possible to facilitate via technology have also come into being. The ability to possiblize the seemingly-impossible via technological and methodological in(ter)vention has been exemplified throughout the course of human history so prominently that we might as well consider it a statistical law. We can feel the sheer fallibility of the infeasibility and incredulity argument intuitively when we consider how credible it would have seemed a mere 100 years ago to claim that we would soon be able to send sentences into the air, to be routed to a device in your pocket (and only your pocket, not the device in the pocket of the person sitting right beside you). How likely would it have seemed 200 years ago if you claimed that 200 years hence it would be possible to sit comfortably and quietly in a chair in the sky, inside a large tube of metal that fails to fall fatally to the ground? Simply look around you. An idiosyncratic species of great ape did this! Consider how remarkably absurd it would seem for the gorilla species to have coordinated their efforts to build skyscrapers. To engineer devices that took them to the moon. To be able to send a warning or mating call to the other side of the earth in less time than such a call could actually be made via physical vocal cords. We live in a world of artificial wonder, and act as though it were the most mundane thing in the world. But considered in terms of geological time, the unprecedented feat of culture and artificial artifact just happened. We are still in the fledging infancy of the future, which only began when we began making it ourselves. We have no reason whatsoever to doubt the eventual technological feasibility of anything, really, when we consider all the things that were said to be impossible yet happened, all the things that were said to be possible and did happen, and all the things that were unforeseen completely yet happened nonetheless. In light of history, it seems more likely than a given thing would eventually be possible via technology than that it wouldn’t ever be possible. I fully appreciate the grandeur of this claim – but I stand by it nonetheless. To claim that a given ability will probably not be eventually possible to implement via technology is to laugh in the face of history to some
extent. The main exceptions to this claim are abilities wherein you limit or specify the route of implementation. Thus it probably would not be eventually possible to, say, infer the states of all the atoms comprising the Eifel Tower from the state of a single atom in your fingernail. Categories of ability where you specify the implementation as the end-ability – as in the case above, the end ability was to infer the state of all the atoms in the Eifel Tower from the state of a single atom. These exceptions also serve to illustrate the paramount feature allowing technology to possiblize the seemingly improbable. Novel means of implementation. Very often there is a bottleneck in the current system we use to accomplish something that limits the scope of tis abilities and prevents certain objectives from being facilitated by it. In such cases a whole new paradigm of approach is what moves progress forward to realizing that objective. If the goal is the reversal and indefinite remediation of the causes and sources of aging, the paradigms of medicine available at the turn of the 20th century would have seemed to be unable to accomplish such a feat. The new paradigm of biotechnology and genetic engineering was needed to formulate a scientifically plausible route to the reversal of aging-correlated molecular damage – a paradigm somewhat non-inherent in the medical paradigms and practices common at the turn of the 20th Century. It is the notion of a new route to implementation, a wholly novel way of making the changes that could lead to a given desired objective, that constitutes the real ability-actualizing capacity of technology – and one that such cases of specified-implementation fail to take account of. One might think that there are other clear exceptions to this as well: devices or abilities that contradict the laws of physics as we currently understand them, e.g. perpetual motion machines. Yet even here we see many historical antecedents exemplifying our short-sighted foresight in regard to “the laws of physics”. Our understanding of the physical “laws” of the universe undergo massive upheaval from generation to generation. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions challenged the predominant view that scientific progress occurred by accumulated development and discovery when he argued that scientific progress is instead driven by the rise of new conceptual paradigms categorically dissimilar to those that preceded it (Kuhn, 1962), and which then define the new predominant directions in research, development and discovery in almost all areas of scientific discovery and conceptualization. Kuhn’s insight can be seen to be paralleled by the recent rise in popularity of Singularitarianism, which today seems to have lost its strict association with a I.J. Good type intelligence explosion created via recursively self-modifying strong AI, and now seems to encompass any vision of a profound transformation of humanity or society through technological growth, and the introduction of truly disruptive emerging and converging (e.g. NBIC) technologies. This
epistemic paradigm holds that the future is less determined by the smooth progression of existing trends and more by the massive impact of specific technologies and occurrences – the revolution of innovation. Kurzweil’s own version of Singularitarianism (Kurzweil, 2005) uses the systemic progression of trends in order to predict a state of affairs created by the convergence of such trends, wherein predictable progression of trends points to their own destruction in a sense, as the trends culminate in our inability to predict past that point. We can predict that there are factors that will significantly impeded our predictive ability thereafter. Kurzweil and Kuhn’s thinking are also paralleled by Buckminster Fuller in his notion of ephemeralization (i.e. doing more with less), the post-industrial, information-economies and socioeconomic paradigms described by Alvin Toffler (Toffler, 1970), John Naisbitt (Naisbitt 1982) and Daniel Bell (Bell, 1973), among others. It can also partly be seen to be inherent in almost all formulations of technological determinism, especially variants of what I call reciprocal technological determinism (not simply that technology determines or largely constitutes the determining factors of societal states-of-affairs, not simply than tech affects culture, but rather than culture affects technology which then affects culture which then affects technology) al a Marshal McLuhan (McLuhan, 1964) . This broad epistemic paradigm, wherein the state of progress is more determined by small but radically disruptive changes, innovations and deviations rather than the continuation or convergence of smooth and slow-changing trends, can be seen to be inherent in variants of technological determinism because technology is ipso facto (or by its very defining attributes) categorically new and paradigmically disruptive, and if culture is affected significantly by technology then it is also affected punctuated instances of unintended radical innovation untended by trends. That being said, as Kurzweil has noted, a given technological paradigm “grows out of” the paradigm preceding it, and so the extents and conditions of a given paradigm will to some extent determine the conditions and allowances of the next paradigm. But that is not to say that they are predictable; they may be inherent while still remaining non-apparent. After all, the increasing trend of mechanical components’ increasing miniaturization could be seen hundreds of years ago (e.g. Babbage knew that the mechanical precision available via the manufacturing paradigms of his time would impede his ability in realizing his Baggage Engine, but that its implementation would one day be possible by the trend of increasingly precise manufacturing standards), but the fact that it could continue to culminate in the ephemeralization of Bucky Fuller (Fuller, 1976) or the mechanosynthesis of K. Eric Drexler. (Drexler, 1986). Moreover, the types of occurrence allowed by a given scientific or methodological paradigm seem at least intuitively to expand, rather than contract, as we move forward through history. This can be seen lucidly in the rise of Quantum Physics in the early 20th Century, which delivered such conceptual affronts to our intuitive-notions-of-the-possible as non-locality (i.e. quantum entanglement – and with it quantum information teleportation and even quantum energy teleportation, or in other words faster-than-light causal correlation between spatially-separated
physical entities), Einstein’s theory of relativity (which implied such counter-intuitive notions as measurement of quantities being relative to the velocity of the observer, e.g. the passing of time as measured by clocks will be different in space than on earth), and the hidden-variable-theory of David Bohm (which implied such notions as the velocity of any one particle being determined by the configuration of the entire universe). These notions belligerently contradict what we feel intuitively to be possible. Here we have claims that such strange abilities as informational and energetic teleportation, faster-than-light causality (or at least faster-than-light correlation of physical and/or informational states) and spacetime dilation are natural, non-technological properties and abilities of the physical universe. Technology is Man’s foremost mediator of change; it is by and large through the use of technology that we expand the parameters of the possible. This is why the fact that these seemingly-fantastic feats were claimed to be possible “naturally”, without technological implementation or mediation, is so significant. The notion that they are possible without technology makes them all the more fantastical and intuitively-improbable. We also sometimes forget the even more fantastic claims of what can be done through the use of technology, such as stellar engineering and mega-scale engineering, made by some of big names in science. There is the Dyson Sphere of Freeman Dyson, which details a technological method of harnessing potentially the entire energetic output of a star (Dyson 1960). One can also find speculation made by Dyson concerning the ability for “life and communication [to] continue for ever, using a finite store of energy” in an open-universe by utilizing smaller and smaller amounts of energy to power slower and slower computationally-emulated instances of thought (Dyson 1979). There is the Tipler Cylinder (also called the Tipler Time Machine) of Frank J. Tipler, which described a dense cylinder of infinite length rotating about its longitudinal axis to create closedtimelike-curves (Tipler, 1974), and while he speculated that a cylinder of finite length could produce the same effect if rotated fast enough, he didn’t provide a mathematical solution for this second claim. There is also speculation by Tipler on the ability to utilize energy harnessed from gravitational shear created by the forced collapse of the universe at different rates and different directions, which he argues would allow the universe’s computational capacity to diverge to infinity, essentially providing computationally-emulated humans and civilizations the ability to run for an infinite duration of subjective time (Tipler, 1986, 1997). We see such feats of technological grandeur paralleled by Kurt Gödel, who produced an exact solution to the Einstein field equations that describes a cosmological model of a rotating universe (Gödel, 1949). While cosmological evidence (e.g. suggesting that our universe is not a rotating one) indicates that his solution doesn’t describe the universe we live in, it nonetheless constitutes a hypothetically-possible cosmology in which time-travel (again, via closed-timelike-curve) is
possible. And because closed-timelike-curves seem to require large amounts of acceleration, i.e. amounts not attainable without the use of technology, Gödel’s case constitutes a hypothetical cosmological model allowing for technological time-travel (which might be non-obvious since Gödel’s case doesn’t incur such technological feats as a rotating cylinder of infinite length, rather being a result derived from specific physical and cosmological, i.e. non-technological, constants and properties). These are large claims made by large names in science (i.e. people who do not make claims frivolously, and in most cases require quantitative indication of their possibility, often in the form of mathematical solutions as in the cases mentioned above) and all of which are made possible solely through the use of technology. Such technological feats as the computational emulation of the human nervous system and the technological eradication of involuntary death pale in comparison to the sheer grandeur of the claims and conceptualizations outlined above. We live in a very strange universe, which is easy to forget midst our feigned mundanity. We have no excuse to express incredulity at Transhumanist and Techoprogressive conceptualizations considering how stoically we accept such notions as the existence of sentient matter (i.e. biological intelligence) or the ability of a species of great ape to stand on extraterrestrial land. Thus, one of the most common counter-arguments launched at many Transhumanist and Technoprogressive claims and conceptualizations, namely technical infeasibility based upon nothing more than incredulity and/or the lack of a definitive historical precedent, is one of the most baseless counter-arguments as well. It would be far more credible to argue for the technical infeasibility of a given endeavor within a certain time-frame. Not only do we have little if any indication that a given ability or endeavor will fail to eventually become realizable via technology given enough development-time, but we even have historical indication of the very antithesis of this claim, in the form of the many, many instances in which a given endeavor or feat was said to be impossible, only to be realized via technological mediation thereafter. It is high time we accepted the fallibility of base incredulity and the infeasibility of the technicalinfeasibility-argument. I remain stoically incredulous at the audacity of fundamental incredulity, for nothing should be incredulous to man, who makes his own credibility in any case, and who is most at home in the necessary superfluous.
NATURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND – BUT TRANSHUMANISM IS! BY: ROEN HORN
For all of human history, humans have been forced to die from the natural effects of aging. Unless humans have been living forever in secret unbeknownst to our history books, they had no choice in the matter of death. But now, with advancements in medicine and technology, death is seemingly becoming closer to being a choice for possibly, the first time in history—that is, if we survive long enough to benefit from these therapies. But even despite this apparent choice in the foreseeable future, many people claim they would still choose death and their actions suggest they are telling the truth. They seem to be very happy with accepting the hand that nature has dealt them. They show no fear as they draw nearer to the end of their lives. This attitude of accepting death is what we call Deathism. THE PARALLELS BETWEEN DEATHISM & STOCKHOLM SYNDROME In many ways, deathists exhibit symptoms of someone who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Mankind has been held hostage by death for so long that most of us have learned to be helpless and we gave up fighting. It’s as if nature’s plan of involuntary death from aging has broken our spirit, and now we just go along with the plan. We don’t question it. Betraying our own survival instincts, we have become willing victims. Feeling utterly helpless against death and aging, we eventually began to praise death as a good thing. This is comparable to a Stockholm syndrome victim developing romantic feelings for their abuser… Death has been so traumatic for our species, that many of us have actually bonded to our abuser and deny our own victimization. Now, most of society can no longer see death for the monster that it is. They have deceived themselves in order to cope with reality. Society holds nature’s plan in such high regard, that they can no longer see how nature uses and abuses them. In psychology, this is called “traumatic bonding” and is typical of someone who is suffering from
“battered-person syndrome”. Society vehemently defends death like a battered woman attempts to make excuses for her abusive partner. Our deathist society has fallen in love with an abusive monster who is holding them captive and murdering them right and left. In this hypnotic state, people cannot think rationally. Technology reaches its arm out to save them from the monster, but they treat it as though it were the enemy… Transhumanism is demonized even though it’s very possibly humanity’s only hope for physical immortality... NATURE’S EVIL SIDE When people personify “Mother Nature”, she is usually portrayed as some innocuous, gentle soul. The hippy movement is largely responsible for this view of nature. But if we were trying to be honest, we would depict nature as a cruel and vicious serial killer. Mother nature is more like a succubus. At first she seduces us with the pleasures of life, but when we’re no longer useful to populate the planet, she’ll eat you alive. Nature is the ultimate facilitator of death. The human mind is uniquely equipped with the intelligence to contemplate life and desire to live forever. But regardless of how badly we want to live, nature shows us no mercy. DEATH AS AN EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN NATURE IS NOT HUMAN HEARTED.” -
LAO TZU
For whatever reason, making humans immortal isn’t on the agenda of evolution. There is an old saying which goes, “Nature with its frugal eye asks only that we mate and die.” Many philosophers have argued that death is an evolutionary design of nature—a kind of planned obsolescence of humanity in order to keep the cycle of evolution continuing for the good of the species. The religious pass the responsibility to God, claiming that death and aging is mankind’s punishment for disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. But everything remains a theory, and regardless of which theory you go by, none of them are viable arguments to say we should not try to solve the problem of death. LUDICROUS PRO-DEATH ARGUMENTS
Some say that we have a duty to die in order to make room for the next generation and that trying to live forever is selfish. This is a man-made idea which makes no sense and the core of this argument is based on an evil prejudice against old people… In essence, what they are saying is that human beings become less important as they get older. This kind of discrimination against the elderly is repulsive and we should protest and criticize anyone who takes this ageist stance. By accepting our deaths we only perpetuate a never-ending cycle of death and meaninglessness. This self-deprecating attitude of humankind will inevitably be abandoned. We do not “owe” anything to a generation of people who have not been born! We are born and we are ALIVE. That makes us more important. Sooner or later a generation will rise up and claim physical immortality for themselves, so it might as well be us. Death should make us all very angry, and if nature will not save us, we must save ourselves. “And now, rather than being a blind process, evolution can be a process that we can control. Maybe now we don’t all have to become martyrs to improve the species. Maybe now we can improve the species while continuing to live on.” - Jason Silva
OVER-POPULATION IS EASILY SOLVED The main argument against physical immortality is of course overpopulation. But this is an absurd argument because, as a people, nothing is forcing us to keep having children. We could easily set up a world government that enforces strict birth-control policies. One option would be colonization of other planets. But, in the scenario that we were beginning to fill earth’s population capacity, we could enforce a mandate that if you wanted to have children, then you would be forced to give up your own life as an exchange for adding an additional life on this planet. Another conceivable option for would-be parents of the future is to birth simulated children into virtual worlds that are near identical to real life. In the distant future, we might actually have something similar to the holodeck of Star Trek. This way people could experience the joys of parenthood without actually burdening the planet with another human. WHY WE NEED TO REBEL AGAINST NATURE’S PLAN Any kindness nature might have shown us is canceled out by her abandonment. Nature has betrayed us with death and we owe her nothing. It’s about time we stop worshiping nature as if we had a moral obligation to follow the plan nature has set for us. Nor can we say that it’s “Gods plan” for us to age and die, because that would only be an
assumption. The knowledge of whether or not there are Gods is inaccessible to humans, including any supposed knowledge of “God’s plan”. For all we know, God would want us to embrace the principals of Transhumanism and pursue our physical immortality through lifeextension technologies. WHY A GOD WOULD APPROVE OF TRANSHUMANISM In the bible, Jesus said to strive for perfection—to strive to be as perfect as God “BE PERFECT, THEREFORE, AS YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER IS PERFECT.” - JESUS (MATTHEW 5:48)
This is the same basic idea of Transhumanism, which seeks to perfect the human condition as much as possible using advancements in technology. Considering that we have no sure knowledge of Gods or an afterlife, and God is not revealing himself to us in order to put our worries about death at ease, what should God expect us to do? If God exists, surely he would not hold it against us that we are trying to prevent our physical death, which we perceive to be a permanent and irreversible destruction of our consciousness. It is rational to assume the worst-case scenario and considering that a God has not revealed himself to humanity or proven his existence, surely he would want us to account for the possibility that he doesn’t exist. It would be suicidal for us to accept death on the mere possibility of there being an afterlife. Would God want us to be so careless with our life, which for all we know is the only life we get? It seems to me that if God exists, he would want us to show some tenacity and use our brains to become as much like a God as possible, including achieving physical immortality if it can be done. In fact, complacently accepting your death seems rather unappreciative of the gift of life, which religious people think God has gifted them with. THE DIVINITY OF MACHINERY There is something divine about the infallible nature of machinery. As humans, we have always sought to transcend the corruptibility of our flesh, which is one reason we find artificial intelligence so alluring. The human journey is one of continual self-improvement as we strive to overcome our limitations. Robots are a perfect symbolism for the perfection that we aspire for. One day we could become robots ourselves—more indestructible, more God-like than we had ever dreamed possible. Like a God, we could wield power over nature and conform it to our own desires.
It’s time we oppose the “natural order” and impose a new world order, where perfect justice can be achieved. Imagine a world where humans could be masters of their own fate and no longer had to die involuntarily. Technology offers a promising hope of salvation. Those that argue against Transhumanism are essentially arguing against the next step of human evolution, which is inevitable. The human race has always used tools to survive and protect ourselves and this process will continue for as long as we are alive. We are finally developing tools that may enable us to achieve unlimited lifespans.
LONGEVITY IN THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISLAMIC TRADITION BY: ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D
The Middle East has often been perceived as a constantly belligerent area, where human life has been held cheap, since the time of despots and tribal wars well to the present. Yet, in fact, the Middle East would be more appropriately seen as a cradle of civilization, where many ideas of human development had their roots, where many technological and scientific concepts were first formulated, and where the goals of preserving and extending human life, even ideas of radically extended longevity, have been pronounced among the earliest. Hopefully, the few examples below will help to see the Middle East not chiefly as an arena of ruthless confrontation, but as it has mostly been – a fertile ground for creativity and pursuit of life. Thus one of the earliest known works of literature is in fact also one of the earliest representations of the pursuit of life, rejuvenation and life-extension, and it stems from the Middle East. This is the Sumero-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, a story about the hero’s struggle with death. (The most complete version has been dated from circa 1300 BCE to 650 BCE, but the story possibly originated as early as about 3000 BCE.) According to the Epic of Gilgamesh: “There is a plant like a thorn with its root [deep down in the ocean], Like unto those of the briar (in sooth) its prickles will scratch [thee], (Yet) if thy hand reach this plant, [thou’lt surely find life (everlasting)].”[1] The plant has been sometimes likened to box-thorn and dog-rose. There are striking parallels between the description of the immortalizing plant and the story of the extremely long-lived Utnapishtim in the epic of Gilgamesh, and the biblical stories (with the composition sometimes dated c. 1300 BCE to 450 BCE) about the “tree of life,” the original potential physical immortality of human
beings and its loss due to ill will, as well as about the extreme and admirable longevity of antediluvian patriarchs (Genesis 2:9, 3:22-24, 5:1-32). In the Avesta, the sacred text of the Iranian Zoroastrian religion (with estimated dates of origin ranging from 1200 BCE to 200 BCE), during the rule of the mythical king Jamshid (Yima), people knew no disease, aging and death.[2] The legendary “cup of Jamshid” was said to be a container for the elixir of immortality and at the same time a means for information retrieval (scrying/remote viewing). According to the Persian poet Ferdowsi (940-1020, CE), as told in the epic poem Shah Nameh, Jamshid became proud and his reign of prosperity and longevity was terminated by the demonic king Zahhak.[3] Also in ancient Egypt, longevity and rejuvenation were celebrated. It may even be argued that many of the pioneering technologies of ancient Egypt, from pyramid construction to embalming and surgery, emerged in the pursuit of life preservation, balance, constancy or immortality. In one of the earliest known Egyptian medical papyruses, “The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus” (commonly dated to the period of the New Kingdom of Egypt, c. 1500 BCE), there is a “Recipe for Transforming an Old Man into a Youth.” The recipe involved the external use of bruised and dried hemayet-fruit (with recent identifications varying from fenugreek to almond). The remedy would not only have a cosmetic anti-aging effect – remove wrinkles, beautify the skin, remove blemishes, disfigurements, and “all signs of age” – but it would also have a true rejuvenating effect, as it would remove “all weaknesses which are in the flesh”.[4] And in yet another ancient Egyptian medical papyrus, The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1500-1600 BCE), there are anti-aging cosmetic remedies to prevent the graying of hair (for example by the use of honey, onion water, donkey liver and crocodile fat), and to stimulate hair growth (for example by the use of flaxseed oil, gazelle excrements and snake fat). Actual treatment of aging was also mentioned: “When you examine a person … whose heart is weak as when old age comes upon him, you say: ‘This is an accumulation of diseased juices,’ the person should not arrogantly dismiss the disease or trust in weak remedies.”[5] The legendary chief minister to the Egyptian pharaoh Djoser, and the reputed builder of the first step pyramid, Imhotep (c. 2650-2600 BCE), too was said to be skilled in the art of rejuvenation.
Also, according to the “Turin Papyrus” and other sources, the ruling periods of Egyptian kings in the first and second dynasty (up to c. 2500 BCE) were allegedly very long (up to 100 years) and the kings’ lifespans were believed to reach into hundreds.[6] The vitality and longevity were revered. Egypt was also apparently the birthplace of alchemy, aiming at the manipulation of matter generally, and improvement of health and longevity in particular. And alchemy’s growth and maturation took place broadly in the Middle East. The world “al-kimia” is of Arabic origin, “al” being the Arabic definite article, and the etymology of “kimia” being very uncertain, with hypotheses ranging from the Greek “Khemeioa” (appearing c. 296 CE. in the decree of the Roman Emperor Diocletian banning the “old writings” of Egyptian “makers” (counterfeiters) of gold and silver; “Khemia” (“the land of black earth,” the old name of Egypt); or some other Greek etymology of the Hellenic Middle East: e.g. “khymatos” (pouring/infusing in Greek) or “khymos (the Greek word for juice), etc. In either case, clearly Egypt was a hotbed of this pursuit.[7] The term “alchemy” apparently took root in Europe only in the 12th century, and was apparently borrowed from the Middle East. The first European alchemical text was translated from Arabic, presumably by Robert of Chester in 1144 and was entitled Liber de compositione alchimiae (The book of alchemical composition). This was allegedly a translation from Arabic into Latin of an epistle of the Egyptian-Greek-Christian alchemist Marianos to the Arab alchemical adept, the Umayyad prince Khalid ibn Yazid (665-704 CE).[8] Also the word “elixir” comes from the Arabic “al-iksir” (dry medicinal powder), as well as many other terms currently found in modern science and born in the pursuits of Islamic alchemists, such as realgar (“raj al-har”), nushadir, alcohol (“al-kuhul”) and many more. Many Islamic alchemists spoke very explicitly about the possibility of radical life extension, which according to their views did not contain any contradiction with the Koran. Thus one of the founding figures of alchemy is
considered to be the Baghdad scholar and physician Abu Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān (also known as Jabir in Arabic and Geber in Latin, c. 721-815) whose theory of elements profoundly influenced both the Islamic and European (Latin-Christian) alchemy. In one of his treatises Jabir stated: “If you could take a man, dissect him in such a way as to balance his natures [qualities] and then restore him to life, he would no longer be subject to death. … This equilibrium once obtained, they will no longer be subject to change, alteration or modification and neither they nor their children ever will perish.”[9] Also according to the alchemist Ibn-Bishrun (c. 1000 CE), quoted by the Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldoun (13321406):[10] “Man suffers from the disharmony of his component elements. If his elements were in complete harmony and thus not effected by accidents and inner contradictions, the soul would not be able to leave his body.” Indeed, Islam has been sometimes presented as somehow intrinsically antagonistic to the idea of life extension. Often the story about the “70 virgins” hopefully awaiting the martyrs in Heaven (a loose paraphrase on Hadith 2687) and similar ones are regurgitated, aiming to demonstrate the alleged denigration of this worldly life in Islam. Yet, in fact Islamic thought has not been inherently opposed to the idea of life extension or even to radical life-extension! There are strong currents favoring this pursuit. Thus, the book Al-Imam al-Mahdi, The Just Leader of Humanity by Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini (b. 1925, a foremost Islamic scholar, since 1999 Vice President of the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran), includes the chapter “The Research About Longevity.” In the chapter, the necessity to pursue longevity research is largely derived from the desire to explain and emulate the remarkable longevity of Al-Mahdi – – مهديthe
messianic “Last Imam” who, in the belief of the Twelver Shi’a Muslims (the largest branch of Shi’a Islam) will come to protect mankind and, together with Jesus, will bring peace and justice to the world. According to this tradition, the Last Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, was born c. 869 CE (255 AH - anno hegirae), and has not died but lives in “occultation.” Biological science is required to explain this fact and make such great longevity a gift to humanity. As the book states: “There is no such age fixed for human life the transgression of which would be impossible. …. All the above observations in the medical and biological sciences make it possible for human beings to expect to discover the secret of longevity and overcome old age one day. Moreover, it has prompted them to continue their research until the goal is reached. There is hope that scientific research into understanding the mystery of longevity will also lead to uncovering the secret of the long life of the Qa'im [al-Mahdi] from the Family of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his progeny). Let us hope that day will come soon.” These were the words of Dr. Abu Turab Nafisi, Professor and Chair of the School of Medicine, University of Isfahan, Iran, and they were cited approvingly.[11] Other Islamic scholars agree. Thus according to the article “The Long Life Span of Imam Mahdi (A.S.)” at the Imam Reza website (affiliated to the Ahlul Bayt – ‘People of the House’ – Global Center for Information), the Islamic tradition acknowledges the possibility of extended life spans, such as those of Noah, Jesus, Khidhr (“the green one”), or Dajjal. Hence, “There is no dispute amongst theists and followers of Divine Religions about the possibility of extended longevity and that there is no limitation on the human life span.” The views of great Islamic thinkers on the subject, as quoted in the article, are unambiguous: The Persian scientist and philosopher Khwajah Nasir al Deen Tusi (1201-1274 CE) said: ‘Extended life spans have occurred for other than al-Mahdi (p.b.u.h.) and been recorded, and for this very reason it is pure ignorance to consider his longevity as improbable.’ The great Tajik-Persian physician, Avicenna (Abū Alī al-Husayn ibn Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā, c. 9801037) said: ‘Consider as possible whatever you hear about the strange things until you have no reason to reject it.’ And more recently, the Azerbaijan-Iranian philosopher and theologian Allamah Tabataba'i (1904-1981 CE) stated: ‘There are no intellectual reasons or rules to denote the impossibility of
an extended life span; therefore, we cannot deny it.’ The article continues: “As we have seen, the Holy Qur’an, the noble traditions, intellect, and history, provide proof of the possibility and the existence of extended longevity. … From a biological, medical or scientific point of view, the human life span does not have a specific time frame where exceeding it would be considered impossible. No scientist up to now has stated that a specified amount of years is the maximum limit of the human life span after which death would be certain. Indeed some scientists, from the east and west, old and new, have stipulated that the human life span is not limited and in fact humans can have power over their deaths by delaying it and thus extending their life spans. This scientific hypothesis encourages scientists to research and administer tests day and night in hope of success. Through these tests they have proved that death, is similar to other illnesses because it is an effect of natural causes which, if they could be discovered and altered, death can be delayed. Just as scientists have been able to discover remedies for different illnesses through research, they can do the same for death.”[12] Thus, clearly extended longevity is considered as theoretically possible, ethically desirable and practically and scientifically feasible by the Islamic tradition. However, according to Aisha Y. Musa’s article “A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity” (2009), the idea of physical immortality, of a complete defeat of death would be incompatible with an Islamic view. According to the author: “The Qur’an declares unambiguously that “whenever you are death will find you,” and “every soul will taste death”. These verses have always been understood to preclude the possibility of earthly immortality.”[13] Still, according to the author, by reinterpreting certain key concepts of Islam (such as Heaven (“Jannah”) and Hell (“Jahannam”) understood not as physical places but as states of the soul; the concept of “the first death” understood not as a transition to unearthly paradise, but as a radical spiritual change in this world (e.g. the death of old and harmful habits); and the notion of Thereafter (“akhira”) understood not as an afterlife but as a new stage of evolution – then even the idea of “practical immortality” (that is to say, not actual, but potential or biological immortality) would be acceptable by Islam.
Yet, even without such far-reaching reinterpretations, the core Islamic values clearly favor the pursuit of life extension and even radical life extension. And these values are equally shared also by representatives of other religions as well as non-religious denominations of the Middle East. Thus according to the Iranian philosopher, one of the chief founders of the transhumanist intellectual movement, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary (pseudonym FM-2030, 1930-2000), “More than ever therefore it is urgent to overcome death. The conquest of death is the single transcendent triumph which in one sweep will defuse all other human problems.”[14] That was an extremely optimistic forecast. The conflicts in the Middle East and in the area generally known as the “Islamic World” are real. Yet the issue of protecting and extending life needs to be raised again with great force, to overcome the destructive tendencies, to leverage the tremendous economic and human potential of the area, to work toward the practical realization of the noble intellectual tradition, to achieve healthy longevity for all.
[1] The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by R. Campbell Thompson, 1928, Tablet 11. “The Flood, lines 268-270, The magic gift of restored youth,” reprinted at Sacred Texts, http://www.sacredtexts.com/ane/eog/index.htm. [2] “Avesta: Venidad. Fargard 2. Yima (Jamshed) and the deluge,” translated by James Darmesteter, from Sacred Books of the East, American Edition, 1898, http://www.avesta.org/vendidad/vd2sbe.htm. [3] Ferdowsi, The Epic of Kings, Translated by Helen Zimmern, 1883, “The Shahs of Old,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/shahnama.txt. [4] James Henry Breasted (Translator and Editor), The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1930, XXI9-XXII10, pp. 506-507. [5] H. Joachim (Translator and Editor), Papyrus Ebers. Das Alteste Buch Uber Heilkunde (The Ebers Papyrus, The Oldest Book on Medicine), Georg Reimer, Berlin 1890, pp. 105-107, 43-44. [6] A.H. Gardiner, The Royal Canon of Turin, Oxford, 1959. For lists of mythical longevity cases, see for example, the compilation Craig Paardekooper, Records of Human Longevity from Other Nations, 2001, mentioning the Turin papyrus and other sources, http://s8int.com/phile/page44.html; http://saturniancosmology.org/files/kings/turin5.txt. See also the Wikipedia article “Longevity Myths” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_myths
[7] Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2012 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=alchemy; Alchemy Academy Archive, June 2006, “Diocletian's Edict against alchemy,” http://www.levity.com/alchemy/a-archive_jun06.html.) [8] Alchemy Academy Archive, January 2002, “Maryanos,” http://www.levity.com/alchemy/aarchive_jan02.html. [9] Quoted in Gerald Joseph Gruman, A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life. The Evolution of Prolongevity Hypotheses to 1800, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 56 (9), Philadelphia, 1966, “Arabic Alchemy: The Missing Link?” p. 60. [10] Quoted in Gerald Joseph Gruman, A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life. The Evolution of Prolongevity Hypotheses to 1800, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 56 (9), Philadelphia, 1966, “Arabic Alchemy: The Missing Link?” p. 60. “Alchemy in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah,” Edited and prepared by Prof. Hamed A. Ead, Cairo University, Giza, 1998, http://www.levity.com/alchemy/islam20.html. [11] Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini, Al-Imam al-Mahdi, The Just Leader of Humanity, Ch. 9 “The Research About Longevity,” translated by Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina, 1996, reprinted at “AlIslam” – The Ahlul Bayt Digital Library Project, Spring Lake Park, MN – a repository of Islamic cultural resources, http://www.al-islam.org/mahdi/nontl/Chap-9.htm; http://ibrahimamini.ir/english/. [12] “The Long Life Span of Imam Mahdi http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=7127
(A.S.)”
Imam
Reza,
2012,
[13] Aisha Y. Musa, “A Thousand Years, Less Fifty: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity,” in Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher (Eds.), Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, Macmillan Palgrave, New York, 2009, pp. 123-131. [14] Esfandiary, F.M., Up-wingers. A futurist manifesto. Popular Library, Toronto, 1977, p. 177.
COULD RELIGIONS COME TO ADOPT A NATURALISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON RESSURECTION AND JUDGEMENT?
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Religions and religious doctrines evolve all the time – and this is a fact that warrants hope. I have long speculated that some future strains of Christianity might come to view the promise of resurrection as one of renewed life in this world – not in some ethereal Platonic world of souls that many Christians today seem to consider Heaven to be. Robert Ettinger, the founder of the cryonics movement, wrote an excellent short story, “The Penultimate Trump,” in 1948. In this story, the suspended animation of humans enables them to be restored to life and youthfulness hundreds of years later. At that time, they are judged on the basis of their past actions and, if they committed sufficient misdeeds, are flown to the penal colony on Mars, which has been renamed Hell. (I recommend everyone to read the full short story, so I will say no more on its contents.) Perhaps the promise of resurrection and judgment will be fulfilled through naturalistic means in this world – and cryonically preserved humans will indeed be judged by their more morally advanced future counterparts upon their revival. An even more distant future possibility might be the revival of non-preserved humans from even a remoter past, if it ever becomes possible to reconstitute entire bodies and minds from the data included in whatever DNA samples from these persons might have remained. In this case, the “judgment” might consist of deciding whom to revive. We would want Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin around, but not Hitler or Tamerlane. I myself am an atheist, but I welcome any adjustments in the theological views of religious people that would render such persons more comfortable with and supporting of technological progress that will ultimately benefit us all.
WHAT WILL LIFE-EXTENSION DO TO RELATIONSHIPS? BY: LINDA GAMBLE
Once we are capable of living for hundreds of years, what will become of our interpersonal human relationships? Life extension and then radical life extension are realities that are just around the corner. We haven’t caught up to this fact in redefining our relationships. Technology is advancing at a much quicker rate than are our social systems, our family structures, our comprehensive schema about each other and the roles we have in each other’s lives. A serious examination of the elements of interpersonal as well as intrapersonal interactions is needed as we grow toward integrating longevity, artificial intelligence and medical/psychological advances into our rapidly changing realities. Let’s consider the most extreme relationship; romantic monogamy and its social institution of marriage. Although there are many forms; for the sake of brevity I will only discuss heterosexual partnering. Evolutionary psychology suggests that there is a reason the average length of time before a marriage encounters serious problems and many times divorce, is about 4 years. That’s roughly the time it takes to raise a human offspring to some degree of self-sufficiency; when it has enough teeth to stop breast feeding, it’s gross and fine motor skills have reached the point that it could keep up with adults and begin to contribute to group tasks, and it has mastered a significant amount of communication skills. However, before that age it is biologically wise to have two parents watching, protecting and feeding the child. After that time, a pair bond is less useful; at least as far as the child’s basic survival. Many social scientists believe that the institution of marriage as it exists today also had simply utilitarian or economic origins. The idea of mating for love didn’t arise until as recently as the Victorian era. Previously, most cultures recognized and encouraged arranged or politically strategic marriages of one degree or another. So what will become of this relationship when it no longer serves the purpose of passing genetic material safely on through the next generations, or securing political power through amassing land and wealth? What will happen to commitment when you face not 60 years, but 600 years with the same person? Will the addition of AI partners in the bedroom (or kitchen, or living room) enhance intimate pair bonding or degrade it? We already know that loving relationships increase life span and quality of life. I believe that the
first step in this new evolution toward becoming capable of sustaining mental health in longevity was the change from utilitarian couplings, to choosing a partner out of love. I think we are still novices at it. It is messy and frustrating and painful and joyful and ecstatic and passionate and paralyzing all at the same time. The deeper the love; the stronger we feel these things; the stronger our chemistry is responding, the more our brains are being shaped by the experience. We are learning to control this torrent of feeling and channel it into higher forms of being together. We have experienced it for millennia, no doubt, we have sublimated it into art, poetry, music as the force quite literally spills out of us. But now, as we study and understand more about what makes, maintains and is important in human relationships, we begin to see that the next step includes these creative processes, but now needs to be focused on specific issues. I suggest that as we eventually master the art of romantic love, pair bonds will become more intentional, more practical and therefore more meaningful. I see the higher aspects of the human psyche like honesty, empathy and altruism becoming more and more an outward expression. I see a time when something like the ancient European ritual of hand fasting returns. For example, marriage vows may become renewable in five years or fifty or 200 as that becomes the new measure of time. Of course some couples may still choose to bond for eternity. And now it will be more possible and we can also understand better what that entails; making deeper more sincere vows. As couples consciously choose to remain together, the elements of the relationship; trust, commitment, teamwork are enhanced and renewed. Instead of what happens too often today where couples stay together in fear of divorce but communication breaks down, resentments fester and infidelity is rampant. We are evolving toward a more compassionate way of being and relating. I see the introduction of AI into the household as a way to free up more mindful time spent together, as machines take over menial tasks. Perhaps over many generations this will allow for further cognitive evolution and further capacity for psychological bonding through exploration and contribution to the world and beyond. AI sexual partners could also provide new territory for a couple to explore together. Introducing something like that will require at the beginning a foundation of trust, open communication and each partner supporting the emotional and physical needs of the other in novel ways. This positive direction will of course require courageous intra personal advancement. We will need to dedicate significant time on introspection and insight through meditation, psychotherapy, psychoeducation, creative growth and even embracing personal struggle and overcoming challenges. We will need to push the envelope of our comfort zones emotionally and intellectually; reaching for new landscapes to inhabit and find new identities within. We will need to become more balanced between logic and mystery, knowledge and intuition, practicality and spontaneity. Our tolerance for pain will need to increase as we grow more resilient and able to live in a new world in new ways. We must first examine and care for our internal existences before we then can seek to improve and redefine out external existence. Our intra personal reality must shift before we can navigate the interpersonal changes that are coming to our and the next generations. Before we can develop the compassion to care for a mate for 600 years, or the desire
to grow in all directions at once with someone, to overcome the epidemic family breakdown and chaos most children grow up in, we must first look inside. Of course this kind of work will depend on attention to physical health, as mind and body are one. Commitment to keeping oneself healthy through exercise, supplements, nutrition, experiences in nature and avoiding stress will be a necessary part of having the endurance to grow alone and together. The transhuman evolution that radical life extension will bring begins with each individual and then becomes a collective growth. Increased longevity will redefine our entire understanding of ourselves and each other and our interconnectivity. We have a commitment to seek out the knowledge, skills and resources that will make our transition into longevity productive and healthy; insuring we are taking steps in the right direction to continue to grow with and not away from loving relationships.
WHAT WILL LIFE EXTENSION DO TO CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT?
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Importantly, there would be considerably less crime in a society where indefinite life extension has been achieved. People would have fewer motivations to commit crime, as they would be considerably healthier, happier, and more prosperous. Moreover, they would have more to lose through criminal punishment. They would make plans with a much longer time horizon in mind, and criminal behavior could derail those ambitious plans. My general view is that criminal punishment would be transformed, especially in the case of capital punishment. Capital punishment might itself be redefined from execution to the simple withholding of life-extension therapies, allowing the unmitigated process of senescence to proceed. This would be effective in allowing appeals and the discovery of evidence of innocence – since a biologically young offender might have a good sixty years in which to make a successful case. I still see the need for that kind of “death penalty” for actual murder, though. Depriving a person of life in a society where indefinite life is possible is no longer a matter of shortening a life by a few decades. Rather, it curtails a potentially unlimited lifespan, full of irreplaceable individual experiences, achievements, and values. Thus, while the troubling aspects of physically violent execution might disappear, the severity with which the offense of murder is perceived would also increase. For some people who might otherwise have been inclined toward crime, this might lead them to reconsider and form internal inhibitions. As regards imprisonment, being incarcerated for life would be much more severe of a punishment if a person is to live indefinitely – especially if parole is not an option. Perhaps this sort of life imprisonment would be used for offenses that are a degree less egregious than the kinds of offenses that result in the gradual “natural” death penalty that consists of withdrawing rejuvenation treatments. For lesser offenses, though, the focus of the criminal-justice system would shift from punishment to restitution. In a future that is far more prosperous and where advanced medical care is abundant, it would be much easier to fix injuries or restore property to a pre-damaged form. The offender would be asked to pay for the damage (perhaps twice the cost, in accordance with Murray Rothbard’s “two teeth for a tooth” rule of restitution).
HUMANITY’S NATURE IS TO TAKE ON PROBLEMS LIKE DEATH
BY: MILE
Can the ant help but build the mound, the bee the honeycomb, the bird the nest? Like them, like most if not all creatures, we can’t help but innovate things that are available to us. I don’t see that we could if we tried. That is what humans do, it is natural that humans expand their horizons. Indefinite life extensionist and futurist Ray Kurzweil asks us why we should define humans by their limitations rather than their ability to supersede them, and I concur with that thought. Why long for a shot at being alive indefinitely into the future of it all, rather than not? Why not just live a normal life of childhood exploration, school, work, family, recreation and retirement then reserve a burial plot and arrange for somebody to dump our remains into it like most people? When you can progress, it is natural to. When a healthy seedling is laying at the right point in the soil, and moisture and sunlight reach it, it doesn’t decide whether or not it wants to sprout, it cannot help but sprout. What healthy newborn doesn’t walk and take up speech? When their teachers open those doors, they don’t choose to go through. They go through because they must. They can’t help but harness opportunities that are available to them. The prokaryotes didn’t make their way to becoming fish, and then the fish didn’t start to walk on land just so they could have land-fish races, they kept transcending. When the boundaries of the frontiers are able to be moved back further, then we don’t let the opportunity go to waste. A creature of contrivance doesn’t resign itself to the box it is in if it knows that it is in the box (another reason for presenting people with “Existences Big Picture Big 8 Categories and Standalone Opportunities”). Filling the spaces and aptitudes that we can is an essential part of what it means to exist. Sometimes others lead the way to these spaces and aptitudes, sometimes we stumble upon them and sometimes we have to use our senses, and think, to find them. We have evolved into natural innovators and we can be proactive pioneers. Every creature that I’ve ever seen, that wasn’t trained otherwise, that was put in a cage or aquarium, has relentlessly tried to get out. Once one finds and shows the way, then the others go
through or figure it out. The builders of the first libraries weren’t among the only small groups to ever populate their isles. Christopher Columbus and his crews were not among a few Europeans to ever dine in the Americas. Lewis & Clark were not the only settlers to cross the trails to the Pacific coast. Jenner, Pasteur and Koch were not among the only few to harness the powers of science and extrapolate its potentials. We aren’t rubbing sticks together and searching for animals with stone axes anymore. We contemplated and continue to contemplate the edges of the camps, dreaming up creative ways to continue expanding what we have in every way. Human willpower, like rivers, chisels through mountains of any size. The river of human willpower has been and continues to surge forward, growing stronger as it batters the walls of death. Our species is in the business of knocking down challenges. We can’t shy away from them, we don’t know how. It’s not in our blood. Our genes will not allow us to. We have battled obstacles for eons until we made it through when we had to. We take on death and work for indefinite life extension because we can’t help it. We have to. If you haven’t started supporting it yet, you will.
THE GLOBAL BRAIN & ITS ROLE IN HUMAN BIOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY BY: MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL.,
It would be helpful to discuss these theoretical concepts because there could be significant practical and existential implications. The Global Brain (GB) is an emergent world-wide entity of distributed intelligence, facilitated by communication and the meaningful interconnections between millions of humans via technology (such as the internet). For my purposes I take it to mean the expressive integration of all (or the majority) of human brains through technology and communication, a Metasystem Transition from the human brain to a global (Earth) brain. The GB is truly global not only in geographical terms but also in function. It has been suggested that the GB has clear analogies with the human brain. For example, the basic unit of the human brain (HB) is the neuron, whereas the basic unit of the GB is the human brain. Whilst the HB is space-restricted within our cranium, the GB is constrained within this planet. The HB contains several regions that have specific functions themselves, but are also connected to the whole (e.g. occipital cortex for vision, temporal cortex for auditory function, thalamus etc.). The GB contains several regions that have specific functions themselves, but are connected to the whole (e.g. search engines, governments, etc.). Some specific analogies are: 1. The Broca’s area in the inferior frontal gyrus, associated with speech. This could be the equivalent of, say, Rubert Murdoch’s communication empire. 2. The motor cortex is the equivalent of the world-wide railway system. 3. The sensory system in the brain is the equivalent of all digital sensors, CCTV network, internet uploading facilities etc.
If we accept that the GB will eventually become fully operational (and this may happen within the next 40-50 years), then there could be severe repercussions on human evolution. Apart from the fact that we could be able to change our genetic make-up using technology (through synthetic biology or nanotechnology for example) there could be new evolutionary pressures that can help extend human lifespan to an indefinite degree. Empirically, we find that there could be a basic underlying law that allows cortical neurons (the most relevant in my analogy) the same general lifespan as their human host. As natural laws are universal, I would expect the same law to operate in similar metasystems, i.e. in my analogy with humans being the basic operating units of the GB. In that case, I ask: If, there is an axiom positing that individual units (neurons) within a brain must live as long as the brain itself, i.e. 100-120 years, then, the individual units (human brains and, therefore, whole humans) within a GB must live as long as the GB itself, i.e. indefinitely. Humans will become deeply integrated and embedded into the GB’s virtual and real structures, that it may make more sense from the allocation of resources point of view, to maintain existing humans indefinitely, rather than eliminate them through ageing and create new ones, who would then need extra resources in order to re-integrate themselves into the GB. The net result will be that humans will start experiencing an unprecedented prolongation of their lifespan, during a process whereby the GB evolves to higher levels of complexity at a low thermodynamical cost. It is known that that new neurons are formed during adulthood, at least in certain parts of the brain. This would be the equivalent of new babies being born to replace any human losses within the GB. However, the majority of cortical neurons are maintained in good operating condition and remain the same entities throughout life, instead of actively being replaced every few weeks (as in the case of, say, skin or blood cells). According to some predictions, humans will increasingly embed themselves within this global brain by way of highly sophisticated digital interfaces (first examples are iphones) that can anticipate the subject’s wishes, preferences, habits etc. Eventually, there could be suitable technology that can allow direct brain to computer (GB) communication. If this is the case, I would expect that it will cost more in energy terms to replace a human brain (through creating a new one via the conventional lines) rather than maintain the existing one. Research shows that new neurons that are not well integrated into the brain die prematurely. The same phenomenon could be true with humans: in order to survive a human brain must entirely integrate itself into the structure of the GB. When fully operational, the GB must rely on its individual constituents i.e. individual human
brains interconnected through technology. Without human input, the GB cannot exist. Furthermore, it cannot exist without technology. This is the same as in the human brain: a neuron contributes to the whole, but without suitable connections the neuron does not survive. There is no magic involved. The sequence of events will happen naturally, based on natural laws. Human brains as individual units of the GB, will be subjected to increased pressures in order to survive longer. This is not a teleological argument. The GB does not have any intent or purpose. It is just an instrument of nature, forming part of the general direction of evolution: from simple to complex. And it is not a matter of living longer as a result of just using Facebook. It is a matter of a total, purposeful commitment to embed oneself into the GB and increase meaningful input of cognitive information of sufficient magnitude into one’s own brain. This will cause epigenetic changes, through a mechanism I describe elsewhere, that will repair and maintain somatic cells and reduce their risk of dying through ageing.
LIFE IS WORTH LIVING – FOREVER!
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Most people are astonished when I tell them that I would like to live forever. “Would that not get extremely boring after a long time?” many of them ask. I respond, “Being dead—sensing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing—would be far more boring. Besides, one is dead forever; once one is dead, one cannot simply recognize the misfortune of one’s situation and decide that one will not be dead anymore.” An absence of everything is far more boring than a presence of anything. Indeed, I cannot even readily conceive a life that is necessarily uninteresting. Consider this: there is a vast number of fascinating books in the world. Let us hypothesize an individual who spends all his time reading them; he is a swift reader and can read one book per day. If he is extremely fortunate by today’s standards and lives long enough to read one book per day for 100 years, he will have read 36,525 books in all. But how many books are in an ordinary public library? 100,000? 200,000? In what is more than a contemporary lifetime, this extraordinary reader would not be able to even purvey a third of a single library! How can anyone claim that such a paltry span of time can ever exhaust life’s possibilities? Let us now hypothesize our reader becoming immortal and continuing to read one book per day. Will he ever run out of books to read? By no means. Wikipedia states that in 2005, 378,000 new titles were published in the United States and the United Kingdom combined—an average of about 1036 per day. Assuming that our reader only cares about books published in the U. S. and the U. K., for every day that the list of books he has read increases by one, the list of books he has not read increases by 1035. Given that the progress of science, education, and culture continues to greatly accelerate the publication of new titles, this gap can only increase at everincreasing rates in the future. Thus, our reader will not only never run out of things to read; he will never experience even a tiny fraction of all the wonderful literature humans produce. How can life ever be boring when there are so many excellent books at one’s fingertips? Of course, the joy of reading does not even nearly approach the total joy of living; it is but a small component thereof. If we add to the list of interesting and desirable occupations the
visitation of every remarkable place in the world, success in every productive profession, the cultivation and maintenance of bodily health through exercise, the enjoyment of the company of one’s family and friends, and the undertaking of profound contemplation about a myriad of topics, then every day life will offer us millions of hours’ worth of opportunities, of which we, alas, can only exercise twenty-four. This requires prioritizing so as to maximize the values gained, but it also assures us that we can never run out of interesting things to do and to experience. Let us hope, then, that medical technology advances sufficiently in our lifetimes to keep us alive indefinitely. No matter how long a time we have, it is possible to spend it in a sublime manner. There is no contest between this vast world and its bounties for the human mind on the one hand and absolute nothingness, the void of death on the other. Life wins, hands down.
AMALGAMATION OF INDEFINITE LIFE EXTENSION AND TRANSCENDENCE AS WE MOVE TOWARD THE FUTURE BY: JAMESON ROHRER
Indefinite Life Extension is truly about ‘transcendence”, but also our capabilities and capacities as beings as well as our planets that will be enhanced, improved, augmented, and digitized among a myriad of other possibilities. Something that occurred recently is unequivocally a giant step forward in our potential to truly transcend to the next stage of humanity: decision approved to begin plans on harnessing solar energy in space and sending it back to Earth for humans to have access to clean limitless energy. This week, the National Space Society (NSS) announced a new international initiative in which the US, India and other nations will band together to develop space based solar power. Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Former President of the Republic of India and Mr. Mark Hopkins, executive committee chairman of the National Space Society said that the initiative has the potential of solving humanity’s energy needs and greatly mitigating climate change. In this bold next step towards not only energy independence, space exploration and harnessing of limitless resources, life extension beyond what our current biological limitations allows, continues to be the beat of the drum towards, aka “transcending our biology”. Every energy infrastructure project that we can complete which lessens the burden of disease, polluted airways, work, and monetary expenditure over the long term, is a significant step towards allowing ourselves the potential to apply technologies for immortal life. In the designing, construction, and completing of this space solar energy project, inspiration will come to many humans to become advocates of life extension technologies. Also, in creation of this space solar array we as a global intelligence will be practicing methodologies, development of strategic teams and the funding needed for space colonization on the moon, Mars and beyond. Having the ability to conduct such missions is vital in the pursuit for indefinite life and transcendence. It will be especially significant for many of us, that projects such as these will actually be
completed in our lifetime, and can actually be completed in our lifetimes, and many other places our species can reach. What use is there in the supporting organizations that focus on the unseen, on“faith”, when we have the greatest opportunity to seek indefinite life and find more of the unseen than we could have ever thought possible. By supporting projects such as this and life extension organizations around the world, we will be allowing a greater chance for our species to reach new heights. We all need to be supporting projects, taxes, and organizations that support the development of the health and longevity of human beings. In harnessing solar energy, not only should we focus on those projects occurring out in space for our benefit, but also harnessing, storing, and sustaining solar energy within ourselves. Scientists recently have been able to place an antenna on a cell, and on that cell can harvest solar energy. This is an important development for now, because we can harvest energy our bodies are currently exposed to on the cellular level, and in the future will have developed nano skin-cells that mimic human skill cells however solar energy conversion ratio will be much more efficient. Scientists have even taken this a step further, going into the brain. They also figured out how to place photo receptor proteins on a specific type of neuron cell in the brain of their choice, in which those receptors use flashes of light (solar energy) to activate and deactivate them at will. So not only will our bodies be able to harness solar energy, but will also have the ability to shut that ability on and off at will. Pursuing projects, funding, and government policy that reinforce the proponents of life extension, enhancements are of crucial important for us in the coming decades, not only within ourselves, but space and the quantum entanglement. Becoming immortal, in whatever form that may be is essential in our species’ quest to comprehend as much of this existence as we possibly can, and to continue asking further questions. Wanting to live forever is what gives life meaning, not death and placing faith and comfort in past traditions that rely on the unseen and subordinate. Instead look to the important things that truly matter: eradicating disease, increasing human lifespans, increasing clean energy and output, space exploration, human enhancement, living immortal by whatever means is most accessible/important to oneself. Let’s be those generations of humans that were not content with staying as they were, but wanted to improve their health, their lifestyles, enhance them bodies and minds, but most importantly lived with the intent and drive to “transcend”.
DEATH COSTS THE WORLD A LOT OF OPPORTUNITY BY: ERIC SCHULKE AND VIOLETTA KARKUCINSKA
We take off our blindfolds when we are born. Here we are, on the planet earth, gifted with hands, feet, organs, eyes, ears and more. Our senses are the blueprint on which we construct our life. We build complex tools and create industry and technology. We possess so many realitysculpting capacities. Life brings energy and power—like a drug within a drug. It encompasses everything from the largest trees to the smallest fish, and even includes microscopic amoeba and single-celled organisms. Opportunities are goodness itself—something from nothing—extropy from entropy. It is evolution and development. While we are here we have these magnificent opportunities—for the time being. Death is on its way. It will be here soon. As it draws near it gradually saps our potential and ultimately slams the door shut forever. It comes for the laborer, it comes for the scholars, it comes for the children; it comes for everyone. It dissolves the generations. For most of us it’s like getting slapped in the face when we reach the end. It’s horrific. This ghastly torture is the flame that our species was forged in. Like a steely blade we pull our destiny out of the flame— it’s long, solid and sharp—but unable to perform its job indefinitely. How much would you be able to accomplish, how many dreams would you make come true for yourself and for all of humanity, if your sword wasn’t wrestled away by death? Death wastefully terminates great minds, the architects of our world, the problem solvers, the boundary expanders: Copernicus, Einstein, Newton, et al. It cuts short the lives of animals such as the majestic butterflies, fish and birds. It kills the beauty around us in the natural world and in people. Death, the dying process, it is our enemy. Death is our ultimate foe. For many centuries procreation has been our genetic strategy in obtaining a type of immortality. It keeps humanity moving forward. The question is: do we need it at the same level as our ancestors? Today people don’t have the necessity to procreate for the sake of the species. Some say death is necessary to make room for new generations so they can bring infusions of new
insight and create progress. What about the insights and progress lost from those with more experience and knowledge? Procreation is compelling for some people who truly want to bring new life into the world. For others it’s about blindly keeping up with tradition. If we don’t need it for survival then it is a time-consuming tradition that wastes valuable energy. Not only that, it treats women like procreation machines. Is it much different than a farm? Is that what humanity is reduced to? Are we farm animals? Our tradition of procreation asks us to ignore the powerful opportunities we’ve unlocked. It is our duty to weigh the pros and cons. Ancient people needed procreation to perpetuate the species. Today we have a choice. We can forgo procreation in favor of exploring the universe. We can focus our energy instead on unraveling the mysteries of space, quantum physics, and more. We’ve evolved past the need to be farm animals and to a level where we can be the masters of our destiny. The vast majority of people don’t think responsibly about death. Many don’t really think about death until faced with it. The loss of a loved one, a friend, or family member usually brings it home for us. When we consider the tragedy of parents taken from their children too early, of young people cut down in life from an illness, or of newborns who perished, we’re confronted with the pain of death. How many tiny, stony graves have you passed while mentally blocking out the grief that threatens to overwhelm you? How devastating is it imagining the potential contributions that have been turned to dust? As you rebel against the Grim Reaper who strikes down the young you should also take a stand against the Reaper who strikes the old. Don’t you wish you had your grandparents’ support and wisdom? Don’t you mourn for the contributions they’re also unable to make? We suffer without the previous generations. Our leaders, builders, founders—the people whose toil, tenacity and intelligence gave us the marvels of the world we live in today—are sorely missed. We suffer as a society with them. Their loss is at a level we can’t even begin to calculate. What if Einstein had died of pneumonia as a child? What if Shakespeare had been cut down in his early days? Imagine what Steve Jobs could have done with another 50 years—or more. These deaths are a major detriment to the human race. What if people could extend their lives and use their experience to improve the human condition? Our fate doesn’t need to be the same as our predecessors’. We’re on the verge of taking the next step in evolution. Because of trial and error the best methods of indefinite life extension are being selected for and rising to the top.
We’re taught that our existence follows a distinct timeline. Our youth is often cut early as we are pressured to “keep up with the Jones’”. People are called “immature” when they “act too young for their age” by holding onto to the wonderment of youthful exploration. We expect people who are barely adults, usually around the age of 18, to establish their life path by choosing a college career direction. How fair is that? How much opportunity do we forgo by conforming to a society that accepts death as part of its culture without even questioning it? Just as we find our wings we are expected to seed the ground and take root. Many of us accept this without a fight, however we need to organize, mobilize and work together to tear the Grim Reaper down. We need to give a damn about our lives and show we are grateful for our opportunity to exist in this wonderland of a universe. Why can’t we oppose the propaganda that others call “nature” and instead do our “own thing”? We need to be our own thinking beings, individuals not swayed by a hive mentality. To be successful we need to transcend the group. Let’s not strive to be like animals, to eat, sleep, procreate and die in good order. Let’s celebrate by letting our colors show and striving for more opportunities. This is what distinguishes us from the animals. Experimenting, trying new things, trial and error, making mistakes and learning from them—this is how organisms evolve. It stands to reason this is the same way that knowledge also evolves. What is the cost of death? What opportunities extend beyond death? We can’t see an end to the boundaries that come with indefinite life extension. The possibilities are worthy of exploration. Science shows us that age-related diseases like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other degenerative calamities developed as human life grew longer. As the afflictions that used to kill us age 40, 50 and even 70 became manageable we became able to live long enough to be done-in by these new beasts lurking in the shadows. Evolution wasn’t pressured to select these debilitating diseases of aging out of the gene pool. Since our ancestors typically procreated and died before they got to the point where they would develop an age-related disease they weren’t a factor. It stands to reason that these ailments aren’t supposed to kill us; historically they don’t unless we grow very old. This means we don’t have to accept them as the “natural” causes of death. Furthermore, who would give into the subjugation of happenstance and randomosity controlling their death? Would you bet your life on a black jack table? On a coin flip? Why not? That’s the same reason why we won’t let aging and disease roll the roulette tables of our lives. The cost is too great. We’d rather be in control, wouldn’t we?
Is death what we want? Are we really that eager to continue a tradition that includes the denial of the opportunities in our future? Don’t we deserve more? How can it be fair for us to perish at the height of our development, to start decaying at the moment we finally begin to understand the world? It’s not about stopping the new generations; it’s about saving them too, and staying with them longer. It’s about helping them discover more and teaching them at an earlier stage in their life, and about sparing them the pain we went through when we lost our relatives. We will spare them the devastation felt when we lost the knowledge, insights, and experience of our predecessors. Indefinite life extension is about all the opportunities before us. It is about the miracles that we can create when given the chance to explore existence beyond its traditional boundaries. It’s about us joining together to support the research and development needed to make this possible for the benefit of ours, and tomorrow’s generations.
LIFE AND LIBERTY: WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT?
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
I often hear the claim that life without liberty is not worth living. Whenever I hear this, I need to ask, of course, what is the purpose of liberty. The purpose of liberty is for the individual to have the ability to take all those actions which contribute to preserving and improving his life. Liberty exists to make life (or at least better life) possible – not the other way around. Note that a dead person has neither life nor liberty; he has nothing. So there are three options as far as slavery is concerned: 1) Both life and liberty; 2) Life but no liberty; 3) No life and no liberty. While option 1) is clearly preferable to all the others, option 2) is preferable to option 3), because something is preferable to nothing. Besides, a man who has temporarily lost his liberty can live to fight another day and bring back that liberty when the opportunity is right. A man who has lost his life has also lost his liberty forever; he will never have it back.
OCCAM’S RAZOR & THE SOUL
BY: YANIV CHEN
Here’s a rhetorical question for you: On which side of Occam’s Razor does your notion of ‘Soul’ fall? Think about it for a couple of seconds. Then continue reading. The purpose of this little cerebral apéritif is to preface a straightforward yet – to most – shocking conclusion about the nature of the ‘Soul.’ 1. Let’s first define ‘Soul,’ ‘Consciousness,’ ‘Mind,’ ‘Self,’ etc. as any nonphysical phenomena containing either the essence of one’s personality or elements thereof. I use these terms (which are not absolutely synonymous) interchangeably here. 2. According to Occam’s Razor, “among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” This is really just human common sense simplified: sure, it is definitely possible that every time an apple falls to the ground, pink unicorns from Mars shoot invisible “laser” beams to push that apple down; then again, it’s much likelier that Earth’s mass simply bends space-time around Earth, thus exerting a force we experience as gravity. 3. Though there are countless examples to illustrate the point, let’s only consider the following situation: somebody close to you snaps his fingers; the air gets compressed in waves until it reaches your outer ear; these compressed waves travel through your ear canal, then hit the eardrum. The resulting vibrations, via the Malleus, Incus, Stapes, Semicircular Canals and Cochlea (in a perfectly understood mechanical-physiological-electrical process which we can readily emulate nowadays – see “cochlear implants”) are in turn translated into electrical pulses. Electrical. Pulses.
From here on, there is nothing but electricity and chemistry. These electrical pulses travel to the brain via the auditory nerve. Now. Your brain is a quiet place; it doesn’t have any pictures, nor any sounds or smells. You have learned, through extensive trial and error – mostly during your formative years – to interpret external stimuli, in this case, particular patterns of electrical pulses – as somebody snapping their fingers. What we experience as consciousness – in this case awareness to an external phenomenon – is really merely the physical output of a pattern-recognizing machine: the cortical columns processing auditory information are virtually identical to the cortical columns processing visual, or tactile information. All of these columns are processing electrical pulses in a very, very similar manner. The difference among them mainly lies in the preceding wiring, i.e. did the stimulus arrive via the auditory nerve or via the visual pathway? If you do not believe that to be the case, simply observe a six month old baby trying to reach a toy right in front of him. Look at how he twitches every muscle in his body and face. The infant simply does not know yet how to associate specific external stimuli – the sight of the toy, its size, varying pressures on specific patches of skin indicating where his limbs are located, etc. – with specific desirable results – causing a specific set of exquisitely timed electrical pulses, thus flexing the proper muscles in a series of actions that will result in him grabbing the toy. 4. Increase the level of “white noise” in the physical brain via simple chemicals (e.g. Propofol, a popular weapon of choice among anesthesiologists), and you will induce lack of consciousness. Use a specific deep brain stimulation probe, and you can even increase that noise so as to drown out Parkinson’s. Eliminate tiny regions in the brain associated with short term memory processing and attention span, and you will be faced with a mere shell of a man. Flip a switch, and you will be able to erase or restore a rat’s memories. If such simple physical, chemical, electrical, measures can have such profound – even negating – effects on our so-called consciousness, what makes anyone think that consciousness is anything but the product of a physical, chemical, electrical brain is beyond me. We do not need anything more than the physical brain in order to generate consciousness. 5. The Conclusion: you are a bio-chemical-electrical machine! There is no nonphysical ‘Soul,’ no ‘Consciousness.’ We are here simply because each and every one of our ancestors managed to survive and procreate (or multiply.) – a chain unbroken for more than 3.6 billion years. The mind is merely a mechanism designed by spartan, brutally aloof evolutionary forces to increase the likelihood of that survival. If you can interpret patterns, you would, for example, know that that rustle in the
grass is indicative of a beast ready to pounce; you would know that next year, 2 moon cycles after the days have stopped shortening, there should be enough rain to sustain your newly sown seeds. You would survive. Of course, being logical, critical thinkers requires that we stop believing in ‘supernatural’ phenomena of all kinds – inside and out – gods, demons, angels and fairies especially, but also in our own ethereal, out of body ‘Soul.’ Though distinct, we are not “unique snowflakes.” Though the comforting nature of the notion of a ‘Soul’ is self-evident, isn’t it time we all grew up? Descartes, one of the champions of the so-called ‘Mind-Body problem,’ who believed that physical inputs are eventually passed on to the “immaterial spirit,” was wrong. There IS no ‘Mind-Body.’ There never was. There was only ever a Body that until very recently was unfamiliar with its own neuronal processes, so it – we – simply fabricated the falsehood of the ‘Mind.’ That fabrication was necessary if we were to grapple with the perceived dichotomy between what we “thought,” and what “was.” Little did we know that the former was the product of the latter. How prosaic. How miraculous. That is why our ‘Mind’ feels good when our ‘Body’ consumes chocolate – they are the same. That is why when our ‘Mind’ suffers and we are depressed, our ‘Body’ is more likely to catch a cold – they are the same. That is why, if the ‘Body’ of a cow produces a misfolded protein (a prion), the result will be a ‘Mad Cow,’ and the human consuming its meat might contract Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, and lose his ‘Mind’ – the ‘Mind’ and ‘Body’ are the same. They were always the same. There is no need for the added complication stemming from the existence of an ethereal ‘Soul;’ the concept of ‘Soul’ falls on the side of superfluous assumptions, and should not be selected. Thus, according to Occam’s Razor, indeed, according to human common sense, there is no ‘Soul.’ We simply “do not have a need for that hypothesis.”
EVOLUTION: BIOLOGICAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, SOCIETAL
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
The concept of evolution is all too frequently given insufficient attention by self-proclaimed proponents of liberty. However, an understanding of biological, technological, and societal evolution – including the similarities and differences among these processes – is extremely helpful and perhaps indispensable for a full appreciation of the nature and benefits of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government. BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Biological evolution is the change in the physical structure, processes, and functionality of organisms over the span of generations. Biological evolution does not occur on an individual level, but rather on the level of populations and often entire species; the accumulated changes constituting biological evolution can result in the formation of entirely new species over hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Indeed, contemporary understandings of evolution hold that all living organisms are related and share a common ancestor. Evolution can explain the greater genetic similarity of certain species to certain others by pointing out that those species shared common ancestors in the more proximate past. The driving force of biological evolution is natural selection. Certain traits allow individuals to survive to reproductive age more reliably and therefore to pass those traits on to their genetic offspring. Biological evolution does not itself create the traits that are more suited to a given environment; those traits arise randomly as a result of genetic mutations. The overwhelming majority of these mutations are deleterious to an organism’s survival, but on occasion a mutation arises that facilitates superior adaptation. The organisms exhibiting this mutation then become more prominent and widespread within their population or species. TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Technological evolution is the change in the machines, infrastructure, and methods of communication used by human beings. The generating force of technological evolution is invention by individual humans or by intentional collaborative human efforts where a division of
labor exists. Subsequently, technologies are adopted or fall into disuse based on commercial selection – the process determining acceptance within a market of buyers or users. Consumers judge technologies based on their ability to fulfill the consumers’ goals as individuals or to adequately perform in the production of still other goods. As new technologies are developed, they frequently displace older technologies that were intended to accomplish a similar role but did so less efficiently – that is, they did not accomplish the goal in question as quickly or with the same level of quality. Although the human biological makeup has remained approximately the same throughout recorded history, technological developments have been able to dramatically alter, improve, and lengthen human lives and well-being during the past ten millennia. Unlike biological evolution, technological evolution occurs on a scale that is perceptible by individual human beings. Moreover, the rate of technological evolution has dramatically accelerated since about 1750. SOCIETAL EVOLUTION Societal evolution is the change in human institutions – including political systems, cultural practices, worldviews, languages, ethical norms, forms of art, and economic interactions. Societal evolution, at its most fundamental level, is driven by individual choices made during day-to-day life. However, those choices are often influenced and conditioned in substantial ways by institutions which were the result of prior societal evolution. Most individuals in most societies choose to simply mimic existing macroscopic institutionally suggested societal arrangements rather than developing their own or even incrementally improving upon the status quo. Thus, the majority of large-scale societal evolution occurs due to the efforts of a relative handful of individuals in any field of endeavor. These can include authors, major artists, politicians, successful entrepreneurs, and philosophical or religious figures. However, advanced societies also exhibit subcultures or niches in which any given individual’s barriers to influencing behavior within the group are much lower. In smaller niches, each individual can be a considerable influence on societal evolution, and the resulting state of the niche can also exert some degree of influence upon the larger society. The scale of societal evolution, like that of technological evolution, can be perceived by individual humans in most cases. However, while technological innovations feed on one another to generate an accelerating rate of evolution, the pace of societal evolution is more variable and differs when we consider various aspects of society. Some social norms and behaviors can change dramatically in a matter of days or weeks; consider, for instance, the popularity of certain songs, movies, and “bestseller” books. On the other hand, much slower evolution – on a scale of centuries to millennia – can occur in such institutions as languages, the layout of roads, the set of esthetic works generally thought to be “high culture,” and ethical norms. The rate of societal evolution may have been accelerated by recent improvements in communication technology – although any impression of this may be due more to the greater ability to be aware of
evolutionary changes among various societies and social subgroups as well as to record those changes, which might have gone unnoticed in the past. FIGURE 1. SUMMARY TABLE OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF BIOLOGICAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, AND SOCIETAL EVOLUTION
Characteristic Biological Mutation Natural selection
Type of Evolution Technological Invention Commercial selection
Societal Generating force Individual innovation Driving force Individual choices conditioned by institutions Pace of change Excruciatingly slow – Rapid and accelerating Variable – from hundreds of thousands – years in the single millennia to days and millions of years digits Spontaneous orders Yes Yes Yes Decentralized Yes Yes Yes Uncertainty of outcome Yes Yes Yes Progressive No Yes Occasionally Individuals can benefit No Yes Yes from their own Planned No – except Yes Occasionally occasionally by humans Man-generated Occasionally Yes Yes Loser is eliminated Yes – losing organisms Losing technologies are Losing institutions are are eliminated. frequently eliminated. occasionally eliminated. Losing organisms are Losing organisms are not eliminated. not eliminated, except in societal devolution. Acquired traits can be No Yes Yes passed on Found in uncivilized Yes No Rarely nature Upper limit on Yes No No possibilities Persistent flaws Yes No Yes – for now Resists change Yes No Yes Change generates Yes Yes Yes
further change Interrelated
Yes
Figure 1 presents a table where some of the aspects of the three kinds of evolution are compared and contrasted. We shall now delve into these attributes in greater depth. EVOLUTION, SPONTANEOUS ORDER, AND UNCERTAINTY OF OUTCOMES All three kinds of evolution are spontaneous orders; the process and the entire results of evolution cannot be controlled, arranged, or even predicted by a single entity. Entities from atoms to human beings participate in evolutionary processes by following certain rules – be they the rules of molecular biology, the laws of physics and the principles of engineering design, or the laws of economics and the inclinations of self-interest. In following these rules, the participant entities generate a macroscopic outcome that is much larger than any of them – indeed, an outcome that may be beyond the ability of a participant entity to perceive and be aware of. No biological organism seeks to bring about new species formation in its attempts to obtain nourishment, escape predators, and reproduce. Likewise, the inventor of a new technology most often does not grasp the full range of economic and societal consequences his invention will have. Moreover, the originators of new social paradigms rarely, if ever, can grasp how their paradigms will interact with already existing paradigms and with paradigms that are yet to come. Neither with technological evolution nor with societal evolution is it possible to exhaustively and comprehensively predict who will use an innovation and how. With biological evolution, the long-term distribution of particular traits within populations and species are likewise difficult to predict, because natural selection is capricious; it does not favor the same traits in the same conditions. Radical and sudden environmental changes may come to favor a previously illadapted set of traits. EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS Not all kinds of evolution are progressive, where progress can be defined as an improvement in the well-being, safety, and opportunities available to individual organisms – particularly intelligent ones such as humans. Biological evolution is notoriously non-progressive; it does not have any mechanisms for ensuring individual survival. Indeed, once an individual has reached reproductive age, reproduced, and reared offspring to near-maturity, biological evolution has no more regard for him, her, or it. As far as that individual’s survival is concerned, it is irrelevant to biological evolution. For this reason, many individual organisms have evolved decent selfpreservation mechanisms prior to reproductive age; humans and other mammals do not senesce prior to reproductive age and generally have strong immune systems to protect themselves from disease until they reach the age when they can be expected to have near-mature offspring. Once the genes are passed on, however, the individual who passed them on is no longer necessary to
the perpetuation his, her, or its genome. Thus, few mechanisms of natural selection operate to select for traits that preserve that individual after successful reproduction and upbringing have taken place. Moreover, biological evolution does not even have built-in protections for the survival and advancement of entire species and lines of descent. There have been numerous observed evolutionary “dead ends,” where natural selection’s results were the destruction of an entire gene pool because of its lack of adaptations to certain environmental conditions – including bizarre and sudden environmental changes. Numerous times during the Earth’s history, more complex species with more advanced functionality have been wiped out and supplanted by more primitive species with less intelligence and fewer abilities. Nor is societal evolution necessarily progressive. History is replete with examples of societies that have lost rights and freedoms hitherto enjoyed by their members. Moreover, commonly held esthetic tastes have decayed over time in many historical and contemporary societies. The English language is currently far more rigid and less receptive to innovation than it was during the era of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Other deleterious changes – such as the decrease in prevailing attention spans and increasing audience passivity – have characterized certain periods of 20th-century Western history. In academic disciplines, including economics, philosophy, and political theory, it is not infrequent that more truthful and accurate theories and ideas are abandoned it favor of fanciful, flawed, and even dangerous mental constructs. The 20th century, in general, exhibited numerous instances of both social progress and massive social decay. On the one hand, decreasing racism and religious intolerance in the West were clear signs of progress; on the other hand, the horrors of the two World Wars, the massive growth in government power, and rampant inflation epidemics were just some of the counter-progressive tendencies of the 20th century. Societal evolution can be progressive – especially over longerterm intervals, as the immense general moral improvement and increases in cultural variety, political freedom, and individual choice during the past millennium have shown. However, there is no guarantee of societal progress during any term within the lifetime of an individual. While a person born in 1940 has certainly witnessed tremendous societal progress during his life, a person living from 1870 to 1940 would beg to differ. Of the three kinds of evolution, technological evolution is the only consistently progressive one. Even as the world engaged in brutal carnage, punctuated by unprecedented economic crises, during the first half of the 20th century, technological progress continued to occur and to accelerate. Technological evolution is progressive because technological improvements build on one another. Existing innovations make it easier to develop new ones, because they economize on the labor, information gathering, communication costs, and other transaction costs required to do so. Existing computers, vehicles, and factory automata can considerably speed up the production of other technologies of their kind. While institutional and cultural factors can
certainly affect the rate of technological progress, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. The knowledge of how to materialize a particular technological design is relatively easy to spread once it is originated; even if a widespread, coordinated effort to suppress technological innovation arises, somebody, somewhere will be able to learn how to create the needed technologies and will be able to actualize this knowledge. Individuals – particularly individual humans – can benefit from their own technological and societal evolution, but not from their own biological evolution. Biological evolution occurs at an intergenerational level, and the individual’s only role in it is that of passing on a genetic code. HUMAN PLANNING OF EVOLUTION At present, human beings have only limited control over planning the course of biological evolutionary processes. With selective breeding and genetic engineering, as well as the alteration of the environments in which non-human organisms exist, it is possible to exercise some manner of indirect guidance of biological evolutionary processes. But there are still many traits that humans can neither engineer nor eliminate in themselves or in other organisms. Technology may, however, soon develop to a point where a greater degree of human oversight over biological evolution can become possible. By far the majority of instances of biological evolution are not man-generated or planned by humans; they occur due to the impersonal processes of mutation and natural selection that have existed for billions of years. Virtually all technological evolution is planned, in the sense that inventors and entrepreneurs deliberately introduce particular technologies into particular markets. However, while the elements of the evolution can be consciously designed and introduced, the consequences and interactions of these elements are virtually impossible to predict by any human being. Societal evolution, like technological evolution, is man-generated, in the sense that humans and their actions are responsible for every component of societal evolution. However, societal evolution is much harder to plan than technological evolution; no one person, for instance, designed the first monetary systems, or any language, or even the majority of the groundwork for political and economic systems throughout history. Moreover, no individual, committee, or government can be said to have originated ethical, cultural, or esthetic norms – although many philosophers, politicians, and artists have influenced these norms in a gradual, incremental fashion. There are virtual no inventors for societal institutions, but there are piecewise tinkerers; there are also revolutionaries who tear down existing institutions without replacing them with viable alternatives – but these are most often the drivers of societal devolution. Nonetheless, there can be a modicum of planning involved in societal evolution – as, for instance, with the influence of major philosophers, constitutional drafters, and paradigm creators
in esthetic and academic disciplines. The effectiveness of this level of planning, however, is much rarer for cultural and political institutions than it is for technologies. STATUS OF THE LOSER IN EVOLUTION In biological evolution, the losing individuals and species – the ones that do not withstand natural selection pressures – are eliminated. From this fact arises the notorious “law of the jungle” – the characterization of destructive competition in uncivilized nature. In technological evolution, however, the losing organisms are not eliminated; the proponents of earlier, now obsolete technologies will most often simply adopt the newer, more efficient technologies. Earlier technologies, however, are most often displaced and assume the status of museum relics and curiosities. This was the fate of the horse-and-buggy, the biplane, and the 486 computer processor. Sometimes less advanced earlier technologies coexist with more advanced later ones over time – as has happened with the communications media, for instance – but this is not generally the case and may be due in part to imperfect substitution among the various communication technologies and in part to ingrained habits within certain segments of the population, which will no longer predominate as demographics shift. In societal evolution, losing organisms are also not eliminated – unless severe instances of societal devolution, including wars, government crackdowns, and waves of crime, occur. Losing ideas and institutions are also seldom eliminated when they are displaced from prominence. In societies, there is always a market for niche ideas, habits, and organizational structures that can coexist with their different, more dominant counterparts. This is particularly true of more advanced societies which tolerate different philosophical, religious, esthetic, and political modes of expression. One’s candidate for office might be defeated, but one’s political ideology might not be affected by this. And if the majority of museum-goers begin to favor the paintings of Picasso, one is still free to enjoy the work of Vermeer and to have it within relatively easy access. It is possible for an institution to die out if it falls into sufficient disuse; there are numerous dead languages, political systems, and social customs. But, as a general rule, a societal institution that loses a contest against a rival will generally retain some sway in at least the intermediate-term future. When societal institutions die, it is due more to atrophy than to any revolutionary change. PASSING ON OF ACQUIRED TRAITS In biological evolution, it is impossible for organisms to pass on traits they acquired during their lifetimes. Rather, all the traits they will ever pass on are encoded in their genomes. By contrast, technological and societal evolution both allow individuals to learn new skills and habits during their lifetimes and teach it to their biological offspring as well as their friends, acquaintances,
and associates. This capability makes technological and societal evolution far more adaptable and resilient than biological evolution. The individual does not need to perish if he has insufficient technological and societal skills and knowledge; rather, he can learn and improve himself in a way in which he cannot yet improve his own genome. EVOLUTION IN UNCIVILIZED NATURE AND IN CIVILIZATION Evolution in uncivilized nature – nature unaffected by humans – is almost exclusively of the biological kind. Non-human organisms do not engage in technological evolution; when they use rudimentary technologies – for instance, for the construction of dams and nests – they do not improve on their methods over time. It is possible to occasionally see traces of societal evolution in the societies of more advanced animals – but this, too, is quite rare, and it seldom survives past a generation. If a group of chimpanzees establish a pattern for more effective societal cooperation and organization, their grandchildren are unlikely to remember or replicate it. Biological evolution, due to its lack of sufficient flexibility and intelligent guidance, has built-in upper limits. Because the status of organisms’ past reproduction and offspring development is irrelevant to biological evolution, the chances of mutation and natural selection alone favoring extremely long-lived or functionally immortal creatures are extremely small – even though one such immortal species, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula, is known to exist. Moreover, random mutation is an extremely slow and unreliable way of generating superior environmental adaptations. Inventing new technologies has given humans the ability to survive in flight, in undersea travel, and in outer space – as well as to travel and communicate orders of magnitude faster than any unaided biological organism. Societal evolution has given humans institutions that enable peaceful cooperation and exchange of ideas unlike any that exists in uncivilized nature. With technological and societal evolution, humans have – at least partially – taken their future into their own hands and made themselves far more adaptable and resilient than any other living creature. FLAWS, CHANGE, INTERRELATIONS, AND EVOLUTION Both biological and societal evolution are marred by persistent flaws. Aside from the deleterious nature of most mutations, it is instructive to note that over 99.9% of all species that ever existed are now extinct – and the overwhelming majority of these extinctions were not caused by humans. Biological evolution is brutal in the collateral damage it inflicts, and it is utterly wasteful with resources and lives; truly, the delay in time and the method of “producing” better organisms that biological evolution employs are among the least efficient processes conceivable. The case for “intelligent design” of biological organisms falls flat on its face when we consider that it would be a supreme insult to any allegedly omnipotent, omniscient deity to suggest that he/she/it designed biological organisms and their interactions to be the way they are. Moreover,
biological evolution frequently has strong component forces that resist beneficial changes. Many organisms in uncivilized nature seek actively to eliminate their more capable and otherwise better-adapted counterparts. Consider, for instance, what would happen if a pack of fire ants attacked any large, advanced mammal. To show the defects of both biological and societal evolution, consider also what would have happened in most Paleolithic hunter-gatherer tribes to an intellectual, inventive member who relished the pleasures of tinkering with sticks and stones rather than the macho excitement of the hunt. Societal evolution’s flaws are evidenced by the tremendous waste of human lives and resources that many institutions – including most wars, governments, and religions, as well as many customs, superstitions, and expectations – bring about. Moreover, less efficient and beneficial human institutions often put forth fierce, even violent, resistance to attempts at progress and improvement. The fates of Socrates, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and most dissenters in totalitarian states testify to this tendency. Technological evolution, on the other hand, is a process whose efficiency and rapidity are constantly on the rise and where, every step of the way, humans endeavor to minimize waste. Unlike biological and societal evolution, technological evolution does not resist change. New technologies are typically rapidly adopted and refined to bring about higher quality and lower cost. Technological innovation is much easier to implement and distribute than innovations in social, cultural, and political norms – in part because most people are not as closely wedded to particular technological methods as they are to their favored societal institutions. In every kind of evolution, change generates further change. The emergence of new biological structures often serves to enable others still – as, for instance, with the evolution of the eye. Likewise, societal innovations inspire still others – as occurs regularly in art, philosophy, and politics. Technological improvements can often serve as components in still others – and the improvements in efficiency due to an earlier stage of progress are often necessary to make a later stage possible. It is also important to remember that all three kinds of evolution are interrelated and affect one another. Technologies often enable particular societal institutions and change the incentives to adopt some and reject others. Societal evolution conditions the preferences of consumers for particular technologies over others. Biological evolution can often interfere with technological progress – as exemplified by the emergence of certain strains of bacteria immune to early antibiotics. Likewise, technological evolution can condition biological evolution through selective breeding, genetic engineering, and alterations to the environments of humans and nonhumans alike. Societal evolution includes the development of attitudes toward technologies and ways of interacting with other biological organisms and thus often conditions the ways in which people approach scientific endeavors and even evolution itself.
EVOLUTION AND LIBERTY Understanding biological, technological, and societal evolution can be crucial to a full appreciation of liberty – itself an emergent evolutionary phenomenon. Environments in which freedom can be effectively enforced and maintained require certain evolved societal and technological underpinnings, which bring about power symmetries among as many individuals and parties as possible, preventing any of them from oppressing the others. A fixed, static, unchanging, and unchangeable natural order dictated by a deity is not easy to reconcile with liberty, because if the structure of that order is already determined and knowable, then there is little room for innovation, experimentation, and progress. In that case, the liberty to act according to one’s choice is easy to jettison and replace by the specious “liberty” of only doing what is “right” by the definition of some political or religious authority. If there is nothing new under the sun, then why not force everyone to conform to the “best” ways of old? This view, of course, is a recipe for carnage, persecution, and mass poverty. Liberty is needed for individuals to discover the truth and to progress to something better than a nasty, brutish, and short primitive subsistence. Liberty can be seen as the ability to participate in a multitude of evolutionary processes where the rules of selection are as non-punitive and non-destructive as possible. Instead of the brutal elimination-based approach of biological competition, selection of what happens in the future can be done by the far more gentle market competition, where the loser is, to paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, merely relegated to a more humble position in the division of labor. Likewise, instead of resigning themselves to the individually non-beneficial and wasteful forces of biological evolution, humans can rely more on the extraordinary abilities that technological evolution gives them to transform the world around them for the improvement of their lives. An appreciation of all kinds of evolution also enables us to understand the limitations of overarching central planning. An impossibly omnipotent god who “designs” all life is only a step removed from a king, dictator, or government committee with similar pretensions of “designing” societies, cultures, and even virtuous conduct. If such amazingly complex structures as living organisms have all been designed – then, surely, the ability to design any other aspect of existence is merely a matter of degree of ability. While many advocates of intelligent design would here invoke the severe limitations of human beings as compared to their god of choice, this is not an argument for liberty that can sustain scrutiny, because many of those same flawed human beings claim to accurately know what their god of choice is and what he/she/it wants them to do. Surely, if knowing the will of a god is accessible to humans, then so is the ability to design and regulate a society from the top down – a much humbler endeavor. Evolution provides an alternative to design theories of existence. Even technological evolution –
the kind most amenable to deliberate planning and engineering – is still immensely decentralized and lacks virtually any central coordination by a governing body or person. Technological, biological, and societal evolution and their byproducts are all examples of what Friedrich Hayek would call cosmos – or an emergent order – as opposed to taxis, or a centrally planned order akin to the arrangement of pieces on a chessboard. Emergent orders do not admit full comprehension – much less control – and the recognition that we ourselves are such emergent orders is sure to deliver a firm blow to the agendas of those who wish to restrict and regulate the non-coercive actions of the sovereign individual.
REJUVENATION RE RELIGION
BY: FRANCO CORTESE
“Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.” - Robert Green Ingersoll, Ingrsoll’s views on politics and religion. Chicago Times,1879.
Is religion at odds with the life-extension movement? A rebounding yes and no. Religion constitutes at once perhaps the best historical validation of the widespread, longstanding and deep-rooted desirability of indefinite longevity, as well as a non-negligible detriment to the contemporary progress in the field of biomedical gerontology (also known as life-extension, indefinite life-extension, anti-aging medicine and experimental gerontology). Insofar as religion was created in order to appeal to humanity’s longing for indefinite longevity, or more precisely the absence of involuntary and irreversible death, then religion is at odds with itself. The widespread belief in some form of an afterlife (wherein personal continuity with the self is maintained past physical death) found in the large majority of both contemporary and ancient religions exemplifies the uniquely and nearly-ubiquitously human desire for an indefinite lifespan and the complete absence of involuntary death. At the same time, the belief that one’s self does survive physical death also removes perhaps the foremost motivator for hastening progress in the field of life-extension: namely, the belief that physical death entails the complete and utter end of the self. If a person believes that they will survive physical death to live in an afterlife, then what real need is there to prolong one’s physical lifetime, if physical death isn’t really death, in the sense of the complete and irreversible discontinuation of the self, at all? Belief in personal continuity through and past physical death directly undermines the central impetus fueling progress in field of biomedical gerontology. On the other hand, religion may have been the largest medium of positive, humanitarian social change aimed towards the betterment of society in the whole of recorded history prior to the Enlightenment. The contemporary life-extension movement can be characterized as a humanitarian movement aimed at reducing involuntary suffering in the world. Indeed, due to the
number of lives claimed per day by age-correlated causes of functional decline (on the order of 100,000 per day, which scales to 3 million per month and 36.5 million per year), the life extension movement may become the most effective way to eliminate contemporary suffering in the world. Thus religion and the contemporary life-extension movement have some significant motivational overlap and continuity-of-impetus, in that they are both aimed at the reduction of involuntary suffering in the world. Furthermore, Abrahamic, Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese religious texts alike abound with instances describing very long-lived people, suggesting that most religions are not axiomatically at odds with life-extension in the physical world. This suggests that lifespans significantly greater than the current maximum lifespan attainable in humans is not in contradiction with the beliefs or central values of the Abrahamic, Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese religious traditions. In ancient Chinese religion and philosophy for example, we find not only a recurrent desire for personal immortality, but instances where specific methodological means were applied in an attempt to prolong one’s physical, earthly life: “Another driving force behind Qin encouragement of religious activities [circa. 200 B.C.E] was the first Emperor's personal quest for immortality. We are told that in this quest he sent groups of young people across the China Sea to look for such islands of the immortals as Penglai… …An explicit concern for long life (shou) had already appeared on early Zhou bronzes and in poems in the Scripture of Odes. Beginning in the eighth century B.C.E. we find terms expressing a hope for immortality, such as ‘no death,’ ‘transcending the world,’ and ‘becoming an immortal.’ By the fourth century B.C.E. there is evidence of an active quest for immortality through a variety of means, including exercises imitating the movements of long-lived animals, diets enforcing abstinence from grains, the use of food vessels inscribed with characters indicating longevity, the ingestion of herbs and chemicals, and petitions for the aid of immortals residing in mountains or distant paradises. It was in this context that Chinese alchemy began. The alchemical quest became the most dramatic form of the quest to transcend death, growing in popularity during the Qin (221207 B.C.E.) and Western Han (202 B.C.E.-9 C.E.) dynasties… …There was no doctrine of an eternal, immaterial soul to fall back on as in India or the Hellenistic world, so the only alternative was physical immortality. In China this tradition continued to develop through the Eastern (Latter) Han dynasty (25-220 C.E.) and produced texts of its own full of recipes, techniques, and moral exhortations. As such, it became one of the major sources of the Daoist religion that emerged in the second century C.E..” [1]
We see both practical attempts at increasing one’s lifespan in the physical world, as in the examples outlined above, as well as attempts to achieve a type of immortality more similar to the conception of passage to an afterlife-as-such found in western religion: … Although in some passages of the Zhuangzi an enlightened perspective leads to acceptance of death, a few others provide poetic visions of immortals, those who have transcended death by merging with the Dao. One of the terms Zhuangzi uses for these individuals is zhenren, ‘perfected
people,’ a term that later became important in the fully-developed Daoist religion that took shape after the second century C.E.. These indications of immortality in the earliest Daoist texts provided the chief point of contact between the classical tradition and those who sought immortality by more direct means, including later practitioners of Daoist religion…
One can also find belief in extremely-long-lived people in later Chinese philosophy and religion as well, such as in “The Complete Works of the Two Che’engs” (c. 1033-110): “Question: About the theory of immortals – are there such beings? Answer: … if you mean people living in the mountain forests to preserve their physical form and to imbibe energy to prolong life, then there are.” [2]
This suggests, firstly, that life-extension was actively practiced and sought as an end in itself by at least some ancient Chinese religious sects and philosophies (not to mention by the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty himself) . Secondly, this also suggests that physical indefinite longevity, as opposed to metaphysical immortality in an afterlife, is compatible with the views and beliefs of those ancient Chinese religious sects and philosophies known to have practiced forms of practical life-extension in the physical world. We find even starker instances of extremely-long-lived people in Buddhist religious texts. In the Anguttara Nikaya [3], for instance, which is the fourth nikaya in the Sutta Pitaka (one of the "three baskets" making up the Pali Tipitaka in Theravada Buddhism), there are several types of “heaven” described, all of which are located in the physical universe. The inhabitants, “deva” or “denizens” of these “heavens” have varying lifespans. Devas of Parinirmita-vaśavartin live 9,216,000,000 years; devas of Nimmānarati live 2,284,000,000 years; devas of Tāvatimsa live 36,000,000 years; devas of Tusita live 576,000,000 years; and the devas of Yāma live 1,444,000,000 years. The Hindu religious tradition also abounds with not only instances of very long-lived people but also, like the Chinese religious tradition, specific attempts to practice methodological means of life-extension. Ilia Stambler explicates the convergences between longevity and the Indian religious, philosophical and cultural tradition adeptly in “Longevity and the Indian Tradition” [4]: “Book 9 of The Rigveda [5] (c. 1700-1100 BCE) is dedicated to praises of the immortality-giving ‘Soma’ plant. (The plant is called ‘Haoma’ in ancient Iranian (Aryan) religious sources, such as Avesta, (c. 1200-200 BCE.). In India, the immortal Rishis, Arhats, and the Ciranjivas (the ‘extremely long-lived persons’) are revered to the present. Their extreme longevity is often attributed to ‘Amrit’ –
– or the ‘nectar of immortality’ – a revered and desired substance.
The traditional Indian medicine of Ayurveda [6, 7], or ‘the science of (long) life,’ includes a special field of Rasayana [8], mainly dedicated to rejuvenation.
Stambler observes here that specific parts of the Indian religious tradition appear to have fueled, or at least supported, some of the earliest historical embodiments (i.e. originating c. 100-300 BCE) of a rejuvenation science. This would suggest that, in the case of the Indian religious tradition, religion supported and even helped facilitate the aims of the life-extension movement and discipline. According to the Sushruta Samhita [c. 300-400 BCE], human life can be normally prolonged to 100 years [9]. Yet, with the use of certain Rasayana remedies (such as Brahmi Rasayana and Vidanga-Kalpa), life can be prolonged to 500 or 800 years. And the use of the “Soma plant, the lord of all medicinal herbs [24 candidate plants are named], is followed by rejuvenation of the system of its user and enables him to witness ten thousand summers on earth in the full enjoyment of a new (youthful) body.”
Moreover, one of the plants cited as being able to prolong life “up to 500 or 800 years”, namely the Brahmi Rasayana, has been shown in contemporary scientific studies to possess some antiaging benefits, suggesting that the teachings described in the Sushtuta Samhita and the Charaka Samhita constituted the beginnings of a veritable life-extension science, or at least that they were more than simply hype [10]. Also according to another foundational text of Ayurveda, The Charaka Samhita (Charaka’s Compilation of Knowledge, c. 300-100 BCE), the normal human life-span is 100 years. Yet, the users of an Amalaka Rasayana could live many hundreds of years and the users of the Amalakayasa Brahma Rasayana could reach the life-span of 1000 years. The great sages, who grasped perfectly the knowledge of Ayurveda, ‘attained the highest well-being and nonperishable life-span.’”
Stambler also notes the concept and practice of life-extension in the Buddhist religious tradition as well: “The Great Buddha who grants Longevity is Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, also known as Amitāyus, the Buddha of Infinite Life. Those who invoke him will reach longevity in this realm, and will be reborn in Amitabha’s PureLand (Sukhāvatī or Dewachen in Tibetan Buddhism) where they will enjoy virtually unlimited longevity. This pure and egalitarian land of longevity was created by Amitabha’s avowed devotion and perseverance. One of the mantras in Amitabha’s praise is “Om amrita teje hara hum” (Om save us in the glory of the Deathless One hum). Many Buddhist mantras for longevity are recited, dedicated to the great healers of old, so that a portal to their wisdom may be opened and through their compassion, suffering will be abolished and health and longevity reached in this world.”
We see far less emphasis on depicting immortality as desirable and attainable through the right variety of religious practices and/or moral codes in Norse religion and mythology. We do, however, find in it conceptions of life after death, as well as the notion of significantly-prolonged life in the physical world:
“Haustlöng [c. 1000] calls Idun [the character in Norse Mythology thought to grant eternal life to other Norse gods] the ‘maiden who understood the eternal life of the aesir” but does not mention the apples, in Snorri’s version of the story Idun’s apples clearly function as a symbol of the immortality of the gods. Indeed, when he presents Idun in Gylfaginning, Snorri says she is the wife of Bragi: ‘She keeps in her bag the apples that the gods are to chew when they grow old, and then all become young again, and so shall it be until Ragnarök.’” [11]
In both depictions of Idun we see the prolongation of life in the physical world contingent on specific factors (which is an aspect characterizing indefinite life-extension), the contingent factor in this case being whether Idun decides to grant one eternal life or not. Prolongation of life is in this case dependent on the carrying out of specific methodological practices, and this depiction of life-extension in Norse legend bears more similarity to contemporary existing and proposed methods of life-extension than, for instance, automatic and non-contingent immortality granted via passage to an afterlife. But the second depiction, significantly, depicts contingent life-extension via specific material changes to the body – namely ingesting Idun’s apples. This bears even more similarity to modern approaches to life-extension than the first case, in which the prolongation of life was contingent on methodological rather than material therapies. We find a multitude of particularly long-lived people described in Abrahamic religious texts as well. We also find many instances reifying the often-unspoken desirability of longer life and an end to involuntary death, in the form of passages depicting unending (or sometimes simply extended) life as one of the “rewards” explicitly promised to the faithful upon their salvation (as opposed to being inherent in the promise of an afterlife). The first observation suggests that significantly-extended lifespans is not in contradiction with Christian belief, values, ethics or cosmology. The latter observation suggests that the Abrahamic religious tradition in general, and the Christian religious tradition in particular, hold life-extension to be desirable, and that it may even constitute one of their fundamental values: Methuselah is said to have lived 969 years: “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died” [12]. Indeed, the King James Version Bible lists 8 persons aged over 900 when they died: Methuselah, who died at age 969, Adam at 900, Eve at 940, Seth at 912 [13], Enos at 905 [14], Kenan at 910 [15], Jared at 962 [16], and Noah at 950 [17, 18]. The Bible also lists 12 other persons between the ages of 200 and 900, and at least 10 persons with a lifespan between 100 and 200: Mahalalel is said to have died at age 895 [19], Lemech at age 777 [20], Shem at 600 [21], Eber at age 464 [22], Arpachshad at 438 [23], Salah at 433 [24], Job at 240 [25], Reu at 239 [26], Peleg at 239 [27], Serug at 230 [28], Terah at 205 [29], Isaac at 180 [30], Abraham at 175 [31], Nahor at 148 [32], Jacob at 147 [33], Amram at 137 [34], Jehoiada at 130 [35], Sarah at 127 [36], Aaron at 123 [37], Joshua at 110 [38] and Joseph at 110 [39].
Furthermore, the concept of definitively indefinite longevity, i.e. biological immortality (as opposed to greatly extended lifespans as in the cases above), does not seem to be contradiction with fundamental Christian tenets or values either. In Genesis, for instance, Adam’s immortality, as well as the desirability of that immortality, are inherent in the warning God gives him: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” [40], as well as in the passage “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die” [41], again referring to eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Certain other passages indicate that the “Original Sin” committed by Adam and Eve that cast them out of Eden was the very act that took natural immortality away from humanity: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” [42]. Additionally, the belief in an eternal afterlife exemplified by most sects of the Christian religious tradition also indicates that literal immortality, and not just greatly extended “mortal” lifespans, is compatible with Christian beliefs and values as well. We also see an emphasis on religion helping heal the sick and diseased in Christianity, which parallels the co-development of the ancient Indian tradition of medical rejuvenation (rasayana) and the ancient Indian religious tradition. Some of the most well-known biblical passages regarding Jesus are about how he healed lepers and the blind. We also see the healing of sickness and disease depicted as a reward promised to the faithful. “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.” [43]. “And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction” [44]. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay” [45]. “When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing” [46]. “You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you” [47]. “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” [48]. “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” [49]. “Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.” [50]. “Now Isaiah had said, ‘Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover’” [51]. In these passages we see both the healing of specific diseases and ailments, as well as immunity to all disease and sickness in general, being promised to the faithful.
Perhaps even more contrary to the popular belief that religion is at odds with the contemporary attempt to achieve indefinite lifespans is the depiction of life-extension as a value and reward in and of itself within the Christian tradition. This can be seen in a number of passages wherein abiding by the moral codes of Christianity is rewarded with longer life. We see this, for instance, in such passages as “I will reward them with long life; I will save them.” [52], and “He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever” [53]. The previous passages can be interpreted as referring to immortality in the afterlife, which nonetheless still reifies the desirability of indefinite lifespans and the avoidance of involuntary death at the heart of the contemporary life extension movement. But we see life-extension in the physical world, as opposed to immortality in the afterlife, being offered as a reward for the faithful as well. We see this in such passages as “The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.” [54], and “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” [55]. Passages locating life-extension in one’s “mortal life” as a value and reward in and of itself, as characterized by the previous passages, are by contrast much less frequent in the Qur’an. We do find long-lived people in the Qur’an, however, especially regarding personages also described in the Bible and the Torah, like Moses and Noah: “And We certainly sent Noah to his people, and he remained among them a thousand years minus fifty years, and the flood seized them while they were wrongdoers” [56]. Indeed, because the longest-living personages in the Bible occurred in Genesis, and all constellating around the first half of the First Testament, the large majority of the long-lived personages (from the Bible) that were previously cited also apply to Judaism and Islam, which along with Christianity constitute the Abrahamic religious tradition. The concept of both immortality and prolonged lifespans also abound in the religious and mythical traditions of Ancient Greece and Rome. Here we find not only immortal deities (e.g. Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Hades, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Poseidon, Zeus, and Iapetus), but we also find interaction between mortals and the immortal deities. For instance, Greek deities were said to be able to procreate with mortals to form demigods, who were able to possess some of the powers of the gods, but who were still ultimately mortal and bound to die. We also find the notion of immortality in the physical world in the Iranian mythological and religious tradition: In ancient Iranian tradition, immortals are the ever-lasting individuals who continue their life after its normal earthly period in a state of perpetual sleep or hiding; they are to appear on Resurrection Day to assist the saviour to save all people. In Band Heš, it is mentioned that fifteen pious men and fifteen pious women on Resurrection Day will assist the saviour, including Toos, Kayxosrow,
Giv, Pašutan, etc … Toos is among those who, along with Fariboorz and Giv, accompany Kayxosrow in his final disappearance; this indicates Zorastrian's belief in Toos' immortality, as Toos is considered one of the immortals in Pahlavi religious texts as well [57].
Ancient Iranian religious texts (as well a geographically-related religious texts) also feature mortals being granted immortality by immortal deities and “angels”: In Farškard, Saošyant (the Zoroastrian World Saviour) sets foot on the earth. When thirty, he is appointed as the prophet Mazdesina and his presence destroys Ahriman (the evil spirit). The immortal figures such as Kayxosrow, Giv, Pašutan, Garšasb and Toos assist Saošyant in the renovation of the world… According to Avesta texts, Kayxosrow is immune from sickness and death and monarchy becomes his legitimate right According to the Yašt… the prophet Zoraster praises Kaygoštasb in the following words: “you shall be immune to sickness and death like Kayxosrow”… Likewise, in Pahlavi texts, Kayxosrow is one of the immortals and resides in Gang Castle and sits on his throne, invisible to all eyes; and when Resurrection approaches, he and Saošyant would meet each other; Kayxosrow will be among the heroes who assist Saošyant in the war in the time of Resurrection. Ghoštasb, after converting to Zoroastrianism, wants to know of his place in Eden. Three angels appear at his court… The angles assure them that God is their protector and would ensure their victory over the enemy. The King's request for knowing of his place in the Eden is granted; the angels also award immortality to his son, Pašutan… According to Band Heš, Ayriraθ is one of the immortals of Zorastrians… In Pahlavi texts, Yašt Faryan is mentioned as an Immortal. In Band Heš, Zand, and Homan Yasen, Zoraster asks Ahura Mazda to give him immortality and requests of Ahura Mazda to grant him immortality like wan ī juyd-beš, Goyad Shah, Pašutan, Yašt Faryan Anoosheh [58].
Indeed, the first known myth ever, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh [59], concerns a Sumerian King’s quest to gain physical immortality through a fabled plant. He gains the plant and loses it to unforeseen circumstances. In the end, Gilgamesh decides that true immortality is for the gods, and that mortals should be content with heroic immortality – that is, with doing great deeds and being remembered for it for years to come. However, in the epic he initially seeks immortality from Utnapishtim, a human survivor of the “Great Flood” who was granted immortality from the gods. So the epic does in fact depict indefinite lifespans in humans, despite the fact that Gilgamesh himself in the end does not attain it. The Sumerian Kings list [60] also indicates the prominence that the concept of immortality took on in the minds of Sumerians. According to their records (which today are typically considered through the same sort of allegorical lens that most religious and mythic texts are), Alulim reigned for 28,000 years, Alalngar reigned for 36,000 years, En-men-lu-ana for 43,200 years, En-mengal-ana for 28,800 years, Dumuzid, the Shepherd for 36,000 years, En-sipad-zid-ana for 28,800 years, En-men-dur-ana for 21,000 years, Ubara-Tutu for 18,600 years, Jushur for 1200 years, Kullassina-bel for 960 years, Nangishlishma for 670 years, En-tarah-ana for 420 years, Babum for 300 years, Puannum for 840 years, Kalibum for 960 years, Kalumum for 840 years, Zuqaqip
for 900 years, Atab (or A-ba) for 600 years, Mashda for 840 years, Arwium for 720 years, Etana for 1500 years, Balih for 400 years, En-me-nuna for 660 years, Melem-Kish for 900 years, Barsal-nuna for 1200 years, Zamug for 140 years, Tizqar for 305 years, Ilku for 900 years, Iltasadum for 1200 years, En-me-barage-si (c. 2600 BCE) for 900 years, Aga of Kish for 625 years, Mesh-ki-ang-gasher of E-ana for 324 years, Enmerkar for 420 years, Lugalbanda for 1200 years, Dumuzid for 100 years, Gilgamesh for 126 years, Ur-Nungal (Gilgamesh’s son) for 30 years, Udul-kalama for 15 years, La-ba'shum for 9 years, En-nun-tarah-ana for 8 years, and so on. The Sumerian kings listed thereafter begin to list reigns of 10-100 years, gradually dwindling in much the same manner as the ages of biblical personages dwindled in age progressively throughout the First Testament. Although one does still find long reins interspersed throughout the shorter reigns, for instance in Ur-Zababa’s listing, which lists him as reining for 200 years c. 2300 BCE, preceded by Puzur-Suen who reigned for 25 years and Zimudar who reigned for 30 years. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find any ancient religious or mythical tradition wherein deities can age and die – the exception being the Norse mythology, where Norse gods must consume Idun’s apples in order to periodically restore their youth. The nearly-ubiquitous conception of indefinite longevity across all ancient religions and mythologies, even during periods where cross-cultural communication is thought to have been non-existent (suggesting that the concurrent conception of immortality are truly independent of one another), indicates that indefinite longevity is one of humanity’s most deep-rooted, long-standing and natural longings – a desire that transcends cultural distance and deep historical time. Religion (and especially those religions promising an eternal afterlife) does constitute a detriment to contemporary progress in life-extension because they remove the central motivator for hastening progress in the field, namely the complete cessation of existence (i.e. death without an afterlife) [61]. If we don’t consider death to really be death at all, then we lack any pressing need to do away with it. Yet at the same time humanity’s religious and mythic traditions constitute perhaps the strongest historical legitimator of longevity’s value and desirability, indicating humanity’s deep-rooted longing for longer life in general, and indefinitely-extended lifespans in particular, perhaps better than any other cultural or historical heritage. Religion, insofar as regenerative medicine and rejuvenation science are concerned, is at odds with itself. Many secularists today would argue that fear of, or at least dissatisfaction with, “utter death” (i.e. physical death without an afterlife) is one of the largest motivating factors for creating and sustaining a religion in the first place. Promises of an end to death through death, in the form of an afterlife, became so unanimously popular because humanity is and should be dissatisfied with death. While there may have been other motivating factors at play, I think most secular people would agree that dissatisfaction with death was one of the main motivating factors for conceiving of an afterlife. If we take this as true, then contemporary religion is ironically thwarting one of
the very impulses that drove its conception in the first place. By believing in an afterlife due to our dissatisfaction with death we unwittingly deter the continuing development of the field that can finally put a real end to our own resented finality. Religion was created in part because we wish to avoid death, and today that very same institution slows progress in actually achieving a scientific end to involuntary death. This problem, the fact that belief in an afterlife negates the central impetus for desiring indefinite lifespans in the physical world, is particularly notable when we consider the fact that the majority of people still believe in one form of an afterlife or another. Recent polls indicate that approximately 80% of Americans and over 50% of global citizens believe in an afterlife [62, 63, 64, 65, 66]. If these polls are accurate, then the majority of humans are likely to see no great or pressing need to significantly extend their lifespans in the physical world. And while secularism has been increasing over time, and should be expected to continue increasing, every day the achievement of indefinite-longevity therapies is delayed costs us 100,000 human lives, irreversibly lost to causes that are in principle preventable and reversible. But the time it takes to make progress in the field of biomedical gerontology is a direct function of how much society demands it and expresses its desire for it. Progress in the field of life-extension is a function of funding, and funding is by and large determined by how much people want something, or by how urgent a given problem is. [67]. The more we demand it and express our desire for it, the more attention and funding it will receive, and the faster it will be achieved. We have endeavored to show that the notion of greatly extended lifespans – as long as a thousand years in the case of the Christianity, Judaism and Islam, a thousand years in case of Hinduism, and nine million years in the case of Buddhism – is not at odds with the beliefs or the values of the large majority of religious and mythic traditions. We have further endeavored to show that in many cases greatly-prolonged life in the physical world is actually offered as a value and reward in and of itself in many religious traditions as well. Neither of these theses deter the fact that widespread belief in an afterlife is going to almost invariably decrease the perceived necessity of ending involuntary death in the physical world. But these theses do help ameliorate the incorrect public perception that religion is actually at odds with life-extension, or that life-extension is directly or indirectly contrary to the values and/or core beliefs of the various religious traditions considered here. Indeed, we have attempted to substantiate the claim that, on the contrary, life-extension is in certain cases neutral in regards to core religious beliefs and values while in other cases being compatible with them, and furthermore that, in certain other significant cases cited and outlined above, life-extension in the physical world actually constitutes a religious practice and value in the Mesopotamian, Norse, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Eastern and Abrahamic religious traditions., both through the promise of indefinite longevity in an afterlife and the promise (and in some cases practice) of lifeextension in the physical world.
In order to combat the arguably-underinformed public perception that religion is at odds with the aims of biomedical gerontology, we should cite the large body of primary literature suggesting that religion and rejuvenation are not at odds with eachother, but are instead in varying instances (1) neutral with regards to eachother, (2) compatible with eachother and (3) actually coincident in terms of values and beliefs. We should attempt to develop communities that explore the intersections between history’s philosophical, religious and mythical traditions and the contemporary field of biomedical gerontology, and which reach out to religious communities in an attempt to demonstrate via hermeneutical interpretation that rejuvenation and religion are not as at-odds with eachother as they are often thought to be.
"The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow -- Hope shining upon the tears of grief." -
Robert Green Ingersoll, The Ghosts, 1877.
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The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:14-15. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Job 42:10-17. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:20-21. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:18-19. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:22-23. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:32. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 35:28. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis25:7. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 11:24-25. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis47:28. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society.Exodus6:20. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. 2 Chronicles 24:15. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 23:1. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Numbers 33:39. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Joshua 24:29. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 50:26. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 2:17. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Genesis 3:4. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Romans 5:12. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Matthew 4:23. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Matthew 10:1. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Matthew 10:8. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Luke 9:11. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Exodus 23:25. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society James 5:14-15. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Mark 16:1718. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Jeremiah 33:6. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society Isaiah 38:21. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Psalm 91:16. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Psalm 21:4. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Proverb 10:27. The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society. Exodus 20:12.
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Qur’an 29:14. Khani G.G., Ghasemi P., and Razmjooee S. (2007). Immortals in Ancient Iranian Myths. Transoxiana: Journal Libre de Estudios Orientales. No.12. ISSN: 1666-7050. Ibid. The epic of Gilgamesh. Stanford University Press, 1989. Jacobsen, T. (1939). The Sumerian king list. University of Chicago Press. Cortese, F. (2013). Religion vs. Radical Longevity: Belief in Heaven is the Biggest Barrier to Eternal Life?! In Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death: Essays, Arguments and Rants about Immortalism, ed. Pellissier, H. 1st ed. Center for Transhumanity: Niagara Falls. 160-172. Belief of Americans in God, heaven and hell, 2011. (2011). Santista.com. Poll; nearly 8 in 10 Americans believe in angels. (2011). CBS News. Conan, N. (2010). Do You Believe In Miracles? Most Americans Do. NPR News. Americans Describe Their Views About Life After Death. (2003). The Barna Group. 43,941 adherent statistic citations: membership and geography data for 4,300+ religions, churches, tribes, etc. (2007). Cortese, F. (2013). Longevity’s bottleneck may be funding, but funding’s bottleneck is advocacy. In.Longevityize!: Essays on the Science, Philosophy & Politics of Longevity, ed. Cortese, F. 1st ed. Center for Transhumanist: Niagara Falls.
PART THREE: LONGEVITY POLITICS
PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE
DEBATE FORUM: WHICH WILL BE THE FIRST NATION TO OFFER STATE-SUBSIDIZED IMMORTALITY TO ITS CITIZENS? BY: IMMORTALLIFE.INFO DEBATE FORUMS2
In the next 2-3 decades, technology will be producing a plethora of anti-aging products that will be able to guarantee radical life extension - to any individual who can afford it. For example, right now TA-65 is available as a telomere activator - but the capsules cost $200 per month. My question is - what nation on the planet will be the first to subsidize “immortality”? What nation will provide anti-aging drugs, stem cell treatments, nano-medicine, and other interventions, to all of its citizenry, absolutely free? My guess is that the first Immortal Nation will be a small wealthy community where there’s already many retirees, high income, and healthy longevity - perhaps Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Luxembourg, or Malta. Iceland, with its population of a mere 400,000, is also a possibility. By offering free anti-aging services, the first Immortal Nations would attract additional citizens seeking access to eternity. The second tier of Immortal Nations would be larger countries that already have a good health care system in place. This category would include Israel, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria. Larger nations will be far behind in guaranteeing Indefinite Life Extension, in my opinion. France, Germany, and Canada will be contenders for first Immortal Nations with populations 2
Debate question and introductory discussion by Hank Pellissier.
over 30 million. Japan? A dark horse possibility. Its inhabitants live longer than anyone else in the world, but with its declining fertility and birth rate… can it afford to subsidize its huge numbers of nonagenarians and centenarians? COMMENTS: A nation in W. Europe would likely be the first to offer such subsidization. Which nation that actually is would be impossible to foresee at this time. By ALAN BROOKS on Apr 11, 2013 at 7:42pm ...PS: “Israel” Problem is, Israel conscripts its citizens. Question is: why would a nation want to subsidize radical life extension for its citizens if it would draft them into the military, substantially raising the odds of their being killed or maimed? IMO one would expect such a nation to eventually cease conscription to enhance incentive to live indefinitely. By ALAN BROOKS on Apr 11, 2013 at 7:53pm While not a “nation”, per se, I believe the United Arab Emirates would be one of the more likelier to first subsidize radical life extension. I say this because of their devotion to adapting new science and technologies to their society construction plans, and even dedicating funds to building areas meant for future technology usage and efficiency. With their single-payer healthcare system, free public education, and overall desire to build while looking to the future, really makes me think of no other place when regarding the possibility of subsidized radical life extension to the mass populace. By B.J. MURPHY on Apr 12, 2013 at 7:09pm Actually Alan’s point about Israel raises an interesting issue about indefinite life extension generally. Clearly, Israel conscripts its citizens because it believes (correctly or incorrectly) that this improves their collective security. So they are required to jeopardize their individual security in order to improve their collective security. And even if one might question how effective is, is there is at least no logical inconsistency between the two. The soldier sacrifices his or her own security to keep others safe. If the threat is sufficiently real (and again, I am not taking a position here on whether this is or isn’t the case), then this will indeed improve overall security.
So the obvious question this raises in the context of indefinite (individual) life extension is: will this improve or rather jeopardize our collective security as a species? At the individual level it’s a no-brainer, but at the collective level it’s less obvious. By PETER WICKS on Apr 12, 2013 at 11:50pm
THE LONGEVITY PARTY MANIFESTO BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
Longevity Party is an international union of people, who believe the main goal of each and everyone is development of scientific and technological progress, significant life extension and supporting unlimited enhancement of capabilities of a personality. LONGEVITY PARTY IS THE PARTY OF COMMON SENSE. Everyone has their own values in life – family, children, creativity, love, beauty, freedom, money, traveling, sex, power… But all these things can only make sense if the person is alive. The basic condition for existence and implementation of all values is life. Its significant extension by rational, scientifically proven methods is the wisest strategy for every one of us. LONGEVITY PARTY STRIVES TO FAIRNESS AND HAPPINESS. There is nothing more unfair than death. People don’t deserve death. Death, senility and diseases make a person unhappy. Fight for fairness and happiness for everyone is a fight against diseases, suffering, pain, aging and fighting for radical extension of human life. LONGEVITY PARTY ADVOCATES ACCELERATION OF HUMAN EVOLUTION. Life is a form of organization of matter, focused in the first place on self-preservation. Life is an anti-entropy process. The essence of evolution is in development and a human being is the best example of it. It’s human nature to strive to enhance capabilities, expand and increase the scope of the personality. Humans are endowed with capacity to self-improvement. They can gain new knowledge and skills and use those to improve their organisms and the world around them. Human evolution has long been happening not only on the biological level, but also on scientific and technological and social levels. All people are interested in positive changes to happen as soon as possible. LONGEVITY PARTY IS THE PARTY OF PROGRESS.
The entire history of humanity is the history of improved capabilities and increased life expectancy. Everything that makes our life better, longer, more comfortable and more replete is the result of progress. Nonetheless, there are dangers and risks associated with science and technology development. They reflect the forces of regress and entropy. These phenomena must be seen as unsolved problems of progress. LONGEVITY PARTY STRIVES TO PRESERVE CIVILIZATION. One of the problems of humanity is the global risks – events, as a result of which the civilization may be destroyed. It is necessary to evaluate these risks well in advance and prevent any possible negative scenario from happening. Longevity Party sets the goal of the indestructibility of humanity. LONGEVITY PARTY PROPOSES THE ABSOLUTE HIERARCHY OF GOALS. Given the conditions of limited financial and intellectual resources, it is crucial to identify the most important tasks and focus on solving them. Certainly, the most important task for the civilization is radical human life extension. The following areas are most promising for developing scientific methods and technologies for radical life extension: regenerative medicine, personalized medicine, neuromodeling, aging diagnostics, gene therapy, creating artificial organs, improving methods of studying molecular biological processes, cryonics, mathematical modeling of biological processes, creating Artificial Intelligence, nanorobots, evolutionary biology of aging, development of futurology. LONGEVITY PARTY ADVOCATES PROACTIVE APPROACH TO LIFE. Given the current time limitations of human life, it is shortsighted to passively wait for technological achievements. It is crucial to do everything possible to extend your own lifespan – use methods of disease diagnostics and preventing, lead a healthy life style, improve your own scientific competence, actively support scientific research aimed at reaching physical immortality, support cryonics as a means of restoring life-sustaining activities of the dead in the future. Longevity Party sets the goal of rising to power in the majority of countries of the world in order to implement projects on significant human life extension.
THE LONGEVITY PARTY – WHO NEEDS IT? WHO WANTS IT? BY: ILIA STAMBLER, PH.D
In the Spring of 2012, there began organizing efforts to create longevity parties in several parts of the world – in Russia, the US, Israel and Europe – dedicated to political promotion of lifeextension research and practice. (See Here, Here and Here.) Some questions may immediately arise with regard to these efforts. Some people, who have not dedicated too long to the study of life-extension or their mortality or politics, may even ask: What loons would start such a party and what loons would vote for it? But at least we, the “loons” who are involved in these activities, should know why we are doing this. We are doing this to attempt to extend our own lives and the lives of our loved ones by perhaps one of the very few means available to us – by attempting to influence public health policy and research policy. This can be a powerful, actionable and democratic means, and somebody has to try to wield it. And if the desire to introduce political innovations for the public good is the prerogative of loons, then all laws and all reforms were produced by loons and we are in a good company. If this realization increases our motivation, that would be good news. Perhaps even better news would be to know that there might actually be people who would vote for such a party, or any other party willing to embroider “longevity” on its banner. Very recently there appeared indications that there might indeed be such people. A recent survey funded by Terasem Movement Inc. showed that about 76% of Transhumanists “want immortality.” But perhaps an even more surprising finding is that not a negligible proportion of “normal people” want immortality. A poll is currently being conducted by the CBC News network on this issue. The question is “If you had the opportunity to live forever - albeit cybernetically - would you do it?” The poll started on July 31 and is still open. As of today, August 16, about 42,000 people responded. About 35.5% said “Yes, at any and all cost” and 17% more said “Yes, but only if I could afford it comfortably.” Thus, about 52.5% of responders were in favor of
immortality! (See Here) About 17% “don’t want to live forever” (ok). About 9% “don’t believe that this technology will ever exist” (which implies that 91% believe it can exist). About 12.5% were “terrified” by the idea, and about 9% were not sure or other. Note that the poll was created in relation to the “Strategic Social Initiative Russia2045” aimed to achieve cybernetic immortality via creating artificial avatars for human consciousness. (Very recently “Russia2045” was renamed to just “2045” and now includes over 14,000 members. One can counter that people who participated in that poll were already interested in immortality, insofar as they read the article in which the poll is embedded. But there are also some rigorous surveys that indicate that the interest in immortality (a.k.a. radical life extension) in the general public might be quite considerable. Thus in January this year, the aspirations for immortality were estimated in Russia by the analytical “Levada Center.” The poll was conducted for the “Russia2045” Initiative, before the international congress “Global Future 2045” held in Moscow in February. The poll included 1600 responders, over 18 years old, from 45 regions of Russia, both city and country, with a standard deviation of 0.035. According to this poll, 32% of Russian citizens wanted radical life extension for themselves, while “keeping youth and good health”: 23% wanted to live “several times longer than people live now,” 9% wanted to live “unlimitedly long, as I wish, up to immortality,” 64% wanted to live “as long as allotted by nature now,” and 4% had difficulty answering. Interestingly, 44% wanted radical life extension for their close ones, that is, more than for themselves: 29% wished their loved ones to live “several times longer” and 15% wished them to live “unlimitedly long, as they wish, up to immortality.” This finding dispels the fears that the pursuit of radical life extension is inherently selfish. Moreover, according to one poll, 45% of Russian citizens “would support a public association for radical life extension.” One can suspect that if such a survey were conducted elsewhere, the results may not be very different. A possible general conclusion may be that a large proportion of people want radical life
extension and are not afraid to admit it. Moreover a growing number of people are ready to work toward this purpose, to whatever limited degree they can. In such a situation, political advocacy for life-extension can flourish.
PRIVATE OR GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR INDEFINITE LIFE EXTENSION? BY: G. STOLYAROV II
I was recently asked to comment on an Immortal Life debate/discussion thread about whether governmental or private approaches to funding and motivating research on indefinite life extension are best. Mine is definitely a libertarian view. I do not support advocating for government funding for life extension, unless the funding is combined with larger reductions in military spending or other destructive government spending. I discuss this issue in two of my videos: - Eliminating Death – Part 18 – Never Seek Government Funding - Libertarian Life-Extension Reforms – #6 – Medical Research Instead of Military Spending The danger of government funding of life extension is that it comes with many political strings attached, and may lead life-extension research itself to be shackled by politically influential opponents of technological progress. The great weakness of politics as a strategy is that it requires consensus among elites and some connection to majority approval, as well as the overcoming of numerous bureaucratic hurdles and obsolete habits. Private action, as long as it is lawful, can simply be pursued irrespective of how many people agree. There is thus much more flexibility and potential for quick deployment with private approaches toward radical life extension. Private investment into life-extension research can occur in many ways, both for-profit and nonprofit, both direct and indirect. Seasteading is indeed a highly promising approach for experimenting with novel medicines and therapies that might take over a decade to be approved by the FDA in the United States or similar “screening” agencies in other countries. At the same time, Tom Mooney is correct about the need for a grassroots education campaign. By the time radical life extension begins to become a reality, there needs to be a strong current of
public opinion supporting it. Otherwise, the “bioconservatives” might just manage to obtain enough support for their agenda to thwart this vital progress.
A LETTER TO SERGEY BRIN
BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO Dear Mr. Brin, I’ve heard you are interested in the topics of aging and longevity. This is very cool, because fighting for radical life extension is the wisest and most humanitarian strategy. I would like to tell you what needs to be done, but, unfortunately, I haven’t got your email address, or any other way to be heard. 100,000 people die from aging-related causes every day, but what makes the situation even worse is that the scientists know how to tackle this problem, but don’t have clue how to convey their message to those people, who could change the situation and make the creation of human life extension technologies possible. Therefore, I am simply writing in my blog, hoping, that maybe somehow you will read this letter, or that maybe my friends will give me some advice on how it could be delivered to you, or that maybe someone would send it to you. So, here it goes. There is no more important goal than preserving human life. Aging limits our lifespan, and is the main contributing factor for diseases responsible for most human mortality and suffering, including heart disease, stroke, adult cancers, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Defeating or simply slowing down aging is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet. It is the most complicated task in the history of mankind. Molecular-genetic studies of laboratory animals, over the last two decades, have demonstrated that the problems of aging are not insoluble. By modifying regulatory pathways, scientists have repeatedly succeeded in extending lifepan – by up to twofold in insects and rodents, and as much as 10-fold in worms and yeast. These same studies have greatly expanded our understanding of those pathways, which are remarkably well conserved from yeast to humans. In view of that conservation, we have every reason to believe that similar strategies will work for humans. What is most needed now is an adequate commitment of funds to support fundamental research. Long-term and large-scale scientific projects are required. Startups largely focused on rapid commercial effect, will not fill the gap. A wealth of inspiring breakthroughs, that have transformed the field of longevity research, hints at the progress that could be made with better support.
Firstly, creating transgenic animals that live radically longer than their counterparts. The record in the area of life extension is shared by Valter Longo and Robert Shmookler Reis. Longo, from the University of California Davis, was able to extend yeast lifespan 10-fold by turning off the genes ras2 and sch9, while also reducing the calorie intake. Shmookler Reis, from the University of Arkansas Medical School, discovered that either of two mutations inactivating the nematode’s age-1 gene (encoding PI3K, a key intermediate in several signaling pathways) can extend worm lifespan 10-fold. Rogina Blanca, Professor at the University of Connecticut, found that a mutation in the Indy gene doubles the lifespan of the fruitfly Drosophila. Andrzej Bartke from the University of Southern Illinois achieved a twofold extension of mouse lifespan by combining calorie restriction (feeding 30% less food than desired) with a mutation that eliminates three pituitary hormones. The next logical step is to create transgenic mice with other mutations and/or transgenes to mimic the changes that were so effective in invertebrates (yeast, worms and fruitflies). For example, tissue-specific downregulation of IGF1 or PI3K, and targeted or whole body overexpression of genes that control the cellular oxidation state (САТ, TXN, MSRA, SOD1, SOD2), DNA repair genes (GADD45 alpha, beta and gamma), regulators of epigenetic state (DNMT2) and transcription of protective agents (FOXO3), heat shock proteins (HSPA1A, HSPA1B) and other genes (PCMT1, SIRT1, PCK1, PLAU). At present, over 100 genes have been reported to be associated with alterations in longevity, and several dozen have been confirmed in multiple species (and thus are likely to translate to humans). Genetic experiments modifying the expression of those genes in mice would be very informative, especially employing combinations of transgenes and suppression of longevity-limiting genes (e.g., mTOR and PI3K). Creating longevity gene therapy looks very promising. In 2012, a group led by Maria Blasco at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center used a viral vector to deliver to adult mice an active gene for the telomerase protein that extends telomeres (chromosome ends, which shorten during aging). Remarkably, gene therapy of oneyear-old mice extended their lifespan by 24%, and treatment of two-year-old mice still added 13%. Treated mice had reduced rates of osteoporosis, reduced loss of subcutaneous fat, but improved neuromuscular coordination and metabolic functions (including less insulin resistance), without any increase in cancers. Based on this “proof of principle” that longevity can be enhanced via gene therapy, the next step is clearly the delivery of other genes required for longevity, whose activity declines during aging. Candidate “geroprotective” genes are already known from prior studies in yeast, flies and worms; their functional testing in mice only requires a modest investment in this promising
research. There are still, however, legitimate concerns to be overcome before the results can be applied to humans, such as the danger of increasing cancer risk, and efficient targeting to specific tissues or cell types. An effective approach to slowing down aging may be suppressing mobile genetic element activity in particular retrotransposones. Retrotransposons are endogenous viral genomes, copied via RNA into DNA elements via reverse transcriptase, which are known to mediate some cancers of mice, and which may destabilize human genomes as well. In recent experiments, inhibition of retrotransposon activity slowed replicative aging of cultured cells differentiating from human stem cells. While it is not yet known whether this would also slow in vivo aging, development of safe genetic or pharmacological means to inhibit retrotransposition in mammals appears promising. One clear deficiency of gerontology and medicine at present is simply that aging has not been recognized as a key target for clinical diagnosis and therapeutic interventions, although syndromes of premature aging (progerias) have long been considered diseases. Aging is a curable disease. Aging is a predisposing condition for many of the most serious diseases faced by our society, and in many ways it makes more sense to target aging than the diseases it promotes. Aging is an “aberration” relative to the youthful state, that can be identified through correlated biomarkers, allowing us to seek both the avoidable factors that aggravate it (e.g., inflammation, thermal and oxidative stresses, ionizing irradiation, etc.), and biological processes or therapeutic measures that postpone it (DNA repair, proteolysis, autophagy, etc.). Aging causes pain, dysfunction, distress, social problems and death of affected person. It is crucial to make numerous medical organizations recognize aging as a disease. If medical organizations were to recognize aging as a disease, it could significantly accelerate progress in studying its underlying mechanisms and the development of interventions to slow its progress and to reduce age-related pathologies. The prevailing regard for aging as a “natural process” rather than a disease or disease-predisposing condition is a major obstacle to development and testing of legitimate anti-aging treatments. This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging, but currently it is completely dominated by untested supplements promoted through fraudulent claims. In order to test the effectiveness of geroprotective drugs, it is necessary to develop the diagnostic platform of aging. The routine annual check-up could easily include testing of diverse parameters that provide the doctor-biologist with critical information about the individual’s aging status and risk profile for age-dependent diseases. Biomarkers of aging include changes in longevity- and aging-associated genes expression (for example, p16, p21, ARF, p53, COX-2, SIRT1, NFkB, Lon, IGF-1), changes in microRNA levels (miR-34a, miR-93b, miR-127, miR-18a), altered
hormones levels (leptin, melatonin, DHEA), cytokines (TNFa, IL-6, IL-8), advanced glycation end products and many others. The diagnostic platform could contain analyses of genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data. The appropriate analysis of those biomarker data, coupled to clinical data, would allow lifestyle modifications and therapeutics to be optimized for each individual, in order to slow aging and to prevent or treat age-related diseases. And it could be done right now. This approach is the basis of personalized medicine, and yet current approaches to personalized medicine largely or entirely ignore the age dimension. It is possible to extend lifespan pharmacologically. Many compounds have been shown to prolong life of certain model animals and to prevent age-related pathologies. These include metformin, rapamycin, lipoic acid, 2-deoxy-D-glucose, carnosine, amino-guanidine, fisetin, hydroxycitrate, 4-phenylbyterate, gimnemoside, cycloastragenol, quercetin, nordihydroguaiaretic acid, acarbose, 17-a-estradiol, melatonin, spermidine, thioflavin T, and kempferol. Others will surely be discovered in large screens that would become more feasible once panels of proven age-biomarkers are developed. Rapamycin extends lifespan of old mice. In 2009 Richard Miller, Randy Strong and David Harrison showed that mice given rapamycin with their food, even beginning as late as the 600th day of life, lived 9% (male) and 14% (females) longer. Given the fact that lab mice normally live 2 – 3.5 years, 600 days is a fairly advanced age for a mouse. Rapamycin is an FDA-approved drug, prescribed chiefly as an immunosuppressant for kidney-transplant recipients. Future studies can design and test advanced geroprotectors, based on drugs like rapamycin, to modify their chemical structure so as to optimally prolong life in humans while preventing or slowing agerelated pathologies. Another global research direction is studying close species that differ significantly in lifespan. For example, aging mechanisms have been compared between the naked mole rat and its close relatives. The naked mole rat is an African rodent that ages very slowly, perhaps not at all – since its mortality doesn’t increase as it ages. These extraordinary animals have protective mechanisms that allow them to live up to 30 years of age, which is 10 times longer than other rodents of similar size, yet never get cancer. We have begun to identify genetic and epigenetic determinants of naked mole rat longevity. For example, they have hyperactive proteolysis and autophagy pathways, which clear damaged proteins and other cellular components. However, because only three labs in the world are now studying naked mole rats, and their budgets are very limited, much still remains to be learned from them. Another animal with little or no senescence is Brandt’s bat. This bat weighs only 7 grams, but
lives to 41 years of age, 12 –15 times the lifespan of mice with the same body mass. Brandt’s bat has received little research attention; comparisons with its close relatives, of more modest lifespan, may reveal which genes are responsible for its great longevity. Fish of the Scorpaenidae family also show little senescence, several of which have life-spans exceeding 150 years. The champion is the rougheye rockfish (Sebastes aleutianus) at 205 years. It may be possible to learn the biological basis for this remarkable longevity, by comparing genomes and transcriptomes of this species with the shortest-lived species, Sebastes dallii, that lives only 10 years. The features that appear to underlie great longevity can then be replicated in rodents to test their relevance to mammals. Fighting aging has to be built on the principles of openness and collaboration. It is necessary to attract hundreds of labs all over the world to collaboration in the framework of a global project that could be called, for instance, Aginome. We have identified a number of molecular biology laboratories that have made important contributions to longevity research, whose productivity is constrained only by the limited funding now available. Additional support is virtually assured to accelerate their pace of discovery, and advance the field. These include groups led by Nir Barzilai, Andrzej Bartke, Mikhail Blagosklonny, Maria Blasco, Judy Campisi, Claudio Franceschi, David Gems, Brian Kennedy, Cynthia Kenyon, Brian Kraemer, Valter Longo, Gordon Lithgow, Victoria Lunyak, Richard Miller, Richard Morimoto, Alexey Moskalev, Thomas Perls, Robert Shmookler Reis, Also, the field of fighting aging has some applied projects that can be implemented in the shortterm. I could tell you about those projects, if you are interested. I would also like to know your opinion about my plan of action. What would you be interested in doing yourself in the area of life extension?
STUDY GERONTOLOGY! THIS FRONTIER PROVIDES HOPE FOR THE FUTURE BY: ERIC SCHULKE
The Boston Globe reported three days ago that enrollment in the UMass Boston undergraduate gerontology program has fallen by two-thirds, to a mere 13 students, over the last decade. A relaunch in 2010 failed to yield more students. For that reason, UMass Boston’s decision to suspend the gerontology undergraduate program was a bow to reality. It’s like a kick in the stomach for me to read about the program failing when the growth of gerontology has never been more lucrative and important. Please, college students, I beg you to reconsider the Gerontology field. Talk about it with your friends, think about it, read about it, ask your teachers questions. There has never been a more important time to enroll in programs like the University of Massachusetts gerontology undergraduate program. Is there something wrong with the word “gerontology” as the Boston Globe suggested? “Researchers need to make it clearer to students how the field connects to the future of the country and the economy. One advocate of the program even suggested a rebranding, saying the very term ‘gerontology’ seemed outdated.” Students, does “Gerontology” seem un-cool? Does it seem too narrow, too niche? Is it relevant for that girl with the beloved grandmother who wants to make a difference? For young adults who are brilliant at analyzing accumulation of damage in aging cells? Who understand the havoc wreaked by metabolism? Gerontology programs provide hope for the future. The study of aging is a premier frontier of our era.
Now is the time when the gerontology field has never been more promising, has never been more equipped to push the boundaries. This isn’t about just keeping grandma alive for 3 more years. This is about saving souls from eternal nothingness, staving off our stay in the perpetual ethers of obliteration, helping all our veteran humans, our mentors, our workers, helping them retain their health and their dignity, their vitality, their hard-earned lives. It’s about securing that same opportunity for ourselves and our progeny. A strong, vibrant gerontology community everywhere is the heart beat of the future, the scaffolding on which the most incredible breakthroughs are prepped to happen. For example, there is presently: 1. Ground-breaking work with the “immortal cell” at Geron 2. Michael Rose’s incredible pioneering work with fruit flies 3. Cynthia Kenyon’s exciting aging work with nematode worms 4. Methuselah Mouse Prize’s work is heating up - researchers are already claiming its prizes Tools to create the breakthroughs are getting better every year. Cryonics is making strides; nanotechnology is taking root as a powerful new tool in gerontology’s arsenal. Why is the UMass Gerontology program failing? What are you students talking about if it doesn’t include the exciting prospect of extending our health in the incredible future? When humanity in the upcoming decades is exploring the ocean depths, voyaging into distant space, creating new inventions… where will you and I be? Will we be enjoying the experience, or will we be in graveyards? Can you stand up for our future? By considering, and encouraging your friends, to apply numerous young aptitudes to endeavors like the UMass Gerontology program? Can this happen? Or will we perpetuate an ironic indifference? And die needlessly? Before our time? NOW is the time to get excited about Gerontology.
DEATH IS TERRORISM BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
In his Boston Marathon Memorial speech Barak Obama said that the bombers wanted to attack the American values of freedom and openness, but they chose the wrong city. “Not here in Boston. Not here in Boston” - he repeated. I believe the terrorists attacked not only the openness of the USA. Terrorism is an argument between those who believe the value of life is “AFTER LIFE” and those who value LIFE itself. If a person values Life, they value its extension and pleasure and rational worldview. Their antagonist is a person who believes that surrounding reality is a Matrix, a bad dream that needs to be broken down as soon as possible in order to wake up into the true, Religious Life. The terrorists see around them only Agent Smiths and sleeping zombies, who can be woken up only by explosions. A terrorist believes that they are demolishing only the Illusion, not the True Reality. Of course, the complete opposite is actually happening: the terrorist brain has been eaten by an unproven worldview, the gigantic cognitive distortion of Religious Propaganda. What a terrorist considers to be Enlightenment is a Disease. Terrorists are not fighting the Zombie World; it is they themselves who are the Zombies. There is a serious bug in religious philosophy. It is supposed to promise Eternal Life after Death, and it is also supposed to Forbid Murder. But if Death is not actually Death, then Murder is not actually Murder.
Death is real only for an atheist. The third world war has already begun. It is between those who seek Death, and those, who strive to Live. There is no other option, no third pole. If we want to live on Earth, we must say: “Not here in Boston, not here in America, not anywhere in the World. We should never facilitate death, including by our inactivity.”
INTERNTIONAL LONGEVITY ALLIANCE MANIFESTO BY: ILA
We advocate the advancement of healthy longevity for the entire population through scientific research, public health, advocacy and social activism. We emphasize and promote the struggle against the chief enemy of healthy longevity – the aging process. The aging process is the root of most chronic diseases afflicting the world population. This process causes the largest proportion of disability and mortality, and needs to be treated accordingly. Society needs to dedicate efforts toward its treatment and correction, as for any other material disease. The problem of aging is grave and threatening. Yet, we often witness an almost complete oblivion to its reality and severity. There is a soothing tendency to ignore the future, to distract the mind from aging and death from aging, and even to present aging and death in a misleading, apologetic and utopian light. At the same time, there is an unfounded belief that aging is a completely unmanageable, inexorable process. This disregard of the problem and this unfounded sense of impotence do not contribute to the improvement of the well-being of the aged and their healthy longevity. There is a need to present the problem in its full severity and importance and to act for its solution or mitigation to the best of our ability. We call to raise the public awareness of the problem of aging in its full scope. We call the public to recognize this severe problem and dedicate efforts and resources – including economic, socialpolitical, scientific, technological and media resources – to its maximal possible alleviation for the benefit of the aging population, for their healthy longevity. We promote the idea that mental and spiritual maturation and the increase in healthy longevity are not synonymous with aging and deterioration. We advocate the reinforcement and acceleration of basic and applied biomedical research, as well as the development of technological, industrial, environmental, public health and educational measures, specifically directed for healthy longevity. If given sufficient support, such measures can increase the healthy life expectancy of the aged population, the period of their
productivity, their contribution to the development of society and economy, as well as their sense of enjoyment, purpose and valuation of life. We advocate that the development of scientific measures for healthy life extension be given the maximal possible public and political support that it deserves, not only by the professional community but also by the broad public.
---------As stated in the ILA documents, the International longevity Alliance promotes the social struggle against the deteriorative aging process and for healthy and productive longevity for all, through scientific research, technological development, medical treatment, public health and education measures, and social activism. In practical terms, we promote the maximal possible increase of healthy longevity, for as many people as possible, and by the most feasible means based on the best available scientific evidence. Hence, in many practical cases, under current technological limitations, our hopes for extended longevity can be only moderate or even minimal. Yet, the hopes may become more “radical” in the future with the advancement of scientific human knowledge and increasing technological capabilities. ----------
JAPAN LONGEVITY ALLIANCE BY: JOHN R. LEONARD
My name is John Leonard and I’m the lead activist for the JLA. We are part of a parent group which is called the International Longevity Alliance or ILA. The International Longevity Alliance promotes the social struggle against the deteriorative aging process and for healthy and productive longevity for all, through scientific research, technological development, medical treatment, public health and education measures, and social activism.
HOW JLA GOT STARTED I came across Longevity Party group on Facebook in July of 2012. The group seemed interesting but I was a bit cautious with the word “Party* as part of the title. Was this some type of strange political party? I am not very interested in politics and am not a bit political in anything. However, the topic was intriguing and I wanted to know if extending one’s life is possible. Still, could this group be some type of crazy cult, I wondered. As I started to interact with the people in this group and I found there were real professionals in various technical fields. I was soon impressed with the type of people in this group from all over the world. I did notice however, I was the only one living in Japan that was a member of this group at the time. In the fall of 2012, I got a surprise personal message from Ilia Stambler - the lead of this Longevity Party , asking me if I wanted to create a group to represent Japan. As I was feeling new to all of this and still trying to learn about what longevity was all about , I declined. How could I lead on something I myself was still debating about with myself? Although I have lived in Japan for over 30 years and speak Japanese, I am not a Japanese citizen...yet. Also, I have no ties to any political or research groups. I felt like I could not make any positive contributions.
A few months later Illia created another group called International Longevity Alliance. The new approach of this group seemed less threatening as the word “Party” in the name was removed. At the same time, I was reading up on extreme life extension articles and essays that told me that anyone can make a difference. Maybe if I start to advocate the importance of one lifespan, I could also make a difference here in Japan as well. At the very beginning of January 2013, I approached Mr. Stambler and told him I will create the “ Longevity Party Japan”. Ironically, I started with the word Party in the name mainly because all the other international groups were calling themselves “Longevity Party ” and I was trying to follow the standard format. After a few months, I noticed that other countries were changing their name to Longevity Alliance and so I did the same. On June 2013, I started to promote JLA.
JLA WEBSITE One of the important actions I found I needed to do was to try to attract researches in Japan about our cause. I was able to send out a few letters earlier this year but did not get any replies. I felt I needed to change my approach and messaged Ilia Stambler on my concern. He explained that in order for any institute to take JLA seriously, it is best to start by creating a legitimate website. Social Networking is good platform for people who are already interested in extending longevity but don’t not show any real structure or commitment. On the other hand, creating a website for such cause will display a professional format and allows one to introduce our cause in a more formal format. I published the japanlongevityalliance.org website in June of 2013. With the launch of JLA website, I feel there is now a platform to properly reach out to organizations including the Japanese general public and have a place of reference for people to visit.
JAPAN RESEARCH Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister of Japan on December 26th, 2012. Abe lead his newly elected Liberal Democratic Party government to invest into Life sciences. From his 10.3 trillion yen economic stimulus package which was approved by the cabinet on January 15 2013, he was able to create a big stimulus package for stem-cell research, especially geared toward clinical applications. The science ministry alone has earmarked ¥21.4 billion for research on stem cells, mainly focused on induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — reprogrammed adult cells, first developed in Japan. This comes on the heels of Shinya Yamanaka who was awarded for the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. His discovery showed that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent. Induced pluripotent stem cells, commonly abbreviated as iPS cells or iPSCs, have a self-renewal ability and pluripotency, which means they can divide and replicate indefinitely. This type of research is vital toward radical life extension.
The Riken Center for Developmental biology in Kyoto is the biggest and most funded in Japan for iPS cell research and application development. Much of the research money that comes from Japan's science ministry goes directly into Riken research. In fact, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself visited their labs with Shinya Yamanaka showing off their latest developments. It does not hurt to have a prime minister so interested in life sciences. Japan does have a unique problem however. Japan has a population containing some of the oldest living humans on this planet. As the baby boomers are starting to enter into their senior years, the health support will be staggering in care and costs. This concern is called the Longevity Dividend in the west, and essentially claims that the rise in healthcare needs by the aging baby-boomer generation will mean that supporting research and development in the lifeextension field may be the only way to ameliorate the economic strain put on the healthcare budgets of countries by the aging baby-boomers. The Japanese government is eager to find cures to aging related diseases to avoid a natural economic disaster. The good news is that by investing in Regenerative Biology, the technology will allow aging Japanese people to live healthy and hopefully disease free. Part of bi-product of such engineering will allow humans to live longer and healthy lifespans.
ACTIONS OF JLA Although Japanese life science research has been given an economic boost from the government, the public needs to keep the momentum going. For JLA perspective, we can help by joining the ILA movement in 2 important yearly global events - Future Day and Longevity Day. JLA had our first gathering for Future Day on May 1st. Although it was only 3 of us, it still marked a small step in the life extending movement history. Longevity Day for Japan event is already in the planning stages for Oct. 1st. 2013. If you live in Japan and are reading this article, I urge you to contact me. However, anyone can join JLA FB group where I will announce events along with global and national research news.
LIBERTY THROUGH LONG LIFE BY: G. STOLYAROV II
It is commonly recognized among libertarians (and some others) that the freedom of individuals to innovate will result in a more rapid rate of technological progress. In “Six Libertarian Reforms to Accelerate Life Extension” I described six liberty-enhancing political changes that would more swiftly bring about the arrival of indefinite human longevity. But, as is less often understood, the converse of this truth also holds. Technological progress in general improves the prospects for liberty and its actual exercise in everyday life. One of the most promising keys to achieving liberty in our lifetimes is to live longer so that we can personally witness and benefit from accelerating technological progress. Consider, for example, what the Internet has achieved with respect to expanding the practical exercise of individual freedom of speech. It has become virtually impossible for regimes, including their nominally private “gatekeepers” of information in the mass media and established publishing houses, to control the dissemination of information and the expression of individual opinion. In prior eras, even in countries where freedom of speech was the law of the land, affiliations of the media, by which speech was disseminated, with the ruling elite would serve as a practical barrier for the discussion of views that were deemed particularly threatening to the status quo. In the United States, effective dissent from the established two-party political system was difficult to maintain in the era of the “big three” television channels and a print and broadcast media industry tightly controlled by a few politically connected conglomerates. Now expressing an unpopular opinion is easier and less expensive than ever – as is voting with one’s money for an ever-expanding array of products and services online. The ability of individuals to videotape public events and the behavior of law-enforcement officers has similarly served as a check on abusive behavior by those in power. Emerging online education and credentialing options, such as massive open online courses and Mozilla’s Open Badges, have the power to motivate a widespread self-driven enlightenment which would bring about an increased appreciation for rational thinking and individual autonomy. Many other technological advances are on the horizon. The private space race is in full swing, with companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Deep Space Industries, and Planetary
Resources embarking on ever more ambitious projects. Eventually, these pioneering efforts may enable humans to colonize new planets and build permanent habitats in space, expanding jurisdictional competition and opening new frontiers where free societies could be established. Seasteading, an idea only five years in development, is a concept for building modular ocean platforms where political experimentation could occur and, through competitive pressure, catalyze liberty-friendly innovations on land. (I outlined the potential and the challenges of this approach in an earlier essay.) The coming decades could see the emergence of actual seasteads of increasing sophistication, safety, and political autonomy. Another great potential for increasing liberty comes from the emerging digital-currency movement, of which Bitcoin has been the most prominent exemplar to date. While Bitcoin has been plagued with recent extreme exchange-rate volatility and vulnerability to manipulation and theft by criminal hackers, it can still provide some refuge from the damaging effects of inflationary and redistributive central-bank monetary policy. With enough time and enough development of the appropriate technological infrastructure, either Bitcoin or one of its successor currencies might be able to obtain sufficient stability and reliability to become a widespread apolitical medium of exchange. But there is a common requirement for one to enjoy all of these potential breakthroughs, along with many others that may be wholly impossible to anticipate: one has to remain alive for a long time. The longer one remains alive, the greater the probability that one’s personal sphere of liberty would be expanded by these innovations. Living longer can also buy one time for libertarian arguments to gain clout in the political sphere and in broader public opinion. Technological progress and pro-liberty activism can reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle. To maximize their hopes of personally experiencing an amount of personal freedom even approaching that of the libertarian ideal, all libertarians should support radical life extension. This sought-after goal of some ancient philosophers, medieval alchemists, Enlightenment thinkers (notably Franklin, Diderot, and Condorcet), and medical researchers from the past two centuries, is finally within reach of many alive today. Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation gives humankind a 50 percent likelihood of reaching “longevity escape velocity” – a condition where increases in life expectancy outpace the rate of human senescence – within 25 years. Inventor, futurist, and artificial-intelligence researcher Ray Kurzweil predicts a radical increase in life expectancy in the 2020s, made possible by advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, aided by exponentially growing computing power. But, like de Grey and perhaps somewhat unlike Kurzweil, I hold the view that these advances are not inevitable; they rely on deliberate, sustained, and well-funded efforts to achieve them. They rely on support by the general public to facilitate donations, positive publicity, and a lack of political obstacles placed in their way. All libertarians should become familiar with both the technical feasibility and the philosophical desirability of a dramatic, hopefully indefinite, extension of human life expectancies. My compilation of Resources on Indefinite Life Extension (RILE) is a good starting point for studying this subject by engaging with a wide variety of sources,
perspectives, and ongoing developments in science, technology, and activism. We have only this one life to live. If we fail to accomplish our most cherished goals and our irreplaceable individual universes disappear into oblivion, then, to us, it will be as if those goals were never accomplished. If we want liberty, we should strive to attain it in our lifetimes. We should therefore want those lifetimes to be lengthened beyond any set limit, not just for the sake of experiencing a far more complete liberty, but also for the sake of life itself and all of the opportunities it opens before us
HOW MUCH DOES AGING COST YOU? BY: DAVID KEKICH
We get hammered with two costs of aging. One is acutely felt. The other not so. The most painful is the direct drain on our pocketbooks when we or a family member loses earning power – or incurs sudden and often stratospheric medical expenses due to aging-related diseases or conditions. Let's explore this one first: Over 30% of people over 80 get Alzheimer's. It's close to 50% by 85. Reason, editor at FightAging.org gives some figures from a recent paper on dementia in the US: "The yearly monetary cost per person that was attributable to dementia was either $56,290 (95% confidence interval [CI], $42,746 to $69,834) or $41,689 (95% CI, $31,017 to $52,362), depending on the method used to value informal care." However, these figures are based on "informal care." How about when you factor in full-time home caregivers or formal nursing home costs? I'm familiar with both, since I lost my dad to Alzheimer's. I was lucky enough to keep him home, looked after 24 hours a day by a loving couple. But I saw some nursing home cost figures years ago, and they were astronomical. How about lost income due to aging? Reason dug up figures for that as well. He found that median income sits somewhere a little under $40,000/year in the prime earning years of life. It tapers off to a little more than half of that for surviving members of the 75 (median) and older demographic who have not yet become demented. So while one of seven completely median older people incurs costs of roughly $40,000/year for dementia, all seven completely median older people suffer an opportunity cost of roughly $20,000/year as a result of becoming old. A range of income that might have been earned if still
healthy and vigorous is no longer within reach. Then add other direct medical costs for the rest of the population - cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and the other common foes - the opportunity costs of being old still look sizable in comparison. Then how about the cost to society? We don't notice that so much, because governments camouflage our individual costs through taxation spread over the whole population, Medicare costs and inflationary measures which sweep costs under the rug while steadily eroding your purchasing power. The total monetary cost of dementia alone in 2010 was between $157 billion and $215 billion. When you factor in heart disease and cancer, we're up to around $600 billion a year. It would take more research to factor in lost wages and all the other aging-related diseases and conditions medical expenses. Arthritis, diabetes, pneumonia, etc, etc. Then when one dies, that spells the end of all future earning power, not to mention the indirect costs when their wisdom, innovation knowledge and experience suddenly evaporate. As Reason again points out, aging causes a largely unseen cost to go along with what is seen, the cost of what might have been but for disability and death. The cost of research and development to build the means of rejuvenation is tiny in comparison to what is lost to aging - and also in comparison to what is spent in coping with the aftermath of loss rather than trying to prevent it.
WHAT IS THE BOTTLENECK FOR PROGRESS IN BIOMEDICAL GERONTOLOGY? BY: FRANCO CORTESE
When asked what the biggest bottleneck for progress in life-extension is, most thinkers and researchers say funding. Others say the biggest bottleneck is breakthroughs, while still others say it’s our way of approaching the problem (i.e. seeking healthy life extension, a.k.a. “aging gracefully”, instead of more comprehensive methods of indefinite life-extension). But the majority seem to feel that the largest determining factor impacting how long it takes to achieve indefinite lifespans is adequate funding to plug away at developing and experimentally-verifying the various alternative technologies and methodologies that have already been proposed (e.g. Robert Freitas’s Nanomedicine [1], Aubrey de Grey’s Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence [2, 3, 4], Michael R. Rose’s Evolutionary Longevity [5, 6]). I claim that Radical Longevity’s biggest bottleneck is not funding, but advocacy, activism and lobbying. This is because the final objective of increased funding for Radical Longevity and Life Extension research can be more effectively and efficiently achieved through public advocacy for Radical Life Extension than it can by direct funding or direct research, per unit of time or effort. Research and development obviously still need to be done, but an increase in researchers needs an increase in funding, and an increase in funding needs an increase in the public perception of indefinite longevity’s feasibility and desirability. There is no definitive timespan that it will take to achieve indefinitely-extended life. How long it takes to achieve Radical Longevity is determined by how hard we work at it and how much effort we put into it. More effort means that it will be achieved sooner. And by and large, an increase in effort can be best achieved by an increase in funding, and an increase in funding can be best achieved by an increase in public advocacy. You will likely accelerate the development of Indefinitely-Extended Life, per unit of time or effort, by advocating the desirability, ethicacy and technical feasibility of longer life than you will by doing direct research, or by working towards the objective of directly contributing funds to life-extension projects and research initiatives. In order to get funding we need to demonstrate with explicit clarity just how much we want it, and that we can do so while minimizing potentially negative societal repercussions like
overpopulation. We must do our best to vehemently invalidate the clichés that promulgate the sentiment that Life-extension is dangerous or unethical. It needn’t be either, and nor is it necessarily likely to be either. Some think that spending one’s time deliberating the potential issues that could result from greatly increased lifespans and the ways in which we could mitigate or negate them won’t make a difference until greatly increased lifespans are actually achieved. I disagree. While any potentially negative repercussions of life-extension (like overpopulation) aren’t going to happen until life-extension is achieved, offering solution paradigms and ways in which we could negate or mitigate such negative repercussions decreases the time we have to wait for it by increasing the degree with which the wider public feels it to be desirable, and that it can very well be done safely and ethically. Those who are against radical life extension are against it either because they think it is infeasible (in which case being “against” it may be too strong a descriptor) or because they have qualms relating to its ethicacy or its safety. More people openly advocating against it means a higher public perception of its undesirability. Whether indefinite longevity is eventually achieved via private industry or via government subsidized research initiatives, we need to create the public perception that it is widely desired before either government or industry will take notice. The sentiment that that the best thing we can do is simply live healthily and wait until progress is made seems to be fairly common as well. People have the feeling that researchers are working on it, that it will happen if it can happen, and that waiting until progress is made is the best course to take. Such lethargy will not help Radical Longevity in any way. How long we have to wait for indefinite lifespans is a function of how much effort we put into it. And in this article I argue that how much funding and attention life-extension receives is by and large a function of how widespread the public perception of its feasibility and desirability is. This isn’t simply about our individual desire to live longer. It might be easier to hold the sentiment that we should just wait it out until it happens if we only consider its impact on the scale of our own individual lives. Such a sentiment may also be aided by the view that greatly longer lives would be a mere advantage, nice but unnecessary. I don’t think this is the case. I argue that the technological eradication of involuntary death is a moral imperative if there ever was one. If how long we have to wait until indefinite longevity is achieved depends on how vehemently we demand it and on how hard we work to create the public perception that longer life is widely longed-for, then to what extent is the 100,000 lives lost potentially needlessly every day while we wait on our hands? One million people will die a wasteful and involuntary death in the next 10 days. 36.5 Million will die this year from age-correlated courses of functionaldecline. This puts the charges of inethicacy in a ghostly new light. If advocating the desirability, feasibility and blatant ethicacy of life extension can hasten its implementation by even a mere 10 days, then one million lives that would have otherwise been lost will have been saved by the
efforts of life-extension advocates, researchers and fiscal supporters. Seen in this way, working toward indefinite longevity may very well be the most ethical and selfless way you could spend your time, in terms of the number of lives saved and/or the amount of suffering prevented. One of the most common and easy-to-raise concerns I come across in response to any effort to minimize the suffering of future beings is that there are enough problems to worry about right now. “Shouldn’t we be worrying about lessening starvation in underdeveloped countries first? They’re starving right now. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the problems of today? On things that we can have a direct impact on? ”. Indeed. 100,000 people will die, potentially needlessly, tomorrow. The massive number of people that suffer involuntary death is a problem of today! Indeed, it may very well be the most pressing problem of today! What other source of contemporary suffering claims so many lives, and occurs on such a massive scale? What other “problem of today” is responsible for the needless and irreversible involuntary death of one hundred thousand lives per day? Certainly not starvation, or war, or cancer, all of which in themselves represent smaller sources of involuntary death. Longevity advocates do what they do for the same reason that people who try to mitigate starvation, war, and cancer do what they do, namely to lessen the amount of involuntary death that occurs. This is a contemporary problem that we can have a direct impact on. People intuitively assume that we won’t achieve indefinitely-extended life until far in the future. This makes them conflate any lives saved by indefinitely-extended-lifespans with lives yet to come into existence. This makes them see involuntary death as a problem of the future, rather than a problem of today. But more people than I’ve ever known will die tomorrow, from causes that are physically possible to obviate and ameliorate – indeed, from causes that we have potential and conceptual solutions for today. I have attempted to show in this article that advocating life-extension should be considered as “working toward it” to as great an extent as directly funding it or performing direct research on it is considered as “working toward it”. Advocacy has greater potential to increase its widespread desirability than direct work or funding does, and increasing both its desirability and the public perception if its desirability has more potential to generate increased funding and researchattention for life-extension than direct funding or research does. Advocacy thus has the potential to contribute to the arrival of life-extension and hasten its implementation just as much, if not moreso (as I have attempted to argue in this article), than practical research or direct funding does. This should motivate people to help create the momentous momentum we need to really get the ball rolling. To be a longevity advocate is to be a longevity worker! Involuntary death from age-associated, physically-remediable causes is the largest source of death, destruction and suffering today. Don’t you want to help prevent the most widespread source of death and of suffering in existence today? Don’t you want to help mitigate the most pressing moral concern not only of today, but of the entirety of human history – namely physically-remediable involuntary death?
Then advocate the technological eradication of involuntary death. Advocate the technical feasibility, extreme desirability and blatant ethicacy of indefinitely extending life. Death is a cataclysm. We need not sanctify the seemingly-inevitable any longer. We need not tell ourselves that death is somehow a good thing, or something we can do nothing about, in order to live with the “fact” of it any longer. Soon it won’t be a fact of life. Soon it will be an artifact of history. Life may not be ipso-facto valuable according to all philosophies of value – but life is a necessary precondition for any sort of value whatsoever. Death is dumb, dummy! An incontrovertible waste convertible into nothing! A negative-sum blight! So if you want to contribute to the problems of today, if you want to help your fellow man today, then stand proud and shout loud “Doom to Arbitrary Duty and Death to Arbitrary Death!” at every crowd cowed by the seeming necessity of death. REFERENCES: [1]. de Grey AD, Ames BN, Andersen JK, Bartke A, Campisi J, Heward CB, McCarter RJ, Stock G (2002). "Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability of Human Aging". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 959: 452–62. PMID 11976218. [2]. de Grey, Aubrey (2003). The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging. Austin, Texas: Landes Bioscience. ISBN 1-58706-155-4. [3]. de Grey, Aubrey and Rae, Michael (2007). Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime. St. Martin's Press. [4]. Laurence D. Mueller, Casandra L. Rauser and Michael R. Rose (2011). Does Aging Stop? Oxford University Press. [5]. Garland, T., Jr., and M. R. Rose, eds. (2009). Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications of Selection Experiments. University of California Press.
HOW TO COMMUNICATE THE LIFE EXTENSION AGENDA BY: PETER WICKS
As technology progresses, it is becoming increasingly clear that radical life extension is a real possibility. Not everyone is happy about this, and not everyone is even aware of it, but some of us are, and would like it to happen sooner rather than later. Nobody knows exactly how radical life extension will be achieved, but one thing seems clear: the more people who act with the intention of making it happen, the more quickly it will happen. So an obvious question to ask is how we can get more people to act with the intention of bringing about radical life extension. In other words, how should we go about communicating the life extension agenda? “Anyone Who Disagrees Is a Deathist” One approach is to ridicule opponents of radical life extension, for example by branding them as ‘deathists’. While it is easy to deplore such an approach, I do not actually believe it is without merit. Given the extent to which political discourse is in any case characterized largely by an exchange of insults, one might as well at least ensure that they are being deployed to a good cause. However, I hope it is also clear to everyone that merely insulting people (and this is what we are doing when we call people ‘deathists’) does not add up to an effective communication strategy. “Why do we want radical life extension anyway?” A better approach might be to ask ourselves why we want radical life extension to happen sooner rather than later. And this can be a surprisingly challenging question. For many of us, it might seem self-evident that anyone who is not basically in denial of their own yearning for immortality, or enthralled by religious or other delusions involving some kind of after-life, will want to live forever. But this case has not been proven, at least not to my satisfaction. While the self-preservation instinct is clearly one of the most powerful motivational drivers that we have, the mere existence of suicide demonstrates that it can be overcome. Furthermore, the drive to
survive is not a result of logical reasoning: it is a result of natural selection, along with other, less salubrious instincts, such as our penchant for insulting each other. It is not clear to me what overriding reason in logic we have to want to survive. And then there is the issue of identity. Psychologists know that individual identity is essentially an illusion, a story told to us by our minds, which helps us to operate effectively in the world (and which thus helped our ancestors pass on their genes), but which doesn’t correspond to reality in any convincing way. At a physical level, human beings can perhaps best be thought of as dissipative systems, essentially forms that appear—and then disappear—as by-products of the relentless march of life (which is to say biology). In reality, we have no more reason to identify with our future selves than with the tree outside our window. A somewhat more practical consideration might be that this yearning for immortality, even if it to some extent exists in everyone, and even if many objections to radical life extension are clearly related to a psychological denial of this yearning, is likely to be stronger in some than in others, and is capable of being outweighed by other considerations. So perhaps a generic answer to the question, “Why do I want radical life extension to happen sooner rather than later?” might be, “Because I have a particularly strong survival instinct, and/or lack good (personal) reasons to want to override it.” An important point here is that by formulating this type of answer to the question, we recognize the essential subjectivity of our desire for life extension, and thus we legitimize, rather than delegitimizing, the preference of some to delay or even prevent radical life extension. And that, I believe, is likely to help our cause, rather than hinder it. There are, of course, strong arguments in favour of radical life extension that do not depend only on our own personal, individual motivations. Two particularly strong ones, in my view, involve choice and morbidity. Put simply, the choice argument is that while people might legitimately prefer to limit their own life-spans, they have no right to impose that on everyone else by opposing the research that is required in order to achieve radical life extension. The morbidity argument is the championed by Aubrey De Grey: if we want to prevent the awfulness of agerelated diseases, then we need to tackle the underlying problem, which is aging. Radical life extension, according to this latter argument, needs to happen sooner rather than later not as an end in itself, but because it is an inevitable consequence of the steps that need to be taken in order to vanquish age-related disease. Empathy helps us to communicate, and acknowledging doubt helps us to empathise At this point, the reader may perhaps be wondering what any of this has to do with communication. Perhaps we have clarified our reasons for wanting radical life extension to happen sooner rather than later (and perhaps the reader will have come to very different conclusions than mine), but how is this supposed to help us to communicate effectively?
The answer to this question, in my view, is that in order to communicate effectively, we need to empathise with those we seek to convince, and to understand how they see the world. And it is always easier to empathise with those with whom we disagree if we are clear in our own minds about why we disagree. Indeed, my own suspicion is that most people who employ the ‘deathist’ slur, or otherwise express shock and outrage regarding the essential wickedness of people who don’t share our agenda, are in reality mainly attacking their own unacknowledged and unresolved doubts about the issue. Better to acknowledge our doubts and think through our reasons for supporting life extension. Then we will be able to see clearly to understand why not everyone shares our view, and develop effective strategies for convincing those who can be convinced (and avoid wasting time on those who can’t). In summary, while ridiculing those who are opposed to radical life extension may be effective as a tactic to be deployed in the context of a discourse that has in any case become vitriolic, the risk involved in deploying such tactics is that it becomes a mask for our own doubts, and we fail to develop the understanding we need in order to actually convince people. By contrast, by accepting that the desirability of radical life extension is not a self-evident truth, but rather (at its best) a possible conclusion of a process of honest self-reflection, we will develop the selfconfidence and peace of mind to understand the motivations and beliefs of those who disagree, and we will become much more effective at convincing those who can be convinced. And that, in turn, is likely to make radical life extension happen sooner rather than later.
SUPPORT LIFE, NOT WAR BY: TOM MOONEY
I normally do not begin newsletters or, in fact any letter, with a quote from the Bible but I found one sentence that was particularly interesting. 1 Corinthians 15:26 states: “THE LAST ENEMY THAT SHALL BE DESTROYED IS DEATH”. I am sure the author was not referring to indefinite life extension but at the same time he characterizes “death" as the “last enemy”. He does not refer to any metaphysical after life and portrays death as an “enemy”. If he were alive today he might have been a stalwart defender of life extension! Quite frankly, we could use outspoken people such as the author of that wise characterization. I am shocked, appalled, saddened and outraged that we are not fighting a war on aging even though we are willing to throw away money that could be used in laboratories all over this country and instead give trillions of dollars to prop up corrupt and incompetent leaders of two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan – that will take our money but never embrace us. I was shocked, appalled, saddened and outraged to read a report by Linda HoBilmes, a lecturer at the Harvard-Kennedy school in Boston that speculated that the aggregate costs of these two wars will be close to 6 Trillion dollars – the most expensive war in world history! Already we have spent over two trillion and future assistance for troops left physically and psychologically damaged will account for the remaining four trillion. By the way, that outrageous sum of money is the equivalent of 75,000 for every household! This is the most shocking and appalling waste of money EVER! To be honest, I worked on the Obama campaign but I made a big mistake! Within the next few days I will be putting up some petitions concerning this situation and asking that as the war winds down that we start supporting life over death. If we can throw away six trillion dollars in the middle east we can afford several billion dollars for life extension research. I will send you a message when they are posted and I hope you will sign them.
WAYS TO BECOME INVOLVED Someone called me recently and wanted to become involved in the life extension movement. I was happy and surprised and I told them what is going on in the movement and how they can help. They were not science oriented people but they wanted to help. I spoke with them for a long time and they finally agreed that they would start a small group and communicate with their elected officials and I informed them I would help them anyway I can. This is how a movement builds and this is something we need to do as soon as possible. I am quite aware that many people who read this are not political activists but, quite frankly, that does not matter. Progress is being made in the laboratories and now it is time to organize politically. I am very aware that many people do not like politics, and you are not alone. If you would like to become involved, contact me at:
[email protected]. I will show you how easy it is. We will prevail but we need your help! Finally, I thought that I would mention a few important things you could do to in order to become involved: 1-start a small group 2-Let us know your ideas 3-Sign petitions 4-Write your elected officials 5-send an E-mail to your Congressman 6-Call me if you need help 202-445-4876 Please get involved, we need your help! In Life, Tom Mooney Executive Director, Coalition to Extend Life
EVERYONE MUST MAKE THEIR OWN TRANSHUMANIST WAGER BY: ZOLTAN ISTVAN
Humanity, we have a problem. Each one of us has a problem. In fact, no matter where you go on the planet, no matter where you search, no matter who you turn to, every single person on the planet has this dire problem. That problem is our mortality. That problem is called death. The reason it's a problem is because we all love life. We all love the precious chance of existence. Even in one's darkest psychological despair, or one's most exhausting hardship, or one's most catastrophic horror, the thing we call life is miraculous. We cherish it and we don't want to lose it or have it end. But end it will! No matter how much you wish otherwise. The stark truth has always been right before your eyes—that nothing will save you from death. The obviousness of this overwhelms us every time we see a loved one or a friend whole body is lifeless, never to reach out, touch, and communicate with use again. Death is final. The great irony for our species is that we don't just have this one problem, but we actually have two problems. The second problem is nearly as vicious as the first. The second problem is the fact that most people around the world are just not worried about the first problem—they're not worried about dying. They're either religious and have the supposed afterlife all worked out, or they just don't care, or they just don't think immortality is possible. Whatever people's reasons, they just don't see the first problem as serious enough to warrant immediate concern—especially in a meaningful scientific way that makes them not die. And by not recognizing death as a problem, many people have no reason to attempt to defeat it. I have made it a mission in my life to make people aware of these two problems. It is why I wrote my philosophical novel The Transhumanist Wager. The concept of the Transhumanist Wager is simple. Through a simple fictional story, it explains that that in the 21st Century, it is a betrayal of ourselves (and the potential of our best selves) to not tackle and solve our two most pressing problems. More importantly, my book explains how we can solve these two problems. But first, some of you are asking: What is a transhumanist? What does such a person want? What are the main goals? Many people around the world still don't even know what transhumanism means. When explaining the term to people, I find it easiest to use the Latin translation. "Transhumanism" literally means "beyond human."
Transhumanist goals are broad and varied, but mostly they revolve around human beings using science and technology to improve and enhance themselves, their lives, and society. Transhumanists tend to concentrate on eliminating or reversing ageing—we are often called lifeextensionists or longevity advocates. Transhumanists are often, but not always, nonreligious. They find meaning in their own lives, without a divine creator. The philosophies of transhumanism make it possible that in the future one may become a so-called divine creator. Without exception, transhumanists prefer reason over any other method of understanding to guide themselves in life. Every transhumanist comes to their own realization of why they're a transhumanist. Each path is unique, personal, and totally different than another. I want to tell you briefly about my path. I was first introduced to transhumanism as a philosophy student attending Columbia University in New York City. For a class, I was assigned to read a magazine article on some of the recent breakthroughs in cryonics. The article told of a small but passionate group of scientists who believed that science and technology would be able to bring frozen patients back to life in the future if they were preserved properly. The article also discussed the transhuman movement, which it described as a community of reason-based futurists who wanted to use science and technology to live indefinitely. I was deeply intrigued. I finished that article and wanted to know more. I spent the next ten years reading everything I could on future technologies, human enhancement, and transhumanism. But it wasn't until I was in the jungles of the demilitarized zone of Vietnam as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel that I came to dedicate my life to transhumanism—that I came to the powerful conviction that human life should be preserved indefinitely, at any cost. While in the jungle filming Vietnamese bomb diggers searching the ground for unexploded ordinances to recover and sell, I almost stepped on a partially unburied landmine. My guide pushed me out of the way and I fell to within a foot of the mine. Tens of thousands have died from landmines in the DMZ in the last forty years, and I was lucky I was not one of them. For me, nothing was ever the same again after that moment. The landmine incident reminded me how fragile the human body was—how precious our minutes alive on this planet are. Upon returning to the Unites States, I began writing The Transhumanist Wager. The reason I tell you my personal story about becoming a transhumanist is that every one of us has their own story. But the two main problems we each face—and the choice we must make: the Transhumanist Wager—that is not just for some people. It is for every reasonable, straight-thinking person in the world. The Transhumanist Wager is not just a novel. Nor it is just an art work. It's an ultimatum—the gravest one you will ever face. In the 21st Century, it's also the only reasonable option. If you love life, you will dedicate yourself to finding a way to preserve that life. Transhumanists will not preserve their life via religion, false hopes, a mystic super spirituality, or otherwise. There is only one way transhumanists will do it: through the tools they can create with your own hands; through the reason their brain can muster; and through the rational conviction their being prompts of them by not wanting to die. To do otherwise in the 21st Century is to remain irrational and suicidal. In a world where we have the technology to travel to Mars, where we can video chat on our cell phones to someone 5000 miles away, or we can replace someone's heart with an artificial one, it's our evolutionary destiny to significantly extend our lives and to be transhuman.
Once you have identified the human race's two main problems, and you understand that you each face the Transhumanist Wager, the question is: what to do? How can you solve these problems and make the right choice in the wager. It's quite simple, really. The journey of the transhumanist requires no ritual, no prayer, and no mystic sacrifice. It requires only your ability to reason. Ask yourself how you can best dedicate yourself to a specific cause of the the life extension movement. Then do it! For some, this may mean going into science as a new career. For others it will mean volunteering in transhuman groups that need help. For some it will mean going into politics and pushing for more friendly science laws. For others, it will mean donating resources to scientific centers. For some, it will mean creating transhuman art and using it a vehicle to gain life extension support. For others it will mean just talking with friends and family about why you think science and technology are the best drivers of civilization. Whatever it is that one can do, be transhuman-minded! Be people that belong to a bright, rational scientific future, not one dogged by religious dogma and heritage. Be transhuman, and rise to your evolutionary destiny.
STRATEGIES FOR HASTENING THE ARRIVAL OF INDEFINITE LIFE EXTENSION BY: G. STOLYAROV II
We are still several decades away from a time when medical technology will be able keep senescence and death at bay. What can we do until then to hasten the arrival of radical extension and to improve our own chances of benefiting from it? I recently offered my thoughts on this matter on an Immortal Life debate/discussion thread. My proposed approach is versatile and can be distilled into five essential points. 1. Personal Good Health. Each advocate of indefinite life extension should try to personally remain in good health as long as possible. This mostly involves common-sense practices (exercise, moderation in food, as well as avoidance of harmful substances, dangerous habits, and risky pleasures). 2. Utilization of Comparative Advantage. Each advocate of indefinite life extension should work to advance it in the areas where he/she has a comparative advantage. I am sympathetic to Peter Wicks’s statements in this regard – with the caveat that finding what one is best at is an iterative process that requires trying out many approaches and pursuits to discover one’s strengths and the best ways of actualizing them. Moreover, an individual may have multiple areas of strength, and in that case should discover how best to synthesize those areas and use them complementarily. But, crucially, one should not feel constrained to personally follow specific career paths, such as biogerontological research. Rather, one could make a more substantial contribution by maximally utilizing one’s areas of strength, knowledge, and expertise – and contributing some of the proceeds to research on and advocacy of indefinite life extension. 3. Advocacy. As Aubrey de Grey has put it, insufficient funding is a major obstacle to the progress of life-extension research at present. The scientists who are capable of carrying out the research are already here, and they are motivated. They need more support in the form of donations, which can be achieved with enough advocacy and persuasion of the general public (as well as wealthy philanthropists). In this respect, I agree with Franco Cortese that an additional promoter today may make more of a difference than an additional researcher, because the work of the promoters may ensure steady employment for the researchers in the field of anti-aging
interventions. My Resources on Indefinite Life Extension (RILE) page catalogues a sampling of the major advances in fighting disease and developing new promising technologies that have occurred in the past several years. If only more people knew… The Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) attempts to raise this awareness and has been gaining support and recognition at an encouraging pace. You can add to this progress by exploring and liking the MILE Facebook page. 4. Forthrightness. It is important for all advocates of indefinite life extension to be open about their views and to be ready to justify them – even casually and in passing. The idea needs to be made sufficiently commonplace that most people will not only take it seriously but will consider it to be a respectable position within public discourse. At that point, increased funding for research will come. 5. Innovative Education. As my previous points imply, education is key. But education on indefinite life extension needs to be made appealing not just in terms of content, but in terms of the learning process. This is where creativity should be utilized to create an engaging, entertaining, and addictive open curriculum of reading materials and digital certifications, compatible with an Open Badge infrastructure. I have begun to do this with several multiplechoice quizzes pertaining to some of my articles, and I welcome and encourage any similar efforts by others.
TAKE ACTION! BY: ILA
---------The views expressed in the documents of the International Longevity Alliance are not necessarily the views of all the publishers or other authors, or even of all the members and associates of the International Longevity Alliance itself. As stated in the documents, the International longevity Alliance promotes the social struggle against the deteriorative aging process and for healthy and productive longevity for all, through scientific research, technological development, medical treatment, public health and education measures, and social activism. In practical terms, we promote the maximal possible increase of healthy longevity, for as many people as possible, and by the most feasible means based on the best available scientific evidence. Hence, in many practical cases, under current technological limitations, our hopes for extended longevity can be only moderate or even minimal. Yet, the hopes may become more “radical” in the future with the advancement of scientific human knowledge and increasing technological capabilities. ---------1. Register at this site to become a member and/or receive updates. (Email list registration will open soon.) 2. Join International Longevity Alliance affiliated groups in social networks. The list can be found here. 3. If there is no related social network in your area, start one! 4. Organize live local meetings of supporters. 5. Get involved with a research institute, public association or other organization, creating and testing treatments for the aging process and its derivative chronic diseases, and for the sake of healthy longevity. Research, work, volunteer or donate for such organizations. 6. Educate yourself on recent advances in life-extension science, as well as its social implications. Educate others. Discuss longevity with friends.
Participate in academic and communal learning frameworks and programs related to the
struggle against the aging process and for healthy life extension, including its research and application aspects. Study such fields as: bio-gerontology; geriatrics; biotechnology; medical technology; social work; financial planning; science, technology and society; regenerative medicine; nano-medicine; nutrition; ergonomics; and other fields related to healthy life extension. Collect up-to-date, evidential scientific information regarding the optimal hygienic lifestyle for all ages, and for aging persons particularly. Share this information freely and discuss it openly with members of the healthcare community, friends and the wide public. Organize focused educational activities for professionals and the wide public, such as conferences, workshops, open discussions, publications in the media and social networks, regarding the research and development for healthy life extension.
7. Lobby. Promote legislation and policies for research, development, public health and education aimed at reducing the damage of aging and for healthy life extension. Write letters to your elected representatives. Participate in their meetings and press conferences, and ask them questions related to healthy longevity. Make them think and act for the advancement of lifeprolonging means. Vote for politicians sympathetic with the goal of healthy longevity for all. 8. Practice a healthy, life-prolonging life-style, according to the best scientific evidence available. Keep well and healthy until the emergence of effective life-extending technologies, and make an effort so they should arrive as early as possible.
TRANSHUMANISM AS A GRAND CONSERVATISM BY: G. STOLYAROV II
For anyone interested in the history of life-extension ideas, I highly recommend Ilia Stambler’s 2010 paper, “Life extension – a conservative enterprise? Some fin-de-siècle and early twentiethcentury precursors of transhumanism”. This extensively researched and cosmopolitan work explores the ideas of five proto-transhumanist thinkers who embedded their future-oriented thoughts in extremely different intellectual frameworks: Nikolai Fedorov, Charles Stephens, Alexander Bogdanov, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Finot. Mr. Stambler considers Finot’s thought to most resemble the ideas of today’s transhumanist movement. The conclusions of Mr. Stambler’s research are profound and interesting to explore. One of the main insights is that it is possible to arrive at support for radical life extension from many different ideological frameworks. Mr. Stambler writes that “In different national contexts, different ideological schemes – secular humanism or religion, discrimination or egalitarianism, idealism or materialism, socialism or capitalism, liberalism or totalitarianism – appear to yield different justifications for the necessity of life prolongation and longevity research and to impact profoundly on the way such goals are conceived and pursued. As the works of the above-said proponents of human enhancement and longevity exemplify, the authors adapt to a particular national ideological milieu and serve as agents for its continuation.” This is a welcome insight in the sense that it should be possible to attract an immensely intellectually and culturally diverse following to the cause of indefinite human life extension. However, it is also the case that some political and cultural environments are more conducive to rapid progress in human life extension than others. I have recently articulated my view that a libertarian set of policies will, by unshackling competition and innovation by numerous entities on a free market, result in the most rapid advent of the technologies sought by transhumanists. That being said, I still perceive much common ground with non-libertarians to be achievable on the issue of life extension – for instance, in the realms of supporting specific research, spreading public awareness, sharing information, and coming together to advocate for policy positions on which we can agree. Also, it is possible that non-libertarian transhumanists might benefit their own intellectual traditions by steering them toward more technology-friendly and life-respecting
directions. As an atheist libertarian transhumanist, I would greatly prefer to be debating with transhumanist environmentalists, transhumanist socialists, and transhumanist Christians (yes, they do exist) than their mainstream counterparts of today. Another key insight of Mr. Stambler’s paper resonates with me personally. Mr. Stambler ventures to “suggest is that the pursuit of human enhancement and life extension may originate in conservatism, both biological and social. There is a close conjunction between the ideas of life extension, transcending human nature and creating artificial life, in Finot’s writings and those of present-day transhumanists. The connection (and progression) between these enterprises may appear logical: the means initially designed to conserve life may exceed their purpose, and beginning as a search to preserve a natural bodily status quo, the aspirations may rapidly expand into attempts to modify nature. It appears to me that these enterprises evolve in this, and not in the reverse order. The primary aspiration is not to modify nature, but to preserve a natural state.” Anyone who has followed my work over the years would be unable to avoid my generally conservative esthetic, my strong interest in history, and my admiration for the achievements and legacies of prior eras. I am mostly not a conservative in the American or even European political sense, but I am conservative in the sense of seeking to preserve and build upon the achievements of Western civilization – including the development of its logical implications for future decades and centuries. Technological progress and the achievement of indefinite life extension are very much the direct extrapolation of the desire to preserve the historical achievements that enable our unprecedented quality of life today. Furthermore, my transhumanism grows out of a desire to preserve my own body and mind in a youthful state – so as to maintain a life driven primarily by my own choices and the manner in which I set up the environment around me. In order for me to remain who I am, and to do what I wish to do, I need to support radical technological change and changes to our society in general. However, those changes are fundamentally aimed at supporting that pattern of life which I consider to be good – and which today, unfortunately, is far too subject to destructive external influences over which no individual yet has sufficient influence or control. Unlike some transhumanists, I have no ambitions to have my mind “uploaded,” to lead a non-biological existence, or “merge” my mind with anyone else’s. If I obtain indefinite life, I will spend it indefinitely looking the way I do (while remedying any flaws) and focusing on the perpetuation of my family, property, esthetic, and activities – all the while learning continuously and becoming a better (and more durable) version of the person I already am. For the true stability of home, family, property, and patterns of living, there must be individual sovereignty. For true individual sovereignty to exist, our society must improve rapidly in every dimension, so as to facilitate the hyper-empowerment of every person. Ironically, for one’s personal sphere to be conserved and shaped to one’s will, a revolution in the universe is necessary.
Cultural and historical preservation is also a major but seldom appreciated implication of transhumanism. By living longer and remaining in a youthful state, specific individuals would be able to create and refine their skills to a much greater extent. Imagine the state of classical music if we could have had hundreds of years for Mozart and Beethoven to compose – or the state of painting if Leonardo, Vermeer, or David had lived for centuries. Every time a creator dies, an irreplaceable vision dies with him. Others might emulate him, but it is not the same – for they do not have his precise mind. They can replicate and absorb into their own esthetic what he already brought into this world, but they cannot foresee the new directions in which he would have taken his work with more time. Each individual is precious and irreplaceable; the loss of each individual is the loss of a whole universe of memories, ideas, and possibilities. Transhumanism is a grand conservatism – an ambition to conserve people – to put an end to all such senseless destruction and to keep around all of the people who build up and beautify our world. The prototranshumanist Nikolai Fedorov (one of those Christian transhumanists who ought to be much more prevalent among the Christians of today) even took this idea to the point of proposing an ultimate goal to physically resurrect every person who has ever lived. While, as I have written earlier, this would not resurrect the “I-nesses” of these individuals, achieving this goal might nonetheless give us the benefit of recapitulating their memories and experiences and seeing how their “doubles” might further develop themselves in a more advanced world. It is precisely the conservative sensibility in me that recoils against “letting go” of the good things in life – whether they be my present advantages or the positive legacies of the past. It is precisely the conservative part of me that hates “starting from scratch” when something good and useful is no longer available because it has fallen prey to damaging external events. To allow the chaos of senseless destruction – the decay and ruin introduced by the inanimate processes of nature and the stupidity of men – is a sheer waste. Many put up with this sad state of affairs today because it has hitherto been unavoidable. But once the technical possibilities emerge to put an end to such destruction, then leaving it to wreak its havoc would become a moral outrage. Once we are able to truly control and direct our own lives, the stoic acceptance of ruin will become one of those aspects of history that we could confidently leave in the past.
INVERTING A TECHNOPOLITICAL TROPE: ON THE HUBRIS OF NEO-LUDDISM BY: FRANCO CORTESE
One of the most common tropes one finds recurring throughout rhetoric that is critical of Transhumanism (the belief that it is possible and desirable to improve the human condition via science and technology) and Technoprogressivism (the belief that it is possible and desirable to improve upon the conditions of society and the world via science and technology) is hubris. Hubris is an ancient Greek concept meaning excess of pride that carries connotations of reckless vanity and heedless self-absorbment, often to the point of carelessly endangering the welfare of others in the process. It paints us in a selfish and dangerous light, as though we were striving for the technological betterment of ourselves alone and the improvement of the human condition solely as it pertains to ourselves, so as to be enhanced relative to the majority of humanity. It also has connotations of foolish certainty and self-percieved infallibility that makes it seem as though we were striving for something that could only be our own downfall. This is also criticism often commonly raised against the longevity community. Selfishness for wanting to stay alive past our programmed expiry-date, and reckless pride for thinking that we somehow deserve to live longer than those that came and went before us. As though we really were meant to die, whatever that could mean. Unlike valid areas of criticism that can and should be addressed, like ethicacy (e.g. availability of longevity therapies) and safety, the criticism of hubris fails to move the field and its rhetoric forward. Concerns regarding as overpopulation and unequal availability should be addressed, and these are the among the type of criticism that succeeds in moving the field forward. Luckily, these are among the concerns most commonly raised regarding indefinite human lifespans. Following these common concerns, however, are criticisms rooted in technical infeasibility, and finally, moralistic criticisms – that it is immoral to live longer than the average person does today; that we shouldn’t tamper with some intangible but definitively static and preordained human nature, as though we haven’t been doing so since the very conception of culture. In no way is the too-common, clichéd criticism of hubris correct or even salient in the context of Transhumanism, Technoprogressivism or what might be called Longevitism. I think that the majority of Transhumanists, Techno-Progressives and emerging-tech-enthusiasts work toward
promoting beneficial outcomes and deliberating the repercussions and most desirable embodiments of radically-transformative technologies for the betterment of all mankind first and foremost, and only secondly for themselves if at all. The ired irony of this situation is that the very group who most often hails the charge of Hubris against the Transhumanist community is, according to the logic of hubris, more hubristic than those they rail their charge against. Bio-Luddites, and more generally Neo-Luddites, can be clearly seen to be more self-absorbed and recklessly-selfish than the Transhumanists they are so quick to raise qualms against. Note that for the purposes of this essay, Neo-Luddites will denote those who favor outright relinquishment of certain emerging (e.g. Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) technologies rather than differential technological development of such emerging technologies, The logic of this conclusion is simple: Transhumanists seek merely to better determine the controlling circumstances and determining conditions of our own selves, whereas Neo-Luddites seek to determine such circumstances and conditions (even if using a negative definition, i.e., the absence of something) not only for everyone besides themselves alive at the moment, but even for the unquantable multitudes of minds and lives still fetal in the future. We do not seek to radically transform Humanity against their will; indeed, this is so off the mark as to be antithetical to the true Transhumanist impetus - for we seek to liberate their wills, not leash or lash them. We seek to offer every human alive the possibility of transforming themselves more effectively according to their own subjective projected objectives; of actualizing and realizing themselves; ultimately of determining themselves for themselves. We seek to offer every member of Humanity the choice to better choose and the option for more optimal options: the self not as final-subject but as project-at-last. Neo-Luddites, on the other hand, wish to deny the whole of humanity that choice. They actively seek the determent, relinquishment or prohibition of technological self-transformation, and believe in the heat of their idiot-certainty that they have either the intelligence or the right to force their own preference upon everyone else, present and future. Such lumbering, oafish paternalism patronizes the very essence of Man, whose only right is to write his own and whose only will is to will his own – or at least to vow that he will will his own one fateful yet fate-free day. We seek solely to choose ourselves, and to give everyone alive and yet-to-live the same opportunity: of choice. Neo-Luddites seek not only to choose for themselves but to force this choice upon everyone else as well. If any of the original Luddites were alive today, perhaps they would loom large to denounce the contemporary caricature of their own movement and rail their tightly-spooled rage against the
modern Neo-Luddites that use Ludd’s name in so reckless a threadbare fashion. At the heart of it they were trying to free their working-class fellowship. There would not have been any predominant connotations of extending the distinguishing features of the Luddite revolt into the entire future, no hint of the possibility that they would set a precedent which would effectively forestall or encumber the continuing advancement of technology at the cost of the continuing betterment of humanity. Who were they to intimate that continuing technological and methodological growth and progress would continually liberate humanity in fits and bounds of expanding freedom to open up the parameters of their possible actions - would free choice from chance and make the general conditions of being continually better and better? If this sentiment were predominant during 1811-1817, perhaps they would have lain their hammers down. They were seeking the liberation of their people after all; if they knew that their own actions might spawn a future movement seeking to dampen and deter the continual technological liberation of Mankind, perhaps they would have remarked that such future Neo-Luddites missed their point completely. Perhaps the salient heart of their efforts was not the relinquishment of technology but rather the liberation of their fellow man. Perhaps they would have remarked that while in this particular case technological relinquishment coincided with the liberation of their fellow man, that this shouldn’t be heralded as a hard rule. Perhaps they would have been ashamed of the way in which their name was to be used as the nametag and figurehead for the contemporary fight against liberty and Man’s autonomy. Perhaps Ludd is spinning like a loom in his grave right now. Does the original Luddites’ enthusiasm for choice and the liberation of his fellow man supersede their revolt against technology? I think it does. The historical continuum of which Transhumanism is but the contemporary leading-tip encompasses not only the technological betterment of self and society but the non-technological as well. Historical Utopian ventures and visions are valid antecedents of the Transhumanist impetus just as Techno-Utopian historical antecedents are. While the emphasis on technology predominant in Transhumanist rhetoric isn’t exactly misplaced (simply because technology is our best means of affecting and changing self and society, whorl and world, and thus our best means of improving it according to subjective projected objectives as well) it isn’t a necessary precondition, and its predominance does not preclude the inclusion of non-technological attempts to improve the human condition as well. The dichotomy between knowledge and device, between technology and methodology, doesn’t have a stable ontological ground in the first place. What is technology but embodied methodology, and methodology but internalized technology? Language is just as unnatural as quantum computers in geological scales of time. To make technology a necessary prerequisite is to miss the end for the means and the mark for a lark. The point is that we are trying to consciously improve the state of self, society and world; technology has simply superseded
methodology as the most optimal means of accomplishing that, and now constitutes our best means of effecting our affectation. The original Luddite movement was less against advancing technology and more about the particular repercussions that specific advancements in technology (i.e. semi-automated looms) had on their lives and circumstances. To claim that Neo-Luddism has any real continuity-ofimpetus with the original Luddite movement that occurred throughout 1811-1817 may actually be antithetical to the real motivation underlying the original Luddite movement – namely the liberation of the working class. Indeed, Neo-Luddism itself, as a movement, may be antithetical to the real impetus of the initial Luddite movement both for the fact that they are trying to impose their ideological beliefs upon others (i.e. prohibition is necessarily exclusive, whereas availability of the option to use a given technology is non-exclusive and forces a decision on no one) and because they are trying to prohibit the best mediator of Man’s ever-increasing selfliberation – namely technological growth. Support for these claims can be found in the secondary literature. For instance, in Luddites and Luddism Kevin Binfield sees the Luddite movement as an expression of worker-class discontent during the Napoleonic Wars than having rather than as an expression of antipathy toward technology in general or toward advancing technology as general trend (Binfield, 2004). And in terms of base-premises, it is not as though Luddites are categorically against technology in general; rather they are simply against either a specific technology, a specific embodiment of a general class of technology, or a specific degree of technological sophistication. After all, most every Luddite alive wears clothes, takes antibiotics, and uses telephones. Legendary Ludd himself still wanted the return of his manual looms, a technology, when he struck his first blow. I know many Transhumanists and Technoprogressives who still label themselves as such despite being weary of the increasing trend of automation. This was the Luddites’ own concern: that automation would displace manual work in their industry and thereby severely limit their possible choices and freedoms, such as having enough discretionary income to purchase necessities. If their government were handing out guaranteed basic income garnered from taxes to corporations based on the degree with which they replace previously-manual labor with automated labor, I’m sure they would have happily lain their hammers down and laughed all the way home. Even the Amish only prohibit specific levels of technological sophistication, rather than all of technology in general. In other words no one is against technology in general, only particular technological embodiments, particular classes of technology or particular gradations of technological sophistication. If you’d like to contest me on this, try communicating your rebuttal without using the advanced technology of cerebral semiotics (i.e. language).
REFERENCES Binfield, K. (2004). Luddites and Luddism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
TALKING TO PEOPLE ABOUT LIFE EXTENSION: IF THEY SAY NO BY: MILE
I have heard it said that when it comes to the progression of indefinite life extension, “If they say no then it’s going to be no.” I’m not sure exactly who “they” is, but they are going to be in an awful small minority here at some point and then until the end of time or the end of humankind. If “they” say no, it does not mean no, it never does. It means you are at a stand off until the side with the most preeminence and willpower prevails. They say no to indefinite life extension? We say no to involuntary eternal obliteration. How are they going to survive our no? That is the much harder problem. You reach a critical mass when the ingredients of a movement, need, resources and catalyst, come together and your movement is born. Then awareness building takes place. Once you have gained your footing, you grow this through the social unrest. Then you solidify a core of mobilization in the form of pressurized advocacy and you keep that momentum primed until you have filled the vacuum that was waiting for your cause to fill it. Sometimes you know, the hungry have to figure out how they can take down a mighty bison so they can eat, figure out how to harness fire so they will not freeze to death, sail an unknown ocean so they can be free, kick the doors of ignorance off the hinges of the vassals grain bins and fill that vacuum in their souls with that grain that means the future for them. The vacuum in the future says yes and it draws us in. At one time the bison, the heat, the ocean and the vassals said no. It would be hard for no to stop us if we tried to let it. If they say no then we meet them at more tables of diplomacy like the desks of the heads of the departments at the NIH, MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the CDC and A4M: at the offices of Congressional health committee members, at the coffee shop in the home towns of philanthropists and angel investors, in the office of venture capital agencies, at conferences, debates and all the rest. If they say no then we mobilize more public pressure, continue building, we get even busier spreading the word to more people, we get even more convincing and timely and we deliver for this cause. If they say no then we notify the Longevity Party. If they say no
we write more letters to our representatives, and send more people in to talk to them. If they say no we prep more and more candidates, prepping those that are already there that can be swayed now, and introducing our own. We create videos and books for that audience; we talk about it in interviews in newspapers and magazines and blogs and television, and we work to get more of them. We work to get through to opinion leaders, role models and voices like Larry King, Steven Seagal, the president of Kazakhstan and the Pope, who in turn get through to others. We proactively work to get more media coverage, more newspaper blurbs, more yard signs and bumper stickers, send more books and documentaries to book clubs and film fests. The entire world, through their general state of not being informed about this cause, generally does say no right now. That is the entire reason for our existence. That is essentially the entire reason for the movement. If they didn’t say no then we wouldn’t be here. A movement doesn’t come into existence because most people say yes. The movement comes into existence to change no to yes. Somebody said to me that, “The only way “around” no is to proceed illegally, or wait for laws to change.” There are many ways through it, and movements systematize that process. You rise up. Sometimes the road through requires a whole new inter-state system of super highways. Sometimes the road through requires the rationing bonds of a nation backing the commitment of 15 million dedicated activists. Sometimes the road through requires hundreds of thousands of people on long marches with fire hoses to the face and dog bites. They said no to industry, they said no to the financing of the Panama Canal, they said no to health care. They said no to us, and we raised an entire movement for indefinite life extension up out of the ground to move through it. We find it at every deadlock; we meet up with it at every impasse. That’s how you get through no. If it takes 5, 10, 20 years, that is nothing in the scheme of things, that’s business as usual. That will be the easy part. To get through no you commit to yes and you see it through. You look at what it will take and you prepare yourself to go the whole distance. Any problem, broken down into enough small pieces is rendered easy. You hand the no’s out among the movement. Your life and your shot at this vast existence are on the line. The movement for indefinite life extension is a small commitment, a small price to pay for such a large prize. There are people who spend more time building and preparing a house than the amount of time it is going to take us to execute the movement for indefinite life extension. So let’s work through this skirmish here with the trancists and the uninformed and then move on to the heavy artillery. Rejuvenating our tissues and blood and bones, keeping our bodies healthy and finding the way to allow indefinite life extension, and in time, that is the hard part. The question is not how we are ever going to get through no. The question is what no is going to
stop us. To quote a great statesmen and military strategist, “We will find a way or make one. Life has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.”
DEFEATING AGING AND DEATH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AND URGENT GOAL FOR HUMANKIND BY: GIOVANNI SANTOSTASI, PH.D
IMMORTALITY IS THE ONLY THING WHICH DOESN’T TOLERATE BEING POSTPONED. - KARL KRAUS
Everything you can imagine doing, achieving, giving, receiving, any goal worth striving for, any experience you desire having is based on one simple requirement: you need to be alive. Life is precious. In particular conscious, intelligent life is very rare and priceless. When reasoning in a scientific manner about the universe we should consider only the evidence in front of us (and possible logically argued deductions from this evidence). It is a fact, that we didn’t observe yet any presence of intelligent life in the Universe. The Italian born physicist Enrico Fermi used this fact together with the several billion years age of the universe to question the existence of other form of intelligent life in the Universe, this is the famous Fermi’s paradox. He was a master of this kind of order estimates based on some simple facts and assumptions. Fermi estimate of the existence of intelligent life in the universe was order 1 (just us or few other ones, very far away). If this estimate is right, then consider the density of intelligence in the universe. A rough estimate of the size of the universe is its age 13.8 billion years times the speed of light (this is a simplified calculation; the size of the observable universe is actually few times bigger). When that is expressed in miles we have that the radius of the universe is about 100 thousand billion billion miles. The volume of the universe then would be is 1 followed by 69 zeros or a billion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion cubic miles. Let’s round the population of the earth to 10 billion. That means that if you spread human consciousness all over the universe you will find a brain every 100 billion trillion trillion trillion trillion miles. Indeed brains are very rare. Each brain is unique, an invaluable treasure.
Neuroscience is revealing almost every day new insights on our brains and how they function. It is clear that even if there are many traits that that make us act in similar ways in given circumstances the precise wiring and connections between neurons is unique to each individual [1]. These unique connections make a personalized cognitive map of the world resultant of the individual diverse experiences [2]. Both environment and genetics can influence how these brain maps are evolving in time and how they react to events and what they are able to imagine and create. Even if the maps are changing and in constant flux their future trajectory is determined by the unrepeatable path that each mind has taken in its history. It should be our top priority to preserve these minds, to allow them to continue to evolve and grow, to allow them to contribute to well beings of other minds (and help heal them and guide them if they tend to be destructive and unproductive). However 100 thousands of these minds are destroyed every day. True that others are created but the uniqueness of each mind is destroyed forever. Aging and death has been unavoidable until now but we live in extraordinary times. Science and technology is advancing so fast that a cure for aging is feasible in the lifespan of most living at the moment on Earth. This advancement could be even faster if made it into a priority. It has been proposed that if one or more governments would come together and create a Manhattan Project style initiative (that focused the work of several scientists to create the first atomic bomb and gave them generous resources to achieve that goal) we could find a solution to the problem of aging within 10 years or less. Even less ambitious projects in the same scale of large scientific projects as the Large Hadron Collider could achieve the extreme longevity goal within a very short time. But this fundamental goal is left to the initiative of few organizations and labs around the world, SENS being one of the largest and best funded [4]. This is not enough. Because of the perceived inevitability of death and the lack of knowledge about the relevant science most people just don’t know how to reason about the issue of death. Religion has been the custodian of most of humankind imaginary and discourse on the topic of death. Religion existence depends on the fear of death that the majority of sentient beings rightly possess. Religion has created much mind conditioning on many issues but on the subject of death even atheists and free thinkers seem to fall prey of powerful preconceptions even more powerful than religious thinking [3]. Discussing this topic many say absurd, nonsensical things, and use sacred words as selfishness, natural, cycle of life as if they were trying to exorcise something that terrifies them. It is an emotional reaction to the topic of death. Paradoxically accepting death to them is a way to exorcise the topic of death. There is not justification to let minds being destroyed by what is understood as a natural process. Humans have thought their natural condition since they become to use their large brains. Each
innovation, each invention, technological, social, political has been an overcoming of our nature. We have defined our nature over and over again. If anything can be said about the nature of humankind is that it is its nature to go beyond its limits. Death and in particular the grotesque degradation due to aging is a tremendous and horrific limitation on the human spirit. It is our enemy number one. Death is a waste. Many of the most productive people spend years improving their skills, learning from experience, gaining wisdom on how to work and be successful in a complex world and when they finally start to master their field they decline in mental power and then die. The equivalent of a large living library is destroyed when a mind is gone. But is not just what the library contains but what it will be able to produce and create that is also lost. A common criticism against the idea of indefinite life spans is that such goal is selfish and it will destroy the economy and the environment because of overpopulation. There is nothing wrong in being selfish and want to preserve your own life. A certain level of selfishness is necessary to get up in the morning and do anything useful for oneself and others. You need to love yourself first to help others. Altruism is intelligent selfishness. Again because most people have not thought about this issue clearly enough and respond in a very emotional way when confronted with mortality the criticism is based on misconceptions. What it is not understood is that the proponents of life extension are not proposing to extend senility but to keep people young, vibrant and creative. It is clear then how for a world population being active and productive could be an enormous boost to the economy. Also people that have more life in front of them would be more careful in reproducing and seeing children as their main asset. It is a fact as a country improves economically the child birth rate decreases. Most of the overpopulation is due to developing countries and even in these countries the projections are that they the child rate birth would decrease soon or is already decreasing. Far from being a problem life extension would be actually a solution to the opposite problem that many developed countries are experiencing that is the fact that a small, productive, young portion of the population has to support economically a much larger older, frail, unproductive one. Several studies have shown through modeling and reasonable forecasting that indeed life extension has a very beneficial economic impact [5]. It should also be clear that extending life would make life even more precious and reckless behavior as wars and violent crime would also be impacted by extended life spans. Crime should decline because people that commit crime often usually do so because they feel desperate and
without any way out. But by living without an arbitrary time limitation people would have indefinite time to achieve goals and look for opportunities and do better planning for the future. Crime would not seem so appealing if you have many chances to prosper and be a productive agent in the world. But besides the immediate advantages of life extension at the individual and social level, remember that the universe is so empty of consciousness and we need to spread intelligence and creative power everywhere to enliven the cosmos. We need more brains, many more to fill the dull and cold emptiness of space. Immortal brains is what we need to achieve the task. REFERENCES:
[1]. G. Miller, Why are you and your brain unique? Science, 5 October 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6103 pp. 35-36 [2]. I. Sample, Sebastian Seung, You are your connectome. The observer, June 2012 [3]. S. Cave, Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization, 2012, Random House, New York [4]. SENS organization webpage L.A. Gavrilov, N.S. Gavrilova, Demographic consequences of defeating aging, poster SENS 4, June
INTERNATIONAL LONGEVITY ALLIANCE INITIATIVES BY: ILA
On January 5, the second general meeting of the leaders and activists of the International Longevity Alliance (ILA) took place. Frankly, there were earlier some apprehensions that for whatever reasons (perhaps even meteorological) the level of activity and enthusiasm of members of this group was gradually decreasing. It was good to find evidence to the contrary. The meeting took place in an extremely cooperative and constructive atmosphere. About 18 collaborative projects were initiated right there and then. The exact organizational structure, goals and ways to join the projects will be elaborated and announced soon, in the “Projects” section of the ILA website. I include below just a brief outline of the directions of work. A more systematic presentation of the collaborative projects has been prepared by Daniel Wuttke on his Denigma platform (that will be one of the ILA collaborative projects). Many thanks to Daniel Wuttke, the developer of Denigma, and Edouard Debonneuil, the leader of the overall “Linking Researchers” project!! (To see the list, please click International Longevity Alliance – Collaborations.) Even now, everyone is welcome to apply to join the teams through the platform or by contacting the key workers in the particular projects. And many thanks to all the participants for their wonderful initiatives! So here are the initiated projects: 1. Writing and promoting materials in different languages. As it was suggested, it is very important not only to produce such materials in local languages, but also make people who speak other languages aware of those materials (for example through publicizing synopses in English). Recognition of local and individual achievement is important! 2. It was even suggested to create a merit earning system, giving people the recognition and respect (if not the money) for the work they do for the cause (and the alliance). Yet, the details of
such a system or even its foundation are still uncertain. Even if an exact system of awarding merit for good work is not entirely clear, it may be important for our movement. So mark down a project: Encouraging and recognizing initiative and contribution! 3. Beside online communications, activism “on the field” also helps to raise morale and public interest in life extension. Several public demonstrations in support of life extension research have already been conducted. The latest one was in December 2012, during the Eurosymposium on Healthy Aging, organized by HEALES, where many supporters of ILA met. Such public actions and demonstrations can be easily replicated across the world. Perhaps they can even be conducted simultaneously in many countries of the world, deploying media coverage. In addition to such public demonstrations, petitions and law proposals could be submitted, study groups can be held, and many more activities in support of life extension done. Such coordinated activities across the world can be done at any time. One idea that was raised during the meeting was to organize some form of joint longevity activism during the forthcoming Future Day on March 1, or other non-specific date, or setting a special regular “Longevity Day,” for such collaborative activities. To include all the options, this project may also be called “A Day of Concerted Longevity Activism.” 4. To facilitate the collection of knowledge, exchange and distribution of free and accessible information about longevity, a Wikipedia project was initiated. 5. A related item is the Collaborative Knowledge Management project that will provide a repository of information on aging and longevity researchers and research centers, as well as providing linking tools. 6. And yet another form of knowledge collection and sharing will be the creation of Educational Platforms on longevity, for different audiences, lay and more academic. 7. There is an overarching “Linking Researchers” project, initiated to facilitate the interaction with and between researchers in the field. A part of this project is an ongoing Skype ILA meeting: the “Worldwide Continuous Longevity Skype Meeting”. 8. The Denigma project [http://denigma.de] will be the main IT platform in the creation of the repository of information on research of aging, and linking of researchers. 9. The “Longevity M edia” project will enhance the ILA website with advanced media options, possibly introducing a kind of “longevity radio” and/or “longevity TV channel” in addition to a video conference platform. Additional media outlets and platforms will be sought and linked to
increase our Internet presence. 10. Newsletter. The website already has online registration option to receive email updates/newsletters, when these will be ready [http://longevityalliance.org/]. 11. The Longevity Alliance Logo Contest continues. The submission of logos will end on January 31, and then voting will begin. 12. Complementing the IT projects, the flagship biological project of the Alliance will be the promotion the Age In Vivo project, testing life-extending interventions in mice, other domestic animals, and simpler organisms, using a Do It Yourself approach. 13. Several people (quite independently) suggested the need to collect data on people’s health and try to analyze it in relation to aging, longevity and an optimal life style. Call it health information project. 14. The health extension media response and outreach team will seek to both react to postings and news in the media about longevity research, as well as facilitate the creation of such postings and news, actively pushing for the public visibility of the topic. 15. Grant writing assistance. The ILA will provide assistance on identifying and obtaining grants for research on promoting longevity. 16. In addition to grants, crowdfunding will be utilized. The organizational structure of the funding projects (grant and crowdfunding) remains to be established. 17. One of the major (perhaps even unique) areas of ILA’s activity is the focus on international lobbying for aging and longevity research, in addition to raising the general public interest and awareness of the issue. The task often requires a very high degree of professionalism, and even restrictiveness. But very often the main ingredient is simply being brave and believing in one’s cause, not being afraid to write and speak to politicians and officials, making them understand that the deteriorative aging process is a grave problem, but not something that cannot be ameliorated by scientific efforts. With such a motivation, almost everyone can become a lobbyist, and everywhere in the world. Yet it is important to know the procedure for each country, the right message to convey and the right way to convey it. 18. An ongoing effort is being made to help the head of the Gerontology Research Group at UCLA, Dr. Stephen Coles, who has cancer, to raise funds for his treatment. Thank you very
much Edouard Debonneuil for starting such a wonderful project! It is a great honor to participate in this initiative – on the human level, trying to help a great person, on the communal level – being a part of the international gerontological community helping one of its leaders, and scientific level – by studying the different treatment options attempting to estimate the best and most effective course of action. It is only to be hoped that there will be more projects like this and more active people involved in them. Looking forward to an active and productive 2013 for the sake of achieving healthy longevity for all!
PROBLEMS WITH NIA FUNDING DISTRIBUTION BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
Funding distribution in the NIA is ridiculous. Not only is the existing decision making system of grant approval not effective, it is actually harmful. Researchers have to submit grant applications only on the type of research where they know what results they’re going to have. Otherwise they wouldn’t get any money at all, because the research project would have low score. This system makes scientific breakthroughs impossible and good research results not likely. This is what I call ridiculous. Apparently, there’s no chance for promising but ‘risky’ research, like the one on senescent cell removal by Dr. van Duersen, to get funding in the NIA. Even though there is compelling evidence that further research will bring results. This article in the FightAging! blog by Reason describes the situation in greater detail. I would like to focus on the fact of the overall misery of the NIA funding system. Felipe Sierra in a New York Times article blames the refusal on overall lack of funding. I think this is not an excuse. NIA is spending approximately 1 billion dollars a year on research, however nearly all of that money goes to ‘safe’ projects with known results. This makes the whole funding system absolutely meaningless. NIA as a government agency has to lobby its research interests. There should be a constant struggle for funding increase to be spent on innovating, promising, ground-braking aging research. We don’t see that. Scientists are silent, because they don’t want to argue with the authorities, because they want to get grants in the future. This type of cowardice will lead the field towards extinction. I firmly believe scientists involved in any type of aging research must be very vocal. They have to claim their goals loud and clear. They have to fight for their future, the future of their research results – even if they have to fight with the NIA as a government agency. The existing order has to be changed for the sake of science.
A LIBERTARIAN TRANSHUMANIST CRITIQUE OF JEFFREY TUCKER’S “A LESSON IN MORTALITY”
BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Jeffrey Tucker is one of my favorite pro-technology libertarian thinkers of our time. In his essays and books (see, for instance, It’s a Jetsons World), Mr. Tucker eloquently draws the connection between free markets and technological progress – and how the power of human creativity within a spontaneous order can overcome the obstructions posed by stagnant political and attitudinal paradigms. Mr. Tucker embraces the innovations of the Internet age and has written on their connection with philosophical debates – such as whether the idea of intellectual property is even practically tenable anymore, now that electronic technology renders certain human creations indefinitely reproducible. Because I see Mr. Tucker as such an insightful advocate of technological progress in a freemarket context, I was particularly surprised to read his 2005 article, “A Lesson in Mortality” – where Mr. Tucker contends that death is an inescapable aspect of the human condition. His central argument is best expressed in his own words: “Death impresses upon us the limits of technology and ideology. It comes in time no matter what we do. Prosperity has lengthened life spans and science and entrepreneurship has made available amazing technologies that have forestalled and delayed it. Yet, it must come.” Mr. Tucker further argues that “Modernity has a problem intellectually processing the reality of death because we are so unwilling to defer to the implacable constraints imposed on us within the material world… To recognize the inevitability of death means confessing that there are limits to our power to manufacture a reality for ourselves.” Seven years is a long time, and I am not aware of whether Mr. Tucker’s views on this subject have evolved since this article was published. Here, I offer a rebuttal to his main arguments and invite a response. To set the context for his article, Mr. Tucker discusses the deaths of short-lived pets within his family – and how his children learned the lesson to grieve for and remember those whom they lost, but then to move on relatively quickly and to proceed with the business of life – “to think
about death only when they must, but otherwise to live and love every breath.” While I appreciate the life-embracing sentiment here, I think it concedes too much to death and decay. As a libertarian transhumanist, I see the defeat of “inevitable” human mortality as the logical outcome of the intertwined forces of free markets and technological progress. While we will not, at any single instant in time, be completely indestructible and invulnerable to all possible causes of death, technological progress – if not thwarted by political interference and reactionary attitudes – will sequentially eliminate causes of death that would have previously killed millions. This has already happened in many parts of the world with regard to killers like smallpox, typhus, cholera, malaria – and many others. It is not a stretch to extrapolate this progression and apply it to perils such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and ALS. Since human life expectancy has already increased roughly five-fold since the Paleolithic era, it is not inconceivable that – with continued progress – another five-fold or greater increase can be achieved. As biogerontologist and famous life-extension advocate Dr. Aubrey de Grey points out, the seven basic types of damage involved in human senescence are already known – each for at least thirty years. With advances in computing capacity, as well as accelerating medical discoveries that have already achieved life extension in mice, rats, and other small organisms, there is hope that medical progress will arrive at similar breakthroughs for us within our lifetimes. Once life expectancy begins to increase by more than one year for every year of time that passes, we will have reached longevity escape velocity – a condition where the more we live, the more probability we will have of surviving even longer. In February 2012 I began an online compendium of Resources on Indefinite Life Extension, which tracks ongoing developments in this field and provides access to a wide array of media to show that life extension is not just science fiction, but an ongoing enterprise. To Mr. Tucker, I pose the question of why he appears to think that despite the technological progress and economic freedom whose benefits he clearly recognizes, there would always be some upper limit on human longevity that these incredibly powerful forces would be unable to breach. What evidence exists for such a limit – and, even if such evidence exists, why does Mr. Tucker appear to assume that our currently finite lifespans are not just a result of our ignorance, which could be remedied in a more advanced and enlightened future? In the 15th century, for instance, humans were limited in their technical knowledge from achieving powered flight, even though visionaries such as Leonardo da Vinci correctly anticipated the advent of flying machines. Imagine if a Renaissance scholar made the argument to da Vinci that, while the advances of the Renaissance have surely produced improvements in art, architecture, music, and commerce, nature still imposes insurmountable limits on humans taking to the skies! “Sure,” this scholar might say, “we can now construct taller and sturdier buildings, but the realm of the birds will be forever beyond our reach.” He might say, paraphrasing Mr. Tucker, “[Early] modernity
has a problem intellectually processing the reality of eternally grounded humans because we are so unwilling to defer to the implacable constraints imposed on us within the material world. To recognize the inevitability of human grounding means confessing that there are limits to our power to manufacture a reality for ourselves.” What would have happened to a society that fully accepted such arguments? Perhaps the greatest danger we can visit upon ourselves is to consider a problem so “inevitable” that nothing can be done about it. By accepting this inevitability as a foregone conclusion, we foreclose on the inherently unpredictable possibilities that human creativity and innovation can offer. In other words, we foreclose on a better future. Mr. Tucker writes that “Whole ideologies have been concocted on the supposition that such constraints [on the material world] do not have to exist. That is the essence of socialism. It is the foundation of US imperialism too, with its cocky supposition that there is nothing force cannot accomplish, that there are no limits to the uses of power.” It is a significant misunderstanding of transhumanism to compare it to either socialism or imperialism. Both socialism and imperialism rely on government force to achieve an outcome deemed to be just or expedient. Transhumanism does not depend on force. While governments can and do fund scientific research, this is not an optimal implementation of transhuman aspirations, since government funding of research is notoriously conservative and reluctant to risk taxpayer funds on projects without short-term, visible payoffs about which politicians can boast. Furthermore, government funding of research renders it easier for the research to be thwarted by taxpayers – such as fundamentalist evangelical Christians – who disagree with the aims of such research. The most rapid technological advances can be achieved on a pure free market, where research is neither subsidized nor restricted by any government. Moreover, force is an exceedingly blunt instrument. While it can be used to some effect to dispose of criminals and tyrants, even there it is tremendously imperfect and imposes numerous unintended negative consequences. Transhumanism is not about attempting to overcome material constraints by using coercion. It is, rather, about improving our understanding of natural laws and our ability to harness mind and matter by giving free rein to human experimentation in applying these laws. Transhumanism fully embraces Francis Bacon’s dictum that “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” This means working within material constraints – including the laws of economics – and making the most of what is possible. But this also means using human ingenuity to push out our material limits. As genetic modification of crops has resulted in vastly greater volumes of food production, so can genetic engineering, rejuvenation therapies, and personalized medicine eventually result in vastly longer human lifespans. Transhumanism is the logical extrapolation of a free-market economy. The closer we get to an unfettered free market, the faster we could achieve the transhuman goals of indefinite life extension, universal wealth, space colonization, ubiquitous erudition and high culture, and the conquest of natural and manmade existential risks.
Mr. Tucker writes that recognizing the inevitability of death “is akin to admitting that certain fundamental facts of the world, like the ubiquity of scarcity, cannot be changed. Instead of attempting to change it, we must imagine social systems that come to terms with it. This is the core claim of economic science, and it is also the very reason so many refuse to acknowledge its legitimacy or intellectual binding power.” It is undeniable that scarcity exists, and that scarcity of some sort will always exist. However, there are degrees of scarcity. Food, for instance, is much less scarce today than in the Paleolithic era, when the earth could support barely more than a million humans. Furthermore, in some realms, such as digital media, Mr. Tucker himself has acknowledged that scarcity is no longer a significant limitation – because of the capacity to indefinitely reproduce works of art, music, and writing. With the proximate advent of technologies such as three-dimensional printing and tabletop nano-manufacturing, more and more goods will begin to assume qualities that more closely resemble digital goods. Then, as now, some physical resources will be required to produce anything – and these physical resources would continue to be subject to the constraints of scarcity. But it is not inconceivable that we would eventually end up in a Star Trek world of replicators that can manufacture most small-scale goods out of extremely cheap basic substances, which would render those goods nearly free to reproduce. Even in such a world, more traditional techniques may be required to construct larger structures, but subsequent advances may make even those endeavors faster, cheaper, and more accessible. At no point in time would human lifespans be infinite (in the sense of complete indestructibility or invulnerability). A world of scarcity is, however, compatible with indefinite lifespans that do not have an upper bound. A person’s life expectancy at any point in time would be finite, but that finite amount might increase faster than the person’s age. Even in the era of longevity escape velocity, some people would still die of accidents, unforeseen illnesses, or human conflicts. But the motivation to conquer these perils will be greatly increased once the upper limit on human lifespans is lifted. Thus, I expect actual human mortality to asymptotically approach zero, though perhaps without ever reaching zero entirely. Still, for a given individual, death would no longer be an inevitability, particularly if that individual behaves in a risk-averse fashion and takes advantage of cutting-edge advancements. Even if death is always a danger on some level, is it not better to act to delay or prevent it – and therefore to get as much time as possible to live, create, and enjoy? Mr. Tucker writes: “To discover the fountain of youth is a perpetual obsession, one that finds its fulfillment in the vitamin cults that promise immortality. We create government programs to pay for people to be kept alive forever on the assumption that death is always and everywhere unwarranted and ought to be stopped. There is no such thing as ‘natural death’ anymore; the very notion strikes us as a cop out.” It is true that there are and have always been many dubious remedies, promising longevity-enhancing benefits without any evidence. However, even if false
remedies are considered, we have come a long way from the Middle Ages, where, in various parts of the world, powders of gold, silver, or lead – or even poisons such as arsenic – were considered to have life-extending powers. More generally, the existence of charlatans, frauds, snake-oil salesmen, and gullible consumers does not discredit genuine, methodical, scientific approaches toward life extension or any other human benefit. Skepticism and discernment are always called for, and we should always be vigilant regarding “cures” that sound too good to be true. Nobody credible has said that conquering our present predicament of mortality would be easy or quick. There is no pill one can swallow, and there is little in terms of lifestyle that one can do today – other than exercising regularly and avoiding obviously harmful behaviors – to materially lengthen one’s lifespan. However, if some of the best minds in the world are able to utilize some of the best technology we have – and to receive the philosophical support of the public and the material support of private donors for doing so – then this situation may change within our lifetimes. It is far better to live with this hope, and to work toward this outcome, than to resign oneself to the inevitability of death. As regards government programs, I find no evidence for Mr. Tucker’s assertion that these programs are the reason that people are being kept alive longer. Implicit in that assertion is the premise that, on a fully free market (where the cost of high-quality healthcare would ultimately be cheaper), people would not voluntarily pay to extend the lives of elderly or seriously ill patients to the same extent that they expect such life extension to occur when funded by Medicare or by the national health-care systems in Canada and Europe. Indeed, Mr. Tucker’s assertion here poses a serious danger to defenders of the free market. It renders them vulnerable to the allegation that an unfettered free market would shorten life expectancies and invite the early termination of elderly or seriously ill patients – in short, the classic nightmare scenario of eliminating the weak, sickly, or otherwise “undesirable” elements. This is precisely what a free market would not result in, because the desire to live is extremely strong for most individuals, and free individuals using their own money would be much more likely to put it toward keeping themselves alive than would a government-based system which must ultimately ration care in one way or another. Mr. Tucker writes: “Thus do we insist on always knowing the ‘cause’ of death, as if it only comes about through an exogenous intervention, like hurricanes, traffic accidents, shootings, and bombs. But even when a person dies of his own accord, we always want to know so that we have something to blame. Heart failure? Well, he or she might have done a bit more exercise. Let this be a lesson. Cancer? It’s probably due to smoking, or perhaps second-hand smoke. Or maybe it was the carcinogens introduced by food manufacturers or factories. We don’t want to admit that it was just time for a person to die.” Particularly as Austrian Economics, of which Mr. Tucker is a proponent, champions a rigorous causal analysis of phenomena, the above excerpt strikes me as incongruous with how rational thinkers ought to approach any event. Clearly, there are no uncaused events; there is nothing inexplicable in nature. Sometimes the explanations may be
difficult or complex to arrive at; sometimes our minds are too limited to grasp the explanations at our present stage of knowledge and technological advancement. However, all valid questions are ultimately answerable, and all problems are ultimately solvable – even if not by us. The desire to know the cause of a death is a desire to know the answers to important questions, and to derive value from such answers by perhaps gathering information that would help oneself and others avoid a similar fate. To say that “it was just time for a person to die” explains nothing; it only attempts to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with an authoritative assertion that forecloses on further inquiry and discovery. While this may, to some, be comforting as a way of “moving on” – to me and other transhumanists it is an eminently frustrating way of burying the substance of the matter with a one-liner. Mr. Tucker also compares death to sleep: “The denial of death’s inevitability is especially strange since life itself serves up constant reminders of our physical limits. Sleep serves as a kind of metaphor for death. We can stay awake working and having fun up to 18 hours, even 24 or 36, but eventually we must bow to our natures and collapse and sleep. We must fall unconscious so that we can be revived to continue on with our life.” While sleep is a suspension of some activities, death and sleep could not be more different. Sleep is temporary, while death is permanent. Sleep preserves significant aspects of consciousness, as well as a continuity of operations for the brain and the rest of the body. While one sleeps, one’s brain is hard at work “repackaging” the contents of one’s memory to prepare one for processing fresh experiences the next day. Death, on the other hand, is not a preparation for anything. It is the cessation of the individual, not a buildup to something greater or more active. In “How Can I Live Forever: What Does or Does Not Preserve the Self”, I describe the fundamental difference between processes, such as sleep, which preserve the basic continuity of bodily functions (and thus one’s unique vantage point or “I-ness”) and processes that breach this continuity and result in the cessation of one’s being. Continuity-preserving processes are fundamentally incomparable to continuitybreaching processes, and thus the ubiquity and necessity of sleep can tell us nothing regarding death. Mr. Tucker validly notes that the human desire to live forever can manifest itself in the desire to leave a legacy and to create works that outlive the individual. This is an admirable sentiment, and it is one that has fueled the progress of human civilization even in eras when mortality was truly inevitable. I am glad that our ancestors had this motivation to overcome the sense of futility and despair that their individual mortality would surely have engendered otherwise. But we, standing on their shoulders and benefiting from their accomplishments, can do better. The wonders of technological progress within the near term, about which Mr. Tucker writes eloquently and at length, can be extrapolated to the medium and long term in order for us to see that the transhumanist ideal of indefinite life extension is both feasible and desirable. Free markets, entrepreneurship, and human creativity will help pave the way to the advances that could save us
from the greatest peril of them all. I hope that, in time, Mr. Tucker will embrace this prospect as the incarnation, not the enemy, of libertarian philosophy and rational, free-market economics.
DOES THE WORDS “IMMORTALITY” & “FOREVER” DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR OUR CAUSE? BY: JOHN R. LEONARD
Wikipedia states that Immortality is the ability to live forever, or eternal life. However, most religions, including Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, links immortality with belief in an afterlife. Such an ideology or concept is mainly referring to an immortal soul. But certain radical life extension advocates, transhumanists, scientists, futurists and out-of-thebox thinking philosophers have adapted the word immortality under the belief that living humans can continue to live forever. Are we talking about extending the lifespan of biological humans or merging humans to machines as a new type of techno-sapien species? I think it depends on if you are talking to the general public or some transhumanist group. The later idea is still a few decades away. I will instead argue that aging-fighters and PR advocates of radical life extensions should not be using the word immortality for biological humans and are probably doing more harm than good Many aging-fighter sites seem eager to promote radical life extension with the word immortality for biological humans. It is easy to understand, but the misinterpretation of the word immortality from the general public and especially religious people point of view is huge. Most everyone in the last century has grown up thinking that immortality was obtained by dying first and then going to heaven. The first reaction of suddenly hearing that immortality could be obtained in living humans is crazy. You might as well tell them “pink elephants are flying in the sky” from their point of mind. Even after one would think about such a notion, they may get scared and even angry at such a claim and take it as an attack to their personal beliefs and religion. Another word that aging-fighters like to use is “forever”. As with immortality, it is a nice buzz word and can promote longevity. But is it valid? Should we be using the word “forever” in order to advocate to governments into allocating funds toward biotechnology and longevity research?
The meaning forever denotes an infinite duration of time. I will not go into all the different theories to the faith of our known universe regarding this. However theoretical physicists and cosmologists like Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman have argued that a possible scenario of living forever ignores the fact that quantum mechanics limits the number of states that a finite system can have. Furthermore, they stress that eternity prohibits any civilization with access to only a finite amount of energy from having more that a finite number of thoughts. As I see it, all matter within our universe cannot stay static in any certain form and living forever is not possible for any biological or non-biological substance. Simply put, there is no such thing as living forever. When someone mentions forever, what image plays out in your mind? Most humans think of it as a very long time and that is about it. The world models we create in our mind of reality is surprisingly simple. Our mind cannot even comprehend what it would be like to live for a thousand years - even if we like the idea of it. Forever is an abstract word that we seem to easily use without any real comprehension in what it really means. Interestingly enough, forever relates to the word “eternity” - endless time. Eternity is an important concept in many religions, where the immortality of God or the gods is said to endure eternally. The fact of the matter is, us mere humans do not have the mental capacity to understand the duration of any significant length of time. If words such as immortality, forever, eternity and endless are not good, then what vocabulary can we use? Namely, any word that does not indicate unlimited time duration. We can use phrases like “Extended Lifespans”, “Radical Life Extension”, “Healthy Longevity”, and “Advanced Life Expectancy” just to name a few. As I am the head of the Japan Longevity Alliance (part of the ILA - International Longevity Alliance), we usually use “Healthy Longevity” as our buzzword. The ILA Manifesto carefully does not use forever nor immortality to promote longevity causes.
HOW TO CONVINCE SKEPTICS & FENCE-SITTERS BY: ERIC SCHULKE
One of Indefinite Life Extension’s primary jobs is “persuasion” - cutting through the status quo, the tradition. The best way to persuade somebody is to let them persuade themselves. The two main ways to do that are through information dissemination and debate. This works the same way for “fence sitters” who are uncommitted, as it does for skeptics and the uninformed that just need more information. Aubrey de Grey suggests that pro-aging trancists are people who have conditioned themselves to use ridiculous fallacies in order to excuse death, so that they don’t have to face its horrors. A pro-aging trancist is just an uninformed person that has tried to solve the pain that death brings them by compensating for it with erroneous solutions. Below is a list of tips and techniques to use to effectively inform someone, and to streamline their concepts with this life and death cause. When to inform, when to debate Ask them Know the basics of influence Realize that some people have coached themselves to accept death Make sure you use the right terminology Don’t ask for money Use strong reasoning and evidence Use appeals to authority and success Know the FAQs Use crowd mentality to your advantage Help stack credible sources Avoid trolls Try the Socratic Method
Use the “used to, found, sure you would agree” formula Get back-up support where you can Carry literature Tell them about the organizations that seem best fitted to them CRASH COURSE ON HOW AND WHY PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR MINDS Every person in the world filters everything they think about through their current traditions, attitudes and beliefs. It is hard to get a person to accept something all at once, even if it is true, urgent and extremely important, even if it is life or death. People want to exist in comfort zones. It is not easy to get a person to step outside of their comfort zones. It is uncomfortable for them, it causes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance means that a person cannot hold two conflicting views at the same time. If people think that talking to others about radical life extension, reading and giving out books, petitioning, talking on the radio, or to coworkers, etc., is uncomfortable and socially awkward, then they are unlikely to step outside of their comfort zone and do those things immediately. They just don’t like it. Gradually and incrementally a person gets used to anything, though, especially the truth. Eventually, the truth in the Indefinite Life Extension cause wins out and their comfort zones loosen and allow them to move more freely. You can expedite this process through use of the most significant, logical, emotional appeal that you can find. Instead of letting them gloss over the atrocity that is death, with comforting language, try to make them uncomfortable with the harsh realities of what it means to live in a world of death, you make their comfort zone less comfortable. Work to finesse it though. The more people we get the word out to, into the ears of, the more people have their reticular activating systems opened to this, and the more people will be able to move through their current limiting attitudes and march with us. These techniques then can help you move people through this course. WHEN TO INFORM, WHEN TO DEBATE We all need to spend most of our outreach informing, but most of us also have to know when to spot out key opportunities to debate, especially if we are good at debating. A. INFORMING
If you try to debate when you should be informing then it’s going to wear you out – and many times it leaves most people in the vicinity less convinced, or polarized against you. Inform
people that are in market place type settings, like forums, round tables, chat rooms, with groups of friends, co-workers and other similar situations. By informing them and not seeking out their responses, like debating does, you are telling them, “this is how it is” rather than “what do you think, does this seem valid to you?” B. DEBATING
Debating at the right times is a crucial driver of a cause. It creates contrast between the realities of indefinite life extensions imminence and the status quo, and demonstrates the intensity and urgency in the situation. Then people check in to see what all the commotion is about and take sides. All you have to do is win more of them than your opponent. Some of the main places for debate are at rallies, meetings with officials, televised events, radio, newspaper, speeches, arranged debates, articles, a lecture, a YouTube video, other similar places and unique occasions. One on one is best in the beginning. After the information campaigns rake in enough supporters, and there are a subset of supporters in any given group of people, then it’s time to take it to them, strike the deepest, rational contrast between your position and the opponents as you can. Confront anybody in any situation that isn’t unethical. This lively contrast in these situations is key. Everybody who is listening is being informed about the schism that exists between this information and the current state of society’s status quo, and the inherent life and death urgency of it. This opens their reticular activating system (ability to spot out similar topics in the future) and helps them begin or continue ‘stacking’. ASK THEM You must first ask them if they support indefinite life extension. If you approach it wrong, you might spend all your time unconvincing somebody that was already on the fence or considering it. If you ask them and they kind of do, then you can get them to commit to that position up front which is important. KNOW THE BASICS OF INFLUENCE Be sure that you know How to Win Friends and Influence People by knowing the book of the same name. Some of its basics include, be positive, appreciative, friendly, listen, let them talk, be humble, don’t be condescending etc. One standard technique is to avoid stating things in terms of absolutes, instead say things like, “It seems to me” and “as you probably already know”. REALIZE THAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE COACHED THEMSELVES TO ACCEPT DEATH Don’t let them tell you how they have rationalized death. Just give them the authoritative information about what is going on with the movement for indefinite life extension and let it sink
in. For many people, the rationalizations of death will no longer be appealing if they recognize that indefinite life is achievable. MAKE SURE YOU USE THE RIGHT TERMINOLOGY Immortality, infinity, live forever, comprehension of morbidity, healthier lives, or life extension tend to conjure stereotypes and misunderstanding. Accurate, straightforward terms are things like indefinite life spans, indefinite life extension, unlimited life spans and unlimited life extension. DON’T ASK FOR MONEY If the other person is new to the idea of indefinite life extension, don’t mention money. Especially don’t ask for money. Don’t mention how the cause would be advanced if we just had xxx many more dollars. The other person will rightly smell (though inaccurately so) a scam, tune you out, and look for the exit. USE STRONG REASONING AND EVIDENCE This is all summarized and explained throughout the MILE guide. Read the guide through, take notes, and read again as necessary. Exponentiality is one key concept; similar research that has had success is another. Appeal to the value of life, the MILE premise, the opportunities that existence presents, and so forth. USE APPEALS TO AUTHORITY AND SUCCESS International conferences have been held, and books have been published. Proponents of indefinite life extension have been on CNN, BBC, 60 Minutes, The History Channel, The Colbert Report, Barbara Walters Special, and many other programs. Much research has been done, some of it crowdfunded by supporters like us. The cause has already raised its first millions. Steven Seagal supports this. Larry King wants cryopreservation, etc. KNOW THE FAQS Many organizations for this cause have FAQ’s. Seek them out and learn them because it’s important to have the ability to rebut people’s basic, initial questions and comments. USE CROWD MENTALITY TO YOUR ADVANTAGE Try to discuss indefinite life extension with people when they are by themselves, when you can. When you talk to a group, the first person to peep out a heckle will often times get the whole
crowd going. HELP STACK CREDIBLE SOURCES If you tell somebody about indefinite life extension and they don’t catch on right away, don’t despair. People usually have to hear about a new concept from around 3 or 4 sources that they view as credible before they begin to consider it. Help fill in those first and second and third times they’ve heard it. AVOID TROLLS If you can see that the person likes to argue for the sake of argument, want to be right and are always contrary, just avoid that person. Don’t let them waste your time when you could be persuading sensible people. Trolls are characterized by things like their use of red herring fallacies like ad hominem, well poisoning, Texas sharp shooter, and others. We can come back to such people at a date later down the road after they’ve had more time to mature. TRY THE SOCRATIC METHOD Socrates would use the method of asking people questions to get them to start arguing his point for him. This also tends to do things like cause your opponents natural inclination toward devils advocacy to work for you instead of them. Read up on this method and try it out. USE THE “USED TO, FOUND, SURE YOU WOULD AGREE” FORMULA It’s a positive way to get a sincere win-win situation. The general formula is “I used to think that… What I’ve found is …. I’m sure you would agree.” For example “I used to think that overpopulation might be a problem too. What we find is that it’s on a decline in industrialized countries, among other things. Here check out this study, I’m sure you’ll agree.” (From the late great Steven Covey’s 7 Secrets of Highly Effective People). GET BACK-UP SUPPORT WHERE YOU CAN If you are going to a party, a social event, evangelizing in the halls of your school, etc.; bring a life-extensionist friend. People are often better persuaded if they can sense any sort of consensus on a given issue. CARRY LITERATURE There are studies that show that people are more inclined to believe what they see in writing. The
various organizations have pamphlets, books and other things you can use. Keep this literature handy, in your car, at the office, etc. Don’t sell it to them; give it to them if it comes up naturally in conversation. TELL THEM ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT SEEM BEST FITTED TO THEM Mile currently supports the following key organizations, but there are a variety of others as well. Use your judgment depending on the group or person. Fight Aging Longecity SENS Foundation Methuselah Foundation Campaign Against Aging Coalition to Extend Life Maximum Life Foundation Lifeboat Foundation Singularity Network Foresight Institute Cryonics Network The more people that believe we can have indefinite life extension in our lifetimes, the more positioned for success unlimited life spans become. Note: Gennady Stolyarov II assisted with this essay.
THE COALITION TO EXTEND LIFE BY: TOM MOONEY
NOW AND FOREVER The great American author, Henry David Thoreau, wrote, "Time is but the stream I go fishing in." All of us enter that stream at birth and for a period of years we float along in different directions; experience joys and sorrows; taste the fruits that life has to offer and, inevitably, one day the water disappears and suddenly we no longer exist. Death has arrived and our short time on earth has expired. Must this happen? Until now the answer has been unequivocally yes! Even though, scientists, biologists, chemists, and others have sought to understand why we age, no magic elixir has yet emerged to defeat death. Aging is a terminal disease that is acquired at birth and will cause our death if left untreated! Can this terminal disease be conquered? I firmly believe so. Slowly but surely modern medicine is beginning to understand why cells age, how we can repair failing parts of our bodies, what biochemical processes cause cells to stop dividing and what can be done to extend our lives indefinitely. We are at the threshold of conquering death with life extension! In the foreseeable future advances will occur that shall challenge the often heard statement, "We all must die sometime." The next decades will be an extraordinary journey for us as long held medical, religious, and philosophical beliefs will be challenged and revised. The end of natural death will be an achievement unlike any in the history of humankind. But the road to life extension and immortality will be a difficult one to travel. Many will be frightened and oppose indefinite life extension for various reasons. Government leaders and opinion makers will be pushed in different directions. The battle for funding this type of medical research will be fierce. The war on aging will be fought in laboratories and hospitals; ballot boxes and political forums. If you have read this far I will assume that you are interested in a cure for the terminal disease of aging.
So am I. We are on the precipice of a new age of science. The future promises unparalleled opportunity to defeat death, but to prevail we need a social and political movement that will push life extension to the top rung of our nation's priorities. This is where C.E.L. comes in! The Coalition to Extend Life is a nascent national organization dedicated to promoting indefinite life extension. We will engage the political debate in order to ensure that immortality becomes national goal. Aging is a terminal illness that must be conquered! To many this may seem like a quixotic undertaking, but, in reality, what are the options? The cure for aging will come but it must come in time for you and me before we are rotting in a grave or reduced to a pile of ashes sitting in an urn on a loved one's mantelpiece. The time to act is now! I believe there is a majority of Americans who support indefinite life extension. Unfortunately, it is not well organized. Opponents will be able to hijack public opinion and persuade elected officials to oppose or even outlaw such research unless we begin to fight now. If you doubt this is true, merely follow the controversy surrounding Stem Cell Research. We need you to join C.E.L. and become involved in the fight to end aging. Remember, the preamble to our Constitution states that we have, "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." C.E.L. will make sure that the right to life means an immortal one for all of us.
"Give me my robe, Put on my crown I have immortal longings in me." - Shakespeare, Anthony & Cleopatra
THE C.E.L’S OBJECTIVES C.E.L. intends to actively promote indefinite life extension and human immortality as a public policy goal of the United States. We intend to win a war on aging by learning how to achieve immortality. In the beginning few will take us seriously. After all, don't all living things inevitably die? Isn't old age something that affects everyone? At the present time the answer to both of those questions is yes. But throughout history, medical science has overcome diseases and conditions that people of that period felt were incurable. Often it was described, as the will of god, and mankind was helpless. For example, the plague devastated Europe in the Middle Ages, killing
millions of innocent men, women, and children. Many said it was impossible to prevent and for a long time it was. But as science and medicine began to understand what caused this killer disease, cures were developed and the scourge of death ceased. We must view aging similarly; it is a terminal disease that can be cured! It is an insidious malady that causes our skin to wrinkle, our hair to whiten, our eyesight to dim, our bodies to weaken, our organs to fail, and ultimately leads to the end of our existence. But as Bob Dylan sang, "The times, they are a changing." Science and medicine are beginning to understand at a molecular level why we age and how we can prevent it. Astonishing breakthroughs and fascinating experiments are unraveling the mysteries of life and death. In the foreseeable future we may be able to end aging and achieve virtual immortality, an elusive dream pursued by many since the dawn of consciousness. The Coalition to Extend Life has been created to make immortality a reality! Initially we will focus on the following priorities: 1. To build a national movement in support of immortality 2. To educate the American public about immortality 3. To support elected officials who will fight for legislation promoting immortality and oppose those who will not 4. To create the equivalent of a Manhattan project to cure the terminal disease of aging 5. If the Coalition to Extend Life is to become a national voice for supporting the search for immortality, we need help now! Obviously, much of our work will be political. We will support measures to increase funding for human immortality research; and strive diligently to ensure that procedures such as Stem Cell Research, Therapeutic cloning, and other necessary medical tools will not be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. As the last presidential election showed, local organizing wins political battles. C.E.L. is a grass roots effort that will work from the bottom up not the top down. Human immortality will be for all of us therefore anyone who cares about this issue should be involved. Your help is vitally needed and warmly welcomed. 6. There are many ways to become involved: 1. Become an annual member of C.E.L. For a mere $30.00 you will receive a quarterly newsletter, informing you of medical breakthroughs, a political update and information on what C.E.L. is doing nationwide.You will receive a stone pendant of a Dragonfly. This insect, throughout history, has been a symbol of immortality. Also, you will receive a Dragonfly T-shirt and a packet of ten postcards that we hope you will send to friends and relatives. They are designed to generate interest for our cause and to raise awareness on the issue. We must spread the message! 7. If you want membership status, and we certainly hope you do, Click here 8. Help collect signatures for the Petition of 1,000,000 Campaign. The purpose of this effort is to begin to build a viable base of political support. We are collecting the names of
supporters in every Congressional District in the country, as a first step towards organizing a nationwide grass roots movement. Our elected officials must be made aware there is massive support for immortality now! Click here to learn more. If you want to be involved as a local coordinator or assist in any other way please contact us at once. The 2006 Federal Election for Congress is just around the corner. C.E.L. will be involved; supporting our friends and opposing our enemies. People matter in politics and You can make a difference! 9. Make a donation. No one will become rich working for C.E.L. but we need money to cover basic necessities. Anything you can spare will be gratefully appreciated. Click here to make a donation. 10. Keep in touch. Communication is vital and we need to know what's on your mind. Feel free to E-mail, write, or call us with any requests, information, questions, evaluations, or criticisms that you have. We look forward to your participation. Contact us! 11. Buy our products. Click here to purchase our products. AN ADDITIONAL WORD FROM THE FOUNDER: As cognizant human beings we know that heretofore all people have reached a point where they die. This existential truth weaves its' way thru art, philosophy, religion, medicine, science, and other intellectual undertakings that attempt to understand our existence. Over the course of history there have been attempts to cure the insidious disease of aging but no "Fountain of Youth" has been found to halt the inevitable disintegration for our body, and its' ultimate demise. Death is a mystery that is hard to comprehend. Like any mystery, though, it can be solved. In laboratories all over this world scientists are beginning to explain why cells age and die and how they can be rejuvenated. Breakthroughs on the biochemical processes that cause aging allow us to achieve immortality. The Coalition to Extend Life is dedicated to combating aging and promoting immortality for all. The struggle will not be easy. Immortality will change how we look at the world, and quite frankly many people fear new ideas and will vehemently oppose the radical transformation that will occur. Therefore, it is necessary to begin now! I decided to start this organization because I do not look forward to death. I hope you feel the same way. Obviously, this is an idealistic goal but when you consider the alternatives, it makes a great deal of sense to fight for your dream, especially since it is within your grasp. I sincerely hope you will be an active member of C.E.L. Together we can build a movement and create a society in which people can live indefinitely. I am dedicating my life to this cause since I am not getting any younger; and neither are you. In Life,
Thomas Mooney Founder & President
WHY BIOTECH IS UNLIKELY TO BE THE WAY BY: MARIOS KYRIAZIS, MD, MSC, MIBIOL, CBIOL.,
It is often said that empiricism is one of the most useful concepts in epistemology. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience acquired through one’s own senses and perceptions, and is contrary to, say, idealism where concepts are not derived from experience, but based on ideals. In the case of radical life extension, there is a tendency to an ‘idealistic trance’ where people blindly expect practical biotechnological developments to be available and applied to the public at large within a few years. More importantly, idealists expect these treatments or therapies to actually be effective and to have a direct and measurable effect upon radical life extension. Here, by ‘radical life extension’ I refer not to healthy longevity (a healthy life until the age of 100-120 years) but to an indefinite lifespan where the rate of age-related mortality is trivial. Let me mention two empirical examples based on experience and facts: 1. When a technological development depends on technology alone, its progress is often dramatic and exponential. 2. When a technological development also depends on biology, its progress is embarrassingly negligible. Developments based solely on mechanical, digital or electronic concepts are proliferating freely and vigorously. Just 20 years ago, almost nobody had a mobile telephone or knew about the internet. Now we have instant global communication accessible by any member of the general public. Contrast this with the advancement of biotechnology with regards to, say, the treatment of the common cold. There has not been a significantly effective treatment for the public at large for, I will not say a million, but certainly for several thousand years. The accepted current medical treatment for the common cold is with bed rest, fluids, and antipyretics which is the same as that
suggested by Hippocrates. Formal guidelines for the modern treatment of cardiac arrest include chest compressions and mouth- to- mouth resuscitation (essentially the same as the technique used by the prophet Elisha in the Old Testament) as well as intra-cardiac (!) atropine, lignocaine and other drugs used by physicians during the 1930’s. In my medical museum in Cyprus I have examples of Medieval treatments for urinary retention (it was via a metal urinary catheter then, whereas now the catheter is plastic), treatment of asthma (with belladonna then, ipratropium now – a direct derivative), and treatment of pain (with opium then, with opium-like derivatives now). About a hundred years ago, my grandfather wrote a book on hygiene, longevity and healthy life for the public, which included advice such as fresh air, exercise, consumption of fruit and vegetables, avoidance of excessive alcohol or cigarette smoke. These are of course preventative treatments advised by modern anti- aging practitioners, hardly any progress in a century. In fact, these are the only proven treatments. Even the modern notion of ‘antioxidants’ can be encountered as standard health advice in medical books from the 1800’s. With the trivial exception of a handful of other examples, there has hardly been any progress in healthy longevity at all that can be applied to the common man in the street. Resveratrol was a standard health advice in ancient Greek medicine (red wine). Carnosine was discovered and used 100 years ago. Cycloastragenol was used in Chinese medicine 1000 years ago. My question is: how do we expect to influence the process of aging when we cannot even develop bio-technological cures for simple and common diseases? Are we really serious when we talk about biotechnological treatments that can lead to radical life extension, being developed within the next few years? And if we are really serious, is this belief based on empiricism or idealism? The manipulation of human biology has been particularly tricky, with no significant progress of effective breakthroughs developed during the past several decades. Here I, of course, acknowledge the value of some modern drugs and isolated bio-technological achievements, but my point is that these developments are based on relatively minor refinements of existing therapies, and not on new breakthroughs that can modify the human body in any positive or practical degree. Importantly, even if some isolated examples of effective biotechnology do exist, these are not yet suitable for use by the general public at large. If we were to compare the progress of general technology with that of life extension biotechnology, we could see that: A. The progress of technology over the past 100 years has been logarithmic to exponential, whereas that of life extension biotechnology has been virtually static. B. The progress of technology over the past 20 years has been exponential, whereas that of life extension biotechnology has barely been logarithmic.
It is one thing to talk about future biotechnology developments as a discussion point, and to post these in blogs, for general curiosity. But it is a different thing altogether if we actually want to devise and deliver an effective, practical therapy that truly affords significant life extension. A different approach is needed, one that does not depend exclusively on biotechnology. It would be naïve to say that I am arguing for the total abandonment of life extension biotechnology, but it is equally naïve to believe that this biotechnology is likely to be effective on its own. My final remark with regards to achieving indefinite lifespan is this: we must engage with technology without depending on biotechnology.
IT’S ABOUT LIFE-EXTENSION, NOT ENDING PAIN AND DEBILITATION BY: MILE
When informing people about the cause to allow people to live long into the future, should we tell most people about how it’s about getting rid of the pain and debilitation of age related diseases, should we tell them how it’s about indefinite life extension, or should we tell them it’s about becoming indestructible immortal omnipotents? This cause is about indefinite life extension, give them accurate information. They deserve to know, whether we think they can ever understand it or not. The world believes many things that are true and the world believes many things that are false. By many estimates, about 85% of the world believes there is an invisible person in the clouds that they can telepathically beg to bend the laws of physics. Around 25% of the world believes in reincarnation, that you used to be things like a duck and bat, and that in the future you will be a whale and a horse. Somewhere around 48% of people believe in ghosts, that when an object is gone, a projection of it comes back and navigates that same general area. More than 75% of the world is superstitious. More than 30% of the world believes in astrology. Over 40% of people believe that you can communicate telepathically. So if people believe all of those false things, why would life or death truth be so fantastical that they wouldn’t believe it? If you need help explaining it to people then read through The Mile Guide. In fact, it seems the world would get on board faster if we told them it was about becoming indestructible immortal omnipotents (which it is not).
Indefinite life extension is the feasible, accurate, rallying, imagination capturing truth. It is what we need the world to fight for. They will believe it. Tell them.
MAXIMUM LIFE FOUNDATION CAPITAL WHITEPAPER BY: DAVID KEKICH
Maximize investment returns… while minimizing risk and maximizing health and longevity… in minimum time. HOW TO PROFIT FROM THE COMING ANTI-AGING SCIENCE REVOLUTION – EVEN IF YOU DON’T INVEST! “Why not get involved in an emerging trillion dollar industry... while developing technologies that are designed to extend healthy lifespans by 25 years or more?” My name is David Kekich. I founded and managed the biggest marketing arm of a Fortune 500 life insurance company – until an unfortunate accident changed the direction of my life thirty two years ago. (It could also impact your life in a very positive way.) Since then, I have devoted myself to a single passion: I have invested the remainder of my time – to say nothing of considerable financial resources to advancing life extension technologies. In other words, I understand the anti-aging industry. Over the past nine years, I helped build a world-class, star-studded scientific team. As you will see in the following pages, there is a compelling case to be made for the potential rewards for individuals who embrace an appropriate and sound approach to this emerging growth market. THE NEXT BIG INVESTMENT SECTOR CAN MAKE EARLY PARTICIPANTS VERY WEALTHY All it takes is one glance at the chart below to see where the biggest money will be made in the health care field in the years just ahead. It’s going to be in treating and preventing diseases and conditions related to AGING. U.S. POPULATION AGED 80+
It is still some time before Wall Street will put the full force and power of their resources behind solutions to the aging problem. But now, a world-class investment management team headed by the former CEO of Citicorp’s pioneer venture group (he built it into a $50 million fund that earned over $7 billion) has set its sights on the opportunity. And the opportunity for you – reading this Special Report today – is twofold, because: 1) You can be part of an elite inner circle who are on the cutting edge of information and treatment as research postpones the debilitating effects of aging by years or even decades; and 2) You can participate financially with a group of unusually dedicated and extraordinarily credentialed investment professionals as they pursue maximum returns in this exploding field of research and development. The “prize” is a longer and healthier life, coupled with what could become the most important and exponentially lucrative investment you’ve ever made. AGING: AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM…. OR THE ULTIMATE OPPORTUNITY? We all consider “aging” to be life’s ultimate reality. On our birthdays, our friends often joke with us that “it’s better than the alternative!”
That’s because, all our lives (and all throughout human history up to this point), there has been no alternative to aging and the symptoms and diseases of aging. But you and I are fortunate to be living at the precise moment in history when mankind is experiencing a veritable explosion of science and technology. Our entire world is changing virtually every day due to exciting, breakthrough innovations in every industry – from telecommunications to travel… from computers to cars… from farming to pharmaceuticals… and everything in between. But nothing is more exciting, in my view, than the technological advances that have already been made (and continue to be made nearly every day) in the rapidly growing science of anti-aging. WHAT DOES ANTI-AGING REALLY MEAN? First of all, don’t let the term “anti-aging” (as it’s used and abused today) fool you. The science-based anti-aging industry emerging today is qualitatively different. It targets products that will substantially extend lifespan… as well as make that lifespan healthier – even for those with all the right lifestyle habits including eating right and exercising regulary with these Muscle Building Workouts. Today anti-aging is already a multi-billion dollar business – even though most of the products have little or no basis in medical science. Many promoters mislead, exaggerate and make false claims to sell to a market eager to hang on to their youth. The anti-aging we’re talking about isn’t about “snake oil;” it’s about the emerging (and serious) field of life-extension medicine. Anti-aging science is quickly coming of age and being taken very seriously by esteemed universities, respected research institutions, and giant pharmaceutical companies. BREAKTHROUGHS IN LIFE EXTENSION ARE ALREADY HERE In fact, some new inventions and innovations in anti-aging medicine have already proven themselves behind the closed doors of our nation’s top research and testing agencies. They’re already here. They just haven’t been released yet to the general public. Thankfully, however, many of these breakthroughs don’t take as much time as do other health
care innovations, such as new drugs. And because of the rapidly approaching urgency and the looming, overwhelming demand for anti-aging innovations, we’re soon going to see wave after wave of anti-aging products getting introduced to a TRILLION-DOLLAR world market of people who are literally dying to hold onto their health, youth, beauty and vitality. It’s what we all want, actually. And now, thanks to the unique research and marketing strategy we’ve developed here at Maximum Life Foundation, you can learn about the development and distribution of the very innovations that will one day – very soon – benefit you directly and help you lead a longer, healthier, wealthier and happier life. SAP Training - Training and certification in over 30 different SAP career paths. This white paper will take you on a journey into the exciting world of anti-aging science – and show you the virtually unlimited opportunities that await savvy people like you who get on board the train to the future… and do it now. One final note before we begin: I want you to know that nearly all of my personal financial return from my activities goes to The Maximum Life Foundation. In other words, I’m in this for the money – but not the way you think. AGING: A GROWING PROBLEM BECOMES AN ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITY It’s happening all over the world… A little known company in California has developed a way to blast cancer cells – without months of agonizing chemotherapy or radiation. Their solution may represent a multi-billion dollar opportunity. 2. Another team of scientists discovered a skin-aging gene. In the intermediate term, this breakthrough could lead to a cure for wrinkles, aging and sun damaged skin… and even baldness. In the longer term, it could reverse many other aging related conditions. 3. A New England company is quietly laying the groundwork that could add up to 20 healthy years to our lives. 1.
Imagine the potential profit – if you participated in even one of these! And our research is uncovering dozens of similar opportunities. It’s no accident venture capitalists and major medical companies are investing billions of dollars annually in research leading toward the treatment and cure of “incurable” diseases. Why? They readily recognize the upside to such investment.
Today, the biggest returns – both to investors and to individuals who want to live longer, healthier, and therefore more productive lives – will come in the field of anti-aging medicine. And here’s why: back in the year 2000, the number of Americans (for example) aged 65 or older reached an estimated 35 million and accounted for almost 13 percent of the total U.S. population. The rapidly aging U.S. population is very significant – especially when you consider the number of older Americans has increased more than ten-fold since the turn of the last century. This trend is mirrored in other developed countries. And, it’s projected to accelerate even faster over the next 30 years. This is both a problem and an opportunity. It’s a problem because the diseases associated with aging will put a tremendous burden on our health-care system (along with the younger taxpayers who will have to foot the bill). The table below lists just a few of the adverse health events that our older population is now experiencing…
HEALTH EVENTS THAT INCREASE WITH AGING
Musculoskeletal
Osteoporosis Degenerative Disk Disease Arthritis Dystrophies
Neurological
Alzheimer’s Disease Parkinson’s Disease Memory loss Dementias Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Palsies Tics and tremors
Respiratory
Emphysema Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Chronic bronchitis
Immunological
Allergy Autoimmune diseases
Cardiovascular
Stroke Heart attack Hypertension Angina
Sensory
Hearing loss Retinopathy Cataracts and other visual impairments
Cancer
Lung cancer Breast cancer Prostate cancer Most other cancers
“Quality of Life” Events
Skin wrinkling, brittleness, discoloration Hair loss Erectile dysfunction Loss of mobility, independence
These aging-dependent chronic diseases and conditions are now the most common forms of illness in the United States. Heart disease and stroke alone account for almost 40% of all deaths. Altogether, the groups of degenerative diseases we link to “aging” are directly responsible for the deaths for roughly 75% of all deaths in the United States. What’s more, the list of diseases above has contributed to a quadrupling of health care expenditures per person in the U.S., rising from $1,067 in 1980 to $4,358 in 1999. By 2010, those expenditures are expected to double again. Total national health expenditures are projected to equal $2.6 trillion and reach 15.9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product by 2010, up from 13 percent in 1999. Why? It’s pure demographics. You see, the burgeoning number of “baby boomers” in our society will begin to turn 65 in 2011. And by 2030, the proportion of the population 65 or older will be one in five – or 70 million U.S. citizens. In the United States, the population 80 and older is currently 9.2 million (3.35 percent of the U.S. population). This age segment is projected to grow to 14.9 million (4.4 percent of population) by
the year 2025 and to 31.6 million (7.82 percent of population) by the year 2050. In other industrialized countries around the world, the percentage of the population age 65 or older is even higher than in the U.S. The percentage of population over 65 in the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan is 24%, 44% and 34% higher than in the United States, respectively. This is truly a growing problem, worldwide. And it cries out for a solution. Fortunately, timing is on our side – because science may now have solutions to some of the agerelated diseases listed above. Happily, the catastrophic effects of such a huge percentage of our population getting old and getting sick all at the same time can now be virtually eliminated – IF the science of anti-aging proceeds on the “fast track” and quickly develops the treatments and “cures” to life-threatening (and life-shortening) diseases we now passively accept. And that’s what we at the Maximum Life Foundation are all about: Helping to get anti-aging science into the mainstream before it’s too late for you. Whether you’re young or old, herein lays one of the major investment opportunities of the 21st century. ANTI-AGING MEDICINE: AN EMERGING SOLUTION Think about it… If the illnesses and deaths we’ve been talking about were preventable, shouldn’t we stop them if we can? Let me put it another way: If a loved one (or yourself) had a major medical condition such as cancer, heart disease or suffered a stroke., wouldn’t you ask that they (or you) receive the very best medical care for those conditions? If there was a treatment that could reverse Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, osteoporosis, arteriosclerosis or diabetes… who in their right mind would turn it down? What ties all these diseases together is the underlying processes of “aging.” But now, science is gradually coming to the realization that aging itself could be classified as a disease. Why? Because it’s not necessarily “normal” or “inevitable” for the body’s vital organs
to stop functioning properly. Scientists now know that our cells could live and grow in the same healthy manner as when we were in our 20’s! Am I just blowing smoke? No. Here’s the hard-core evidence that gives everyone involved in anti-aging science so much cause for optimism… HOW THE EPLOSION OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IS REVOLUTIONIZING OUR LIVES To properly understand what I’m about to share with you, you need to know that the pace of scientific advancements today far outstrips what you and I have been accustomed to during our lifetime. Whereas science used to proceed at a snail’s pace, that’s not the case anymore. Now it’s approaching the speed of light! It’s all because several sciences and technologies are finally coming together and working synergistically on the problems that face mankind. For instance, medical researchers are now able to use supercomputers to speed up experiments that used to take years. The key? They’re using a new technology known as “bioinformatics.” Bioinformatics is a computer-assisted data management discipline that assists in accumulating, analyzing and representing biological processes. Emerging in the 1990s, this field is accelerating the drug discovery and development process through in vitro (in test tubes) and in vivo (in animals or humans) testing processes. Now they’re adding in silico (computer simulations) to turbo charge anti-aging science. The major task of bioinformatics is utilizing the power of supercomputers to convert the complexity of the genetic codes of the human genome into useful information and knowledge that can be harnessed to understand the aging process and its attendant diseases. The result? Faster and faster progress in the anti-aging sciences It’s not a surprise. In the modern era, our knowledge has been advancing by quantum leaps compared to most of human history. For instance, scientific knowledge doubled from the year 1 A.D. to 1500 A.D. But by 1967, it doubled five more times... and each time, faster than before.
And several experts estimate that today, biotech knowledge doubles about every 48 months. Some computer scientists project that by 2010, scientific knowledge in general will double every 100 days! Part of the reason? As I said, supercomputers, like the kind now being used in bioinformatics. These computers can do experiments in 15 seconds that used to take years. It’s no wonder we’re gaining on the aging problem so fast! Here’s another anti-aging advance: Newly developed research tools called “gene chips” can do tissue studies in hours – or even minutes – that used to take years of animal studies. These gene chips are actually “laboratories on a chip.” They’re simply amazing. But perhaps the most profound observation is the rate of change itself is accelerating. This means the past is not a reliable guide to the future. The 20th century was not 100 years of progress at today’s rate but, rather, was equivalent to about 20 years, because we’ve been speeding up to current rates of change. And, we’ll make another 20 years of progress at the year 2000 rate, equivalent to that of the entire 20th century, by 2014. Then we’ll do it again by 2021. Because of this exponential growth, the 21st century will equal 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress – 1,000 times greater than what we witnessed in the 20th century, which in itself was no slouch for change. And you’re probably aware that the power of technology per dollar doubles every 12 months. This means our tools could be 1,000 times more powerful in just 10 years and a billion times more powerful by 2035. On top of that, scientists just launched an emerging discipline known as “nanomedicine” that will revolutionize cell repair. In a nutshell, nanomedicine, the medical application of nanotechnology, could eventually build or repair almost every cell in the body, from the bottom up, atom-by-atom. It promises to give us complete control of matter and a very efficient way to cure aging damage, injuries and diseases. MORE ANTI-AGING BREAKTHROUGHS For your information, here are some of the anti-aging and life-extension breakthroughs that took place just in the last few years… 1. In 2003,Celera and the public Human Genome Project categorized the human genetic code. We finally have the blueprints for a human being.
That means someday, we could completely understand how the human body works at the most basic level. This will greatly speed up the time it takes to develop new treatments for all diseases. 2. Leonard Guarente and his team at MIT were able to find the genetic pathway involved in controlling aging by caloric restriction in yeast. By understanding how eating less calories works to extend life in something like yeast, scientists can use this information to figure out the same pathway in humans. Then, we could develop drugs to do the same thing. In fact, Dr. Guarente co-founded Elixir Pharmaceuticals to do just that, and now, several caloric restriction “mimetics” have been discovered. 3. Simon Melov and fellow researchers at the Buck Institute extended the life of a worm by 44% by feeding it powerful but safe new drugs. This is the first time drugs dramatically extended the lifespan of a complex form of life. This could perhaps result in a pill that would greatly extend your lifespan and your “healthspan.” 4. Stephen Helfand and his team at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington isolated a gene called “I’m Not Dead Yet.” Using it, he bred a line of fruit flies that live twice as long as regular fruit flies. Once again, turning the right genes on or off can extend lifespan. 5. Aubrey de Grey at Cambridge University feels that with the right level of funding, we could see real age-retarding therapies (that at least double the current average healthy lifespan) within the next 20 years. Dr. de Grey published a “Scientific Roadmap” to reverse aging in an aged mouse in less than 10 years. The human map won’t be far behind. 6. Stem Cells. All our organs come equipped with spare parts called “stem cells.” Their job is to make replacement parts for specialized organs like hearts, eyes, skin, etc. Many stem cell breakthroughs occurred recently, including: a. Diabetic mice were cured of insulin deficiency. b. A world-first breakthrough promises a cure for lung diseases that kill millions. Melbourne scientists at the prestigious National Stem Cell Centre have turned stem cells into lung cells. The revolutionary development is a step towards coaxing damaged lungs to repair themselves. The technique could yield cures for cystic fibrosis, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and, eventually, lung cancer.
c. New liver cells were grown in mice. d. Neurons for very specific areas of the brain were grown from stem cells. e. A 16-year old Michigan boy received a pioneering stem-cell transplant. He was accidentally shot in the heart with a nail gun, and after surgeons removed the nail, he had a heart attack that destroyed nearly a third of his heart's muscle cells. He would have needed either a new heart transplant or an experimental bone-marrow stem-cell transplant directly into the damage heart. The latter was tried and seems to have worked! f. In Tokyo, Professor Asashima grew whole frog eyes from stem cells, implanted them, and the frogs were able to see. g. Stem cells can help cardiac tissue to repair itself weeks after a heart attack, new Cleveland Clinic research shows. The study identified the first stem cell "homing factor" for cardiac muscle tissue, which allows stem cells to "home" to an area of tissue damage. h. Mike May had his sight restored and his injured eye regrown by stem cell therapy after 43 years of blindness. 7. Martin Holzenberger and his team in Paris made mice live 33% longer than normal, with no obvious side effects. They removed a gene involved in sensing nutrients. With good gene therapy techniques, the same type of thing might add about 30 years to our lives. That’s not an exaggeration. 8. The first “Methuselah Mouse Prize” was awarded to Andrzej Bartke for his treated mouse that lived almost five years – equivalent to 180 years for a human. The second was won by Stephen Spindler. 9. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have been looking for what they call the Holy Grail of aging research: molecules that activate the enzymes that in turn influence the genes that regulate aging. Now, they say, they have found those molecules. One of the molecules, a compound known as resveratrol, was shown in a study to extend the life span of yeast cells by up to 80 percent. Similar trials were performed on mice. Resveratrol is now available as a supplement for human consumption. 10. Tweaking genes in roundworms (a good model for basic human physiology) multiplied their life spans by 600%. This equates to 500-year human life spans.
There’s more. A group at the University of Wisconsin developed a technique to locate many genes that are involved in the aging process in mice. This may soon allow us to control the aging process itself. At Sierra Sciences, a biotechnology company, researchers have been working on shutting off the cellular aging clock, the telomere. There are far too many examples to list them all. What does all this research mean? Very simply this: With today’s astonishing pace of scientific progress, we’ll most likely develop technologies in the next 5 to 10 years in the lab that could eventually slow aging to a crawl. Maybe halt it. Maybe even reverse it by 2029. And even before these technologies are translated to humans, they will be worth BILLIONS. WHERE THE MONEY WILL BE MADE IN LIFE EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY Aside from the sheer humanitarian benefits of anti-aging science and the promise of a diseasefree, healthy and happy society, there’s also a lot of money to be made in this sector for those who are savvy enough to see the trend and invest early. What’s more, investing in this exciting new science of anti-aging will benefit YOU directly! You’ll be helping to fund the very research that will produce the products, medicines, treatments and therapies that YOU will one day use to stay healthier and more productive for many years longer than you now “expect” to live. But it doesn’t stop there. Consider this… As an investor, you know if you compound your investments at a realistic rate of 10% a year, you’ll double your money in 7.2 years. So let’s take that a step further: What if we can add 15 years to your lifespan?
Very simply, you’ll quadruple your net worth in
those “extra” fifteen years of your life!
And… because of the health-enhancing nature of anti-aging science, those will be 15 QUALITY years. Not 15 years of “hanging on” like people do now. No. You’ll be healthy, active, vibrant, clear-headed, independent and getting the most out of every day. Not only that, but you’ll be enjoying the fruits of the investment decisions you make today. Lifeextension and anti-aging investments could have potentially explosive returns, as we’ll see in a moment. So you’ll be much richer AND much healthier – at a time in life when people are now expected to be put out to pasture! Let’s take a quick look at how profitable your investment in anti-aging research can one day be… HOW MUCH MONEY WILL BE MADE IN LIFE EXTENSION TECHNOLOGIES? To understand the potential size and scope of this market, you need to know how big the “conventional” health care market is already. As indicated earlier, health care expenditures per person in the U.S. now exceed $7,500 per person per year – making health care a $2.3 TRILLION per year industry today. (It’s the largest industry in America, I might add). That comes out to $100 billion every 16 days! Sales of medical products alone are projected to rise from $147.1 billion in 1999 to $448.5 billion in 2010. That’s an enormous jump – and it includes an increase in pharmaceuticals from $99.6 billion to $366.0 billion. Now combine that with the astonishing advances in anti-aging research we’ve seen already, and answer this question… Where do you think people will be spending their money once these new discoveries are ready for the public?
According to health care industry analysts, it’s safe to assume the market for anti-aging and healthspan products and services will soon exceed $250 billion – and even that is expected to grow at accelerating annual rates. What’s more, According to the American Council on Collaborative Medicine… The anti-aging industry will be more than one trillion dollars 2010 when you include all life extension therapies and products! In other words, it’s time to plan your investing strategy! Your investment in anti-aging research now can mean only one thing: You’ll make a fortune if you own stock in the right companies – companies with cutting-edge technology and the ability to bring their products to market the fastest. And, once again, that’s what the Maximum Life Foundation is all about: Helping to get antiaging products and therapies into production as soon as humanly possible. YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE THE FUTURE I’ve mentioned the Maximum Life Foundation a few times now, but I haven’t adequately explained it to you. So let me tell you exactly what we’re all about, and why I’d like you to join our efforts to change the future for everyone. Our mission is to Maximize investors’ returns… while Minimizing risk and to Maximize health and longevity… in Minimum time. We do this by making the public aware of the incredible potential in this emerging industry. Why do we do this? The answer is simple. The more and the earlier people invest in this sector, the sooner we expect extreme life extension therapies to be developed… and the sooner you and we can take advantage of them. After all, how would you like to be faced with the prospect of being part of the last generation to suffer, deteriorate and die from aging when you could be part of the first generation to enjoy
open-ended youthful lifespans? The destructive process responsible for human aging – known by its technical name, “senescence” – is a primary cause of heart disease, cancer, stroke, type II diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Maximum Life Foundation considers senescence our #1 enemy. Therefore, we have created a network of scientists, physicians, and biotechnology professionals who developed a strategic plan to defeat senescence. And now we’re working on strategies to fund the science, profitably and safely. OUR “MANHATTAN” PROJECT This fast-track plan, known as “The Manhattan Beach Project,” will serve as a guide for making decisions on which experiments and technologies are critical to treating the diseases of aging and defeating senescence. (Its seeds were planted at a June 2000 international aging conference for scientists in Manhattan Beach, California, and the project was launched in January 2010. See www.ManhattanBeachProject.com.) To execute this plan, Maximum Life Foundation supports both public and private research on the aging process, and we foster cooperation between academic and industry labs. For instance, the field of “interventive gerontology” is just beginning to blossom, and Maximum Life Foundation will play a key role in supporting it. The Foundation is also committed to aiding anti-aging researchers in commercializing their technologies so the advances in the lab can reach the public much sooner than would otherwise be the case. Currently, researchers who want to create a new biotech company are faced with the daunting task of finding funding, management, and laboratory space, as well as dealing with the hundreds of tiny administrative details necessary to start a company. Maximum Life Foundation is creating services to eliminate these problems for researchers so they can focus on perfecting real lifeextending technologies. Maximum Life Foundation identifies new anti-aging companies and technologies and encourages the investing public to investigate this sector. Most molecular and cell biologists feel that once we have a better understanding of the majority
of our genes and the proteins they produce, controlling the aging process is inevitable. And understanding more about how aging works will shortcut finding cures for aging related diseases. The human body is a wonderfully complex machine. Deciphering the aging process is simply a matter of continuing to figure out how that machine works. Therefore, the Foundation is exploring every possible avenue to speed up research on the disease processes associated with human aging. It is the hope of the members of the Foundation that the tremendous economic, social and emotional costs of human aging can be greatly reduced through this effort. WHERE DO YOU COME IN? How often have you heard (or made) comments like: “Tell ‘them’ to hurry up with all this.” Or “Why doesn’t someone do something about that?” Or “Let me know when I can buy an “aging cure.” Well if something’s important enough to get done, then it’s our responsibility to do it. You are responsible for your own life. And now, for the first time, you have a chance to play a major role in your own personal longevity as well as for millions of others. What if you waited for someone else to do something about this “aging business”? Let’s say, one year before a life extension breakthrough, one of the aging related diseases nabs you or a loved one? You or they suffer and die. But if you had only helped speed up the research by just one or two years, you would have been given a chance to live a longer and healthier life! People just like you are dying every day – at a rate of 2.5 million deaths a year, in the United States alone. (Worldwide, the number is simply staggering – 55 million.) And over 70% of these deaths stem from aging! If you don’t do something now to help combat senescence and the aging-related killer diseases, you and your family members will most likely suffer and die from one. But if Maximum Life Foundation’s work helps speed up the discovery of new anti-aging cures, what would that mean to you? Maybe a particular breakthrough will give you another 10 healthy, robust years. And if the next breakthrough comes about five years later, who knows? That one might give you another 20 good years!
Remember: Biotech knowledge is doubling approximately every two years now. Someday it will double in one year... and so on. And our tools are becoming increasingly more powerful… as much as 1,000 times more powerful in just the next ten years. This equates to incrementally more progress every year. Therefore, adding one extra year to your life now positions you to enjoy lots of extra years! Your chance for many more years of quality, healthy living suddenly jumps from 0% to something far greater! And because of the uniqueness of our plan, many individuals have the power to step-up progress by a full year... or more - and as a financial bonus, profit handsomely from their efforts! Doesn’t that sound like something worth working toward? Plus… you might not have to wait for that first breakthrough. According to life insurance industry data, right now, with today’s knowledge, you can (depending on your age) add up to 5, 10, or even 20 more years to your expected life span by following some pretty simple steps. If you’re doing everything right now, you’re the rare exception. If not, when you join with us, we’ll show you exactly what to do – today – that could keep you healthy and active until our first new breakthrough. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND PROFIT AT THE SAME TIME Here at Maximum Life Foundation, we invite you to join our mission – because it’s your mission, too. If you love life, you can’t get too much of it. Investing time in life-extension pursuits now gives you the greatest possible return tomorrow... more time! Investing money in well-chosen opportunities gives you potentially huge profits to enjoy with your extra time. Better yet, putting your resources to work could let you grow wealthy and live a long healthy life without worrying about above normal investment risk. Together, our mutual efforts will accelerate the days when we can consistently slow, stop... and possibly even reverse the human aging process. HOW FUNDING WOULD SPEED UP RESEARCH The scientists and researchers in our network have all told us one thing very clearly: They spend only about 20% of their most valuable productive time in the lab.The balance, or about 80%, is spent writing grant proposals and business plans, teaching, performing administrative duties, and
other distracting activities. Furthermore, it’s rare for most anti-aging scientists to intermingle and cross-pollinate ideas with scientists in the same industry, but in other disciplines. When we made this happen at our first scientific aging conference, creative sparks flew… projected timelines were reduced by as much as 40%... and projected budgets were slashed by as much as 30%. So as you can see, Maximum Life Foundation serves as a catalyst for helping anti-aging scientists and encourage the funding necessary so they can spend most of their time in the lab, but we’ll also provide management and business development expertise and bring them together so they can “compare notes” and synergistically work together to accelerate the crucial discoveries we’re after. A big part of our motivation is we know we will die according to schedule unless we do something to extend our biological clocks.
In other words, our lives are at stake – just like yours is. Thus, we’re highly motivated to get the job done – fast! In fact, we’ve committed our lives to the project. BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP And specifically, we need money to use for research and to grow the most promising companies. That’s why we’re putting out the call now to you and any of your associates who may want to stake their claim in the wildly profitable science-based anti-aging market that’s right around the corner. Historically financial support for research into the biological mechanisms of aging and efforts to extend the healthy lifespan has been spotty. Governments aren’t providing much funding support. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies’ support of basic aging research is hindered due to the fact that there are no generally accepted biomarkers for aging that would allow the FDA to approve a drug designed to slow the aging process. These companies are forced to develop drugs for specific diseases. And the FDA doesn’t recognize aging as a disease. Congress supplemented scarce aging research dollars by establishing the National Institute on Aging in 1974, but that money has predominately gone to disease specific research, such as Alzheimer's disease, or towards the behavioral aspects of aging. Venture capital firms typically aim for profitable exits from their investments within 2-4 years.
The research and product development we support typically takes longer to mature. These are the reasons very little funding has gone into life extending technologies. That’s why we need a creative targeted private funding approach to speed up progress. It also gives us a head start to big profits in this emerging trillion dollar industry. With a multiplier effect – support from enough interested people like you – we can raise the money to put our anti-aging project into high gear. Scientists tell us they can start making an impact with only a few million more dollars per year. We know exactly what it takes to give you the opportunity for a longer and healthier life as well as to enrich your portfolio. We built the engine. All we need is your help to supply the fuel. If you’re interested, all you have to do is contact us, and we’ll give you all the information you want or need to take this to the next level. Regulatory restrictions prevent us from going into detail about the aspects of any offer here. But an independent qualified agent will provide full details to you as soon as you contact us. In the meantime, I want to leave you with this thought…Why be part of the last generation to waste away and die “on time”... when we can be the first generation to control our destinies? Maximum Life Foundation’s officers and organizers currently invest 60 to 70 hours a week on this job. By succeeding before our time is up, we see a possibility of someday again enjoying many of the strengths of the supple bodies and minds we took for granted in our youth. Failure means premature death. Winning this contest grants life, health and wealth. Lots more for you and your loved ones. We will win. And we’d love to have you share in the legacy of making this happen. Won’t you please contact us today? If you do, we’ll send you the exciting free report, How to Avoid The 7 Deadliest Biotech Investing Pitfalls. Send an email request to
[email protected].
PART FIVE: LONGEVITY PRAGMATICS
CAULDRON OF THE SORCERESS (1879) BY ORDIN REDON
I.
LIFESTYLE
SKULL WITH BURNING CIGARETTE (1885) BY VINCENT VAN GOGH
DEBATE FORUM: WHAT IS THE BEST LONGEVITY EXERCISE? BY: IMMORTAL LIFE DEBATE FORUM DEBATE3
You know you need to exercise to live 100 years, but what’s the best type of workout? Research varies considerably. Some scientists say that bicycling is the best - but that seems way too dangerous in a crowded city… Another study says swimming is ideal, but that’s not always convenient, and I always get sinus colds after a dip. What about running? Research praises this primal activity, but doesn’t it wear out the knees and hips? Regarding exercise itself, should it be vigorous, or moderate? There are studies that support both. What about weightlifting or CrossFit? Is that a smart option? Dr. Marios Kyriaszis - who mentors the Certificate in Radical Life Extension program - believes “Paleo” Stone Age exercises like tree-climbing, wood-chopping, and rock-rolling are best. What’s your opinion? Is the value of exercise exaggerated anyway? (Some studies suggest that if you work out an hour, you only gain an extra hour of life… is that worth it?) _________ Every single we extend our existence is another minute when people won’t miss us, and another minute we push ourselves closer to any potential treatment for extended longevity or actual rejuvenation. By KHANNEA SUNTZU on Mar 24, 2013 at 7:46am
3
Debate question and introductory discussion by Hank Pellissier.
_________ I think it is a waste of time trying to extend life. Men know upfront when they are going to die – unless in the case of accidents (which is not discussed here). Be that, the best way to live life is to prepare for death while healthy. Even while dying, if a person so wills, he can enjoy it and add it to his experiences. Postponing death by a couple of years by exercising like mad in rain and snow or in gym is just not worth it. There are other aspects of life that may not fit the psyche of the subject – like siblings, spouses and so on. What use is it if a person is healthy yet those around him are annoying sort of people? You get bedridden by 65 only to be cursed to death at 85. Two decades on deathbed ! John Mortimer hit it spot on when he said he wouldn’t like to give up the pleasures of life for a couple of more years in the Geriatric ward. By RAGHU SESHADRI on Mar 24, 2013 at 9:44am _________ There are four kinds of people in the context of this question: 1. Those who have read the relevant research (and know who Fries, Ratey, Glassman, and Weider are without googling) and been citizen-scientists and tried it out for themselves with every type of exercise listed here, and more, keeping notes. 2. Those who know the theory of exercise and longevity, but don’t themselves exercise. 3. Those you exercise but don’t know the theory or research. 4. Those who are, objectively, so lazy they have not bothered to explore exercise nor read the literature. It’s easy for people in the first category to talk with the others and ID them, but such a vast gulf exists conceptually between the first and fourth that little actual debate is possible. So I am seeking to debate people in the first category. My starting point is to ask, “What goes wrong at a predictable linear rate that can be repaired at
an equal or greater rate?” and “What exercises repair which types of breakdown?” and “What best practices are necessary to keep the exercise itself from causing harm?” My answers to these questions is that there are at least five linear decay functions (my term): telomeres, neurons, muscle mass, bone mass, and VO2 max. My subjective opinion is if you don’t know what these are and why you don’t want them getting worse that you’ve wasted your time and life. Telomeres can be lengthened by running. Look it up. Is there any other evidence of a physical activity lengthening telomeres? If so, that’s an option. If not, running needs to be on your “must do” list. However, over 70% of new runners get injured their first year, so you need to do more homework and lay a foundation to avoid injury and becoming one of millions (I personally know thousands) who complain of knee and hip problems. Neurons are added via neurogenesis. Who want to live much longer if you are losing brain cells and not replacing them? People say you don’t. The world doesn’t need more people losing net brain cells. Running 45 minutes at 75% max heart rate triggers neurogenesis, as long as you learn something new within three weeks. Women have an advantage over men: they trigger neurogenesis at only 65% max heart rate. The default is that max heart rate is 220 minus your age, but the more personal your number, via better techniques, the better. Muscle mass is added via weight lifting. The 3/18/2013 winner of The Biggest Loser, Danni, gained 19 pounds of muscle in three months, which is something to aim for if you, but rarely achieved. More muscle mass is associated with longer life, and can also let you walk away from accidents that would injure other. Recently I walked away from falling down stairs backwards and crashing my bike at 25 miles an hour on an oil slick. Bruises, yes, but nothing broken. Bone mass is added via weight lifting, especially the heavy deadlifts and clean & jerk. The combo of bone mass and muscle mass and neurons lets you avoid the dreaded stumbling, falling, and breaking a hip, and accident that, at least until recently, led to an increase in comorbidities for every cause of death but two, such that a person’s odds of dying after age 65 with a broken hip were 33% after 12 months and 50% after 18 months. VO2max is increased by repeatedly running your fastest mile or intervals. There is a vast literature on this, but it starts with paying (about $200 at Phase IV in Santa Monica) for a test that takes about 45 minutes and involves running to near exhaustion on a treadmill that keeps getting faster and steeper until the gaseous composition exhaled into a face mask changes. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. My own rule of thumb is that this needs to be above 50 if you are serious about life extension (because it decreases every year after 28 for non-exercisers),
above 30 to be possibly fit, above 20 to be possibly healthy, and above 10 to be alive much longer. We are 60% oxygen, so it’s bizarre we don’t habitually measure our ability to process oxygen. But, hey, this blind spot gives me something to contribute to the radical life extension community. VO2 max is also assisted by 3x daily use of a PowerLung. It takes seven months for ligaments and tendons to catch up with the muscles of a running program. I highly recommend biting the bullet and getting and wearing a weight vest to speed up the process, to not be one of the injured 70%. The Fries study at Stanford of runners showed no evidence of greater injuries of long time runners vs. non-runners with respect to knee and hip problems. Biggest wow: runners stayed out of assisted living seven years longer! Exercise burns calories, and couple with a good diet makes you less likely to get type II diabetes, which shortens the life expectancy vs. non sufferers by an average of 15 years. The more you do, the more you can do. May you exercise, live long, and prosper. By ALEX LIGHTMAN on Mar 25, 2013 at 7:32am
LONGEVITY LIFESTYLE BY: DAVID KEKICH
Dear Future Centenarian, Happy people live longer. Conversely, negative thoughts, words and actions cause stress, inflammation, shorten your telomeres and send harmful signals to every one of your trillions of cells. Joe Mercola posted an article on his site last week that fits beautifully into the longevity wheelhouse. I changed the title slightly from “22 Things Happy People Do Differently.” I eliminated or shortened the narratives for brevity, but you can see a full explanation of each point as well as the article here. Dr. Mercola asks, “What’s the secret to being happy?” and then continues with “You can learn how to do it, just as you can learn any other skill.” It’s a great article, and I suggest you master these points if longevity (and happiness) are your goals. 1. Let go of grudges. Letting go of a grudge frees you from negativity and allows more space for positive emotions to fill in. 2. Treat everyone with kindness. 3. Regard your problems as challenges. Eliminate the word “problem” from your mind entirely.
4. Express gratitude for what you have. 5. Dream big. 6. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Happy people know how to let life’s daily irritations roll off their backs. 7. Speak well of others. Talking negatively about others is like taking a bath in negative emotions. 8. Avoid making excuses. 9. Live in the present. Avoid replaying past negative events in your head or worrying about the future. 10. Wake up at the same time every morning. 11. Don’t compare yourself to others. Even regarding yourself as better than your peers is detrimental to your happiness, as you’re fostering judgmental feelings and an unhealthy sense of superiority. 12. Surround yourself with positive people. 13. Realize that you don’t need others’ approval. 14. Take time to listen. 15. Nurture social relationships. 16. Meditate. 17. Eat well. 18. Exercise. 19. Live minimally.
Clutter has a way of sucking the energy right out of you and replacing it with feelings of chaos. 20. Be honest. Every time you lie, your stress levels are likely to increase and your self-esteem will crumble just a little bit more. 21. Establish personal control. Avoid letting other people dictate the way you live. 22. Accept what cannot be changed. This is not a test, but if it were, how well do you score? If not extremely high, you may be undermining your health. I’m weak on some and need to work on them. It’s easy to gloss over little tips like these. Please don’t let their simplicity fool you. They are powerful. Attitude drives everything, including the resolve to do the research and to get it funded. Miserable people’s attitudes shorten their lives on the whole, even though they sufferingly FEEL like life is endless. So smile, laugh and be happy. You’ll live longer and enjoy it more. More Life, David Kekich
LONGEVITY RUNNING: LIFE EXTENSION SCIENTIST BILL ANDREW’S 138-MILE HIMALAYAN ULTRAMARATHON BY: JASON SUSSBERG
A funny thing happens when I film with biotech scientist and telomere expert Bill Andrews: I run a lot. This trend continued when I arrived in the Himalayas in Northern India to film Andrews racing in an impossibly cruel 138-mile ultramarathon at 18,000 feet. When I showed up, I wasn’t expecting to run a half-marathon there in some of the tallest mountains in the world—that was the furthest thing from my mind as I prepared for a difficult shoot under extreme conditions. But as it turned out, all that running that Bill and I had done in the past served me well. My first run with Bill was from the driver’s seat of a rental car. I was driving while the film’s codirector and cinematographer, David Alvarado, filmed Bill from a rental hatchback for the benefit of the camera. David and I are directing “Long for This World” - a feature documentary on radical longevity and the scientists behind this timeless quest. Bill is one of three scientists of study—the others are Dr. Aubrey de Grey and Terry Grossman—in our film. Besides being a biotech scientist hell-bent to cure aging (his own included), Bill Andrews is also a successful ultramarathoner with an impressive runner’s resume. I showed up in Reno to film with Bill Andrews this March for one of many shoots for our documentary. We had scheduled to film around the lab, but plans had changed. Bill needed to take a break from trying to raise funds for Sierra Sciences to map out a race course using a GPS on his wrist for Molly Sheridan, his then-fiancée, in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California. The race course he was charting uses foot trails, so Bill had to map it out by running the route.
Bill Andrews in the Himalayas. I asked to come along in hopes that I could film him running. I quickly ditched the camera when I realized how long and far we would be going. I don’t often get to talk to film subjects at length without camera gear in tow, so it was a relief to chat and connect without the presence of the camera. By the end of the day we had run 16 miles and only partially mapped the course. A 16miler is a walk in the park for an ultra-marathoner like Bill, who regularly competes in 100-mile races. I’m a reasonably fit, casual jogger, but this unexpected run completely drained me, mentally and physically. Midway through our exhaustive run, we ran into a gold-panner. Bill initially took him for a field biologist, but he was in fact prospecting for nuggets in the gold country of Auburn. Interestingly, that was the term John Furber of Legendary Pharmaceuticals used to describe Bill Andrews: prospector. Sierra Sciences is trying to find its gold in the form of a small molecule that will turn on the telomerase gene and thus, according to telomere theory of aging, lead to cellular immortality. The idea is to find the drug that will express the enzyme soon enough so that the 60 year-old Andrews can cure his own aging, and subsequently the rest of humanity, thereby ending human’s universal mortal struggle against itself (you can watch the trailer from our movie here to hear Bill explain it himself). What does running an ultramarathon in the Himalayas have to do with defeating aging? Well— Bill happens to be obsessed with both and we are around for the ride. As filmmakers, we are looking for metaphors, trying to put people’s passions into logical storylines. From a storytelling perspective, it’s great—defeating death and running a 138-mile, 60 hour
nonstop race at 18,000 feet is the stuff of mythology. As Molly Sheridan, Bill’s wife put it, “Anti-aging goes right along with ultramarathon running because people don’t think either are possible… We have incredible bodies that can do a lot when you just train them to go there and a lot of it is the mindset. It’s the same with anti-aging.” Being a scientist, Bill isn’t one for storytelling fluff—he cites research from the University Colorado Boulder on the telomere length of runners at various ages. In every case, the telomerelength of the runners was substantially longer than their non-running controls. But, speaking as a runner, we run because we like running and any positive health consequences are a pleasant externality that vindicate this odd desire to lace ‘em up and let it rip. We arrived in the Ladahk region of the Himalayas eleven days before the race commenced to acclimatize to the high altitude. The oxygen deprived air has serious health consequences even for those who spend their lives at such elevations. Two of the more serious disorders are HACE and HAPE. The former is a brain swelling edema that could result in the brain busting through the skull causing death, while the latter is a serious pulmonary edema where the lungs fill with fluid that could also result in death. The race medics gave lengthy demonstrations about the seriousness of even minor high altitude afflictions, but it didn’t seem to cause any of the 11 elite runners to reconsider. We had spent days acclimatizing, prepping for our shoot and filming the backstory of the race. Midway through the acclimatization period, there was a non-advertised, non-hyped marathon in the city of Leh affiliated with the ultramarathon. As a casual jogger of sea-level trails of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, I didn’t really consider participating. Plus, I didn’t want to shirk my filmmaking responsibilities. But, after talking with the ultra-runners, who view a half-marathon at 12,000 feet with the same nonchalance and passivity they would view attending a Sunday brunch and matinee, I decided to run the 13 miles in the rarified thin air of the Himalayas. Anyone who has experienced high altitude for an extended period knows just how much of a toll it takes on your body. Just lounging around at 12,000 feet causes headaches, brain swelling, chronic shortness of breath, UV damage to eyes and skin, muscle loss and dehydration. Just imagine adding a 60-hour 138-mile race to the mix boggles the mind.
The race crossed this valley. I joined the half-marathon for the same reason the ultra folks came to the Himalayas; I wanted to see if my body could do it. The ultra-runners assured everyone around them that the half marathon was just for fun and uncompetitive. Not for me, I wanted to break two hours and place really well. Mark Woolley, a headmaster of an international school in Madrid, ended up winning the race. I was vying for second against John Sharp, a chatty telecom engineer from Texas who reminded me of Beck, from Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, the famed-tale of a Himalayan climbing adventure gone terribly wrong. John was a Tea Partyin’ Ayn Randian, lecturing on fractional banking and global warming-is-hoax to anyone within ear shot. Finding common ground on bombastic and illegal American foreign policy, I found John’s hard-partying Texas style quite agreeable. I was closing in on the finish line up Shanti Stupa when Bill Andrews yelled “go Jason!” causing Sharp to pick up his pace and cross the Finish line seconds ahead of me. Acting semi-proud of my 1:54 half-marathon, I quickly reminded myself that it’s less than 1/10 (!!) the distance of the real race. During the acclimatizing period, we filmed Bill and Molly, the ultra-running power couple, getting married in a Buddhist temple in Leh. The wedding was as beautiful as it was confusing. A lama friend of Bill and Molly performed the touching ceremony in Ladahki ending with Bill asking, “Okay, so are we married?” The wedding finished something that began in Ladahk two-years earlier during the inaugural year of the race. Bill and Molly were two of three racers that took the initial plunge. The grueling race begins at Kardung Village which lies approximately 14,000 feet above sea level. The first
leg is a 26-mile (essentially a full marathon) climb to 18,000 to Khardung La pass. In 2010, the ultra-couple paused during the race to perform a commitment ceremony before continuing the race with what they thought would be two full days of non-stop running and well over 100 miles to go. Molly describes what happened next as “just surreal.” Bill would withdraw from the race because of a life threatening gall bladder infection, which he insists is non-running related. Molly withdrew after 100 miles after hearing the gravity of Bill’s health. After a week waiting to stabilize at the local hospital, Bill flew home to have surgery. Not wanting to remain with a DNF (did not finish), Molly returned the following year and became the first American women to finish the race. This year, Bill came to finish what he started in 2010.
Bill Andrews on the trail.
Earlier, Bill declared to the camera that he will finish the race or die trying (a riff on Sierra Sciences’ motto, “Cure Aging Or Die Trying”). The stakes were high: he wanted to slay this dragon. The eve of the race Bill’s blood pressure sharply increased, concerning the medics. They presumed it was just pre-race nerves and the pressure of having a documentary crew following his every waking move - mea culpa! Once the race began, Bill fell into his element, swiftly slaying Kardung La and making it to the cutoff point hours ahead of what he expected. Running throughout the night, he came to a stop at the town of Karu to give necessary relief to his ailing feet, grotesquely blistered and battered. By
morning, Bill became alarmed that his health had taken a turn for the worse. After an emotionally reassuring visit from Molly, then acting as a race ambassador, Bill continued the race and ran the final 70 miles over the next 24 hours, crossing another peak of 17,000 feet during a nasty blizzard and hail storm. Bill finished 5th out of 11, becoming the oldest person to finish the race at 60 years-old. To the surprise of the filmmakers, being an ultra-running 60 year-old is not uncommon, strange or unhealthy. In fact, most of the runners we interviewed expressed the idea that being older is an asset. The logic goes like this: the older one is, the wiser one is, and thus more patient and mentally strong to stand up to the overwhelming mental chatter that tells one “stop running, what you’re doing is nuts!” Lynne, a resident nurse from Manhattan, called herself a “young pup” at the age of 47. None of the runners were scandalized by Bill’s age; they unanimously agreed that it was the general public’s view on aging ultra runners being unhealthy that was extraordinary and shocking. So, let me return to my earlier question: What does running an ultramarathon have to do with curing aging? According to Bill, who is searching for funding to continue his search for the elusive molecule, it shows that this 60-year old must know a thing or two about staying young forever. Photos by Jason Sussberg
LONGEVITY & EXERCISE BY: DAVID WESTMORELAND
The benefits of physical activity were first scientifically noted in 1953 by Dr. Jerry Morris. Dr. Morris discovered that men of similar social status had different rates of cardiovascular disease based on how much physical activity their occupation required (Morris & Glasg 1953). Since then, studies have documented many more health benefits gained from physical activity and have begun to research the volume, duration and intensity need to realize these benefits. BENEFITS OF EXERCISE Physical activity has been shown to have a number of physiological and psychological benefits. Some benefits of physical activity include: CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE: Physical activity has been shown to reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 35% (Macera & Hootman 2003). CANCER: There is strong evidence that physical activity reduces the risk of colon, breast, and endometrial cancers. There is weaker evidence that physical activity reduces the risk of ovarian, lung, and prostate cancers. There is either no or insufficient evidence for all other cancers (Friedenreich & Neilson 2010). To be specific, research has shown that physical activity can reduce the risk of colon cancer in men by 30% to 40%, and breast cancer in women by 20% to 30% (Lee 2003). STROKE: Highly active individuals have a 25% lower risk of stroke incidence or mortality than less active individuals (Lee & Folsom 2003). TYPE 2 DIABETES: Moderate physical activity was found to reduce the risk of diabetes in men by 40% (Jefferis & Whincup 2012). Additionally, those individuals with diabetes who walked for at least 120 minutes a week, had a 39% to 54% reduced risk of mortality (Gregg & Gerzoff 2003).
OBESITY: Physical activity has been shown to prevent weight gain, promote weight loss, and maintain weight loss (Donnelly & Blair 2009). OSTEOPOROSIS: Physical activity helps prevent osteoporosis (Nguyen & Center 2000). DEPRESSION: Physical activity has been shown to reduce the risk of becoming depressed (Teychenne & Ball 2008). Physical activity has also been shown to reduce the symptoms of depression (Dunn & Trivedi 2001). ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE & DEMENTIA: Physical activity has been shown to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (Rockwood & Middleton 2007). COGNITIVE FUNCTION: Physical activity has been shown to improve cognitive function in children (Ellemberg & St-Louis-Deschenes 2010) and adults (Kramer & Erickson 2007). STRESS: Physical activity has been shown to reduce stress (Smits & Tart 2011). MOOD: Physical activity has been shown to improve mood (Reed & Buck 2009). SELF-ESTEEM: Physical activity has also been shown to increase self-esteem (McAuley & Blissmer 2000). VOLUME Volume is the total amount of physical activity accumulated over a period of time, usually a week. Research has shown that volume is more important for health benefits than exercise duration or intensity (U.S. Dep. 2008). 0-150 MINUTES A WEEK: Any amount of physical activity is beneficial. In fact, the incremental gains from the first 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week are the largest (see chart) (U.S. Dep. 2008). 150-300 MINUTES A WEEK: Adults are recommended to get at least 150 minutes per week (30 minutes a day, 5 days a week) of moderate intensity aerobic exercise or at least 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic exercise, or an equivalent combination of the two (O’Donovan & Blazevich 2010). Substantial health benefits accrue to individuals meeting this target (all of those listed in the first section except colon cancer, breast cancer, and substantial weight loss). 300+ MINUTES A WEEK: Adults who get at least 300 minutes of aerobic exercise a week gain the health benefits of those who exercise 150 minutes a week, but to a greater degree (see chart).
Individuals who exercise 300 minutes a week also gain protection from colon and breast cancer as well as an increased likelihood of weight loss (U.S. Dept 2008). STRENGTH TRAINING: Strength training offers the independent benefits of muscular strength, endurance, and mass. It assists in the maintenance of basal metabolic rate and lean body mass (to aid weight loss). Strength training also promotes independence and helps prevent falls in the elderly (Pollock & Franklin 2000). Strength training for at least 30 minutes on 2-3 nonconsecutive days a week is recommended. Research supports doing 8-12 repetitions of 8-10 different exercises targeting all major muscle groups. (O’Donovan & Blazevich 2010) DURATION Duration is the length of continuous time an individual spends exercising during an average session. Duration has little effect on the health benefits of exercise. BOUTS OF LESS THAN 10 MINUTES: There has been little research studying bouts of less than 10 minutes, although some studies have shown that these short bouts of exercise are just as effective as bouts of 10 minutes or longer (Strath & Holleman 2008). 10 MINUTE BOUTS: Exercising in 10 minute bouts has been shown to be as effective as exercising in longer continuous bouts (Murphy & Blair 2010). SPREAD OUT TO AT LEAST 3 DAYS A WEEK: Individuals who exercised in longer bouts on 1-2 days a week had a lower mortality risk relative to inactive individuals. However, the overall mortality risk was lowest for individuals who spread their exercise out over at least 3 days a week (Lee & Sesso 2004). INTENSITY: The intensity of an activity is measured by its Metabolic Equivalent (MET). The MET of an activity is measured by the rate of energy expended during that activity relative to the rate of energy expended while at rest. Low intensity activities (standing, walking slowly, and doing most household chores) have an MET between 1.1 and 2.9. Moderate intensity activities (walking fast, doubles tennis, and biking slowly) have an MET between 3.0 and 5.9. Vigorous activities (jogging, swimming, singles tennis and biking fast) have an MET of 6.0 or higher. As a rule of thumb, people engaged in moderately intense physical activities can talk, but not sing. People engaged in vigorous physical activities cannot say more than a few words without taking a breath (U.S. Dep. 2008). LOW: Prolonged time spend sitting has been associated with increased mortality risks, independent of exercise levels (Patel & Bernstein 2010). Taking short low-intensity activity breaks from sitting has been show to counteract many of these negative outcomes (Healy &
Dunstan 2008). Additionally, low intensity exercise has been found to produce the most positive effects on mood (Reed & Buck 2009). MODERATE: All of the health benefits listed in the first section can be attained through moderate intensity exercise. As a general rule, an individual needs 2 minutes of moderate intensity exercise to gain the same health benefits of 1 minute of vigorous intensity exercise (O’Donovan & Blazevich 2010). VIGOROUS: Vigorous activity has been shown to improving aerobic fitness better than moderate intensity activity as measured by VO2max (Swain 2007). Vigorous activity also appears to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (Swain & Franklin 2006), body fat (Tremblay & Despres 1990) and all-cause mortality (Wen & Wai 2011) to a greater degree than moderate activity, after controlling for total energy expended. ADDITIONAL POINTS CHILDREN AGED 5-16: Children have been found to need more exercise than the average adult. Children are recommended to get at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise a day (U.S. Dep. 2008). INDIVIDUALS 65 AND OLDER & DISABLED: Individuals aged 65 and older as well as those who are disabled are recommended to meet the guidelines for adults aged 18-65 if possible. If not possible, these individuals are recommended to get as much exercise as their health will allow (U.S. Dep. 2008). CAN YOU EXERCISE TOO MUCH? It is possible to exercise too much. Overtraining can cause various types of injury. In extreme cases, too much exercise can cause sudden cardiac arrest, especially in those with coronary artery disease and those who are habitually inactive (Haskell 2007). Continuous moderate to high intensity exercise of over 1.5 hours has been shown to temporarily depress the immune system for 3-24 hours (Gleeson 2007). Overtraining has also been shown to cause fatigue, performance decline and mood disturbance (Meeusen & Duclos 2006). There is a point where these risks overtake the incremental benefits of added exercise. While it appears to be above 420 minutes a week, where exactly that point is has not yet been determined REFERNECES Dunn, Andrea L.; Trivedi, Madhukar H.; O’Neal, Heather A. Physical activity dose–response effects on outcomes of depression and anxiety. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Vol 33(6, Suppl), Jun 2001, S587-S597.
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ONLY ONE WAY TO KEEP YOUR WEALTH INTACT: KEEPING YOUR HEALTH INTACT BY: DAVID KEKICH
James Clement sent me this wonderfully apropos quote by Ryan Waggoner: “Youth is the ultimate wealth, and you’re a bit poorer today.” And last week, I got an essay from Reason which I modified slightly that hits the nail on the head. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/12/longevity-research-donate-now-or-donatelater.php Life is a sequence of decisions involving time and resources: how much, how long, now, or later? Everything from choosing a career to deciding whether to reach for the salt passes through the engine in your mind that weighs costs and time. In this, helping to further the advance of longevity science is the same as any other human endeavor. We choose when to support research, we try to pick the best research to support based on likely outcomes, and we choose how much support to give. You could choose to invest in promising life-extending companies or technologies or donate resources today to organizations like the SENS Research Foundation or Maximum Life Foundation. Or you could wait to invest or donate in some future year. Here are some arguments to either side: INVESTING OR DONATING LATER On balance, I’m likely to have more resources to donate later. If I soundly invest what I would have donated now, it’ll most likely be worth more in later years. This isn’t certain, but a reasonable expectation. The cost of life science research is falling dramatically. If I donate the same amount later, more can be accomplished, and more rapidly, than now.
INVESTING OR DONATING NOW Work that isn't accomplished today will have to be accomplished tomorrow. It may be faster and cheaper to complete that research project if we start twenty years from now, but what if we could be long done by then, even though today's progress is slow and expensive by comparison? Every year shaved from the time taken to develop new medicines means many lives saved. If you don't use money when you have it, it has a way of vanishing amid life's slings and arrows. Not investing or donating today easily turns into not doing so at all. Just as "paying yourself first" is the way to enforce savings in spite of your worse nature, so maintaining a steady stream of investments and donations today is the way to ensure that you actually make a difference. Without providing support now, a range of researchers and organizations that can make best use of your resources may not emerge to accept later funds. Growth in the sciences is as much about establishing institutions that have authority and continuity as anything else. Funds here and now are needed for all of their functions: drawing new researchers into the field; bringing respect to the field; communicating to the public; educating students. No great research community, dedicated to a cause, arises spontaneously from nothing. Years or decades of steadily increasing funds and incremental progress are required. Investing or donating now encourages other people to do so very soon. It’s a form of persuasion, granting legitimacy in other people's eyes to the project you favor. When you don’t invest or donate now, you miss the chance to persuade others now. IN CONCLUSION Invest or donate now. Unless you find yourself in the rare and envious position of knowing in certainty that a stupendous pile of money will land in your bank account in years to come. In which case, invest or donate both now and after that fortunate event. Over the years, Reason, I and possibly you have watched many people churning their way through the energetic startup communities, putting off many things in their lives because of the conviction that they would have time and much money to deal with them later. Among the ways to wealth, it’s true that doing a good job of starting a company (and a good job of being networked while doing it) is the best shot at success - but best is far from a sure thing, or even a good chance. I can assure you that most of the people involved in that world do not end up wealthy enough to have justified putting off most things.
The same, at a more sedate pace, applies to the rest of us. Tomorrow is what we build today. If we set down no bricks, there will be no wall. SENS is well equipped to fund identified research projects. MaxLife is focusing more on creating investment opportunities. A venture fund is being formed for wealthy investors, and smaller private investments for accredited investors may also be available. Remember, the more youth you let slip away, the poorer you get.
ENDURANCE EXERCISE STUDY SAYS 40 IS THE NEW 80 BY: MARC RANSFORD
People who exercise on a regular basis up to the age of 80 have the same aerobic capacity as someone half their age, says a new study from Ball State University. “New Records in Aerobic Power Among Octogenarian Lifelong Endurance Athletes,” a Ball State research project conducted in collaboration with several Swedish researchers, found that the long-time athletes in the study are enjoying vibrant and healthy lives. The study was recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. “In this case, 80 is the new 40,” said the study’s lead author Scott Trappe, director of Ball State’s Human Performance Laboratory (HPL). “These athletes are not who we think of when we consider 80-year-olds because they are in fantastic shape. They are simply incredible, happy people who enjoy life and are living it to the fullest. They are still actively engaged in competitive events.” Researchers examined nine endurance athletes from northern Sweden and compared them to a group of healthy men from Indiana in the same age group who only performed the activities of daily living with no history of structured exercise. The endurance athletes were cross-country skiers, including a former Olympic champion and several national/regional champions with a history of aerobic exercise and participation in endurance events throughout their lives. The athletes exercised four to six times a week, averaging 3,700 more steps per day than the non-exercisers. Members of the two study groups rode exercise bikes as researchers measured oxygen uptake. When the participants reached total exhaustion, they had reached maximum oxygen uptake (also known as VO2 max). Skeletal muscle biopsies were then taken to measure the capacity of their
mitochondria, the aerobic base of their muscle and other cells. The study also found the endurance athletes established new upper limits for aerobic power in men 80-91 years old, including a maximum oxygen uptake that was nearly twice that of untrained men their age. “To our knowledge, the VO2 max of the lifelong endurance athletes was the highest recorded in humans in this age group, and comparable to nonendurance-trained men 40 years younger,” Trappe said. “We also analyzed the aerobic capacity of their muscles by examining biopsies taken from thigh muscles, and found it was about double that of typical men. In fact, the oldest gentleman was 91 years old, but his aerobic capacity resembles that of a man 50 years younger. It was absolutely astounding.” A person’s VO2 max is a proving to be a better predictor of mortality than many better-known cardiovascular risk factors, Trappe said. Based upon the VO2max findings, the lifelong exercisers have a 50 percent lower all-cause mortality risk compared to the untrained men. The current research is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Examining the potential for exercise to improve the quality of life for America’s aging population has been a cornerstone of research for HPL. Trappe said the study fills in an important knowledge gap for aerobic capacity, given that individuals living beyond 80 are the fastest expanding age demographic in our society. “Since we are living longer, our research indicates that lifelong exercise enhances physical capacity, has powerful anti-aging effects, and emphasizes that exercise is medicine, Trappe said. “If we can get people to embrace some sort of regular exercise routine, we can improve their lives.”
3 WAYS ANIMAL PROTEINS JUST MIGHT KILL YOU BY: JONATHAN BECHTEL
The biggest and most important differences between vegetarian and omnivorous diets is they’re lower in calories and saturated fat, and higher in fiber and phytonutrients. Taken together this usually means lower weight and longer lifespans. Sign me up. However an underappreciated difference between vegetarian and omnivorous diets is the difference in protein composition. The protein in animal diets is typically considered superior since it has a more “complete” amino acid profile and it’s generally assumed that more protein is always better. I’ve written before about the flaws in the latter two points, but the differences in composition of animal and plant proteins deserves its own consideration because it can have a large impact on your health. 0Consuming significantly more animal protein than vegetable protein can cause the following problems: Let’s discuss these three points in some detail so you can understand the long term health risks of consuming too much animal protein. Proteins are the building blocks of cells. Practically every cellular molecule is made up of different proteins that your body synthesizes from 20 different amino acids. (There’s technically more than 20, but the others are esoteric and not relevant to our discussion). The twenty amino acids comprise all dietary proteins, regardless of whether or not they come from plants or animals. So we know all proteins are made of the same basic stuff, which is all used to build our cells. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how excessive amounts of animal protein can change the way your body works.
As I said before, animal proteins tend to be acidic and your body is naturally alkaline. When acidic compounds enter your body it releases a buffer solution to bring the pH back to its normal state. This buffer solution comes from your bones and it causes a lot of calcium to be excreted into your blood stream. HOW ANIMAL PROTEIN HARMS YOUR HEALTH 1. It will raise your cholesterol. 2. It will mess up your kidneys. 3. It will weaken your bones. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANIMAL AND PLANT PROTEINS Animal proteins contain the amino acids in different proportions than plant proteins. Animal proteins have more sulfur containing amino acids. Sulfur amino acids are metabolized into sulfuric acid. Your body is naturally alkaline, and thus has to make adjustments to reduce dietary induced acidity. Too many of these adjustments without corresponding changes in other nutrients creates metabolic imbalances which result in the health problems I listed above. 1). ANIMAL PROTEIN WEAKENS YOUR BONES We all know that calcium is the building block of strong bones. So if your bones are getting rid of calcium that’s not a good thing for bone health. Most evidence more or less confirms this intuition. Other dietary factors play a role, like the amount of phosphorus in the proteins digested and the presence of other minerals that affect how much calcium is excreted, but the general relationship still applies. Animal protein is bad for your bones! 2). ANIMAL PROTEIN DISTURBS KIDNEY FUNCTION A fairly famous paper published in Nature found that animal protein causes the kidney to behave very differently than vegetable protein. When you eat animal protein your body begins to secrete two chemicals called glucagon and Prostaglandin 1 (PGF1), which change the hormonal balance in your kidney, which causes more blood and other stuff to pass through it. More stuff passing through the kidney is called an increase in the Glomerular Filtration Rate
(GFR) which causes the kidney to become swollen and can lead to kidney hypertension. Your kidney exists to effectively filter stuff out of the blood. So it’s obviously not good if it stops filtering things very well. The relationship between animal protein and kidney function has become so strong that reducing animal protein is practically always considered the first step in treating a kidney disease of almost any sort. It’s possible that over time high amounts of animal protein can also lead to renal cancer, but that’s still up in the air. GOUT, KIDNEY STONES, AND ARTHRITIS, OH MY! Anyone who’s ever had a kidney stone knows they’re a royal pain in the ass. They cause acute pain that comes in waves and leaves the body just as quickly as it storms in. It makes taking a piss (perhaps the most basic of all human functions) an act of pain tolerance. The most common form of kidney stone is made of a compound called calcium oxalate. Remember what animal protein causes your body to secrete more of? That’s right: calcium. It also increases the excretion of uric acid and citrate, which are other precursors of kidney stone formation, and reduces your body’s ability to dissociate oxalate crystals in the blood. Want to stop that burning sensation when you take a leak? Stop eating meat. AND IT DOESN’T END THERE Closely related to the problems of kidney stones is gout. Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, and people who suffer from kidney stones are twice as likely to suffer from gout as people that don’t. Animal protein causes your body to excrete more uric acid. Increased excretion of uric acid and a diet rich in purines are the biggest precursors to gout, and both are closely associated with large doses of animal protein. The idea that protein intake influences your cholesterol might seem novel, but it’s actually been known for over 100 years when a scientist known as Mr. Ignatowski published evidence in 1908 that his barn rabbits suffered from increased rates of atherosclerosis when they were fed animal protein instead of egg protein. 3). ANIMAL PROTEIN RAISES YOUR CHOLESTEROL
The link between animal protein and cholesterol was eclipsed by the role of fat in the 1920′s, but increasing evidence has suggested that animal protein is atherogenic. Clinical studies in humans have found that serum cholesterol is lowered when casein protein is replaced with soy protein. Longer term clinical studies done on pigs have showed the same effect. When it comes to cholesterol pigs are a very good subject because their bodies metabolize cholesterol in a way that’s very similar to humans, so the evidence there is very solid. It’s not clear exactly why animal protein raises cholesterol, but there are currently two good guesses: Hopefully this article has scared you about gorging on animal protein. However, it shouldn’t scare you too much. Vegetable proteins have an increased arginine to lysine ratio. Animal proteins reduce the rate of cholesterol turnover in the cells, which causes them to build up In either case, the link is pretty strong, and the relationship exists independent of the other nasty stuff in meat, like saturated fat, salt, and nitrogen based preservatives. DAMN, SO IS ANIMAL PROTEIN TERRIBLE FOR YOU? In the overall pantheon of nutrition, how important is the difference between animal and vegetable protein? Not a whole lot. At least not compared caloric intake, the sodium/potassium ratio, or the excessive levels of saturated fats that come with meat. All proteins are made of amino acids, and your body’s pretty good at getting rid of what it doesn’t need. From what I can tell, the protein in animals doesn’t have an effect on the following conditions: Blood pressure, most forms of cancer and metabolic disorders. Eating meat might contribute to these disorders – but it isn’t the protein that’s doing it. RETHINKING THE SUPERIORITY OF ANIMAL PROTEIN IN THE HUMAN DIET Protein in general is good for you, and that includes animal protein. However, given the metabolic changes your body undergoes when it continually digests extremely large amounts of animal protein, eating a lot of it relative to vegetable protein is
probably not a great idea. It’s a common chestnut that you need complete proteins (a.k.a. animal protein) to be healthy, but there are a lot of reasons to think this is not the case. Vegetable proteins from soy and hemp provide all the essential amino acids and don’t create the acidity in your body that animal protein does. REFERENCES: Feskanich, Diane, et. al. “Protein Consumption and Bone Fractures in Women.” Sellmeyer, Deborah, et. al. “A high ratio of dietary animal to vegetable protein increases the rate of bone loss and the risk of fracture in postmenopausal women” Abelow, Benjamin, et. al. “Cross-Cultural Association Between Dietary Animal Protein and Hip Fracture: A Hypothesis” Munger, Ronald, et. al. “Prospective study of dietary protein intake and risk of hip fracture in postmenopausal women” Massey, Linda. “Dietary Animal and Plant Protein and Human Bone Health: A Whole Foods Approach” Hiatt, Robert, et. al. “Randomized Controlled Trial of a Low Animal Protein, High Fiber Diet in the Prevention of Recurrent Calcium Oxalate Kidney Stones” Taylor, Eric, et. al. “Dietary Factors and the Risk of Incident Kidney Stones in Men: New Insights after 14 Years of Follow-up” Bernstein, Adam, et. al. “Are High-Protein, Vegetable-Based Diets Safe for KidneyFunction? A Review of the Literature” Choi, Hyon, et. al. “Purine-Rich Foods, Dairy and Protein Intake, and the Risk of Gout in Men” Walker, JD, et. al. “RESTRICTION OF DIETARY PROTEIN AND PROGRESSION OFRENAL FAILURE IN DIABETIC NEPHROPATHY” Armstrong, B. “A RETROSPECTIVE REFERENCE STUDY OF RENAL CANCER WITH SPECIAL TO COFFEE AND ANIMAL PROTEIN CONSUMPTION”
Kritchevsky, David. “Dietary Protein, Cholesterol and Atherosclerosis: A Review of the Early History” Carroll, K. K., et. al. “Hypocholesterolemic effect of substituting soybean protein for animal protein in the diet of healthy young women″ Fernandez, Maria, et. al. “Hamsters and Guinea Pigs Differ in Their Plasma Lipoprotein Cholesterol Distribution when Fed Diets Varying in Animal Protein, Soluble Fiber, or Cholesterol Content” Forsythe, W.A., et. al. “Effects of Dietary Protein and Fat Sources on Plasma Cholesterol Parameters, LCAT Activity and Amino Acid Levels and on Tissue Lipid Content of Growing Pigs” Lichtenstein, Alice, et. al. “Lipoprotein Response to Diets High in Soy or Animal Protein With and Without Isoflavones in Moderately Hypercholesterolemic Subjects” Robertson, WG. “Diet and Calcium Stones” Kramer, Holly J, et. al. “The association between gout and nephrolithiasis in men: The Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study” Fam, Adel G. “Gout: Excess Calories, Purines, and Alcohol Intake and Beyond. Response to a Urate-Lowering Diet” Alexander, Dominik, et. al. “Meta-analysis of animal fat or animal protein intake and colorectal cancer” Chow, Wong-Ho, et. al. “Protein Intake and Risk of Renal Cell Cancer” Maclure, Malcolm, et. al. “A Case-Control Study of Diet and Risk of Renal Adenocarcinoma”
RULES OF THUMB FOR ESTIMATING YOUR BIOLOGICAL AGE BY: DAVID KEKICH
Uh uh. Not so fast. If your first impulse was to tell me how many years it has been since you were born, stop right there. There could be a huge difference between your chronological age and your biological age. Let me explain. Your chronological age measures how long you have been on this planet. Your biological age measures how you look, feel and perform—and is a gauge as to how long you will live. Recent studies have shown that the rate at which you age is only determined 25–35% by your genetics. The rest is up to you. Thanks to recent knowledge, we are able to measure biological age objectively. It may not be precise yet, but it does give you a good measure of how effective your anti-aging program works for you—or how your habits may be accelerating your aging process. For example, I have a young-looking fifty-six-year-old friend. We compared notes on how we maintain our health, and we found our protocols and longevity plans were similar. He measured his biological age, and found out he was about thirty-five! I did the same and got similar results. I’m sixty-seven now (chronologically). Yet my blood pressure is better than it was when I was thirty-five and fit. (If you’re not monitoring your blood pressure, you’re ignoring a basic health tool.) My cholesterol levels are almost as good, and my body fat is about the same. I attribute that to my improved diet and supplements and continuing to exercise regularly. My skin elasticity, respiratory function and reaction time compare to someone in their mid-forties, and my immune profile, neurological scores and blood tests are equal to those of a forty-five to fiftyyear-old man’s. Finally, an online test measured me at about fifty.
If my friend can do it, you can do it. If I can do it, so can you. We have essentially turned back our biological clocks by an astounding 15–20 years. That could mean we have each bought ourselves the opportunity to take advantage of over fifteen more years of nutritional, medical and longevity advances. That could be the difference between being part of the last generation to die from aging and being part of the first generation to live indefinitely along with those you love. You can do what we did too. You can. And if you cherish life, you will. In fact, I have other friends who did the same. One was born sixty-two years ago, and he was dealt a bad set of genes that prematurely aged him and put him at risk of an early death. But through a well-balanced program like the one you will learn here, he was able to drop his current biological age to about forty-two. When he started, his biological age was probably at least ten years higher than his chronological age. Now it’s twenty years less. So he netted around thirty years, ten years more than my other friend and me. I have stories about other friends who do almost as well. These similar results are no coincidence. Once you see how you measure up, you can reverse your biological age dramatically. For example, let’s say you are 50 and your tests show you are 52. That’s not good. You have essentially shortened your projected lifespan by two years and are expected to die at 79 instead of 81. However, let’s say you start your Life Extension Express seven simple step protocol now and retest in a year. The calendar will tell you that you are 51. But your tests might say you are 45. That means while you have experienced one more year of life, you are biologically seven years younger than you were a year prior. Now your projected lifespan could be 87, so you bought yourself an extra eight years during which new discoveries could be your difference between oblivion and youthfulness. Most anti-aging physicians can quickly test you for your biological age. Ask for an H-scan. But courtesy of Dr. Stephen Cherniske, here are some free tests you can do at home: SKIN ELASTICITY Lay your hand down on a desk or table, palm down. Pinch the skin at the back of your hand for five seconds. Let go and time how long it takes your skin to go back to its smooth appearance. If you’re very young, it should snap back immediately. An average 45-year-olds’ skin will take 3–5 seconds. At age 60, it takes about 10–15 seconds on average. By the time you are 70, it usually takes 35–60 seconds to crawl back. So if you are 60 and it takes 3–5 seconds, this test indicates your biological age is around 45.
If you want to increase your skin elasticity, follow the diet and antioxidant recommendations in my book, Life Extension Express. REACTION TIME Ask someone to hold an eighteen-inch ruler or yardstick vertically from the one-inch line. Place your thumb and forefinger about three inches apart at the eighteen inch line. Then ask your partner to let go without warning you. Then catch the ruler as fast as you can between your thumb and forefinger. Mark down the number on the ruler where you catch it. Do this three times, and average your score. A 20-year-old 19 will average about twelve inches. That generally decreases progressively to about five inches by the time you are 65. So if your score is seven and one-half inches, you test out at about age 50 for reaction time. Games like ping pong, tennis and foosball can up your scores. STATIC BALANCE Take off your shoes, and stand on a level uncarpeted surface with your feet together. Close your eyes and raise your right foot about six inches off the ground if you are right-handed, or on your left foot if you are left-handed. See how many seconds you can stand that way without opening your eyes or moving your supporting foot. Most 20-year-olds can do it easily for 30 seconds or more. By age 65, most people can only stand for 3–5 seconds. You lose about six seconds a decade, so if you score 12–14 seconds, you test at about 50 years of age. Yoga, balance board training and exercise can improve your scores. VITAL LUNG CAPACITY Take three deep breaths, and hold the fourth without forcing it. Healthy 20-year-olds can hold it for two minutes easily. We lose about 15%, or 18 seconds per decade, so a 60-year-old will do well to hold it for 45 seconds. If you can hold your breath for 65 seconds, you test at about the 50-year-old level. You can improve with exercise and deep breathing techniques. MEMORY/COGNITION Ask a friend to write down three random seven-digit numbers without showing them to you. Ask him or her to say the first string of seven numbers twice. Now repeat the string backward. Do the
same for the other two numbers, and average the results. A 30-year-old should score 100%. Most of the 50-year-olds will miss one digit out of seven. Most of the 60-year-olds will miss two, and 70-year-olds will miss three. So how did you test? Is your biological age younger than your chronological age? Great! Now you can do even better. Is it higher? Don’t despair. Remember my friend who tested older but now tests twenty years younger? Starting now, you will do it too. If you’re right on the mark, that also says you have lots of room for improvement. Who wants to be average? The average American isn’t very healthy. Average means you get sick and die on schedule. Who wants that? If you test younger than your chronological age, congratulations! However, unless you’re doing everything right, you can improve even more. Going forward, when someone asks your age, why not tell them your biological age instead of chronological? From now on, I’m tempted to say something like “I was born in 1943, but I’m actually about forty-eight years old.” Maybe fifty years from now, you could say “I was born in 19__, but I’m actually about twentyfive years old.”
VEGETARIANISM & LONGEVITY BY: JOERN PALLENSEN
According to the largest study of vegetarian and vegans to date: Vegetarians live on average almost eight years longer than meat-eaters. This conclusion correlates with findings in the study below: By the 1970s, the mortality rate from heart disease of Finnish men was the highest in the world, and so they initiated a country-wide program to decrease their saturated fat intake. Farmers were encouraged to switch from dairies to berries. Towns were pitted against each other in friendly cholesterol-lowering competitions. Their efforts resulted in an 80 percent drop in cardiac mortality across the entire country.” Here’s my synopsis of what I’ve recently read: Heart disease is our leading cause of death. The 35-year follow-up of the Harvard Nurses Health Study was recently published, now the most definitive long-term study on older women’s health. Dietary cholesterol intake — only found in animal foods — was associated with living a significantly shorter life and fiber intake — only found in plant foods — was associated with living a significantly longer life. Consuming the amount of cholesterol found in just a single egg a day may cut a woman’s life short as much as smoking five cigarettes daily for 15 years”. More than 20 years ago, Dr. Dean Ornish showed that heart disease could not just be stopped but actually reversed with a vegan diet, arteries opened up without drugs or surgery. Since this lifestyle cure was discovered, hundreds of thousands have died unnecessary deaths. What more does one have to know about a diet that reverses our deadliest disease? Cancer is killer number two. Ah, the dreaded C word. But look at this hopeful science!
According to the largest forward-looking study on diet and cancer so far performed, “the incidence of all cancers combined is lower among vegetarians.” After Dr. Ornish’s team showed that the bloodstreams of men eating vegan for a year had nearly eight times the cancer-stopping power, a series of elegant experiments showed that women could boost their defenses against breast cancer after just two weeks on a plant-based diet. If you or anyone you know has ever had a cancer scare, this research will make your heart soar. Because there is real, true hope something you can do to stave off the big C.” COPD (lung diseases) is the third biggest killer, can be prevented with the help of a plant-based diet and can even be treated with plants. The Tobacco Industry knows as much, hence the study ”Addition of Açaí [Berries] to Cigarettes Has a Protective Effect Against Emphysema in [Smoking] Mice.” Seriously. The Meat Industry, of course, employs the same tactics, like putting fruit extracts in burgers, or improving the nutritional profile of frankfurters with powdered grape seeds.. Alzheimer’s disease is now our sixth leading killer. We’ve known for nearly 20 years now that those who eat meat – including chicken and fish — appear three times more likely to become demented compared to long-term vegetarians. Exciting new research suggests one can treat Alzheimer’s using natural plant products such as the spice saffron, which beat out placebo and worked as well as a leading Alzheimer’s drug. Diabetes is next on the kick-the-bucket list. Plant-based diets help prevent, treat, and even reverse Type 2 diabetes. Since vegans are, on average, about 30 pounds skinnier than meateaters, this comes as no surprise; but researchers found that vegans appear to have just a fraction of the diabetes risk, even after accounting for their slimmer figures. Mood disorders: this year an interventional trial was published in which all meat, poultry, fish, and eggs were removed from people’s diets and a significant improvement in mood scores was found after just two weeks. It can take drugs like Prozac a month or more to take effect. So you may be able to get happier faster by cutting out animal foods than by using drugs. Based on a study of 15,000 American vegetarians, those that eat meat have about twice the odds of being on antacids, aspirin, blood pressure medications, insulin, laxatives, painkillers, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers.
THE CHINA STUDY: VEGANISM & LONGEVITY BY: JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D
The China Study used a broad comparison of different diets and living styles across diverse regions of China to answer questions about diet and disease. The authors’ bottom line is that eating animal protein leads to the high rates of cancer and heart disease, and many other afflictions of the Western world as well. They cite evidence that dairy is as bad as meat – worse in some respects, and they counsel a vegan diet. They have written an engaging book and make a compelling case, but why have so many studies before and since missed the connections that loom so large in the China Study? A LOT OF LEGWORK Colin and Thomas Campbell are a father-son team from Cornell who have used epidemiology to answer the question, what diet is best for human health and longevity? There are a lot of things they get right. First, epidemiology is far more compelling than animal studies or lab results or biochemical theory. Epidemiology looks at humans long-term, in settings that reflect the way people actually live. Epidemiological studies are based on correlations between behaviors and disease or behaviors and mortality, relating the choices we make to what happens to us. But in a science experiment, you like to have controls: two experiments that are run identically in all respects, except that one thing is changed. With people in their natural habitat, you have to give that up. No two people are alike, and no two groups of people differ in one respect only. Epidemiologists know this well, and they seek to bridge the gap (1) by constructing groups that are as much alike as possible, (2) by collecting data for large numbers of subjects, and (3) by using sophisticated mathematics to tease apart the possible causes for different outcomes. The Campbells do all this well. They chose 65 counties in China because the population tended to stay put and maintain similar habits over decades, and because the Han people are genetically similar. They sent teams out to collect blood and vital stats from 6500 volunteers, and they visited each family to observe first-hand what they were eating, rather than rely upon questionnaires.
One thing in their design about which I’m more skeptical: they started with 367 factors that we wished to study, and a large number of health outcomes. People who do multi-factorial statistics often don’t realize that the number of possible causes rises rapidly with the number of variables. Even five variables cannot be meaningfully separated, and 367 is ridiculous. But in the end, they limit their conclusion to broad-stroke conclusions about animal- vs. plant-based diets. A more essential limitation is that they have bet the farm by including dairy along with meat in their conclusions. The problem here is that only three of the 65 counties had any dairy at all in their diets, and zero relied primarily on dairy for protein. The Campbells supplement the China Study with lab rat studies and cross-country comparisons to fill this gap, but the result is much less convincing just because countries vary in so many cultural and genetic and environmental ways that different parts of China do not. Even meat consumption in rural China is nothing like meat consumption in the West. There is no part of China that consumes beef in quantities typical of Texas or Argentina. The core methodology of the book is so strong, but then the principal conclusion is derived from a methodology that is more circumstantial. This is a kind of bait-and-switch, which does not invalidate the Campbells’ thesis, but certainly opens doors for doubt. Below is a plot from Chapter 5, showing that countries with higher consumption of animal protein tend to have higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease.
One problem with this evidence is that the same countries with high animal protein consumption also eat more saturated fats, and more fat in general. You could draw a nearly identical plot averring that it was fat intake and not animal protein that causes heart disease. PRINCIPAL STUDY RESULTS
The core of the book is in statistical excerpts from the Study, in Chapter 4. CONCLUSIONS Rats are fed protein from casein, a dairy source. Some of the rats are on a 5% protein diet, others on a 20% protein diet. Both groups are challenged with aflatoxin, a potent carcinogen. None of the low-protein rats got cancer; but all the high protein rats contracted cancers. In America, the (age-adjusted) death rate from coronary heart disease is 17 higher than the corresponding rate in rural China. Szichuan and Guizhou had extraordinarily low levels of CHD in middle-aged men, (even for China). What are they doing right? These areas had some of the lowest meat consumption levels. Compared to Western diets, the China study was comparing low animal protein with lower animal protein. Still, a robust association of animal protein with blood cholesterol and cancer were found, even at very low intake levels. Chinese fiber intake is three times as high as in America (33 vs. 11 g/day). Fiber decreases residence time of food in the GI track, and also absorbs and eliminates toxins as well as nutrients. The Campbells propose that this is part of the explanation for lower cancer rates in China. Chinese women have half the estrogen levels of US and British women, and their reproductive lives are shorter at both ends. Lifetime exposure to estrogens is less than 40% that of American women. The Campbells propose that this is a factor in the lower breast cancer rate in China – less than 1/5 the American rate. “Average calorie intake per kilogram of body weight was 30% higher among the least active Chinese than among average Americans. Yet, body weight was 20% lower. How can it be that even the least active Chinese consume more calories yet have no overweight problems?” The Campbells propose that (1) even the least active Chinese are more active than the average American, and (2) higher proportion of complex carbs compared to protein and fat in the diet signals the body to store fewer calories as fat. A whole section of the book is devoted to the association between cow’s milk and auto-immune diseases. Childhood diabetes is much more prevalent in children who are weaned early from breast milk to cow’s milk. Much of the research for this book took place more than twenty years in the past. It is an intriguing thesis that the Campbells raise, and the notion of a vegan advantage seems intuitively attractive. But there is a lot of direct evidence that the Campbells fail to address. Some of it
involves epidemiological comparisons that are able to address more directly the difference between high-dairy and low-dairy diets. Some of it does not support the Campbells’ powerful thesis. I was left feeling that they have opened a useful window, but they have not fairly summarized the diversity of evidence on vegan diets.
20 HEALTH BENEFITS OF MEDITATION BY: DAVID KEKICH
Meditation doesn’t just have to be for eastern mystics. Millions of Americans practice it, because its health benefits have been proven in many different studies. It’s not an escape, as some think. Meditation is a proactive practice that can enhance your life. It’s the equivalent of giving your mind an escape valve to blow off steam. All meditation really means is to focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This allows your mind to reset itself and stop the vicious cycle of thinking about things that stress you out. Focus separates peak performers from average performers, possibly more than any other attribute. It also builds energy. That’s why so many high profile leaders practice meditation. Meditation is anything that brings you to the moment and keeps you there. The more you meditate and focus on the “now,” the stronger you grow physically, mentally and emotionally. Mainstream medicine is now beginning to take notice of meditation’s effects. For example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which is about 80% meditation, has been approved in Britain for use with people who have experienced three or more episodes of depression. Your brain, just like your muscles, can be overworked, and it needs recovery time. Like many people who exercise, meditators in their mid-fifties tested twelve years biologically younger than non-meditators. Did you know meditation actually increases the thickness of your brain regions associated with attention and sensory processing? Here are some additional benefits: Meditating: Increases the growth of new brain cells. Increases your IQ and Emotional Intelligence scores. Increases your comprehension and productivity.
Improves your mental focus, memory and decision making. Decreases stress, anxiety and depression. Reduces free radicals, heart rate and biological aging. Slows your breathing. Improves quality of and ability to sleep. Reduces your blood pressure. Relaxes your muscles. Reduces your risk of stroke or heart attack. Gives your body time to eliminate lactic acid and other waste products. Increases blood levels of DHEA. Reduces anxiety and eliminates stressful thoughts. Helps with clear thinking. Helps with focus and concentration. Reduces irritability. Reduces stress headaches. Enhances overall health. Accelerates weight loss. Wow! Is that incredible, or what? Review this list a few times. Let the benefits sink in. Who wouldn’t want better health, to think more clearly, to age more slowly and to be smarter? The essence of meditation is to quiet your thoughts by focusing completely on just one thing. Unlike hypnosis, which is more of a passive experience, meditation is an active process that seeks to exclude outside distractions by concentrating all your thoughts on the subject of meditation. In all cases, it helps if your body is relaxed. Get in a position that you can comfortably sustain for a period of time (20–30 minutes is ideal, but even five minutes helps a lot). If you choose, and if you are sufficiently supple, the lotus position may work best for you. Otherwise, sitting in a comfortable chair or lying on a bed may be equally effective. A number of different focuses of concentration may be used. Which one you choose is a matter of personal taste. Some of these are detailed below: Breathing: Focus on each breath in and out, breathing in through your nose on a count of seven, hold for a count of three, and breathe out through your mouth on a count of eight. Inhale and exhale completely, totally filling and emptying your lungs. Focusing on an object: Completely focus on one object. Choose something pleasant and interesting, and then examine it in detail. Observe its color, shape, texture, etc.
Focus on a sound: Some people like to focus on sounds. The classic example is the Sanskrit word “Om,” meaning “perfection.” Imagery: Create a mental image of a pleasant and relaxing place in your mind. Involve all your senses in the imagery: see the place, hear the sounds, smell the aromas, feel the temperature and the wind. In all cases, keep your attention focused. If external thoughts or distractions wander in, let them drift out. If necessary, visualize attaching the thoughts to objects and then move the objects out of your attention. Now I’m going to show you two simple stress-busting techniques that work like crazy with minimal time and effort. In fact, they are fun. They’ll take you from a dysfunctional, tied-up-ina-bundle-of-knots condition to the relaxed, happy and productive super-star you are meant to be in a matter of minutes. DEEP BREATHING It’s fun and easy. It’s also a proven technique that has worked for thousands of years in virtually every culture in history. Simply sit or lie in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, briefly clear your mind, and take a slow, deep, belly breath through your nose. Then exhale slowly through your mouth. Repeat while focusing only on your breath. If other thoughts enter your mind, simply let them pass through, and keep focusing on your breath. When I first tried this, I had a hard time focusing on, or visualizing, my breath. After some trial and error, I came up with a way that works—at least for me. I visualize the healing air I breathe in as gold and silver, relaxing, recharging molecules or particles, representing all the peace, tranquility and goodness in the world. I see the exhaled air as smoky pollution… cleansing my body of toxins and stress. I do this several times a day. To demonstrate how effective this simple technique can be, I did it last evening when I felt stress over an unpleasant task. When I started, my blood pressure was 117/75. Seven minutes later, I dropped it to 97/63. That’s simply amazing! Had I not taken my stress break, I would have eroded my health, functioning sub-par and frenzied. Instead, I jumped back into my task with renewed energy and motivation.
This is not a one-time event. I get these results regularly. Taking several stress-busting breaks every day could help you avoid 80% of all medical conditions. That’s the medical profession’s conservative estimate of the toll stress takes on you. How often do you think what you are doing is so urgent and important that you can’t afford to take one minute off, let alone seven? Well, I’ve got news for you. The best time to take a stress break is when you think you don’t have the time. That’s exactly when proactive relaxation breaks are the most productive way to spend your time. Not only will they improve your performance, but you could avoid a nasty hospital stay, or
RUNNING & WEIGHTLIFTING FOR NEUROGENESIS & LIFE-EXTENSION BY: ALEX LIGHTMAN
What’s the best exercise for life extension? There are four kinds of people in the context of this question: 1. Those who have read the relevant research (they know who Fries, Ratey, Glassman, and Weider are – without Googling) and they’ve been citizen-scientists and tried it out for themselves with every type of exercise listed here, and more, keeping notes. 2. Those who know the theory of exercise and longevity, but don’t themselves exercise. 3. Those you exercise but don’t know the theory or research. 4. Those who are, objectively, so lazy they have not bothered to explore exercise nor read the literature. It’s easy for people in the first category to talk with the others and ID them, but such a vast gulf exists conceptually between the first and fourth that little actual debate is possible. So I am seeking to debate people in the first category. My starting point is to ask, “What goes wrong at a predictable linear rate that can be repaired at an equal or greater rate?” and “What exercises repair which types of breakdown?” and “What best practices are necessary to keep the exercise itself from causing harm?” My answers to these questions is that there are at least five linear decay functions (my term): telomeres, neurons, muscle mass, bone mass, and VO2 max. My subjective opinion is if you don’t know what these are and why you don’t want them getting worse - that you’ve wasted your time and life.
TELOMERES CAN BE LENGTHENED BY RUNNING. Look it up. Is there any other evidence of a physical activity lengthening telomeres? If so, that’s an option. If not, running needs to be on your “must do” list. However, over 70% of new runners get injured their first year, so you need to do more homework and lay a foundation to avoid injury and becoming one of millions (I personally know thousands) who complain of knee and hip problems. NEURONS ARE ADDED VIA NEUROGENESIS. Who wants to live much longer if you are losing brain cells and not replacing them? Please say you don’t. The world doesn’t need more people losing net brain cells. Running 45 minutes at 75% max heart rate triggers neurogenesis, as long as you learn something new within three weeks. Women have an advantage over men: they trigger neurogenesis at only 65% max heart rate. The default is that max heart rate is 220 minus your age, but the more personal your number, via better techniques, the better. MUSCLE MASS IS ADDED VIA WEIGHT LIFTING. The 3/18/2013 winner of The Biggest Loser, Danni, gained 19 pounds of muscle in three months, which is something to aim for if you want, but it is rarely achieved. More muscle mass is associated with longer life, and can also let you walk away from accidents that would injure other. Recently I walked away from falling down stairs backwards and crashing my bike at 25 miles an hour on an oil slick. Bruises, yes, but nothing broken. Bone mass is added via weight lifting, especially the heavy deadlifts and clean & jerk. The combo of bone mass and muscle mass and neurons lets you avoid the dreaded stumbling, falling, and breaking a hip, and accident that, at least until recently, led to an increase in comorbidities for every cause of death but two, such that a person’s odds of dying after age 65 with a broken hip were 33% after 12 months and 50% after 18 months. VO2MAX IS INCREASED BY REPEATEDLY RUNNING YOUR FASTEST MILE OR INTERVALS. There is a vast literature on this, but it starts with paying (about $200 at Phase IV in Santa Monica) for a test that takes about 45 minutes and involves running to near exhaustion on a treadmill that keeps getting faster and steeper until the gaseous composition exhaled into a face mask changes. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. My own rule of thumb is that this needs to be above 50 if you are serious about life extension (because it decreases every year after 28 for non-exercisers), above 30 to be possibly fit, above 20 to be possibly healthy, and above 10
to be alive much longer. We are 60% oxygen, so it’s bizarre we don’t habitually measure our ability to process oxygen. But, hey, this blind spot gives me something to contribute to the radical life extension community. VO2 max is also assisted by 3x daily use of a PowerLung. It takes seven months for ligaments and tendons to catch up with the muscles of a running program. I highly recommend biting the bullet and getting and wearing a weight vest to speed up the process, to not be one of the injured 70%. The Fries study at Stanford of runners showed no evidence of greater injuries of long time runners vs. non-runners with respect to knee and hip problems. Biggest wow: runners stayed out of assisted living seven years longer! Exercise burns calories, and couple with a good diet makes you less likely to get type II diabetes, which shortens the life expectancy vs. non sufferers by an average of 15 years. The more you do, the more you can do. May you exercise, live long, and prosper.
“NATURAL” ANTI-AGING IS AN OXYMORON BY: JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D.
This will be a view of the evolution of my views on evolution. I’ve always been scared of death. I’ve jealously tried to preserve my youth, but the way in which I’ve understood aging has been remade, and thus my anti-aging practice has turned on its head…twice. ANTI-AGING AND ANTI-CANCER, STAGE ONE Before 1983, I was Mr. Natural. I didn’t distinguish between diseases of age and diseases of youth. I believed that the biggest threat to my health was the modern life style. My body is doing its best to thrive, I thought, and the best way I can help it is by simulating the environment in which it was evolved to work best. Humans were evolved in a time when work was hard, but there was no constant din of cars and construction, no fragmenting of the attention by advertising and seductive multi-media, no pesticides, preservatives or pollutants. The diets of early humans were more plant-based before animals were cultivated. My anti-aging practice consisted in endurance exercise, a vegetarian diet, and avoidance of industrial chemicals. I was especially eager to avoid cancer. I believed that cancer was caused by chance events, whose probability was promoted by carcinogens. The body is not evolved to handle industrial poisons. These chemicals can randomly mutate our DNA. Most such mutations are merely dysfunctional. But there is an odd chance, if we are very unlucky, that the mutation will be just of the wrong type, and a cell will be transformed into a selfish monster that grows and divides and reproduces without check. Cancer was the enemy, and since the cause of cancer was an unlucky mutation, the best thing I could do was to avoid mutagens. And the sun. Did I tell you that my uncle, a schoolteacher in the winter and a fisherman in the summer, died of skin cancer when he was 49?
I avoided food additives, air pollution, dental x-rays and the sun. Such were my practices and my beliefs. Then, in 1983, I read a cover story in Science Magazine by Bruce Ames. NATURAL CARCINOGENS AND THE GENESIS OF STAGE TWO Bruce Ames is a very smart biochemist at UC Berkeley. His invention of the Ames Test launched him into prominence back in the 1970s. The Ames Test revolutionized the way FDA identified carcinogens in food additives. Before the Ames test, the standard procedure was to feed large amounts of the chemical to hundreds of rabbits over several years, and to count how many of them developed cancer. It was expensive, labor-intensive, and slow. The Ames test4 allowed for a pre-screening in a matter of hours, in a convenient lab test. FDA procedures were transformed and streamlined. The world’s rabbits got together in 1973 and voted Ames a Human of the Year award. It was 1983 when Ames came out with an article that changed the way we thought about pesticides in food. Ames noted that many plants, including food plants, had evolved their own pesticides as a defense against insect predators. These natural chemicals could be far more carcinogenic than the man-made chemicals that we avoid like the plague, and yet they are completely un-regulated by FDA. FDA does not test nor regulate the toxicity of natural foods. This article revealed to me that some of the foods I had considered most healthful contained carcinogens far more potent than the man-made chemicals I had been avoiding. Ames devised a scale of danger he called HERP, for Human Exposure / Rodent Potency, based on dividing the amount of the substance that people are likely to consume by the amount that is found to cause cancer in lab rats. For several years, I stopped eating beets and celery and basil and black pepper and potatoes. Such were my practices and my beliefs. Then, in 1996, I read a Scientific American article by Richard Weindruch that turned my attitudes around yet again. HORMESIS, AND STAGE 3 IN MY THINKING
4
Bacteria were bred to be unable to produce their own histidine, so that they required histidine in their diet in order to grow. For the Ames test, the bacteria are cultured in a medium without histidine, then the test chemical is added. If the chemical is mutagenic, then many of the bacteria will mutate and a few will, by chance, re-aquire their ability to manufacture histidine. If the bacteria won’t grow in the medium that’s a negative result – the substance hasn’t mutated them. If they do grow, then that’s a positive. The substance causes mutations, and there’s a strong likelihood it causes cancer as well.
This article told me for the first time that many animal species had been found to live longest when they were on the brink of starvation. “Many species” implied that it was no accident, but an evolved feature of sufficiently general import that it is all over the biosphere. It dawned on me for the first time that Nature (and her alter-ego “evolution”) had betrayed me. Our bodies are programmed to die. It’s in our genes. We destroy ourselves from the inside out. This is an evolutionary conundrum, of course, because, on its face, aging is the opposite of fitness. I’ve devoted much study to this paradox, and written about it, for example, here. There’s another, more practical conclusion from the fact that we are evolved explicitly to get old and die. It followed that no “natural diet” could address the issue of aging. All my attention to giving the body the foods which it was evolved best to work with was misguided, because aging is not a failure of the body. The body knows just what it wants to do, and what it wants to do is gradually, inexorably to self-destruct. My mission changed from supporting the body and its evolutionary program to manipulating the evolutionary program, tricking the body into living longer. The program is not for a fixed life span, but a flexible life span dependent on circumstances. When life is hard and plenty of people are dying of starvation or disease, there is not so much need for aging to keep the death rate up. So aging takes a (partial) vacation when hardship is detected. This is the phenomenon of hormesis, and the reason that food restriction and physical exercise are among the best things we can do to prolong our lives, despite the fact that one denies the body resources and the other wastes resources and generates toxic by-products. I no longer think that cancer is caused by a single deadly mutation in a rogue cell. I think that such mutations are happening all the time, and in a young person with a healthy immune system, the cancerous cells are quickly attacked and eliminated. I think that cancer is a disease associated with failure of the immune system and, of course, such failure becomes much more common with age. I’m less concerned about chemical carcinogens, natural and artificial, and more concerned about maintaining a healthy immune system. I’m less concerned with toxic chemicals, natural and artificial. I’m less concerned with dental xrays and sunburns. There is some evidence that low doses of toxic chemicals and even of radiation5 can actually increase life expectancy. Here’s a review on hormesis. I’m more concerned with challenging myself physically, and a little obsessed with the hard work 5
Every time I say this, it sticks in my throat because it’s just too damn convenient for the nuclear power industry. IMHO, the nuclear power industry is a plague on humanity for reasons that are not mitigated one iota by hormesis. The problems with nuclear power are the danger of more Chernobyls and Fukushimas, and the legacy of toxic waste that our great, great grandchildren will have to safeguard for 10,000 years. Did I mention that without public subsides (Price-Anderson!), the cost of nuclear power would be off the charts?
of pushing to my limits. I try to challenge myself mentally as well, entertaining new ideas that seem preposterous, and trying to evaluate the evidence afresh; learning new skills an putting myself into uncomfortable social situations, because I think it helps to keep me alive in multiple ways. And I focus on the ways that the body is destroying itself directly, and measures I might take to interfere with that process. For the present, that means an anti-inflammatory diet and a crude attempt to rebalance the body’s hormones at a more youthful level6. For the near future, I think the best strategy will be to oppose telomere shortening, which is the body’s most accessible aging clock.
6
But stay away from growth hormone.
II.
TECH
FALLEN ANGEL (1872) BY ORDIN REDON
CHEMICAL BRAIN PRESERVATION: CRYONICS FOR MIND-UPLOADERS
BY: GIULIO PRISCO
The Brain Preservation Foundation and the Brain Preservation Technology Prize were announced at the recent H+ Summit. The week before Ken Hayworth gave a fascinating preview at the ASIM2010-1 First Online Workshop on Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds. Hayworth, a brain researcher at Harvard University, has spent years developing techniques to scan the brain and record its synaptic circuits. The Brain Preservation Foundation has been established to promote serious scientific research in the field of brain preservation for long-term static storage. Its goal is to spur development of a hospital surgical procedure which can reliably and demonstrably preserve the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses within a human brain. Existing scientific literature suggests that such a goal should be readily achievable by extending (via vascular perfusion) existing laboratory protocols for the chemical fixation and plastic-embedding of small pieces of brain tissue. If such a surgical procedure were available in hospitals it could provide interested persons a means of avoiding death and reaching the distant future. One of the first initiative of the Foundation is the Brain Preservation Technology Prize, a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure. Brain preservation is a form of cryonics: preserving dead persons until future technology can restore them to life. In this sense, brain preservation is not an alternative to cryonics, but on the contrary it is conceptually equivalent to cryonics. The chemical brain preservation, or plastination, technique favored by the Brain Preservation Foundation is different from the cryopreservation technique currently used by the three major operational cryonics organization (Alcor, the Cryonics Institute and Kryorus), but the objectives are the same. Therefore, I think plastination should be actively investigated by cryonics service providers with the objective of including it as a supported cryonic service when the time is right. The prefix cryo- is not applicable because storing chemically preserved brains does not require ultra low temperatures, but I think the terminology should be preserved to show respect, recognition and gratitude to the cryonics community for their excellent work.
According to Hayworth, a chemically preserved, plastic-embedded brain can be losslessly subdivided in strips that can be imaged at nanometer resolution by current technology. This resolution is sufficient to image the smallest brain structures which, according to current scientific knowledge, are the physical substrate of our thoughts, memories, feelings, emotional responses, hopes, dreams and identity. It is important to stress that this can be done with current technology, and Hayworth cites experimental results to prove it. So, where is the catch? The catch is that chemical preservation is irreversible, or at least very difficult to reverse (some skeptics think that also conventional cryonics is irreversible). But on the other hand, the information in a chemically preserved brain can be retrieved and run on a different substrate ("mind uploading"). This makes chemical brain preservation a storage technique optimized for future nanoscale scanning, and an ideal form of "cryonics for uploaders". For those who accept scanning the brain and running the information in the scan file on a different substrate as a valid form of identity preservation, chemical brain preservation seems clearly superior to cryopreservation. I definitely belong to this group. I look forward to being extracted from my brain, leave biology behind, and run as substrate-independent software in a virtual body, roaming the universe and perhaps wearing a physical body on occasions. Mind uploading is a two steps process, 1) scanning the brain to read the information in it, and 2) running the information in the scan file (mindfile) on a suitable alternative substrate. Of course, after the first scanning step 1), the resulting mindfile can be stored until a suitable technology is available for 2). But I used to think that even developing suitable brain scanning technology would take many decades and perhaps centuries. On the contrary, I am now persuaded that chemical brain preservation may permit storing "solid mindfiles", physical databases of memory and personal identity, which future technologies will be able to ignite and bring back to life in a suitable physical substrate, in only one or two decades. So, I will choose chemical brain preservation once it is operationally available. Hayworth's "uploading may be only 15 years in the future" (in the sense of operational brain preservation suitable for future scanning and uploading) is very refreshing compared to the cautious, boring and defeatist attitude of today's moderate transhumanists, repented extranshumanists and anti-transhumanists in disguise. I feel back in the optimistic 90s, and I hope it lasts. I prefer not to discuss philosophical issues related to personal identity preservation. For me things are clear enough, and I encourage you to read Hayworth's "Killed by bad philosophy Why brain preservation followed by mind uploading is a cure for death" for a crystal clear analysis.
Chemical brain preservation has also simple operational advantages over cryopreservation. Since it does not require especially expensive storage facilities, it can be offered at a lower price (perhaps at a much lower price). Also, it may be already covered by existing laws and regulations. If chemical preservation can be legally considered as a form of embalming, as the Body Worlds art exhibit seems to indicate, then the preparation of patients, their transport to a storage facility abroad, and running a local storage facilities, are already permitted by the law in most countries. From the Open Letter on Brain Preservation, which you should sign now: "We accept the current scientific consensus that our unique conscious self is generated by processes within our physical brain. Further, we accept that all the memories, skills, and personality traits that make us unique are hardwired into the physical and molecular connections among our brain’s hundred billion neurons... The structural basis of memory and personality -- the synaptic connectivity between neurons -- can be preserved essentially perfectly by today’s chemical fixation and plastic embedding techniques. Extrapolating from current technologies for the nano‐imaging of plastic embedded brain tissue, we believe that one day science will have advanced sufficiently to allow complete retrieval of memories from such a preserved brain." Some references: Ben Goertzel on KurzweilAI: "Ken Hayworth asked in his H+ Summit talk, “Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain?” His collaborator John Smart hit the same theme — and spent most of the conference sitting in the lobby at a table raising money to pay a summer intern to help with the research. With a PhD from USC and a post-doc at Harvard, Ken isn’t exactly an amateur — but he’s looking at his field with new eyes. Plastination of body tissues was developed for other purposes (did you see the beautiful Body Worlds art exhibit?), but it may well obsolete cryopreservation, posing a lower-cost and more effective way to preserve the minds of the deceased till the Singularity when they can potentially be reanimated." George Dvorsky: "I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation... brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation... As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off." Fibur.ru: "Is there a way to preserve your brain, and thus your identity for the future? Traditionally, some people have turned to cryonics —basically freezing their brains and bodies
in a vat of liquid nitrogen with the idea that in the future nanotechnology will be able to unthaw and revive them. At the summit, John Smart, president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, announced the Brain Preservation Prize. (Disclosure: I made a $50 contribution to the foundation while at the summit.) Modeled on the X Prizes, the Brain Preservation Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”The idea is that the precise pattern of information in an individual’s brain constituting that person’s identity would be preserved and could be revived later by being uploaded into an advanced information technology network or perhaps a new body and brain. Although any technique could qualify for the prize, Smart evidently believes that a kind of plastination is the most likely way to go. People who attend the Body Worlds exhibition are familiar with one type of plastination that is used to preserve entire human bodies for display. One technique involves flooding a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. This process turns a brain into a black block of plastic that will last indefinitely. Smart was followed by Harvard researcher Kenneth Hayworth whose work focuses on using electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains. Plastination preserves both structure and molecular level information. He predicted that scientists would produce a synapse level atlas of an entire human brain over the next decade. “Can a mind be extracted from a plastic embedded brain?” ask Hayworth. “The answer is almost certainly yes.” When? In the next 50 years, predicted Hayworth." H+ Magazine: "In the future, we might understand brain circuitry so well that such devices could be used to scan and “upload” an individual’s mind to any type of substrate (a new body, robot, or artificial environment). This Matrix-like immortality would be the ultimate backup of ourselves." Aschwin de Wolf: "Mind uploading advocate Kenneth Hayworth has launched an interesting website devoted to the science of brain preservation. Of particular interest is his Proposal for a Brain Preservation Technology Prize (PDF). This document includes one of the most comprehensive discussions of chemopreservation as a strategy for personal survival." Greg Jordan, in a 2008 article on Biostasis through chemopreservation: "Twenty years ago, Charles B. Olson published an article called “A Possible Cure for Death” in the journal Medical Hypotheses. In it, he favorably compares methods of chemical preservation to cryogenic preservation. Unfortunately, this article provoked no wide discussion or attempts at implementation... Chemical methods of preservation such as fixation are not only adequate, they have long been the gold standard for biologists studying the structure of cells and the brain... But what of reversibility? Olson dismisses the need for reversibility. The information in the brain
can be retrieved and run on a different substrate - a new organic or machine brain.. For those who accept the method of resuscitation by scanning the brain and running it its processes on a different substrate (“mind uploading“), chemopreservation might present additional benefits. The chemopreserved brain, unlike the cryopreserved brain, is ideally suited to microscopic extraction of information."
MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY & LONGEVITY BY: DICK PELLETIER
Whether you believe it, or think it’s just too bizarre to be true, this most hyped science of all time – molecular nanotech – promises a utopian future with scarcity-free lifestyles for everyone on the planet; and healthcare miracles that could one day push human lifespan to the edge of immortality. To achieve this remarkable future, scientists must first create a tiny microscopic-size tool called a fabricator that can grasp individual atoms and molecules and form them into objects. Futurists at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology believe the first fabricators could be developed by early 2020s. The next step is to build a Star Trek-like replicator called a nanofactory with billions of fabricators inside. These in-home machines guided by Internet-delivered software, will select atoms from supplied chemicals or household waste products and turn them into essentials, like food, medicine, clothing, or appliances. Watch this video of a nanofactory arranging blocks of atoms to create a state-of-the-art laptop computer. Nanofactories will eventually replace most human labor in manufacturing, making consumer goods more plentiful and much cheaper, while raising quality levels. On voice command, requested products would exit the machine in minutes. Think Star Trek’s Captain Picard, “Computer; tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Even Third World families will find nanofactories affordable as these machines can copy themselves at little-to-no cost. In Revolutionary Wealth, Alvin and Heidi Toffler argue that we are on the verge of a post-scarcity time that will alleviate most of today’s poverty. Supporting this view, futurist Steve Burgess in a recent blog predicts that in the 2030s, nanofactories will launch an unprecedented era of global wealth. Though low cost goods will reduce poverty, the best use for molecular nanotech may lie in
medicine. Most sickness, injury, and stress can be traced to cell issues; but today’s doctors cannot treat individual cells. In addition, many current medical techniques carry bad side effects. Surgery saves lives, but it also causes trauma. Chemotherapy kills cancer, but healthy cells are destroyed; and the cancer often returns. Enter molecular nanotech. Today, doctors are injecting nanoparticles that target and destroy cancer cells without harming other tissues. In fact, after seeing nanotech’s huge potential, a former NCI director predicted that all cancer deaths would be eliminated by 2015. It may not be cured by then, he said, but new drugs will be available to end most of the suffering, pain, and death that cancer now dishes out. Forward thinkers believe that among the first products produced in nanofactories will be tiny medical nanorobots; with gears, sensors, motors, gripping tools, onboard computers, and propulsion systems, as imagined here. Tomorrow’s doctors will use these computerized nanowonders as “cell repair” machines. “You enter a wellness center complaining of a fever. Instead of a pill or shot, the doctor injects tiny nanorobots seamlessly through the skin into your bloodstream where the clever ‘bots immediately travel to the appropriate cells delivering a lethal dose of medicine directly to the infected area.” The above scenario may sound like something out of a sci-fi tale, but experts predict nanorobotics will one day turn this fantasy into reality. In a Futurist Magazine article, nanotech pioneer Robert Freitas describes a procedure for a type of medical nanorobot called a chromallocyte. This robot would extract chromosomes from a diseased cell and insert new ones in their place. These procedures will not only repair damages caused by aging; but would also eradicate any disease that might cause death. Get ready to enjoy an indefinite lifespan. Doctors would use nanorobots to correct problems like heart disease, cancer, and damages suffered from normal aging processes; and direct them to strengthen and enhance the body. These creations would restore bones, muscles, eyesight, and teeth to a more youthful state, keeping us forever young. Experts predict these procedures could appear in clinical trials in developed countries by as early as mid-2030s or before, and will be available for the rest of the world shortly after. Futuristic?
Certainly. Possible? Absolutely. Considering that life itself is, in a sense, the ultimate example of nanotech, the possibilities seem almost endless.
PREVENTATIVE TESTING FOR AGING
BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
Did you know that there are only 138 mutations that play the major role in making a cell cancerous? Well, 138 found so far, however, the number of these driver mutations inside the genes won’t grow significantly, at least that’s not anticipated. Obviously there are thousands of mutations in cancer cells, but not all of them give the selective growth advantage unique to cancer. This beautifully written review of cancer genetics tells us what the researchers all over the world have learned about differences in normal and cancerous genomes. Sequencing technologies are becoming less and less expensive and hopefully very soon we will see sequencing as part of routine clinical testing. Although we are not there yet. The authors of the article provide this outline: “1. Most human cancers are caused by two to eight sequential alterations that develop over the course of 20 to 30 years. 2. Each of these alterations directly or indirectly increases the ratio of cell birth to cell death; that is, each alteration causes a selective growth advantage to the cell in which it resides. 3. The evidence to date suggests that there are ~140 genes whose intragenic mutations contribute to cancer (so-called Mut-driver genes). There are probably other genes (Epi-driver genes) that are altered by epigenetic mechanisms and cause a selective growth advantage, but the definitive identification of these genes has been challenging. 4. The known driver genes function through a dozen signaling pathways that regulate three core cellular processes: cell fate determination, cell survival, and genome maintenance. 5. Every individual tumor, even of the same histopathologic subtype as another tumor, is distinct with respect to its genetic alterations, but the pathways affected in different tumors are similar.
6. Genetic heterogeneity among the cells of an individual tumor always exists and can impact the response to therapeutics. 7. In the future, the most appropriate management plan for a patient with cancer will be informed by an assessment of the components of the patient’s germline genome and the genome of his or her tumor. 8. The information from cancer genome studies can also be exploited to improve methods for prevention and early detection of cancer, which will be essential to reduce cancer morbidity and mortality” Those 138 mut-driver genes (oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes) can be classified into one or more of 12 pathways. And these pathways can be grouped into three large groups: cell survival, cell fate and genome maintenance. All these things go wrong during aging. The majority of the listed pathways play a role in aging. Naturally, cell senescence is seen as an anticancer strategy of the cell. And it works well until it doesn’t. The relationship between these two processes is not understood completely and more research is definitely needed to answer the question what happens over time. What distorts the balance? Cancer is truly an age-related disease. Aging brings decline in DNA repair efficiency and other mechanisms of genome stability maintenance. I think that if we figure out a way how to keep those mechanisms intact, working as good as they do at the age of 16, for example, there’s a good chance we will eradicate cancer, at least the solid tumors. This will be a huge step in increasing human longevity. I wholeheartedly agree with the authors of the article on the following matter: “‘plan A’ should be prevention and early detection, and ‘plan B’ (therapy for advanced cancers) should be necessary only when plan A fails. To make plan A viable, government and philanthropic organizations must dedicate a much greater fraction of their resources to this cause, with long-term considerations in mind. We believe that cancer deaths can be reduced by more than 75% in the coming decades (152), but that this reduction will only come about if greater efforts are made toward early detection and prevention.” This idea of prevention is valid not only for cancer, but for aging in general. In my opinion, if we develop the tests that will definitely include cancer testing, we will be able to see what is happening, what is going wrong on molecular level, and we won’t wait for 90% of the organ is non-functional, until Alzheimer’s have consumed the personality of our loved one, until we feel we can no longer walk up three staircases. We will fight the disease in its infancy, and we will fight aging to remain youthful for as long as we choose to be.
3D-PRINTED CYBERNETIC APPENDAGES BY: JAMESON ROHRER
In a remarkable feat of science and technology, a robot hand is now giving children born without fingers the ability to feel what its like to have those metaparcels. The billions of humans on Earth simply take these complex appendages and feelings from these extremities for granted. If we broke down the amount of energy and nerves required to grab a door handle and perceive that feeling to be conducive, we can gain a better appreciation for each moment we are alive. 3D Printing is advancing to the stage in which we as humans can take the technology and apply it not only to the human body to replace body parts, upgrade certain muscles and bones that may have deficiencies, but also to build tools and products that will aid the species in multiple ways. Not only does 3D printing have the capability of changing us humans towards a new evolutionary path, where we could potentially transcend our biology, but also increasing our aptitude in pursuing space exploration and colonization. For instance, the International Space Station, will be obtaining its very own 3D printer in 2014, funded by NASA. (http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/nasa-3d-printing-international-space-station/). With such a technology at the fingertips of astronauts, the potential uses could be limitless, including food, lab supplies, clothing, fuel, materials for colonization, the list could go on and on. Taking this another step, in using 3D Printers and specifically nanotechnology as nanoscale construction devices, the human species will have the ability to stop disease, suffering, regrow limbs, enhance or even replace organs, sections of scar tissue, enhanced surgical recovery, and increased productivity. 3D Printers will also provide us access points to virtual reality, computer brain interfaces, and potentially even mind-uploading. With all of this in mind, we must appreciate the wonderful opportunity we have to not only enhance ourselves, seek out new world and universes, clean up our current home (Earth), enhance our brains to visualize multiple universes via virtual reality, or an augmented state of consciousness, but also the opportunity to completely change how our species functions at the civilization level, specifically producing tools and technologies. With all this being said, the tenets of transhumanism will take us to new experiences, new
locations and new levels of consciousness that we currently can barely comprehend. The next revolution of humanity is coming quickly, and people are anxious and nervous because the changes to global society will be more profound that any of the previous revolutions. However, we must embrace this change if we are to truly outlive our centuries of misguided developments.(materialism) A recent book that came out, titled, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization by K. Eric Drexler (http://transhumanistlibrarian.wordpress.com/books-related-to-transhumanism/), provides excellent context regarding the coming changes to the modes of production for humanity. There is reason to be nervous about the coming revolution. However, this will completely change what we do in our daily lives, and the focus of the species will turn from one of competition to one of cooperation to attain heights that are unfathomable and exciting. 3D Printed appendages and beyond….What is next? Sources: http://www.dezeen.com/2013/05/29/3d-printed-robohand-helps-children-born-without-fingers/
ORGAN AND TISSUE REPLACEMENT COULD END AGING BY 2020 BY: DICK PELLETIER
As we trek through the next decade, older citizens might look in the mirror and wonder, “Who is that gorgeous creature?” Their reflection would reveal a body filled with enthusiasm, sporting a dazzling smile, wrinkle-free skin, perfect vision, natural hair color, real teeth, and an amazing sharp mind and memory. Welcome to the incredible world of innovative anti-aging healthcare, which growing numbers of future followers believe will become widely available and affordable as we move into the years ahead. With new clinical trials popping up almost daily, experts predict that by early-to-mid 2020s, doctors will use stem cells loaded with non-degrading telomeres, and low-cost 3D bioprinters to replace aging skin and strengthen frail bones and muscles. These replacements promise to cure or make manageable most of today’s age-related illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and most brain disorders. We begin our journey with the research company Centagen’s progress in using telomeres-active stem cells to renew aging muscles, bones, and skin. This entrepreneurial group, led by Bryant Villeponteau, Ph.D. (aka the “Father of Telomerase Biology”) along with their Board of Directors, won financing from Maximum Life Foundation, where hope lies that 100 year-olds will soon become the new 50 year-olds. Some say that Centagen’s work might one day be considered the ‘holy grail’ of stem cell research. Dr. Villeponteau believes he could start studies within two years and know in months whether it was working or not. Watch this short video of a heart patient benefiting from this treatment at a Costa Rica clinic. Next, we look at 3-D bioprinting. This procedure holds promise to save even more lives than telomeres-strengthened stem cells. With an estimated printer price of $250, 3-D bioprinting will
become inexpensive enough for everyday enthusiasts to get involved. See fascinating photos of the technology in action. Modern Meadow, another innovative 3-D bioprinting startup is developing a system that will grow meat and leather from extinct animals, such as the wooly mammoth. This TED video describes what’s involved in a new technology called ‘de-extinction’, reconstructing the genomes of extinct animals. We currently fight heart disease with drugs that reduce cholesterol buildup; but with new technologies predicted for the 2020s, we will simply grow new veins or hearts where necessary. In fact, nearly all of our organs, bones, muscles, hair, and skin can be replaced as these new procedures become available. Ray Kurzweil, in his best-selling book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever confirmed that we are in early stages of a medical revolution. “By 2026,” Kurzweil says, “biotech upgrades will add more than one year of life expectancy to our lives each year.” However, the concept of replacing organs and tissues to stop aging causes some to ponder. On the one hand, a natural instinct to improve ourselves is embedded in our nature. On the other hand, though, it is through natural human form that we perceive ourselves. Conservatives believe that eliminating the ‘older look’ in senior citizens could risk undermining our identity and dignity as human beings. Nevertheless, advocates counter that no one wants to suffer the pain and agony of growing old with failing health; and Kurzweil reminds us that we are the species that always seeks to extend its abilities. Throughout history, improvements in healthcare, diet and environment have resulted in increasing our lifespan. Today, healthy people can expect to live into their 80s and beyond, but advances predicted for the 2020s could extend both health and life indefinitely. As we gain more and more benefits from 2020s medical advances, we see an era of huge excitement for science and great hope for humanity unfolding. The smart, sexy, strong years, once thought long lost, might soon be recaptured as we move closer to this future time. We will have at our disposal, an awesome array of innovative medical technologies that promise to improve health and provide a lifespan that could one day approach immortality. As of this writing, more than 100,000 people die every day from age-related diseases. Can this carnage be stopped? If technology continues to advance exponentially, we have a chance.
CREATION OF ARTIFICIAL CELLS DEALS FATAL BLOW TO VITALISM BY: G. STOLYAROV II
The theory of vitalism, the idea that life is incapable of emerging or being synthesized from nonliving components, was completely and obviously invalidated by J. Craig Venter’s recent creation of an entirely artificially designed living organism, the Mycoplasma mycoides. This synthetic bacterium was designed entirely by humans, without emerging from a previous species. Of course, vitalism was not viable for a long time, and, for intelligent students of the natural sciences, its patent falsehood was evident since Stanley Miller’s famous 1953 experiment, which showed that amino acids – the basic building blocks of proteins – could be generated from simple inorganic compounds in an artificial reducing atmosphere. But now the case against vitalism is so obvious that only the most dogmatic, evidence-averse individuals could still adhere to it. There it is – a cell that was not the offspring of another living organism, but was rather artificially synthesized in its every aspect, much as a building might be constructed by the deliberate arrangement of bricks and beams in accordance with a human-designed blueprint. I welcome the emergence of artificial life and all of the impressive possibilities that it offers even in the near-term future – from improved and rapidly produced influenza vaccines to microorganisms that can clean up oil spills and synthesize new sources of energy. More important, of course, are the long-term implications of this discovery – which are too vast to be foreseen by any single individual. We humans have an amazing ability to discover and engineer the workings of life, and our own lives should become ever longer and better as a result.
MEDICINE WILL TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF BIOLOGY BY: DAVID KEKICH
Dear Future Centenarian, According to Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a lack of biology is the only limit on longevity. In his personal opinion, medicine is all about transcending the limits of biology. Where we have not yet transcended, such as in maximum observed human lifespan, is because the necessary biotechnology has not yet been developed. You can read the report here. What does he mean by the “only limit?” As we know, we only have about one chance in a thousand to live to 100 with today’s medicine. On that note, I took a short and entertaining online lifespan calculator test yesterday here. Since it was developed by Northwestern Mutual, I had high hopes for its accuracy. But it pegged my expected lifespan at 101. That was ludicrous. They obviously didn’t map my genome, and genetics take over around the age of 90. Sure, there’s much you can do to make it to 90, but you’ll need breakthroughs in biology to expect to make it to 101. But the technology of tomorrow will paint a different picture. If you want to talk about longevity and mortality rates, you have to qualify your position by stating what sort of applied biotechnologies are available. Longevity is a function of the quality and type of medicine that’s available across a lifespan. Most life-extending breakthroughs which have occurred in the past hundred years have solved problems that killed people early in life. Infectious disease, for example, is controlled to a degree that would have been thought utopian in the squalor of Victorian England.
The things that kill older people are more challenging. Great progress has been made in reducing mortality from heart disease in the past few decades for example, but that’s just one late stage consequence of the complex array of biochemical processes that we call aging. The point of this discussion? Tremendous progress in medicine, including the defeat or taming of many varied causes of death and disability, has not greatly lengthened the maximum human lifespan in practice. The research community hasn’t really started in earnest on the work on rejuvenation biotechnology. The story of medicine to date has been work on other line items, or largely futile attempts to patch over the failure modes that lie at the end of aging. Since aging is only an accumulation of damage, there’s a gentle trend towards extended life as a result of general improvements across the board in medicine - perhaps one year of additional life with every three to five years of technological progress at the present time. On average, people with access to modern technology and support suffer biological damage at the cellular level and molecular machinery more slowly across their lives. But this is slow going incidental life extension. Given this history of medical progress, you’ll find many life science researchers and advocates who view the human lifespan as bounded. They look to past progress and extrapolate to assume that future progress can only continue improving things within the existing human maximum life span. In other words, that more and more people will live in good health closer to that maximum, but that the maximum is set in stone. There are even names for this goal, “squaring the mortality curve” and “compression of morbidity.” This is a noble undertaking as it reduces end-of-life suffering and medical expense. But instead of a goal in itself, it merely delays the inevitable. So advocates for super longevity need to make sure their efforts don’t get sidetracked by shortterm feel-good progress at the expense of a real long-term solution to our aging dilemma. The future of medicine in the next few decades is not about gaining a decade of life with no hope of pushing out human life span beyond 120 years. It’s about building the alpha versions of medical technologies that can provide open-ended healthy lifespans.
But until many more people come to understand this point, there will continue to be the same lack of support for research that will lead to radical change in the relationship of medicine and aging. More Life, David Kekich
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY’S PROMISE
BY: MARIA KONOVALENKO, M.SC.
Synthetic Biology is going to be huge all over the world very soon. No wonder, the promise is incredible. According to Jeurgen Pleiss, possible applications of synthetic biology include: 1. Genetic circuits. The BioBrick project initiated at MIT seeks to assemble a set of standardized DNA parts that encode basic biological functions. The “Registry of Standard Biological Parts” includes genes for transcription factors and enzymes, promoter and enhancer elements, ribosome binding sites, and terminators. This registry describes the sequence of the individual bricks, a quantitative description of their input–output properties, and a concept of how to connect them, the “biowiring”. Each element can be considered as a logical circuit, an inverter, or a NAND or a NOR gate. By combining logical gates and by wiring them using orthogonal, highly specific gene products, artificial genetic circuits have been constructed with predetermined behavior. Projects at the international Genetically Engineering Machine (iGEM) competition are examples of genetic circuits. 2. Protein design. The ultimate goal is the complete de novo design of proteins. The methods are based on design tools that evaluate the compatibility of a protein sequence with a given structure. The vision of protein design is a modular approach to the design of new biomaterials with desired properties. Although all protein design efforts use the 20 amino acids as basic parts, de novo design is not limited to naturally occurring amino acids. By using expression platforms with expanded genetic code, single unnatural amino acids can be incorporated by in vivo or in vitro protein biosynthesis. Thus, the synthetic potential is considerably enhanced. However, the primary goal of protein design is not to compete with natural structural diversity. In line with the premises of synthetic biology, it would be desirable to identify a minimal set of robust and versatile scaffolds. In a modular design strategy, these basic parts would then be combined into more complex devices which are then modified to function as enzyme, power generator, signaling device, mechanical motor, or structural protein. The major application would be cheap and effective drugs. 3. Platform technologies. Like synthetic bacteriophages with optimized genome organization.
The synthetic gene circuits and the production of designed proteins are implemented into living cells, thus allowing applications in biotransformation and biosensing. The ideal cellular platform should be of minimal complexity. Minimization of genomes is expected to simplify the cellular platform. 4. Engineering of pathways. Signaling pathways are characterized by the modular architecture of the proteins involved in signal transduction. Kinetics and thermodynamics of intermodular recognition are crucial to specificity and information flow. Production of natural products by synthetic gene clusters is considered as a promising application for synthetic biology.
LONGEVITY & THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY BY: DICK PELLETIER
By around mid-century, many future followers predict the pace of technological progression in genetics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will become so fast that humans will undergo radical evolution. Advances that provide a forever youthful and healthy state of being could be realized. “The year is 2032. You have just celebrated your 80th birthday and you have some tough decisions ahead. You can keep repairing your current body or move into a new one. The growing of ‘blank’ bodies has become all the rage, and by using your own genetic material, body farmers can even recreate your own face at age 20.” This scenario is from a blog by Google’s top-rated futurist, Thomas Frey. Frey believes within 20 years, breakthroughs will eradicate or make manageable most diseases. Shortly after, we will replace frail body parts with stronger non-biological tissues. Using stem cells, we have already re-grown bladders and throats, and “printed” new bones and arteries with 3D bioprinters. In short, Frey says, with the help of future technologies; no human should ever need to die! Most positive futurists agree with Frey. Nobody wants to experience the pain and agony dished out with today’s healthcare. Tomorrow’s medical care promises a much brighter and happier life. For example, using advanced technologies, burn victims would simply toss their charred skin and re-grow a new body. This forward view of the future is not too difficult to imagine when you consider our past. Humanity’s merge with its technology began shortly after the taming of fire, and is still happening today. Many predict that the fine-tuning of our DNA-based biology aided by advanced artificial intelligence promised by the impending singularity will spark a powerful nanotech revolution that will redesign and rebuild our bodies and the world we live in.
Nanotech will change our physical world much the same way that computers have transformed our information world. Existing products that are now expensive, such as photovoltaic solar cells, will become so cheap in the decades ahead, that it may one day be possible to surface roads with materials that would also gather energy to power cars, ending much of the world’s dependency on fossil fuels. In addition, imagine machines that create low-cost clothing, medicine, food and most essentials, with only your voice needed to command the action. By early 2030s, home nanofactories will arrive. Now bring on the most amazing impending revolution – human-level robots – with intelligence derived from us, but with redesigned bodies that exceed human capabilities. These powerful android creatures expected by late 2040s, will enable us to tap their minds to increase our intelligence. Author Ray Kurzweil in “The Singularity is Near” explained how the human body might evolve. Today’s frail body, version ‘1.0’ has unacceptable failure rates (more than 50 million people are expected to die in 2013, most from age-related damages). Biotech and molecular nanotech advances from 2013 to late 2030s will produce a more durable version ‘2.0’, immune to most, but not all of our killer diseases. This brings us to version ‘3.0’. By 2040, people will add more non-biological parts to their bodies: robotic blood cells, cell repair machines, strong bones, muscles and skin; even new neurons made from carbon nanotubes. These changes will not take place all at once; they will occur gradually with market demands; but by 2050, most people will enjoy life in a non-bio body boasting a zero failure rate. Even if a destructive accident were to occur, nanorobots guided by tomorrow’s artificial intelligence will quickly make repairs, or when necessary, format a new body with the patient’s original consciousness and memories intact, allowing life to continue. By mid-century, living in a ‘3.0’ body will render death no more disruptive than a brief mental lapse. Most disaster victims would not even be aware they had died. Free from concerns over dying, humanity can now grasp the true meaning of humanness while enjoying the benefits of an indefinite lifespan. Many experts believe that as the future unfolds, we will become a space-faring society scattering our populations to the stars. And a few bold space exploration proponents
LONGEVITY, DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING & VIDEO GAMES BY: G. STOLYAROV II
Imagine if it were possible to help cure disease and lengthen human lifespans simply by playing one’s computer games of choice. Here, I describe a concept for doing just that, and I welcome efforts from any readers to help bring it about. To make a practical, concrete difference in accelerating the advent of radical human life extension, one of the most powerful contributions a layman (non-biologist, non-doctor, nonengineer) can make is to donate idle computer time to distributed computing projects focused on biomedical research. Immensely promising distributed computing endeavors include Rosetta@home, Folding@home, and World Community Grid’s Human Proteome Folding and Help Conquer Cancer projects. I am a major participant in many of these projects. (I rank in the 98.7th percentile for all distributed computing users by total credit and in the 99.5th percentile by recent average credit.) My computer runs these projects almost nonstop, and I have even made several upgrades, partly to enhance my contribution. Distributed computing enables scientific research to occur at rates and scales previously inconceivable. Researchers utilize thousands of computers worldwide to perform incredible numbers of complex calculations that they could not have processed in their labs alone. Billions of computers now exist, and it seems so easy to just download a distributed computing client and let it run while the computer is idle. The computer owner does not need to be technically knowledgeable about the field of research in order to make a positive and direct contribution. Yet participation in distributed computing projects is still orders of magnitude below where it should be. For instance, as of February 23, 2013, Folding@home has 1,674,431 all-time donors of computer resources; the front page suggests that 167,833 computers are currently active in the project. Rosetta@home has 355,661 total donors, while World Community Grid has 401,270. The number of people worldwide who care about advancing medical research is surely far larger than this. Yet even an easy task like installing a distributed computing client may be beyond the comfort
zone of many people with busy, often hectic, lives. If these people take time out of their day for activities not related to their primary occupations, they will do so because they find those activities entertaining, relaxing, or both. Computer games are an immensely popular example; they directly engage hundreds of millions of people worldwide for hundreds of billions of hours every year. If this level of contribution were made to distributed computing projects, we would see the pace of research accelerate tenfold or more. There is already one game (FoldIt) that attempts to utilize human creativity to directly address one challenge related to life extension: the prediction of protein-folding configurations. FoldIt’s users have even had some success where computer algorithms have not. However, Foldit’s gameplay is not for everyone, just like any particular genre of computer game will attract some enthusiastic users but will leave others indifferent. To radically increase the use of distributed computing, I recommend a new approach: the design of computer games that automatically run distributed computing projects in the background when they are played. Players would not need to acquire the game with the purpose of contributing to research projects; their primary motivation should be to enjoy the game. However, one of the marketing points in the game’s favor could be that it would enable people to make a meaningful contribution to research while they enjoyed themselves. Such games would not need to be related to the subject of the research at all; they could be about absolutely anything, and there could be numerous games of this sort made to appeal to a wide variety of consumer demographics. Indeed, creators of existing games could work on ways to link them to distributed computing clients and use this to emphasize their companies’ philanthropic side. Each game could include an option to activate the distributed computing client even if the game is not being played. In this way, players who come to enjoy their participation in distributed computing projects could extend that participation beyond their gaming sessions. On the other hand, a lot of players would acquire the game just to play it, while being only peripherally aware of the distributed computing aspect. However, their consent to the distributed computing would be a part of the usage agreement associated with the game. They would contribute to important biomedical research by default, just like all of us contribute to the carbon dioxide available to the Earth’s plants simply by exhaling. I am not a programmer myself, but I strongly encourage any programmer and/or game developer reading this article to develop this proposed connection between any game and a distributed computing project. This concept should be in the public domain, and, to the extent this is possible under current law, I hereby release any original ideas or concepts in this article into the public domain in full. I seek no monetary profit or even credit from such undertakings (though I would be extremely happy to be informed of efforts to implement them). I will benefit considerably if the implementation of this idea radically accelerates life-extension research, and
this benefit would certainly be enough for me. It is in my best interest for numerous parallel, competing, or collaborative efforts to arise in this area, and for many people to try variations on this idea. I also welcome input from those who can anticipate some of the technical details and challenges of developing games of this sort. For instance, I would be interested in insights regarding the potential ease or difficulty of integrating a distributed computing client with another program. At present, I anticipate that most of the challenges would be technical, rather than legal, since BOINC, one of the most popular clients, is free software released under a GNU Lesser General Public License. My strong recommendation is for any efforts in this area to have an open-source character, welcoming contributions from all parties in order to make the vast benefits of this project realizable. At least some of the games created as a result could be made freely downloadable, so as to entice more people into obtaining them with nothing to lose. The idea is now out there. I urge you to help make it happen in any way you are able.
NANOTECH TO END DISEASE, AGING & POVERTY BY: DICK PELLETIER
Dr. Tuan Vo-Dinh, award-winning researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) dreams of the day when nano-sized robots will roam freely through the bloodstream, zapping diseased cells with pinpoint lasers, automatically and instantaneously repairing all problems they encounter along the way. Vo-Dinh heads the advanced biomedical science and technology group in ORNL’s life sciences division. He is one of the most honored researchers at Oak Ridge, having received more than 100 Awards that recognize the nation’s most innovative research projects. Though he admits that nanobots sound like something out of “Fantastic Voyage,” this star scientist feels confident his dream will come true. “Already we can insert nano-biosensors into cells and observe their process,” he says. Officials at Foresight Institute, an industry think tank, agree that future nanobots will revolutionize healthcare. Ability to self-replicate makes them inexpensive, and because they can position each atom in place with perfect precision, they leave no doubts about the quality of performance. Today, when a cell is damaged, doctors rely on drugs to instruct the cell to repair itself, a process that does not always bring the patient back to health. With nanobots, damaged cells are completely rebuilt, one atom at a time, creating a flawless and brand new, or better than new youthful cell. Nanobots work like tiny surgeons as they reach into a cell, sense damaged parts; repair them by reformatting new atoms, and leave. By repairing and rearranging cells and surrounding structures, nanobots can restore every tissue and bone in the body to perfect health – including replacing aging skin with new, resilient skin, restoring youthful looks and good health.
Glen Fishbine of nanomagazine.com sees other advantages of these amazing machines. “By manipulating individual atoms, nanobots can replicate themselves, and build nearly any desired product on command. This capability promises to end disease, create wealth for everyone, stop pollution, provide unlimited energy, and build goods at little or no cost.” Foresight thinkers compare nanotech with the importance of humanity’s taming of fire. Because assemblers build copies of themselves quickly, using inexpensive materials, little energy, and no human labor, a single nano-machine can copy itself billions of times with almost no cost. However, opponents remind us that the human body contains about ten thousand billion billion protein parts, which make up an extremely complex machine called “life.” Can nanobots really improve on what nature has accomplished through all its years of evolution? Advocates believe they can. These amazing ‘bots will easily understand how healthy cells differ from damaged ones, and in the time it takes an enzyme to change a single bond, nanobots could perform more than a thousand steps, easily winning the “speed race” over nature. Expected by many as early as 2020, nanobots will clearly revolutionize medicine, giving us the ability to drastically extend our lives. Since forward-thinking scientists now consider death a treatable disease resulting from damaged molecular machinery, chemical imbalances, and defective structures – all problems within the range of nano-repair devices – youthful health and indefinite lifespan could soon be available to every adult, regardless of age. This “magical future” can become reality in our lifetime! Think positive and it could become your future.
BIOHACKING 101: WHY SELF -EXPERIMENT? BY: WINSLOW STRONG
This is the second post in the Biohacking 101 series. The first post gives an overview of what biohacking is all about and a compendium of sources for identifying potential biohacks. Here I will discuss the reasons for self-experimentation. In particular, I will detail how selfexperimentation supplements both the results of population-average trials and the “collect data and seek out patterns” approach that is now popular in the Quantified Self movement. In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -Galileo Galilei A self-experiment is an experiment performed on yourself and by yourself. That is, you are both the object of the experimental treatment and the experimenter conducting it. Self-experimentation has a long history in science, especially in medicine. It’s a natural manifestation of human curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire for self-improvement. As I expressed in my bio, I have found personally that self-experimentation in career, lifestyle, and health, has been incredibly rewarding for me in terms of growth in these areas. As a bonus, it’s often quite fun. However, these days many of us have become accustomed to asking Google for best practices and assuming that what we find is the distillation of human science and wisdom. How could little old you hope to arrive at better practices without becoming an expert in a field that you currently don’t know much about? BIG SCIENCE TODAY: POPULATION AVERAGE TRIALS Almost all big scientific trials involving humans as test subjects address the question of whether an experimental treatment affects a certain quantified objective on average in a certain
population. In the coarsest sense, this yields information along the lines of: if you select a random human being on earth, and feed him or her 100g of French fries per day, then on average he or she will outlive those not receiving this treatment. I made up this example, but it’s plausible given that much of the world is malnourished, and providing more food of nearly any type to a malnourished person is likely to benefit his or her survival. ADDING SPECIFICITY TO THE POPULATION GROUP CAN DRASTICALLY CHANGE THE RESULTS Population average studies often don’t highlight the level of variation between individuals within the study, although they typically record this information. It would be easy to see how the favorable result from the hypothetical French fry treatment could in fact be unfavorable for some segments of the world population. On average, would forcing Americans to eat 100g of French fries a day improve their longevity? I doubt it. Americans consume sufficient food, and too much of some types. French fries cooked at high temperatures in processed, omega-6 rich vegetable oils have a pathological effect on the health of nourished subjects. The original experiment is not sensitive to the important variable of the nourishment level of the test subjects. THE ULTIMATE SPECIFICITY FOR YOU IS SO-CALLED N=1 Biohacks are ideally carried out as self-experiments. When selecting a biohack, it’s nice to know that it has been effective for a segment of the population, even better if that segment resembles you. This narrows down the search process from a huge universe of potential biohacks to the ones that most plausibly might work for you. However, the biohack is only useful if it actually does work for you. The only way to become very sure of this is to perform an experiment on yourself. No one is identical to you. Even identical twins, still in the womb, have differences due to epigenetic factors resulting in different gene expression despite identical DNA base pairs. In theory, self-experiments can be sensitive to all of the uniqueness that is you. In practice, repeated measurements must be carried out over time, so self-experiments are reproducible in so far as their outcomes are unaffected by the properties of you that change over the experimental measurement process. If we can nail down our certainty to all but those changes in us over time, that would be quite strong evidence to draw conclusions from. We would still fool ourselves occasionally, but not very often. BUT N > 1 Self-experimentation is now popularly being referred to as n=1 experimentation, because instead of many test subjects, like there are in population-average trials, there is just one subject, yourself.
But this n properly refers to the statistical parameter representing the number of (independent) observations. In a self-experiment, n=1 if you, for example, pop a happy pill one day and feel happy that day. Not because there is just one subject, but because there is just one observation of one trial (one pill, one day). It would be poor logic to conclude from one trial that a treatment is effective (unless perhaps your happiness was well outside the bounds of anything that you had ever experienced before). I.e. you would be fooling yourself. In contrast, if each day you independently have a 50% chance of being happy overall and a 50% chance of being unhappy, but you try taking a particular pill a day for 10 days and notice that you are happy every day, then, and this is a highly significant result. Even better if you blind yourself and randomly take the treatment pill or a placebo. PERSONALIZATION IN MODERN MEDICINE Establishment medicine is gradually warming to the idea of greater personalization and patient empowerment. Our genetic data is now at our fingertips, useful in such things as personalizing cancer treatment. Some of the more enlightened doctors are recommending measurement, tracking, and self-experimentation to their patients. In other words, they are encouraging their patients to become biohackers. A great example of patients self-biohacking against a headwind of their doctors’ advice is the story of the eventual recognition of non-celiac gluten sensitivity. “Some people eventually fail to be diagnosed with celiac disease because they don’t fit the criteria, but because they were desperate because nothing else explained their symptoms, they decide, despite the negative results, to try the diet no matter what. And some of them, sure enough, had their symptoms improved or completely resolved. So as typically happens in these situations, it was from the grassroots that the problem really became a problem, because when we saw this critical mass of people come into our clinic, at the beginning we sent them away. We said, you know, you don’t have celiac disease. You have no reason to be on a gluten-free diet. But when we saw this phenomenon to take great proportion, we asked ourselves: Is that possible that all these people are nuts? Are they all responding as a placebo effect? So we started to dig into this situation a little bit more, and sure enough, we discovered that there is another form of gluten reaction that we don’t call gluten intolerance anymore because we went through a revision of nomenclature, but we call it gluten sensitivity. And it turns out to be an immune response to gluten not on an autoimmune basis like in celiac disease, not even on an allergic basis because we know that sometimes wheat can induce an allergic reaction like any other foodstuff.” – Dr. Alessio Fasano
The trend towards greater personalization and proactive patient involvement seems likely to continue to grow. But there’s no reason to restrict self-experimentation to disease treatment. It is a powerful methodology for enhancing almost any aspect of your life. UNSTRUCTURED SELF-TRACKING IS NOT ENOUGH TO GAIN INSIGHT
The Quantified Self (QS) movement is a popular trend describing those who take data on themselves and track changes over time. Interest in QS has fueled demand for a profusion of new technologies – from activity monitors to brain-wave (EEG) detectors – for individuals to take data on themselves. I am an active proponent of the movement, having started the Zurich chapter of the meetup group in November 2012. QS empowers the individual to take control and responsibility for their health, performance, and well-being. This is in contrast to most medical systems in the world that encourage individuals to passively rely on their doctors for health evaluations, diagnosis, and prescriptions. In this sense I think that QS is a giant step in the right direction. However, many of the QSers that I have met go only so far as taking data on themselves. It’s well-known that even this simple act of measuring can have profound influence on behavior. For example, when individuals track their activity level it typically leads to increases in it. However, when one wants to cause a change in a health or performance objective that is not as directly under our control, it’s generally insufficient to merely measure the objective and hope that it improves. Testing well-thought-out treatments is more efficient and effective. In order to truly gain insight from these tests it’s best to use a scientifically valid process, namely a properly run self-experiment. Ideally such an experiment would incorporate: repetition (of observations), randomization (of the experimental treatment), controlling (for other variables), self-blinding (you don’t know when you are receiving the treatment), and statistical analysis of the results. Not all will be possible or practical in each case, but knowing the ideal allows us to better approximate it in reality, leading to more efficient and accurate learning of what does and does not improve our lives. SOME RESULTS OF BIOHACKERS FROM SELF-EXPERIMENTATION You don’t have to look very hard to find the potential fruits of biological self-experimentation. A few examples: Me - I hacked: a repetitive-strain injury using mind-body techniques, my mindstate with meditation, my working memory with dual-N-back training, and fact acquisition with spaced repetition software (SRS), like Anki. I have also done a lot of dietary experimentation with varying results. Dave Asprey -“He upgraded his brain by >20 IQ points, lowered his biological age, and lost 100 lbs without using calories or exercise.” Seth Roberts - Hacked acne, sleep, mental acuity, weight.
Brian Kerr – Check out his story here. PLAN YOUR OWN SELF-EXPERIMENT The Biohacking 101 series of posts is designed to provide exactly the knowledge that you need to plan and execute self-experiments to improve your performance or health. If you already have a biohack in mind that you would like to test out (see the previous post for some inspiration), then take few minutes to think about how you might setup a self-experiment to determine whether it is successful. In future Biohacking 101 posts I will give you ideas to help you refine your approach.
DIY NANOTECH DOUBLES LIFESPAN IN MICE! BY: GRINDHOUSE WETWARES
“The groundwork for the technology and science we use has been in existence for decades, it is not nanotechnology or advanced Synthetic biology…but anatomy, electrical engineering, and programming.” These words can be found on the website for Grindhouse Wetwares, the collective of grinders where I’ve been developing for over a year now. Certainly, we haven’t been using any nanotechnology thus far in our projects, and nanotechnology itself is probably one of the fields of technology that most people intuitively feel will be out of DIY hands for decades to come. Even synthetic biology is being tackled by enthusiasts, but nanotechnology is still imagined to be like moonshine. I’m here to tell you that that is not true; basic nanotechnology can be done on a DIY level, even with today’s technology. First, a bit about my background. I’m currently studying mathematics and physics. I have a particular interest in quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry. Most of the contributions to grinding that I’ve made, however, have been in the field of electrical engineering – essentially, applied classical electrodynamics. I’ve therefore been looking for ways to contribute using my interest in quantum mechanics. Recently, I learned some basic solid-state physics – one of the main scientific fields behind nanotech – and I began thinking of ways to apply this knowledge to creating DIY nanotech. Just in case the very idea seems silly to any of you, the isolation of graphene is something to keep in mind. Graphene is a commonly talked-about nanomaterial, and it’s essentially one of those magical materials that will do everything except your taxes. In addition to being an excellent conductor and having great thermal properties, graphene is approximately a hundred times stronger than steel. A common analogy used is that graphene could withstand the pressure of an elephant balanced on a pencil. Yet, for all its amazing properties, graphene is identical in structure to the graphite used in your pencil lead; the difference is just that graphene is a single atom thick.
Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov won the Nobel Prize in 2010 for having isolated graphene. Surely, the method they used must have been incredibly complex, right? Actually, they just used adhesive tape to repeatedly split graphite crystals, until they were statistically guaranteed to get a few pieces of single-layer graphene. While this is no good for mass production of graphene, it still works as a proof of concept. After all, while the tape used was a very clean brand with little residue, even Scotch tape will work. All that is required is to break off a piece of pencil lead, and after a little bit of work you can replicate Geim’s experiment. In point of fact, it doesn’t even appear that I’m the first to come up with the idea of DIY nanotech. A quick search on Google returns a method for making DIY magnetite crystals (which can reusably remove some toxins from water), along with several schematics for a DIY scanning tunneling microscope (which can both view and manipulate individual atoms). So, what contributions do I have to make to this emerging field? I shall close by outlining one of my first DIY nanotech projects. It began when I first told fellow Grindhouse developer Tim Cannon about some of my ideas for DIY nanotech, and he asked me to come up with a way to produce C60-fullerene, aka buckyballs (those soccerball-shaped carbon molecules), on a DIY level. Why would he want to produce those? Well, you may be familiar with the study which concluded that buckyballs mixed with olive oil can nearly double the lifespan of mice. Even if you feel that the study is bunk (personally, I’m annoyed that they starved the experimental group, thereby potentially confounding the results), being able to replicate or falsify it would still be an interesting endeavor. Plus, the potential uses for buckyballs go beyond their potential life extension abilities. After doing a bit of research on the subject, I found that soot actually contains just about every carbon structure known to humanity, including graphene, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs. Once you have soot, you can purify it in order to get the structure you want. Since I imagine most biohackers aren’t going to be getting it from their chimney, the task was on me to figure out a cheap, efficient way to get soot. While nearly-pure carbon is readily available in the form of graphite, you cannot simply burn it to get what you want. While you can get some soot that way, the bulk of the carbon is going to react with oxygen in the air to produce carbon dioxide. We need a more efficient method than that. The first step is to remove the oxygen from the equation. Rather than try to create a vacuum, the best way to do this is to fill a container with some relatively inert gas, such as helium, argon or nitrogen. Once you have that, all you need to do is introduce some energy to the carbon. With that in mind, this is the method that I gave to Tim:
1. Break a pencil lead in half, and attach the halves as electrodes to a circuit connected to a battery. 2. Fill a container with helium, and stick the electrodes in there without allowing oxygen to enter. Allow the electrodes to arc with each other. This provides the energy needed to convert layers of the graphite electrodes into soot. 3. Collect the soot from the container. Place the soot into some solvent that can do the trick (for example, the polycyclic aromatic compounds that are sometimes used to clean the soot from chimneys). Given that fullerenes such as buckyballs are the only allotropes of carbon that truly dissolve in organic solvents, the resulting solution should contain a decent fraction of buckyballs. 4. Profit! As of this writing, Tim has gotten approval from his local hackerspace to try this experiment himself. Now, I looked up how commercial companies and research labs produce this, and it seems most of their methods are closely-guarded secrets. I did find one other method that involves burning hydrocarbons at low pressure. That would be doable, though somewhat harder than the method I came up with. The advantage of it, though, is that it can be used to bulkproduce this material with 95% purity. I could ramble on about some other ideas I had in this field, but I want to know what you can do. The current state of DIY nanotech is just what a few random lunatics on the internet can come up with; if more of us began researching this, what could we do together? Don’t buy a word of the notion that nanotech is out of our hands; pick up your hand tools, and find out for yourself!
CRYONICS 101 BY: JAMESON ROHRER
The possibility of living indefinitely, or even living “again” via re-animation from cryogenic freezing is just one method that is being used by transhumanists and many others. What is Cryonics you ask? I hope to explain this to you in the following text below. Cryonics is best described as the preservation of humans and animals at low-temperatures, essentially “freezing” the body with the notion of potentially reviving that organism when the proper technology becomes available. Here are a few things to keep in mind: 1. It is not currently feasible to resuscitate anyone from the state of cryopreservation at this time with the technologies currently available. 2. The study and comprehension of the processes involved in cryopreservation are still being researched and studied, thus many people in the emerging fields of science do not confirm cryopreservation as a viable means for future re-animation. (But this encourages for more research and study into this important field!) 3. Specifically, in the United States (and probably most countries as well), cryonics cannot be legally completed until after an individual has been declared legally “dead”. With this in mind, lets continue delving into what is involved in the process of cryogenics. A main central aspect of cryonics is that things such as identity, personality, and particularly long-term memory are stored and potentially preserved in durable cell structures and patterns within areas of the brain, areas that do not require neural activity to be ongoing. There are multiple obstacles in facing long term preservation, but even with these present, cryonics is currently our best-known method of having the opportunity to potentially living indefinitely with the power of future medical technologies. Long term cryopreservation can occur when an object is cooled to 77.15 Kelvin,(or -196 F) which if you did not know, is the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. There is much debate as to how much damage ice at this temperature can do to tissues and other cells. Cryopreservation
organizations have tackled this particular problem with that they call “cryoprotectants”, which are designed to help minimize damage. These chemical solutions can be placed inside blood vessels to help maintain their structural integrity over the long term. The idea with these cryoprotectant solutions is to help with the process of cooling and solidifying bodily tissue without the formation of ice crystals, and this is known as “vitrification”. These cryoprotectants were first developed in the early 1990′s and are still being used today by one of the leading Cryonic organizations, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. During the procedures conducted right after death, a type of injury that is particularly unavoidable at the current time, but does not stop the preservation of bodily tissue long term, is ischemic. Ischemic injury occurs when tissues get inadequate blood circulation which then deprives those tissues of vital vitamins and nutrients. This is why cryonic organizations have what they call a “standby procedure”, where the medical teams wait until the patient is declared legally dead and then begin the attempted process of vitrification immediately thereafter. The possibility of revival is one of the main reasons why any individual would consider putting themselves through the process of cryopreservation. With the ever increasing research and practical applications of fields such as medical nanotechnology, biotechnology, bioengineering, nanomedicine, and brain-computer interfaces (mind-uploading) expanding, there is no reason for more people not to consider this is an option for themselves and potentially other family members. If the rate of technology keeps increasing as it has for several decades now, hopefully the actual need for cryogenics will not be in high demand. As of 2012, there have been approximately 250 people who have undergone cryopreservation procedures. I will be starting the process of getting myself set up with an organization so I can prepare myself for post death with cryonics in 2014. If more people seek out this opportunity, and increase demand for the medical procedures then the price of the process will drop. Why can’t you be the next person? Neuropreservation is cryopreservation within the brain with surgical procedures used to remove the rest of the body, usually by means of cremation. Neuropreservation is one of the main two options that exist for persons interested in cryonics. The other option is fairly self explanatory, and that is “whole body” preservation. Here are several reasons why neuropreservation is important: 1. Preserving the brain is vital because it is the location of where that individual’s memory and personal identity are stored. 2. If future medical technologies are supposedly at the level of tissue regeneration, then by all means those technologies should be capable of rebuilding a body with a reanimated brain. 3. Since there is damage that does occur to the bodily tissues and organs during cryogenic
freezing that is currently unavoidable, leaving portions of the body un-revivable, choosing Neuropreservation is the more economical method which allows for easier transportation, and the amount of time devoted to neuropreservation techniques is substantial and has been improved with time. An individual must keep in mind that the various cryonic organizations have differing policies on whole body vs. neuropreservation. For example, the Cryonics Institute and American Cryonics Society will only do full body now, as opposed to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and others have both full body and neuropreservation options available. FINANCIAL & LEGAL ISSUES The cost of cryonics differs considerably depending on which organization, which procedure and transportation fees. The European cryonics group KrioRus can complete the neuropreservation process for $10,000, with Alcor’s procedure slated at $80,000. A full body cryopreservation usually costs more than $200,000. Alcor members have an annual rate of $500 for membership, while American Cryonics Society members pay $300 a year. Usually the cost of a “standby team” is not included in the fees for neuro or full body preservation, and can range from $28,000-$35,000 just for the Cryonics Institute, including transportation costs. Cryonics Institute members can also sign up for Standby and Transport by cryonic professionals with additional payment to the company Suspended Animation, Inc. Many have noted the substantial costs of cryonics being profitable, but the costs of cryonics are also high and well documented. The costs of cryonics is comparable to transplant surgeries, with a large percentage of the fees going towards a standby team of 5 cryonics professionals and a method to pay interest in paying for storage of the patient long term. Luckily, there is a method of which a good portion of people can afford these cryonic technologies, most often through a life insurance policy, which helps spread the cost of processes over many years. With this and the increasing demand for cryonic technologies and procedures the costs will go down over time. Legallly cryonics patients are treated as deceased persons, and Cryonics providers more often than not are seen as medical research institutes. PHILOSOPHICAL & ETHICAL QUESTIONS A fair percentage of the debate concerning cryonics amongst scientists and experts, is whether cryonics is an interment procedure or medicine. Particularly among the religious debaters, the issue of a soul comes into play. They claim that only a deity can resurrect the dead and that
reanimation of a person in cryonic suspension cannot be achieved. Attempting to label cryonics as “interment” cannot be used, because it assumes that cryonics do not work period, without any data or evidence. CRYONICS 2013-2023 The amount of people interested and having knowledge of what cryonics is increasing due to general increased interest and the number of people like myself who are advocating for cryonics as an option that is currently available that aids in the potential opportunity for life extension. One aspect of the research conducted on cryonics should be focused on improving the effectiveness of the “cryoprotectants” in minimizing the effects of ice cystalization in the body to as close to 0 as possible. Other means of cryogenics would be to find a solution that allows for the body to be best preserved via a solution, gel, etc that would allow for near “live” bodily tissues for the sake of longevity. Lastly, it will be interesting to see how much computers come into play regarding the processes involved in cryonics. Computers could be used to improve the energy efficiency of the storage chambers, the amount of costs associated with a standby team, lowering the costs of cryoprotectants with more effective alternatives. ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: Alcor Life Extension Foundation (Scottsdale, Arizona, United States) http://www.alcor.org/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/alcor.life.extension.foundation?fref=ts American Cyronics Society (Cupertino, California, United States) http://www.americancryonics.org/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanCryonicsSociety?fref=ts Cyronics Institute (Clinton, Michigan, United States) http://www.cryonics.org/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CryonicsInstitute?fref=ts KrioRus (Moscow, Russian Federation) http://old.kriorus.ru/en Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/KrioRus/112101728805776?fref=ts
III.
PHARMA
TELOMERASE HISTORY & TIPS BY: DAVID KEKICH
Dear Future Centenarian, Researchers studied the connection between telomeres, telomerase, and cellular and organismal aging, but the public had little awareness until the early 1990s. That’s when Dr. Michael West founded Geron Corporation and brought on board Dr. Bryant Villeponteau, Dr. William Andrews and a strong underlying team. In the following years, West succeeded in embedding a controversial thesis deeply into the public imagination: that the (re)activation of telomerase in somatic cells could retard or even reverse the degenerative aging process. There were always problems with this thesis, and with public (mis)understandings of it, but its sheer simplicity and public prominence has in direct and indirect ways advanced scientific research that has answered many of the questions the thesis forced upon the scientific community, and opened up important new avenues for research in telomere biology and in biomedical gerontology. The most direct and important fruits of that expansion of research into telomerase have been studies on the pharmacological and transgenic activation of telomerase in the tissues of aging mice. Several such reports have appeared over the years, each hailed prematurely as evidence of the life-and health-extending power of the enzyme. The most important of these have been a series of experiments by María Blasco, PhD, SENS Research Foundation Advisory Board member and Director of the Molecular Oncology Programme at Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). Dr. Blasco has gone on to develop a blood test kit to measure the critical short telomeres. Prior tests only measured the less important mean telomere length. Now, an inexpensive saliva test has been developed which holds promise to be an accurate telomere measuring tool.
A tantalizing report in this series has appeared - but to understand it in context, we will first review those that led up to it. If you have an interest in telomere biology, you should read the whole thing. It’s very educational, and a good illustration of the way in which there are no sudden breakthroughs in science - just sudden attention paid to steadily ongoing progress. From the SENS Foundation via FightAging.org: You may have been following the emergence of telomerase activation products. The first was introduced at $25,000 per year and has come down in price substantially. It’s still out of reach for most. Other effective and more affordable products followed, and there are others on the horizon. The better ones have gone into more extensive human studies. Results should be announced starting in several months. In addition, the spotlight has been shining on telomerase-supporting lifestyle habits. Stressreduction, exercise, diet and supplements such as fish oil should be your first line of defense against telomere shortening. Within a few years, a stem cell therapy may be available that resets your aging clock/telomere length in many or most of your organs’ cells. More on this as it develops. Each new advance rests upon decades of past work and the efforts of a range of other research groups. It also illustrates the need to look past the headlines to pick at the details of heralded research. More Life, David Kekich
SUPPLEMENTAL SKINNINESS BY: JOSH MITTELDORF, PH.D
We know that cutting calories has multiple health benefits and makes you thinner. But suppose we play tricks to be thinner without eating less – is there still a benefit for health and longevity? This week we review Irvingia, Metformin, Pycnogenol, Green Coffee Extract, Acarbose, and old-fashioned amphetamides for weight loss. Also avoiding carbs and increasing fiber, intermittent fasting and bursts of exercise before eating. Weight-loss drugs have a bad name from the days when people were a little too eager to lose weight for appearance’s sake, and willing to take risks with their health to do so. Early weight loss drugs were stimulants, with all the associated risks: they make you feel good, they keep you from sleeping, they let you down, they’re habit-forming. Now we know that keeping weight down is an increasingly important part of staying healthy as we age. There is a new generation of drugs and supplements that work through different channels than the old ones, and some of them have long-term benefits independent of weight loss. I’m coming from a perspective based on the loss of insulin sensitivity as a primary driver of aging. This is the essence of “metabolic syndrome” or “Type 2 Diabetes”, but in a milder form, this is a part of how we all age. Loss of insulin sensitivity causes us to gain fat cells, which exacerbates loss of insulin sensitivity in a vicious cycle. Metabolic syndrome, even in its mild form, is associated with increased risk of cancer and heart disease. Simply eating less is the best medicine in principle, but a large majority of people who start off well by applying willpower end up actually gaining weight. (1, 2) Hence there are tricks and treatments, strategies and diet fads. My advice (as usual) is to recognize that diet is very individual, to try different diets and diet aids until you find something that works for you. Here’s a brief guide to what’s available. GREEN COFFEE EXTRACT This is the latest among the new generation of supplements that affect the insulin metabolism. GCE slows the absorption of sugar and reduces the secretion of the enzyme (amylase) that turns
starches to sugar in the digestive tract, and also blocks the enzyme glucose-6-phosphatase that makes sugar in the liver. Overall less of the food energy passing through the intestine is absorbed into the body, and to this extent taking green coffee extract should be expected to have the same benefit as eating less. The primary active ingredient may be chlorogenic acid, but its effect has not been separated from other phytoesters included in the extract. The extract contains no caffeine7. In the best results to date, subjects lost an average 8 kg over 22 weeks, without consuming less calories. A 2011 review (before this latest study) found clear evidence that GCE is effective as advertised, but bemoaned the fact that all the research in the field was linked to companies that stood to pofit from the sale of GCE. Chlorogenic acid is also found in sunflower seeds and prunes. IRVINGIA Leptin is a hormone that signals your brain that you’ve had enough to eat, and signals your fat cells to burn up their fat stores. As we age, we lose sensitivity to leptin (as to insulin). Irvingia is the extract of an African bush mango, purported to increase leptin sensitivity. There are reports of large weight loss in a short time with irvingia (3, 4) but the studies are shortterm and there are ambiguities in their design, so results are often summarized by reviewers as “inconclusive” (5, 6). OTHER WAYS TO PREPARE THE INSULIN SYSTEM BEFORE EATING There are several other foods reported to help prevent the insulin spike from a meal, when taken 20 before eating anything else. These include cinnamon, vinegar, and grapefruit. PYCNOGENOL Lowers blood sugar after eating, effectively improving insulin sensitivity. This is a supplement in the same class as others mentioned here, and may
