Accelerating Future

The creators of this documentary teaser are raising money to continue work on their life extension documentary!

Comments Off

In Sonia Arrison’s book 100 Plus, in chapter 8, she discusses two groups of people spreading the longevity meme: “salespeople” and “mavens”. Let me pull the quotes that define these terms, starting with “salesperson”:

“‘All over the world and right in your backyard, there are people who are steadily pushing back the frontier of aging. They are not content to simply wither away, becoming frail and feeling worthless,’ says CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Dr. Gupta is one of the people leading the charge in spreading the meme that healthy life extension is not only a possibility but is also worth fighting for. A neurosurgeon and chief medical correspondent for CNN, he is on the front lines when it comes to discovering and explaining cutting-edge science. Former president Bill Clinton calls him “the world’s doctor,” and the public relies in him to separate medical fact from fiction. Aside from his regular news reports, Dr. Gupta has written a couple of books that explain how advances in science are promoting health extension. His messages is that there is a tsunami of longevity-related research in the works and that “there is nothing more important.” Dr. Gupta might think of himself as simply a doctor who is informing the public about new advances, but when it comes to explaining how the longevity meme has caught on, we could call him a “salesperson.”

Labeling Dr. Gupta a salesperson is not derogatory. He is obviously not trying to “sell” a product in return for money. Rather, the term is derived from Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book The Tipping Point, in which he explains how certain people and circumstances come together to make an idea unstoppable. In this context a salesperson is someone who exudes energy, enthusiasm, and charm, someone who can effectively and charismatically explain concepts and ideas. Of course, Dr. Gupta isn’t alone in this role. Society has reached a longevity tipping point because many players are involved.

Now, “maven”:

“While salespeople work to popularize a new meme, those who help build it can be called “mavens.” These are the people who are committed to collecting and disbursing information. They are like databanks, almost compulsively collecting and offering data to others who show interest. In the longevity movement, there are a lot of these types of people, ranging from those who are seen as either cutting edge or “fringe” to those who are more mainstream.

One well-known maven is Aubrey de Grey, whom we learned a bit about in Chapter 2. A computer scientist turned gerontologist, de Grey describes himself as a “fighter at heart.” He battles aging, he says, because of the suffering it causes. “Aging is just like smoking: It’s really bad for you. It shortens your life, it typically makes the last several years of your life rather grim, and it also makes those years pretty hard for your loved ones.”

3 Responses »

Sonia Arrison is kicking ass everywhere these days with her new best selling book, 100 Plus. Her book made the Post’s bestsellers list weeks ago, and she’s had good coverage on WSJ.com. Go, Sonia, go!

Relatedly, Reason has a post up on how “A Great Deal of What People Say About Radical Life Extension is Utterly Divorced From Reality”. Check it out.

No Responses »

From The Independent:

Even by Silicon Valley standards, the grand design drawn up by William and Michael Andregg is hugely ambitious. Halcyon Molecular, the company that the brothers founded in 2008, is developing a way to sequence the human genome – and thus unlock the deepest secrets of DNA – faster and cheaper than ever before, and they have embarked on their adventure with financial muscle from billionaire members of a venture-capitalist fraternity known as the PayPal Mafia. That, on the face of it, sounds commendable enough, but there’s a two-part qualification to their basic plan which places the enterprise outside of the ordinary and teases the limits of the imagination.

First, there is the relative inexperience of the Andregg brothers. William is 29, Michael just a year older, and both are college drop-outs — but given Silicon Valley’s impressive track record for nurturing and funding obsessive, unconventional young innovators, their age is hardly unusual. The surprise is the long-term mission of Halcyon Molecular: to solve “the biggest challenge humans can individually face – disease and mortality”, as the mission-statement poster in their office reception says. Put another way, they’re supercharging the effort to map life’s biological code in almost unimaginable digital detail and, by doing so, ultimately, to attempt to conquer death itself.

I did a half-time stint for Halcyon Molecular last Fall, contributing to their website and other writing projects.

3 Responses »

2 Responses »

My friend Kent Kemmish, at Halcyon Molecular, has offered to put up $50 for someone who does the best animated flash version of Nick Bostrom’s classic essay “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant” (German version). Let’s say that the challenge stands for one month, until August 7th.

My other friend Kevin Fischer is also putting in $50 for a total of $100.

Would anyone else be interested in adding to that purse? We probably need to boost it by a few times to make this happen.

Updates:

Kent Kemmish initially put in $50.
Kevin Fischer put in $50.
Luke Parrish put in $50.
Steve put in $50.
Christopher Hamersley put in $50.
Lincoln Cannon put in $50.
Didier Coeurnelle put in $200.

The purse is now at $500.

Kickstarter won’t work because it has to be created by the person who does the project, and they are encumbered by having to promise deliverables. Both of these do not apply in this situation.

20 Responses »

A new article from Ben Best in Cryonics magazine:

I am an ardent supporter of Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his work to advance rejuvenation science. The man is priceless and unique in his concepts, brilliance, dedication, organizational abilities, and networking skill. His impact on anti-aging science has been powerful. I have attended all four of the conferences he has organized at Cambridge University in England. For the February 2006 issue of LIFE EXTENSION magazine I interviewed Dr. de Grey, and for the December 2007 issue of LIFE EXTENSION I wrote a review of ENDING AGING, the book he co-authored with Michael Rae.

Dr. de Grey asserts that aging is the result of seven kinds of damage – and that technologies that repair all seven types of damage will result in rejuvenation. His seven-fold program for damage repair is called SENS: “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence”. Dr. de Grey asserts that repairing aging damage is a more effective approach than attempting to slow or prevent aging, and I agree with him. Being an ardent supporter of SENS has not stopped me from simultaneously being a critic of aspects of his program that I think are flawed or deficient. I will attempt to outline some of my criticisms in simple language, assuming that my readers have some knowledge of basic science.

Continue.

2 Responses »

About:

The International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP) is an independent non-profit initiative serving the aging research community, academic, corporate, patient advocacy and charitable funding organizations worldwide.

The AgingPortfolio.Org system is a flexible and highly scalable knowledge management system developed to enable funding organizations to collaborate, track, analyze, structure, make decisions and set directions for future research efforts in aging and also address the needs of research investigators, health care policy makers, government officials, interest groups and general public.

5 Responses »

I saw that ImmInst was mentioned in Newsweek recently, in an article about Tim Ferriss. Immortality Institute is also mentioned in his new book, which was #1 on Amazon I believe. Here’s the bit:

Ferriss is on the bleeding edge of a new trend in self-tracking and experimentation. “It’s happening because almost everyone has a data-gathering device,” he says. “It’s never been easier to gather your own data in an actionable way.” Case in point is one of his former investments, DailyBurn.com, which tracks your diet and workout sessions using an iPhone. Other sites such as CureTogether.com let you open-source clinical trials, so you can see which do-it-yourself experiments work. Meanwhile, new organizations like the Quantified Self and the Immortality Institute are connecting self-experimenters who want to trade data in a centralized fashion.

Tim Ferriss is an interesting fellow. His approach to fitness can simply be summed up as a combination of aggressiveness, self-monitoring, and the scientific method.

2 Responses »

H/t Living to 150.

I highly recommend Aubrey’s book… it has 4.5 stars on Amazon. The book is a quick read and includes lots of details on SENS that don’t appear elsewhere. It also includes the story of how Aubrey came up with SENS in a hotel room in California. If anything, parts of it (near the beginning) are stuff you may have heard of, so skipping 100 or so pages can make it easier going. It has a total of 400 pages, which is pretty good. Most people aren’t familiar with the details it contains, but they’re very interesting biologically because Aubrey, and his collaborator Michael Rae, really have an unusual take on aging that sets Aubrey and a few others apart from everyone else. They hypothesize many research avenues which may contain value which aren’t really being pursued, or are only being pursued by the SENS Foundation.

No Responses »

Fight Aging has the links.

No Responses »

Covered by the Guardian last month:

Cleopatra may have bathed in asses’ milk to preserve her youth but Nursultan Nazarbayev, the autocratic president of Kazakhstan, wants nothing less than an elixir of life to keep him going.

Not satisfied with 19 years in charge of the gas-rich central Asian state, Nazarbayev urged scientists today to unlock the secret to immortality.

The 70-year-old leader stressed in a speech that a new scientific research institute in the capital Astana should study “rejuvenation of the organism,” as well as “the human genome, production of human tissue and creation of gene-based medicines”.

In an aside to students, Nazarbayev added: “As for the medicine of the future, people of my age are really hoping all of this will happen as soon as possible.”

Continue.

No Responses »