Dark Matter of Transhumanism

Enjoy watching my talk at Stanford Advancing Humanity Symposium. In this talk I am sharing our wonder about why haven’t the ideas of life extension won. It is not clear why isn’t every person on Earth concerned with their longevity. There are several serious reasons that I mention in my presentation, but even all of them combined don’t give the answer to this question. I am also looking at different possible scenarios of how the extending longevity ideas could rise to power. I’d like to know which scenarios you think is the most likely one. Please, share your thoughts.

Here’re the slides.

Thomas Perls – Increasing Genetic Influence Upon Exceptional Longevity with Older and Older Ages

Here’s a talk by Dr. Thomas Perls at the 2nd Genetics of Aging and Longevity Conference. Dr. Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Boston University Medical Center,  is the founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. A significant portion of the study is devoted to understanding why centenarians delay or escape Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders.

Second Transhumanist Political Meeting Took Place in Moscow

The Second Transhumanist Political Meeting took place on Saturday, September 22, 2012 in the very center of Moscow in Revolution Square right opposite the famous Bolshoi Theater. For the secont time Russian transhumanists went to the streets and declaired their demands, which are – life and youth for everyone, development of new biomedical technologies and development of life extension therapies. The meeting was organized by the Russian Transhumanist Movement. I loved the atmosphere. It’s such a pleasure to be surrounded by like-minded people, who understand the importance of common actions aimed like this one. The meeting was aimed at publicly stating that we need our lives to be protected and extended. We demanded more money to be dedicated to research aimed at eliminating aging and life extension. In this picture Mikhail Batin is saying a couple of words about his new transhumanist book Futurology that he co-authored with Alexei Turchin.

The poster says: “250 years of life for everyone”

“We are against death!”

Posters from left to right: “Eternal youth to the masses”, “People must live” and “For cryonics”.

Alexei Turchin, expert in global risks, is showing Anna Arlanova, actress, the book Futurology, which can be thought of as a transhumanist text book.

Dr. Yury Pichugin is advocating that cryonics must be recognized as a credible scientific field, that holds a lot of potential for the humanity and that more money has to be spent on research in the area of cryobiology.

Daria Khalturina, lobbying expert, is signing the petition to increase funding for research aimed at life extension addressed to the Russian authorities.

“The right to live is the main human right”

“Overpopulation is a myth”, “Protect our right for life!”

“I want to become a Genetically Modified Organism”

“We are for regenerative medicine” and “The retired must live”.

“I want to extend youth to 150 years”

 

Do you Want to Be Immortal? Really? – Yes, Really.

In this recent article the Huffington Post author George Young asks a question if we really want to be immortal. He tells the readers about Igor Vishev, Russian philosopher, who believes that the first people to become immortal are likely to be already born today. Igor Vishev is the follower of Russian cosmists, such as Nikolai Fedorov, Vladimir Vernadsky and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

From Fedorov on, a main cosmist idea has been to overcome death. For Fedorov individual immortality was not sufficient; our ultimate task was to bring back to life all humans who had ever lived. A devout if eccentric Christian, Fedorov viewed the resurrection as a human task, the Christ-like duty of the sons and daughters of humanity to restore life to those from whom it had been taken. Children would use future scientific technology to resurrect their parents, who in turn would resurrect theirs, all the way back to Adam and Eve.

And then after telling the story of Russian cosmists the author of the article simply becomes blind all of a sudden and falls into the trap built by shortsightedness and inability to think rationally. He writes:

The important question now may not be whether remaking ourselves and our universe to eliminate limits to present life is possible, but whether it is desirable. For centuries poets have intuited profound value in the mystery of death. As Shakespeare tells us in Sonnet 73, death gives life meaning, and love grows more strong for that “which thou must leave ere long.” Or, as Wallace Stevens wrote in “Sunday Morning,” “Death is the mother of beauty.” Could many of our best intangibles be lost in the transition from human to “transhuman”?

Shakespeare knew nothing about antibiotics and resuscitation. He had no choice but to accept death, otherwise it would be just too hard to live knowing that death is the worst, most horrible thing that can happen. It is so much easier to attribute death some meaning or even positive qualities. It means that we don’t have to fight it or fear it, death is normal, good even and we can get back to our everyday routine. But the reality is 100% different. Death is not the mother of beauty. Death is the mother of worms, eating your rotting body. Death makes your life worth nothing. And it doesn’t matter if you leave your work behind – you won’t care, because there will be no you. Just like every dying pharaoh would trade all the gold and pyramids he owns for another day of life, every lethally sick person would give everything he owns for the cure, just to live one more day, just to breathe for a bit longer.

The question of what death is and how or whether we should attempt to eliminate it won’t be settled here, or anywhere, anytime soon. But if Igor Vishev is right, someone alive today — certainly not the one writing these words, but maybe someone reading them — may be around long enough to know the answer.

I understand why George Young is so against immortality – he doesn’t believe he will be able to use life extension technologies. He is a senior citizen at the moment and this makes him pessimistic. His mind wants to protect him from the frightening thought that some people will become immortal, forever young maybe, but not him. So his mind tries to justify death in his own eyes.

But Mr. Young may be wrong in his assumption that he is not going to benefit from life extension technologies. If the existing life extension results are transferred from model animal to humans, he may well have the chance to live for quite some more time. And during this extra time there’s a good chance some new technologies would be developed to prolong his life even more. We don’t know this for sure, but we have to fight for our lives.

The more optimistic and unbiased articles we have about the possibility of life extension, the greater our chances are to eliminate all the age-related diseases and make people live much healthier and, most importantly, much longer lives.

We are Organizing Genetics of Aging and Longevity Conference

I am proud to announce that Science for Life Extension Foundation is one of the organizers of the 2nd international Genetics of Aging and Longevity conference. It is going to be an amazing and actually unprecedented conference focused on genetic mechanisms of aging and longevity. Check out the list of our invited speakers. I can’t wait to hear the prominent researchers sharing their experience in making model animals live longer. By the way, we are proud to have all the longevity-record braking researchers, who extended the lifespan of yeast, nematodes, fruit  flies and mice. You can’t miss this meeting. I encourage you to go ahead and register. It’s the end of April, beautiful spring in Moscow. For those who have never been here before, here’s your chance to kill two birds with one stone – learn a lot about aging and discover one of the most beautiful and dynamic cities in the world.

Transhumanist Media Content

We, as well as the leaders of transhumanism all over the world, have a challenge to deal with. It is the development of a convincing advertising, agitprop content that attracts attention to our topic. We also must impel people to act in favor of radical life extension. We need video-blogs, scientific and popular science lectures, movies, ads and virus videos. We hardly have anything, and anyway if there’s something then it’s rather low quality.

On the other hand, the problem is that all the movies and presentations demonstrated in different countries did not cause much impact. The number of supporters is growing, but incredibly slow. It may seem that the flow of «natural information» about the scientific progress has to draw an educated listener to a conclusion that radical life extension is possible and that it’s their top priority. However, in reality we observe the unwillingness of people to consider fighting death.

There is a vicious cycle: a large budget is needed to create a good media product, but in order to have a large budget, one needs to have a persuasive media product.

Fighting Aging is the Most Important Goal

 

The First Political Meeting on Immortality in History

It says: “150 years of life for everyone.” This is one of the posters shown at the meeting on immortality that took place on Saturday, September 24 in the very center of Moscow, right across the street from the famous Bolshoy Theater. It was such a great gathering. I loved the atmosphere. Approximately 100 people came to support immortality, creating new technologies, regenerative medicine, genomic research and everything related to fighting aging and radical life extension. Here are some pictures from this superb meeting that left me with a warm feeling and positive impression.

The Best Strategy for 5,000,000,000 people

Last week I gave a talk at the Singularity University about how we can extend life. Those who have never heard about the Singularity University, should definitely check out what the SU is all about. I talked about the current records in life extention achieved in model animals, overviewed the main scientific approaches to fighting aging and looked at why activation of stress resistance genes may be a very good idea for extending our longevity. I wrapped up by noting the potential profitable business side of life extension, which is creation of geroprotective drugs.

You can find the presentation “The Best Strategy for 5,000,000,000 people” here.

A couple of pictures from the place where great ideas and poeple are mixed together with the common goal of transforming the humanity. Although, it’s such a pity that life extension doen’t get much attention.

TEDMED sold to Jay Walker

One of the greatest conferences in the world, TEDMED, has recently gained new leadership. TEDMED was co-founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Marc Hodosh and now has a new co-owner, Jay Walker. The deal caused a bit of a scandal when Richard Saul Wurman has sent out a letter, where he expresses his disappointment with this change. Here’s the letter:

“Friends of TEDMED, sponsors (profit and particularly non-profit), conferees, personal friends, presenters and service providers,

On the advice of counsel and because I feel it is my moral and ethical responsibility to all of you who have given me and TEDMED the benefits of your enthusiasm, energy, brilliance and financial support, without which I would never have been able to produce this or any conference, I am writing to inform you that Mr. Hodosh, to whom I entrusted TEDMED, has sold the conference to Mr. Walker for $16 million with future additional payments of as much as $9 million, and options to Mr. Walker’s new company, TEDMED LLC. I will have no further involvement of any kind with TEDMED.  This was finalized without my concurrence while I was away on spring holiday with my wife and grandchildren.

You are all smart people and I don’t think I need to breast-beat or vent what has led me to this very difficult and painful decision (though I am sorely tempted).  Let it suffice to say that the way in which this deal was made and their plans for the future of the conference have made it impossible for me to continue to participate.

I have been informed by Mr. Walker and Mr. Hodosh in separate conversations that this year’s TEDMED will be the last one in San Diego at the beautiful Hotel Del Coronado. Next May it will move to the Washington, D.C. area and morph into a mega-event, rather like a medical Davos.  I point you to a New York Times article written by Andrew Ross Sorkin which gives the flavor of that event:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/a-hefty-price-for-entry-to-davos/?scp=2&sq=DAVOS&st=cse

This is completely alien to the spirit and passion with which TEDMED has thrived, and not in any way a form that has interest to me.  In fact, it is the antithesis of what I believe made TED, when I created it, TEDMED, and the eg conference, unique and magical.  The Washington event will even have formal dress balls in the evening.

So, if life is full of curve balls, I now have my catcher’s mitt on and I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest thanks to all of you for all you have given to me and the conference, and to let you know that I will be back in touch with you soon regarding, what I do think, will be the new direction for gatherings (as an alternative, not a replacement to the old form), a mold-breaking, new kind of communication that I have been contemplating for the last year and is now very close to being ready to announce.

It is called WWW.WWW and it will occur in September 2012 as a live and quite affordable iPAD enterprise app.  It will combine a small live audience with pairings of various combinations of the 100 greatest minds of the twenty-first century in improvised conversations addressing the key W words such as the World, Weather, Water, War, Well-being, Wealth, the Web, Wit; I think you get it.  Intellectual jazz.

I do hope to see all of you again on this and other future adventures.

RSW“

I have to say I’ve got a very good feeling about this change. Frankly speaking, I was quite disappointed to hear some of the speakers expressing ideas promoting death, like for example, the poetry written by Richard Saul Wurman’s wife. The main idea of that poem was “we are all going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it, and therefore shouldn’t even bother trying.” That was so strange to hear at the conference that is devoted to new technologies aimed at improving our health and extending our lives. Let me simply remind you that the conference started with the beautiful singing of Charity Tillemann-Dick, who got back to opera singing after having a double lung transplant. She and her doctors dared to fight death and won. That’s a great example of life-saving and life-improving technologies that TEDMED was created to promote. I hope the future TEDMED conferences will have more stories about how technology can help us improve and prolong people’s lives. We all need that, because life is the most precious thing that we have.