Why Don't Futurists Try Harder to Stay Alive?, asks Rob Wiblin at Overcoming Bias

Suppose you want to live for more than 10 thousand years. (I'll assume that suffices for the "immortalist" designation). Many here do.

Suppose in addition that this is by far, very far, your most important goal. You'd sacrifice a lot for it. Not all, but a lot.

How would you go about your daily life? In which direction would you change it?

I want to examine this in a sequence, but I don't want to write it on my own, I'd like to do it with at least one person. I'll lay out the structure for the sequence here, and anyone who wants to help, by writing an entire post (these or others), or parts of many, please contact me in the comments, or message. Obviously we don't need all these posts, they are just suggestions. The sequence won't be about whether it is a good idea to do that. Just assume that the person wants to achieve some form of Longevity Escape Velocity. Take as a given that it is what an agent wants, what should she do?

 

1) The Ideal Simple Egoistic Immortalist - I'll write this one, the rest is up for grabs.

Describes the general goal of living long, explains it is not about living long in hell, about finding mathy or Nozickian paradoxes, about solving the moral uncertainty problem. It is just simply trying to somehow achieve a very long life worth living. Describes the two main classes of optimization 1)Optimizing your access to the resources that will grant immortality 2)Optimizing the world so that immortality happens faster.  Sets "3)Diminish X-risk" aside for the moment, and moves on with a comparison of the two major classes. 

 

2) Everything else is for nothing if A is not the case -

Shows the weaker points (A's) of different strategies. What if uploads don't inherit the properties in virtue of which we'd like to be preserved? What if cryonics facilities are destroyed by enraged people? What if some X-risk obtains, you die with everyone else? What if there is no personal identity in the relevant sense and immortality is a desire without a referent (a possible future world in which the desired thing obtains)? and as many other things as the poster might like to add.

 

3) Immortalist Case study - Ray Kurzweil -

Examines Kurzweil strategy, given his background (age, IQ, opportunities given while young etc...). Emphasis, for Kurzweil and others, on how optimal are their balances for classes one and two of optimization.

 

4) Immortalist Case study - Aubrey de Grey -

 

5) Immortalist Case study - Danila Medvdev -

Danila has been filming everything he does hours a day. I don't know much else, but suppose he is worth examining.

 

6) Immortalist Case study - Peter Thiel

 

7) Immortalist Case study - Laura Deming

She's been fighting death since she was 12, went to MIT to research on it, and recently got a Thiel fellowship and pivoted to fundraising. She's 20.

 

8) Immortalist Case study - Ben Best

Ben Best directs Cryonics Institute. He wrote extensively on mechanisms of ageing, economics and resource acquisition, and cryonics. Lots can be learned from his example.

 

9) Immortalist Case study - Bill Faloon

Bill is a long time cryonicist, he founded the Life Extension Foundation decades ago, and to this day makes a lot of money out of that. He's a leading figure in both the Timeship project (super-protected facility for frozen people) and in gathering the cryonics youth togheter.

 

10) How old are you? How much are you worth? How that influences immortalist strategies. - This one I'd like to participate.

 

11) Creating incentives for your immortalism - this one I'll write

How to increase the amount of times that reality strikes you with incentives that make you more likely to pursue the strategies you should pursue, being a simple egoistic immortalist.

 

12, 13, 14 .... If it suits the general topic, it could be there. Also previous posts about related things could be encompassed.

 

Edit: The suggestion is not that you have to really want to be the ideal immortalist to take part in writing a post. My goals are far from being nothing but an immortalist. But I would love to know, were it the case, what should I be doing? First we get the abstraction. Then we factor in everything else about us and we have learned something from the abstraction.

Seems people were afraid that by taking part in the sequence they'd be signalling that their only goal is to live forever. This misses both the concept of assumption, and the idea of an informative idealized abstraction.

What I'm suggesting we do here with immortality could just as well be done with some other goal like "The Simple Ideal Anti-Malaria Fighter" or "The Simple Ideal Wannabe Cirque de Soleil".      

 

 

So who wants to play?

 

 

 

Today this girl I met comes to my place, allegedly to get some books about her new interests, singularity, immortalism, cryonics.

Actually, she wanted to ask me a question, a question about which I could use some rational opinion.

She says: "So, here is the real reason I came here. I'm thinking of making a documentary, a movie, and it would be about, well.... about you."

(I am shocked)

"So, yes, a movie about you, and the fact that you want to live forever, it would have interviews with friends, parents, girlfriend, and a lot with you" "What do you think?" 

(I sit down in the floor to think about it)

The conversation continues and I generally sense she wants to do something interesting, somewhat controversial, kind of humoristic, but at the same time striking some topics that are really unheard of around here (Brazil)

Now, I am looking for opinions. From an utilitarian perspective, and given that I am directing the Humanity+ or Transhumanist group of Brazilians, should I go with it?   My concern is basically not about me, but about how will a movie about me influence, positively or negatively, the growing H+ movement in Brazil, given the inferential distances, prejudices, and mysterianism that might surround the whole interaction between the movie's memes, and the spectator's memes. 

(from here below, the translation is google tradutor, not mine)

Positive aspects: The film would be seen at festivals, and at least a few hundred to tens of thousands of people would see it. These people might be intrigued by the prospect of living much, and it could become a platform for attracting people to transhumanismolatino (and eventually to other stuff, like GWWC and Singinst, but that is a side dish).

It would be a good opportunity to bring out various issues that in Brazil have been neglected until now. (cryonics, transhumanism, biological immortality, singularity)

Reinforce my good habits, like eating healthily, work more earnestly, etc ...

Negative aspects: it may end up passing a bad image of me (imagine the mythical average person, not that smart, somewhat religious,  seeing a  guy who wants to live forever in a video, is very strange) and therefore my bad image would spread to stuff I represent, like the Provisional Team, the Singularity Institute, Transhumanismo Latino, etc......

May defame my image with women (who would date an immortalist after all .....)

 I may become a stigma simplified, I  would just be classified as an immortalist, and no other characteristics will ever cross the knowledge of people, they always see me just like that. And the institutions that I represent / drive, would suffer accordingly.

I have put up a poll in the comment section down here, so that I can know your opinion, please take the time to vote, thank you.

 

 

There's a good song by Eminem - If I had a million dollars.  So, if I had a hypothetical task to give away $30 million to different foundations without having a right to influence the projects, I would distribute them as follows, $3 million for each organization:

1. Nanofactory collaboration, Robert Freitas, Ralph Merkle – developers of molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Robert Freitas is the author of the monography Nanomedicine.
2. Singularity institute, Michael Vassar, Eliezer Yudkowsky – developers and ideologists of the friendly Artificial Intelligence
3. SENS Foundation, Aubrey de Grey – the most active engineering project in life extension, focused on the most promising underfunded areas
4. Cryonics Institute – one of the biggest cryonics firms in the US, they are able to use the additional funding more effectively as compared to Alcor
5. Advanced Neural Biosciences, Aschwin de Wolf – an independent cryonics research center created by ex-researchers from Suspended Animation
6. Brain observatory – brain scanning
7. University Hospital Careggi in Florence, Paolo Macchiarini – growing organs (not an American medical school, because this amount of money won’t make any difference to the leading American centers)
8. Immortality institute – advocating for immortalism, selected experiments
9. IEET – institute of ethics and emerging technologies – promotion of transhumanist ideas
10. Small research grants of $50-300 thousand

Now, if the task is to most effectively invest $30 million dollars, what projects would be chosen? (By effectiveness here I mean increasing the chances of radical life extension)

Well, off the top of my head:

1. The project: “Creation of technologies to grow a human liver” – $7 million. The project itself costs approximately $30-50 million, but $7 million is enough to achieve some significant intermediate results and will definitely attract more funds from potential investors.
2. Break the world record in sustaining viability of a mammalian head separate from the body - $0.7 million
3. Creation of an information system, which characterizes data on changes during aging in humans, integrates biomarkers of aging, and evaluates the role of pharmacological and other interventions in aging processes – $3 million
4. Research in increasing cryoprotectors efficacy - $3 million
5. Creation and realization of a program “Regulation of epigenome” - $5 million
6. Creation, promotion and lobbying of the program on research and fighting aging - $2 million
7. Educational programs in the fields of biogerontology, neuromodelling, regenerative medicine, engineered organs - $1.5 million
8. “Artificial blood” project - $2 million
9. Grants for authors, script writers, and art representatives for creation of pieces promoting transhumanism - $0.5 million
10. SENS Foundation project of removing senescent cells - $2 million
11. Creation of a US-based non-profit, which would protect and lobby the right to live and scientific research in life extension - $2 million
11. Participation of  “H+ managers” in conferences, forums  and social events - $1 million
12. Advocacy and creating content in social media - $0.3 million