Past and Present

Ten years ago teenager me was hopeful. And stupid.

The world neglected aging as a disease, Aubrey had barely started spreading memes, to the point it was worth it for him to let me work remotely to help with Metuselah foundation. They had not even received that initial 1,000,000 donation from an anonymous donor. The Metuselah prize was running for less than 400,000 if I remember well. Still, I was a believer.

Now we live in the age of Larry Page's Calico, 100,000,000 dollars trying to tackle the problem, besides many other amazing initiatives, from the research paid for by Life Extension Foundation and Bill Faloon, to scholars in top universities like Steve Garan and Kenneth Hayworth fixing things from our models of aging to plastination techniques. Yet, I am much more skeptical now.

Individual risk

I am skeptical because I could not find a single individual who already used a simple technique that could certainly save you many years of healthy life. I could not even find a single individual who looked into it and decided it wasn't worth it, or was too pricy, or something of that sort.

That technique is freezing some of your cells now.

Freezing cells is not a far future hope, this is something that already exists, and has been possible for decades. The reason you would want to freeze them, in case you haven't thought of it, is that they are getting older every day, so the ones you have now are the youngest ones you'll ever be able to use.

Using these cells to create new organs is not something that may help you if medicine and technology continue progressing according to the law of accelerating returns in 10 or 30 years. We already know how to make organs out of your cells. Right now. Some organs live longer, some shorter, but it can be done - for instance to bladders - and is being done.

Hope versus Reason

Now, you'd think if there was an almost non-invasive technique already shown to work in humans that can preserve many years of your life and involves only a few trivial inconveniences - compared to changing diet or exercising for instance- the whole longevist/immortalist crowd would be lining up for it and keeping back up tissue samples all over the place.

Well I've asked them. I've asked some of the adamant researchers, and I've asked the superwealthy; I've asked the cryonicists and supplement gorgers; I've asked those who work on this 8 hour a day every day, and I've asked those who pay others to do so. I asked it mostly for selfish reasons, I saw the TEDs by Juan Enriquez and Anthony Atala and thought: hey look, clearly beneficial expected life length increase, yay! let me call someone who found this out before me - anyone, I'm probably the last one, silly me - and fix this.

I've asked them all, and I have nothing to show for it.

My takeaway lesson is: whatever it is that other people are doing to solve their own impending death, they are far from doing it rationally, and maybe most of the money and psychology involved in this whole business is about buying hope, not about staring into the void and finding out the best ways of dodging it. Maybe people are not in fact going to go all-in if the opportunity comes.

How to fix this?

Let me disclose first that I have no idea how to fix this problem. I don't mean the problem of getting all longevists to freeze their cells, I mean the problem of getting them to take information from the world of science and biomedicine and applying it to themselves. To become users of the technology they are boasters of. To behave rationally in a CFAR or even homo economicus sense.

I was hoping for a grandiose idea in this last paragraph, but it didn't come. I'll go with a quote from this emotional song sung by us during last year's Secular Solstice celebration

Do you realize? that everyone, you know, someday will die...

And instead of sending all your goodbyes

Let them know you realize that life goes fast

It's hard to make the good things last

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