Whenever I talk about indefinite life extension, the science and tech behind its development, and the desire for individuals to have the ultimate choice of when and how long they wish to live and die, the radical left almost always resorts to the argument, “Yeah, that sounds great, but then the rich aren’t going to provide it for the 99%. They’ll only keep it for themselves and let us die off.” How is this not equivalent to the conspiracy theory that the 1% are withholding the cure for cancer to the general populace?

It’s a bullshit viewpoint, in my opinion. Yes, the 1% are greedy fucks who care more about profits than anything else, but then, I ask you, how do they expect to earn profits from an extinct species?

While you’re trying to figure out an answer for that, I also find the idea that nothing would result from this kind of oppression to be asinine. Why? Here’s a good example: Black Friday. Every year Black Friday customers gather in the hundreds and thousands in each city, literally rioting, fighting, and killing people, just so they can get their hands on consumer products that’ll be outdated by next year. So if the cure for aging is being withheld from the masses, what the fuck do you think the masses are going to do? Just go home and sob? Ha! There’d be warfare on the streets the next morning.

Continue reading “Life Extension on sale for Black Friday? RIOT!” »

Procreative sexual activity has been at the heart of the evolutionary process for millions of years. Until recently, the situation was simple: a male and a female had sexual intercourse in order to produce offspring and thus ensure survival. But, in humans, there are certain signs that something profound may be happening, signs which may be pointing to the beginning of Radical Life Extension. I argue that reproduction is a tactic used by natural evolution in order to increase complexity and thus, survival. Reproduction equals aging. But, as we now may have the capability to increase complexity through technology, the reproduction stratagem may be downgraded and thus aging will also decrease.

Here, the term ‘Radical Life Extension’ specifically means the abolition of aging. Without the process of aging, however it is defined, people will not suffer age-related degenerative conditions, and they will not die of old age. Therefore, the terms ‘Radical Life Extension’,’ Indefinite Lifespans’, and ‘cure of age-related diseases’, all convey the same meaning: a life without aging. It is important to emphasize that I consider the process of aging to be directly related to that of reproduction. I argue that the process of reproduction is necessarily implicated in the process of aging (in other words, aging happens because we need to reproduce), as explained in my argument number 3 below.

In this context, I would also like to remark that by ‘reproduction’ I specifically refer to sexual (i.e. genetic) reproduction. Evolution may still continue to use (or begin to use) other forms of reproduction such as memetic reproduction and reproduction of noemes.

The main thrust of my discussion is that we are now beginning to witness the first tentative steps leading away from the significance of procreative sexual intercourse and towards the global emergence of other, sustained, non-procreative sexual preferences.

Continue reading “Sexuality, Evolution and the Abolition of Aging” »

BOOK PROPOSAL

The Prospect of Immortality − Fifty Years Later
Editor: Charles Tandy, Ph.D.
Publisher: Ria University Press
Distributor: Ingram
Timeline: To be published in 2014 (fifty years after 1964)

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Please look at Dr. Tandy’s chapter-by-chapter summary of Robert Ettinger’s classic, The Prospect of Immortality or consult the 1964 volume directly. Notice that Ettinger’s book consists of eleven chapters devoted to the following eleven topics:

Continue reading “Call for Contributors: The Prospect of Immortality − Fifty Years Later (Ed. Charles Tandy Ph.D.)” »

In is now quite clear that aging is not a simple phenomenon and it will not be overcome by using simple approaches. We need to increase the complexity and sophistication of our efforts in order to be in a better position to develop strategies against it. For this reason, I set up the ELPIS Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans (www.elpisfil.org) which is a scientific research organisation aiming to study aging from a complex evolutionary perspective.

The foundation’s research methodology is based mainly upon the ELPIS hypothesis (www.elpistheory.info). The initials stand for ‘Extreme Lifespans through Perpetual –equalising Interventions’. I developed this hypothesis in 2010 whilst trying to examine the reason behind the presence of aging. It was clear that aging is not an essential component of our evolutionary development, and if we find ways to study why nature has developed it, we may then be able to eradicate it. Currently, the chances of us dying from aging are heavily against us. By developing suitable interventions, we may be able to equalise the odds against us dying (i.e. remove aging as a cause of death).

Our method is different from most existing approaches aiming to eliminate aging. We are mainly interested in the ‘connection-approach’ and not so much in the ‘component-approach’. We believe that it is important to study how the different components of the organism are interconnected and regulated, rather than just repair the individual components. It is the ‘why aging happens’ rather than the ‘how it happens’ that interests us most. In order to make this clear let me mention an analogy with poliomyelitis.

Polio
*How it happens? There is inflammation and necrosis leading to damage of motor neurons and, ultimately, muscle weakness and paralysis
* Why it happens? Because the poliovirus causes it

Continue reading “Defying Aging: The ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans” »

By Avi Roy, University of Buckingham and Anders Sandberg, University of Oxford

Men who are unemployed for more than two years show signs of faster ageing in their DNA, according to a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers at the University of Oulu, Finland and Imperial College, London arrived at this conclusion by studying blood samples collected from 5,620 men and women born in Northern Finland in 1966. The researchers measured the lengths of telomeres in their white blood cells, and compared them with the participants’ employment history for the prior three years, and found that extended unemployment (more than 500 days in three years) was associated with shorter telomere length.

Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, which protect the chromosomes from degrading. With every cell division, it appears that these telomeres get shorter. And the result of each shortening is that these cells degrade and age.

Continue reading “Do unemployed people age faster?” »

The Lifeboat community doesn’t need me to tell them that a growing number of scientists are dedicating their time and energy into research that could radically alter the human aging trajectory. As a result we could be on the verge of the end of aging. But from an anthropological and evolutionary perspective, humans have always had the desire to end aging. Most human culture groups on the planet did this by inventing some belief structure incorporating eternal consciousness. In my mind this is a logical consequence of A) realizing you are going to die and B) not knowing how to prevent that tragedy. So from that perspective, I wanted to create a video that contextualized the modern scientific belief in radical life extension with the religious/mythological beliefs of our ancestors.

And if you loved the video, please consider subscribing to The Advanced Apes on YouTube! I’ll be releasing a new video bi-weekly!

This poem had originally appeared on Transhumanity.

Opt Not for Death

A cosmist’s cosmological comet is in correlation
with the connotational confrontation of dreams,
Dreams that are only dreamt by the dreary of death,
Death only dreamt when no dreams are left.
For what is left than the dichotomy of life and naught,
foretold by the whispers of our ancestors’ ancestors? (more…)

Giulio Prisco

I recently interviewed KurzweilAI’s Giulio Prisco for my podcast The Eternities. The below is a short piece I posted on Disinfo.com about the interview, which has stimulated some debate there. Listen to the interview.

From Disinfo.com:

Pascal’s Wager demonstrated a certain rationality to a belief in god. The seventeenth century philosopher, Pascal, argued that if one believes, yet god does not exist, nothing is lost in death. But, if god exists, the reward is eternal happiness.

Continue reading “Transhumanist Spirituality – A New Religion for the Modern Age?” »

Containing more than 160 essays from over 40 contributors, this edited volume of essays on the science, philosophy and politics of longevity considers the project of ending aging and abolishing involuntary death-by-disease 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 can.

The collection is edited by Franco Cortese. Its contributing authors include William H. Andrews, Ph.D., Rachel Armstrong, Ph.D., Jonathan Betchtel, Yaniv Chen, Clyde DeSouza, Freija van Diujne, Ph.D., John Ellis, Ph.D., Linda Gamble, Roen Horn, the International Longevity Alliance (ILA), Zoltan Istvan, David Kekich (President & C.E.O of Maximum Life Foundation), Randal A. Koene, Ph.D., Maria Konovalenko, M.Sc. (Program Coordinator for the Science for Life Extension Foundation), Marios Kyriazis, MD, M.Sc MIBiol, CBiol (Founder of the ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans and the medical advisor for the British Longevity Society), John R. Leonard (Director of Japan Longevity Alliance), Alex Lightman, Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE), Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D., Tom Mooney (Executive Director of the Coalition to Extend Life), Max More, Ph.D. , B.J. Murphy, Joern Pallensen, Dick Pelletier, Hank Pellissier (Founder of Brighter Brains Institute), Giulio Prisco, Marc Ransford, Jameson Rohrer, Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., MBA, JD., Peter Rothman (editor-in-chief of H+ Magazine), Giovanni Santostasi, Ph.D (Director of Immortal Life Magazine, Eric Schulke, Jason Silva , R.U. Sirius, Ilia Stambler, Ph.D (activist at the International Longevity Alliance), G. Stolyarov II (editor-in-chief of The Rational Argumentator), Winslow Strong, Jason Sussberg, Violetta Karkucinska, David Westmorland, Peter Wicks, Ph.D, and Jason Xu (director of Longevity Party China and Longevity Party Taiwan).

Available on Amazon today!