Personally, I don’t need any convincing. I’ve been an immortalist for years.
For many years, I think Aubrey de Grey was the most important figure in life extension. Of course medical progress advances in a highly decentralized way, but de Grey had a bold research program specifically aimed at curing the ageing process, and with his Methuselah beard made himself an icon of longevity. Then sleazy behavior towards a junior researcher provided the occasion for a power grab which saw him dethroned and expelled from his own research foundation. He started a new one and the research continues, but as far as charisma and leadership is concerned, the damage seems to be done.
These days Bryan Johnson seems to be the most visible immortalist, but it’s a different situation (although one that tracks the zeitgeist), because he’s not a researcher like de Grey, he’s a rich techbro doing propaganda of the deed, by being visibly and vocally in favor of anti-aging via the quantified life. As further context, I would claim that after several decades in which transhumanist futurism was solely the concern of SF fans and fringe intellectuals, we actually now have a political faction which favors that agenda in practice as well as in theory, namely the Musk-Andreessen axis which arguably formed the tech half of the techno-populist coalition that marked the first few months of Trump 2.0. They may have stepped back a little from politics now, since business rather than politics is their main means of getting things done, but the ideology—“e/acc” (G. Verdon) or “techno-optimism” (Andreessen) - is as active as ever, and I place Johnson in that context.
The current closest analog to de Grey might be MIT’s George Church, though he seems to be more a prophet of biotech in general, with anti-aging just being one of many radical schemes that he backs. And yet another important feature of the current landscape is the rise of AI. In the short term, one may expect that AI will participate in the R&D process in an unprecedented way; but truly superhuman AI could make human immortality fully feasible, while also putting an end to the human era of life on Earth (by replacing us as the apex predator). I have been known to say that humanity squandered its chance to do the truly rational thing and deliberately choose to work towards 1000-year lifespans; instead it busied itself for decades with its other concerns, leaving the struggle for longevity to activists like de Grey, and then when the power elites of the world really did decide to reach for a transhuman technology, it was AI, the one that can outright replace us and not just empower us, and they are doing so, while in a state of denial about this.
Personally, I don’t need any convincing. I’ve been an immortalist for years.
For many years, I think Aubrey de Grey was the most important figure in life extension. Of course medical progress advances in a highly decentralized way, but de Grey had a bold research program specifically aimed at curing the ageing process, and with his Methuselah beard made himself an icon of longevity. Then sleazy behavior towards a junior researcher provided the occasion for a power grab which saw him dethroned and expelled from his own research foundation. He started a new one and the research continues, but as far as charisma and leadership is concerned, the damage seems to be done.
These days Bryan Johnson seems to be the most visible immortalist, but it’s a different situation (although one that tracks the zeitgeist), because he’s not a researcher like de Grey, he’s a rich techbro doing propaganda of the deed, by being visibly and vocally in favor of anti-aging via the quantified life. As further context, I would claim that after several decades in which transhumanist futurism was solely the concern of SF fans and fringe intellectuals, we actually now have a political faction which favors that agenda in practice as well as in theory, namely the Musk-Andreessen axis which arguably formed the tech half of the techno-populist coalition that marked the first few months of Trump 2.0. They may have stepped back a little from politics now, since business rather than politics is their main means of getting things done, but the ideology—“e/acc” (G. Verdon) or “techno-optimism” (Andreessen) - is as active as ever, and I place Johnson in that context.
The current closest analog to de Grey might be MIT’s George Church, though he seems to be more a prophet of biotech in general, with anti-aging just being one of many radical schemes that he backs. And yet another important feature of the current landscape is the rise of AI. In the short term, one may expect that AI will participate in the R&D process in an unprecedented way; but truly superhuman AI could make human immortality fully feasible, while also putting an end to the human era of life on Earth (by replacing us as the apex predator). I have been known to say that humanity squandered its chance to do the truly rational thing and deliberately choose to work towards 1000-year lifespans; instead it busied itself for decades with its other concerns, leaving the struggle for longevity to activists like de Grey, and then when the power elites of the world really did decide to reach for a transhuman technology, it was AI, the one that can outright replace us and not just empower us, and they are doing so, while in a state of denial about this.