Foresight Visions – Reaching Longevity Escape Velocity

The Foresight vision weekend has its first panel

Sonia Arrison, Aubrey De Grey, Max More, Kevin Perrott compare strategies to extend human healthspans
– Snake oil vs the holy grail – cryonics – overpopulation vs stabilization –

There is Existential Hope website is tracking all of the topics at the Vision Weekend.

Increased Healthplan does confer longer lifespan. Aubrey says do not get hung up on that distinction. Long lifespan will give you more future choices.

Live transcript of highlights in the panel

No one is being forced to live longer than they want.
No one has to plan out their entire future life right now.

Suicide hot lines do not start with a question – Are you over 75 ? They do not hang up based upon age.

The Longevity movement has to be able to convince those outside the movement.
How do you activate those who are convinced about the life extension vision ?

100,000 people die everyday from aging.

There is terror management theory. In social psychology, terror management theory (TMT) proposes a basic psychological conflict that results from having a self preservation instinct, whilst realizing that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, and this terror is then managed by embracing cultural values, or symbolic systems that act to provide life with enduring meaning and value.

Will it make the inequality gap worse ? It depends upon the speed of rollout.
Is any inequality gap problem going to be worse than the 100,000 per day death from aging problem ?

Raising up the life expectancy of the poor countries is happening and it is being addressed and resolved irregardless of extreme life extension.

Increasing carrying capacity on the planet is being increased for capitalist reasons. The rollout of electric cars and solar power is because the projects and companies are profitable.

Good to have a portfolio of options and funded paths

Key is to have more passionate and intelligent people working on possible solutions and to provide them with funding and resources.

Geriatrics is investing too late to do anything.
Calico is doing basic research and redoing all of the existing work. They have a lot of resources and Sergey Brin and the others behind it know better. They have been to Foresight vision weekends in the mid to late 1990s. Aubrey first met Sergey back in the 1990s.

All measurements from publicly funded research should made available in realtime and shared openly.

Gates Foundation and the Parker Institute requires its funded programs to be far more open about their research.

Blockchain can be used to boost research openness while giving credit to the originator.

FDA and regulations are a problem, but changing it will be slow. It will be faster to get movement and change from the things funded by wealthy individuals.

Metabolism adjustment is too hard and preventing undesirable side effects would be hard to deal with.

Fixing aging damage is a more tractable approach.

Cryonics

Brain only preservation has technical advantages. The preservation can be optimized for the brain rather than the whole body. The freezing and preservation would be higher quality.
In California and Florida there would be a delay of two days before the body could be taken. The body would be on water ice during the regulatory delay. Taking the brain or head would be a tissue donation and would not be delayed.

Cryonics is not freezing dead people. We are stopping damage. Back in the 1940s if your heart had stopped you would be declared dead. Now we perform CPR and defibrillation. Technology changes when death is declared.

Background videos and information

Here is a google doc with background information.