Action

LongeCity Small Grants

Mar 20 2013 02:04 PM | ImmInst in Action

With the support of our Members and advertisers LongeCity is able to offer a limited number of small grants and financial prizes.

The following types of projects can be supported:

• Science support: contribution to a scientific experiment that can be carried out in a short period of time with limited resources. The experiment should be distinguishable from the research that is already funded by other sources. This could be a side-experiment in an existing programme, a pilot experiment to establish feasibility, or resources for an undergrad or high-school student.

• Chapters support: organising a local meeting with other LongeCity members or potential members. LongeCity could contribute to the room hire, the expenses of inviting a guest speaker or even the bar tab.

• Travel support: attendance at conferences, science fairs etc where you are presenting on a topic relevant to LongeCity. Generally this will involve some promotion of the mission and/or a report on the then conference to be shared with our Members

• Grant writing: Bring together a team of scientists and help them write a successful grant application to a public or private funding body. Depending on the project, the award will be a success premium or sometimes can cover the costs of grant preparation itself.

• Micro matching fundraiser: If you manage to raise funds on a mission-relevant topic, LongeCity will match the funds raised. (In order to initiate one of these initiatives we usually also require that the fundraiser spends at least 500 ‘ThankYou points’ but this requirement can be waived in specific circumstances.)

• Outreach: Support for a specific initiative raising public awareness of the mission or of a topic relevant to our mission. This could be a local event, a specific, organised direct marketing initiative or a media feature.

• Articles: Write a featured article for the LongeCity website on a topic of interest to our members or visitors. We are mainly looking for articles on scientific topics, but well-researched contributions on a relevant topic in policy, law, or philosophy are also welcome.

Grant Size: this scheme includes
'micro grants' - up to $180
'small grants' - up to $500
Grant applications exceeding $500 can be received, but will not be evaluated conclusively under the small grants scheme. Instead, we we will review the application as draft and may invite a full application subsequently.

Decisions as part of the small grants programme are usually pretty quick and straightforward. However please contact us with a proposal ahead of time - we will not normally consider applications where the expenditure has already been incurred!
Proposals can be as short or elaborate as necessary, but normally should be about half a page long.

Only LongeCity Members can apply, but any Member is free to apply on behalf of someone else - thus, non-Members are welcome to find a Member to 'sponsor' their application.

Please email action@longecity.org with your proposal.
You can also use the ideas forum to prepare the proposal.For general questions, or to discuss the proposal informally, feel free to contact us at the above email or get in touch with Mind.

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"Healthy Aging" is not enough

Feb 09 2013 11:33 AM | brokenportal in Action

A Response to the "Compression of Morbidity" Mindset

"...there is no basis for the ardent hopes and positive statements made as to [its] safety and success[..], and [..] therefore, it would be a wrong, whether wilful or unknowing, to lead the people and perhaps governments at this time to believe the contrary;..."

I will come back to this quote shortly.

The popular and wide spread article about the need to support and fund the compression of morbidity called the "Longevity Dividend" is a good example of a solid piece detailing a need to fight aging. In it, the authors show the viability of slowing the aging process, urge people to support it, urge the government to direct funds to it, and urge places like the NIH to reserve more resources for it.

However, they don’t push for indefinite health-spans or indefinite life extension, here after referred to as indefinite life extension. They push rather for the 'compression of morbidity', or in other words, for more healthy years in the last period of a person’s average, traditional, 70- to 90- year life span.

“This compression of mortality and morbidity would create financial gains not only because aging populations will have more years to contribute, but also because there will be more years during which age-entitlement and healthcare programs are not used.”

S. Jay Olshansky, Daniel Perry, Richard A. Miller, Robert N. Butler, 2006

At the same time the authors work to discredit the pursuit of indefinite life extension. They suggest that altering genes would not be practical, useful, or ethical. They call indefinite life extension unrealistic and suggest that it is not feasible. Although they are not focused exclusively on compressing morbidity, as much of the gerontology community has been, they are still mired in old-school thinking.

The overall mindset includes older academic scholars who have grown through the younger, naïve dreaming stages (where people tend to think more about things like indefinite life extension) into the realm of more realistic endeavours like the compression of morbidity.

In response

We must never forget that we are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order of things that kills everybody.”

Alan Harrington

Achieving indefinite life extension is the most important, urgent, and time-sensitive cause ever undertaken in the history of humanity, and with all due respect, sentiments like those expressed by proponents of the compression of morbidity, though very noble and well meaning, are misleading and harmful to this cause.

Regardless of whether we ultimately find that we can achieve indefinite life extension or not, we need to go all the way and see. Our lives- this amazing shot at this incredible mysterious existence- depend on it. We can not afford to sell ourselves short on this.

If life is practical and useful, if choosing life over death is ethical, then whichever functional constructive approach to creating its indefinite healthy extension that we discover will be practical, useful, and ethical as well. Life is those things.

People are right when they say that it is not productive or healthy to over hype this cause, or anything for that matter. Incidental examples are not representative. Also we cannot afford to confuse this cause's efforts with hype when they are not. This is a real, urgent, life-or-death cause. Its components are by their very nature demanding, large, and extraordinary. They require reciprocating reflection, dialogue, and action.

This is more than a scientific endeavour; this cause demands work, development, and in depth sociological reform as well. The two need to work together and acknowledge each other, rather than occasionally (and some times more often) misunderstand each other. We work to help facilitate these and other aspects more fluently, as we continue growing toward where humanity needs this cause to go.

The number one reason why we need to choose indefinite life extension over the compression of morbidity is this:

We don’t have to know we can get there to go there,
but we do have to go there to get there.

Compression of Morbidity isn’t a bad thing per se. However, portraying to the public that indefinite life extension is not in the cards is.

If people think that they can not get indefinite life extension in time for them, they won’t fight nearly as hard as this cause needs them to.

People like Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation, who work on strategies for ending aging, say that the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 years old now. He’s not s

aying that the first person to live to 1,000 is alive now. There’s a big difference. “Might” means go and see; “is” means go and get. We aren’t going there to get indefinite life extension; we are going to see if it is there to get or not. Organisations like ImmInst, stress that the world can see indefinite life extension if it supports this goal with urgency.

When something is this important, allowing people to open their minds to the realities that breakthroughs may be around the corner is important.

To be sure though, we cannot announce that indefinite life extension is just around the corner, because we don’t know that. That’s not what this cause is saying. Those that suggest that we are saying things like that are wrong. Indefinite life extension may not be in the cards in any foreseeable future. If we never find it, and along the way we realize a compression of morbidity by say, 7 years, then great, that’s a great goal, and a much needed step. But these 7 years should not be the goal in and of itself.

It is not the goal in and of itself in the same way that getting the “No Coloreds Allowed” signs removed wasn’t the goal of the Civil Rights Movement or performing 50 more space launches to orbit the earth wasn’t the goal in getting to the moon. Martin Luther King Jr. stated the notion that it was no time for gradualism and that justice too long delayed was justice denied.

"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

They needed to set ambitious goals that went all the way.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

“…even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.”

John F. Kennedy

They needed to go there. It is the same for this cause.

We don’t have to know we can get there to go there, but we do have to go there to get there. Things like the removal of “Coloreds Only” signs, orbits around the earth and 7-year dividends, are parts of it, but the struggle for cilvil liberties and the moon landing would not have reached their potential if the visionaries had not dreamt to go all the way, rather than hoped to go a portion of the way.

“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree.
The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years.
The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!’”

We have to plant the seed that we are undertaking the quest for indefinite life extension now. We have to take into consideration the fierce urgency of now; we have to have a dream; we have to shoot for the moon. We have to start now. We have to go there. We have to see if our lives are in the cards for us or not. Missing out on this chance to exist here because we don’t go there would be as big of a tragedy as if the Americas were still undiscovered, blacks were still segregated, and the moon were still untouched.

This is the next great human mission. Through blood, sweat and tears, progress, joys, and dreams, our ancestors have delivered us to this cusp at the end of the technology era, which is emerging into the grand new Transhuman era. In a way, we have been preparing through out all of human existence for this. We cannot let our ancestors down. This is an immense homage we owe to them for their great sacrifices and hard work, as well as an obligation that we owe to ourselves and all of our dear progeny of the future.

There is no time to waste. We must plant the seeds we have been handed, the seeds of the movement for indefinite life extension, now. We have to get going now.

Let me get back to that statement from the beginning -- and quote it in full this time:

"...there is no basis for the ardent hopes and positive statements made as to the safety and successful use of the dirigible balloon or flying machine, or both, for commercial transportation or as weapons of war, and that, therefore, it would be a wrong, whether wilful or unknowing, to lead the people and perhaps governments at this time to believe the contrary;..."

Rear Admiral George Melville (1901)

Those who 'know better' are often worn down by a lifetime of trying.
The pioneers of important concepts and causes made their discoveries and pioneered their areas when they were different ages. Albert Einstein was 26, Isaac Newton was 23, Werner Heisenberg was 24, Bill Gates was 20, Alexander the Great was 20, Neil Armstrong was 39, and Meriwether Lewis & William Clark were 32 and 36, respectively. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. started advocating for the Civil rights of African Americans when he was 26, Christopher Columbus was 41, and Mahatma Gandhi was 45. In fact it is hard to think of any who were 50 or older. That is not though, to say that that there were not many great pioneers over the age of 50.

Those who kick against a prevailing mindset can expect ridicule,

even at the cusp of their breakthrough.

"...a physicist who professed such heresies is unworthy to teach science."

German Minister of Education,
when George Ohm's theory of electricity was published in 1827

We aren’t of those mindsets; we are of the mindset of one of the founders of the scientific method itself,

“But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this–that men despair and think things impossible.”

Francis Bacon

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. If people don’t want it, crave it, fight for it, and believe they can have it, they they are going to innovate at a much slower rate.

Fighters know this, and in their hearts, scientists know this as well.

“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”

General Douglas MacArthur

“100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.”

Wayne Gretzsky

We may not be able to get there, but we have to believe we can if we are to put forth the amount of effort that is needed to get it done in time for us if it is there.

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

Eden Phillpotts

We don’t intend to keep it waiting. The time is now.
For the love of life, we may not get there, but we have to go there, and we have to do it like our lives depend on it.

Eric Schulke

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taking action...

Jan 08 2013 08:03 PM | caliban in Action

What can I do!?

This is a natural question that those sharing the mission to abolish the blight of involuntary death often ask.
At LongeCity, we are providing a lot of community-sourced suggestions and for a long while we have wrestled with a succinct answer. Such a ‘take action’ page as provided by other organisations is still something we are looking to polish… but maybe the question also deserves a slightly longer answer – especially for those young people (whether in life or at heart, we get a lot of them especially at LongeCity) who ask the question in the context of planning to (re)orient their entire life and career towards life extension.

Over the next few months, I’m hoping to develop a short ‘primer’ to help with this most weighty of decisions.
This task is certainly too big, too important to be monopolized. I would therefore welcome any suggestions and alternative perspectives during the drafting stages.

to be continued...

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Elders Advice Video Prize

Jul 01 2012 08:09 PM | ImmInst in Action

Submit a video interview with someone aged 78 or older and win a book, CD or video game of your choice from the LongeCity store.

Entry conditions:

1- The person you are interviewing must be aged 78 or older. We are willing to trust you on this one, but we may ask for documentation if there is real doubt.

2- The interview should be between 8 and 10 minutes in length.

3- The interview *must* include an answer to all of the following questions:
-- Would you like to live forever and why or why not?
-- Why do you think you are still alive today?
-- Do you have any advice for people trying to live for a very long time?

4- Beyond these questions, you can decide to include anything of interest in the interview. You could ask the interviewee about their life history, memorable experiences, their nutrition, their philosophy, their life now, whatever you think is interesting.

5- Your equipment doesn't have to be professional. You can use a laptop, a webcam, a mobile phone camera -- as long as the quality is good enough that we can see and hear the persons you are interviewing.

6- Submissions will be displayed on the ImmInst website and the interviewee must have given consent to that.

7- Submissions may be rejected at the discretion of the ImmInst board for any reason.

8- ALL accepted submissions will win a prize as long as there is funding available!