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How well do you know Aubrey de Grey?
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Sun Oct 27, 2019 12:34 pm
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Aubrey de Grey famously sports a very long beard, for a specific reason. Which one?
In honor of Methuselah, the very long-lived biblical figure after which he and Dave Gobel named the Methuselah Foundation, which they co-founded
His ex-wife asked him to grow one because she likes beards
He travels around the world all the time and often has no time to shave, so he actually decided to just let it grow
He lost a bet and he's a man of his word
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Before he became a biogerontologist, what other field was Aubrey de Grey working in, and why did he switch fields?
Computer science, and because not many other people worked on aging
Mechanical engineering, and because working in that field gave him the maintenance approach idea behind SENS
Biogerontology was actually his original field
Insurance, and because the elderly kept filing too damn many claims with his company
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In addition to being a famous biogerontologist, Aubrey de Grey is also a non-professional mathematician. In 2018, he made the news because he proved that
There are no intermediate sizes of infinite sets between the size of the set of the integers and the set of the real numbers, a.k.a. the continuum hypothesis
The chromatic number of the plane, that is the minimum number of colors you need to be able to paint points on a plane in such a way that no two adjacent points are of the same color, is at least 5
Every even number larger than two is the sum of two prime numbers, a.k.a. the Goldbach conjecture
The number of idiots born every second is at least 2
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During his university years in Cambridge, Aubrey de Grey was a rather strong player of a popular competitive game, but eventually he had to give up playing it, What was the game, and why did he stop playing?
Chess, and he stopped playing because he lost the final match of an important tournament
Go, and he stopped playing because he grew more interested in chess
Othello, and he stopped playing because his tight work schedule prevented him from practising
Speedcubing with Rubik's Cube, and he stopped playing because his beard would get constantly tangled in the cube
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Aubrey de Grey made a bold prediction that he still stands by today. What did he predict, and with what chance?
There's a 50% chance that the first human to live to 1000 years old has already been born
There's a 40% chance that cancer will be totally defeated by 2025
There's only about a 20% chance that we won't defeat aging by 2100
There's a 100% chance that Hell will freeze over before people stop calling him an immortality prophet
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SENS Research Foundation was started thanks to an initial capital of about 9 million British pounds that was provided entirely by Aubrey de Grey himself. Where did Aubrey find this money?
He sold the company he had during his career as a computer scientist
It was the prize money from the famous SENS challenge thrown by MIT Tech Review to disprove SENS
He inherited it from his late mother
He wished he could have a penny for each time people say that aging is inevitable, and one day his wish was granted
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