26 replies to this topic

[Live Forever]

A little over an hour video (and audio) interview of Aubrey de Grey by Eliezer Yudkowsky:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16508

Edited by Live Forever, 15 December 2008 - 06:37 AM.

[forever freedom]

Very nice interview . Thanks.

[brokenportal]

Interesting new angles, Its an hour long, so Im still listening to it right now. Its reminding me how deep even other gerontologists are in the pro aging trance. Its like they are saying sort of, they can see that bees and birds can fly, but they discount the idea that mankind ever can fly, as at one time they did think, but obviously now we fly.

[Live Forever]

Glad you guys are enjoying it. Actually, it was through contact with the Bloggingheads people and Aubrey via email that we were able to get him on there. Since it is a very different demographic that watches Bloggingheads on a normal basis, hopefully it will be effective in spreading the message a bit.

[brokenportal]

Yes, hopefully, this is long, Im still watching it. Eleizer just said something about a sponge that moves to where it needs to go, at which point it no longer needs its brain so it eats it. He then says thats an often used analogy for what its like to acheive tenure. Thats hilarious. I googled sponges eating their own brain but couldnt find it.

Back to the point of it though, of course we've all heard most of this before, but its great to further imbue this stuff. What it makes me think though is, how can we get more of us touring giving interviews and speechs and stuff? Are you good at giving speechs? Why for example dont you? I dont because I have a no tempo, non charasmatic voice at all.

There are a few projects being developed that would help get speeches out there on line 9 and 12 of this google doc of life extension exposure expedition projects here: http://docs.google.c...evision=_latest

Please do add ideas to those if you would.

[Live Forever]

Back to the point of it though, of course we've all heard most of this before, but its great to further imbue this stuff. What it makes me think though is, how can we get more of us touring giving interviews and speechs and stuff? Are you good at giving speechs? Why for example dont you? I dont because I have a no tempo, non charasmatic voice at all.

I think Aubrey will pretty much do an interview with whoever (within reason of course), if you lay the groundwork for him. If anyone knows of a local radio station or a podcast website or anything, and would think it would be a good opportunity for him, then I would suspect he might be open to the idea. I am just an avid watcher of Bloggingheads, so I got the idea of having him on there and contacted the Bloggingheads people to see about the possibility. (actually at first we were trying to get Mind on there since he is our executive director and all, but they seemed to much prefer Aubrey, haha) It was fairly straightforward, and I would encourage anyone if they have any ideas of good venues to work towards making them happen.

As far as formal talks, do you mean like at lecture halls and universities and things? Touring would be expensive (radio/podcast/etc. interviews are virtually free), but it might be something to look into in the future if we could raise the funds for such a thing. Aubrey speaks at lots of places, anyway. (conferences, the Google complex 3 times now, etc.)

[brokenportal]

I think Aubrey will pretty much do an interview with whoever (within reason of course), if you lay the groundwork for him.

I noticed that, I asked Aubrey if he would be willing to speak at my state university and he said sure so I asked Mind if he could get the University to reserve some space and then Aubrey flew in and lectured. We got about 150 students to attend by the way, which we thought was pretty good.

If anyone knows of a local radio station or a podcast website or anything, and would think it would be a good opportunity for him, then I would suspect he might be open to the idea. I am just an avid watcher of Bloggingheads, so I got the idea of having him on there and contacted the Bloggingheads people to see about the possibility. (actually at first we were trying to get Mind on there since he is our executive director and all, but they seemed to much prefer Aubrey, haha) It was fairly straightforward, and I would encourage anyone if they have any ideas of good venues to work towards making them happen.

We could continue focusing on getting just Aubrey more gigs, but I think, could be wrong, that developing more people to speak would be a good idea because over time as this meme picks up, I imagine that all of their time will become booked to the max of what they can handle. So the more the better. If you would, you or anybody that reads this, please help hang ideas on the outline being devoloped on line 4.2 and 12 of the google doc of life extension exposure expedition projects, "leeep" is what we're calling it now. Then later as teams develop to focus in on more projects it will be moved to the imminst wiki to be undertaken in a more focused way.

As far as formal talks, do you mean like at lecture halls and universities and things? Touring would be expensive (radio/podcast/etc. interviews are virtually free), but it might be something to look into in the future if we could raise the funds for such a thing. Aubrey speaks at lots of places, anyway. (conferences, the Google complex 3 times now, etc.)

Lecture halls, universities, expo centers, convention centers, local newspapers, local parks, local television, national television, anything and everything. Internet is free, sure, and Ide be interested to see where further discussion of this may go, because you might be right, but like say, if we could train a bunch of speakers to tour their states then that would help pick the concept up in the local news, and it would get schools talking about it and stuff like that right? Im thinking that a tour bus would be worth it too, but It still needs discussion. The benefits of that would be that I would think that it would likely be picked up by national news. And maybe this is stupid, or maybe its a great idea, Im not sure, but I think that a tour bus pulling around a gimmick like a giant clock with an hour hand at the 45 minute mark that people can hang from and take their picture with would become an icon and almost suredly be picked up in the national news and all the news of all the local areas it travels too. It could also be turned into a huge fund raising bin. There is a lot of other stuff that would go with it too. The outline for this campaign bus idea is on line 12 of that link Im talking about. Please give it feedback, positive hopefully, but constructive criticism is more than welcome.

[Live Forever]

Back to the topic of this specific video...

I found the discussion on evolutionary reasons for aging interesting, and not the normal type of topic that you hear Aubrey speak about. (at least not in the talks and interviews I have heard him give)

Also, I am glad that they got around to the topic of cryonics, as most people either haven't heard of it or haven't heard of it spoken about in a positive light.

I suppose that is the advantage of having an hour long interview as opposed to a short one; More time for topics to be covered.

[brokenportal]

Ive been thinking about Eleizers question about saturation of information in the brain, sure you forget old stuff to possibly make room, or its recorded over, but now its got me thinking about what might happen when the brain is used for so long. Like, might it end up being something like a tape that you record over a whole bunch of times and it loses it quality or something like that. Im sure there are more arguements to help strengthen why we can do something about it or how its not a problem but I havent heard them yet. I look forward to it.

And then there is the question Eleizer asked about what we'll do if we do get sens all worked out and then we find out there are things that will age us that we hadnt anticipated. I expected Aubrey to handle that question well, and he did pretty well, but the conviction of his answer didnt instill me with as much confidence as Ide hoped for, and thats of course because the reasoning holds some weight, sens might all be for naught when we find out say, dna starts a spontaneous break down or some thing after 140 years or whatever.

[Johan]

bloggingheads.tv doesn't seem to work for me. Does anyone know if the video is available anywhere else?

[Mind]

Not working for me right now either. Maybe I need a flash player upgrade?

[Live Forever]

bloggingheads.tv doesn't seem to work for me. Does anyone know if the video is available anywhere else?

Not working for me right now either. Maybe I need a flash player upgrade?

They have the links to the actual files of the video if your Flash isn't up to date or doesn't work or whatever. (in the part labeled "Download")

Here are the links (I am just copy and pasting them from the site):
WMV video file
MP4 video file
MP3 audio file

Hope that helps.

Edited by Live Forever, 14 December 2008 - 12:11 PM.

[Johan]

It still doesn't work for me. Could someone with access to the files upload them to somewhere other than bloggingheads.tv?

[Live Forever]

It still doesn't work for me. Could someone with access to the files upload them to somewhere other than bloggingheads.tv?

Nothing seems to be working right now. They must be doing site maintenance or something. Check back in a little bit and I bet it will work.

[Johan]

It works now, it seems. I'm listening to it at the moment.

[John_Ventureville]

I keep on forgetting the time frame and budget Aubrey wants for his SENS project. If I remember correctly he desires one billion dollars to do a twenty year long research program. Is that right?

I wish him luck trying to raise such a gigantic sum.

John

[brokenportal]

Probably something like that, in this interview he said he could easily find good ways to spend a good 100 million a year on sens.

[Live Forever]

Probably something like that, in this interview he said he could easily find good ways to spend a good 100 million a year on sens.

Yep, at the end Eliezer asked him how much he was spending now and how much he would like to spend (which he at first humorously misunderstood as "how old are you and how old would you like to be", haha). He said they spent about $2 million in the last year funding research, but has plans for up to $100 million a year. I wish him the best at getting it.

[DJS]

It's nice to see Aubrey get on bloggingheads which is definitely one of the more respected intellectual vlogging communities out there (front page links on the NYT = serious viewership).

I haven't watch the whole vid yet but my one criticism of the opening is that it had an infomercial feel to it. Like, "Hi we're Aubrey and Eliezer and we're trying to sell you our memetics." I understand that usually Aubrey is accustomed to explaining SENS and the life extension movement in very basic terms for the uninitiated, but bloggingheads is a very different audience. We're talking about snooty intellectuals here. The better approach, I'd argue, would have been to go with the "hey, we're an established community talking about strategy and technical details. If you want to know what the hell we're talking about, go get yourself better informed."

Going slightly off topic, there is this one virtual presence on bloggingheads, Will Wilkinson, whom I find interesting and well informed (even if I don't share his libertarian politics). He has some understated futurist leanings, as I remember in one conversation him mentioning that he and his girlfriend/partner were getting signed up for cryonics policies. That certainly caught my attention.

[Live Forever]

Going slightly off topic, there is this one virtual presence on bloggingheads, Will Wilkinson, whom I find interesting and well informed (even if I don't share his libertarian politics). He has some understated futurist leanings, as I remember in one conversation him mentioning that he and his girlfriend/partner were getting signed up for cryonics policies. That certainly caught my attention.

I like Will, too. (Perhaps more, since I tend to agree with his libertarian politics as well, haha.) He and Yudkowsky had a recent diavlog together as well, if you are interested. He has indeed mentioned being interested in cryonics for himself and his partner (Kerry Howley); It would be interesting to see him interview a member of the cryonics community at some point on his "Free Will" bloggingheads vlog.

[DJS]

(I just can't help being a negative nancy)

Also, I really wish that Aubrey was interview by someone like Mind instead of Eliezer. I have nothing against Eliezer in terms of his perspective or intellectual capabilities, but good lord is his awkward to watch. I know, it's shallow of me to say this, but shouldn't PR be a consideration. Let the intellectuals do their intellectual stuff and let the smooth talkers get talking. Eliezer, go back to your secret underground layer with a thousand super computer and build us a friend AGI already!

[Live Forever]

(I just can't help being a negative nancy)

Also, I really wish that Aubrey was interview by someone like Mind instead of Eliezer. I have nothing against Eliezer in terms of his perspective or intellectual capabilities, but good lord is his awkward to watch. I know, it's shallow of me to say this, but shouldn't PR be a consideration. Let the intellectuals do their intellectual stuff and let the smooth talkers get talking. Eliezer, go back to your secret underground layer with a thousand super computer and build us a friend AGI already!

Yeah, I suppose they surmised that the small amount of fame and following he has garnered from his Overcoming Bias blog and whatnot would translate into being able to reach a certain brand of consumer, but he is definitely not the smoothest on-camera operator. I would like to see Mind on there at some point as well.

[DJS]

heh, yeah... and again, nothing against Eliezer, I just think that there are others who could give a smoother delivery.

And maybe the intellectual/smooth talker dichotomy was imprecise, as one can be an intellectual and a smooth talker sometimes, but my basic point was obvious enough - some intellectuals aren't smooth.

He and Yudkowsky had a recent diavlog together as well, if you are interested.

copy/pasting it on my list...

[brokenportal]

Eleizer didnt seem that awkward. I didnt notice it at all until you mention it here. It seemed interesting to see the interaction of those two kind of people.

You say mind should interview Aubrey, he has in ustream, you know that right? or are you talking about in bloggingheads? If so, thats a good idea too, do you think you can set it up?

[DJS]

Eleizer didnt seem that awkward. I didnt notice it at all until you mention it here.

This is a problem.

You say mind should interview Aubrey, he has in ustream, you know that right? or are you talking about in bloggingheads? If so, thats a good idea too, do you think you can set it up?

Bloggingheads, but I have no special connections. Or perhaps you were directing this towards LF.

[Prometheus]

Admittedly, there are instances where Eleizer does speak over Aubrey, which is a shame since Aubrey is very articulate, has such a rich knowledge and needs only the most simple of prompting on a topic to expound on it. But the evidence Aubrey offers for the repudiation of programmed aging - that death by aging rarely happens in the wild - is just so annoying.. Also to say that aging is an arbitrary rather than intended failure of repair mechanisms is, until it can be proved either way, an opinion.. Elezier also implies that there is evolutionary pressure to increase reproductive age when death occurs by aging, which Aubrey agreed with and was going to - I think - provide some evidence for but the subject was changed by Eleizer.. I disagree with this notion because by increasing generational span there is also a decrease in evolutionary rate.. In any case, a very informative interview, despite some subtle antagonism by Elezier which appears to have been compensated by a tolerant Aubrey.

[Shannon Vyff]

It is a good talk, but I would have like Eleizer to push more (I've seen him do it, he has a sharp wit, this talk was very buddy buddy in comparison)--the blogging heads community is used to deeper questioning (and general debating) Eliezer and Aubrey are too similar in outlook Thanks for sharing it with our community Live Forever :-) I hope that it does its job of outreach, anyone know if Will ever signed up for cryonics?