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A Recent Interview with Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation


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#1 reason

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 01:08 PM


Aubrey de Grey is the co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on speeding up development of the biotechnologies needed for human rejuvenation. The underlying model behind the research programs funded is that aging is caused by forms of cell and tissue damage that are currently well defined and understood. Periodic repair of that damage will allow for effective treatment of age-related disease and ultimately indefinite extension of healthy life spans. The only thing separating us from rejuvenation therapies is the matter of building the necessary treatments, a process of a few decades all told were it adequately funded - which is, sadly, still not the case, and one of the reasons why advocacy and grassroots fundraising is so important.

THE INSIGHT: That leads me into the next question: Google has created the California Life Company (Calico), the hedge-fund billionaire Joon Yun has launched the Palo Alto Longevity Prize, so there seems to be a lot of movement in this area. What I'm really fascinated by is - a lot of people are investing a lot of time and money into this area of defeating ageing - if you do implement this 7-stage plan and you see breakthroughs in this area, what's to say that something else, some other large obstacle, doesn't come up? Are you relatively sure that if this 7-stage plan is implemented it will create an open passageway for a longer life?

AUBREY DE GREY: That's a great question. I'm going to give a slightly complicated answer to it - really a two-part answer: the point about the approach that we're taking now is that it's based on this classification of the types of damage that occur in the body and eventually contribute to ill health of old age - classification into seven major categories - and that classification is important because within each category we have a generic approach, a generic therapeutic strategy that should be able to work against every example within that category. So, then your question really divides into two questions. The first question is: are we going to identify new types of damage that fit into the existing classification? The second part of your question is: are we going to find new types of damage that don't fit into the classification - type number 8, and so on?

The answer to the first question is: absolutely, we're going to find more of those; we've been seeing more of those turn-up over the years - throughout the time that I've been working in this area. But, the fact that they fit into the classification means that they're not a problem. It means that, yes, we're going to have to carry on developing additional therapies to address these additional types of damage, but that's kind of okay, because the difficulty of developing those additional therapies will be very slight as a result of the fact that they will be minor variations of the therapies that we already developed to address the examples of that category, that we already knew about.

So, now we move onto the second part of the question, of are we going to identify damage-type number 8, and so on - ones that don't fit into the classification. That's a very important question, but the evidence is looking very good that it's not going to happen. First of all, we can just look and say, "Has it happened anytime recently?" and the answer is absolutely not. SENS has been around for 15 years and, in fact, all of the types of damage that SENS discusses have been well studied and known about for more than 30 years. That's a very long time for nothing to be discovered that breaks the classification.

THE INSIGHT: Have you at any point in your career had an anxious response from governments about your work, like it being a national security threat?

AUBREY DE GREY: No, the government don't behave in that way, because everyone in the government is caught in this trap that I talk about so often, where they're desperate to continue to pretend that any talk of radical life extension is just science-fiction; they don't want to think about it. The reason they don't want to think about it is the reason why the general public don't want to think about it and the reason why quite a lot of scientists don't want to think about it: namely, they don't want to get their hopes up. They really don't want to reengage a psychological battle that they have already lost, that they have already submitted to. They have already made their peace with ageing and the inevitability of declining health, old-age and eventual death; getting into a mode of thinking where maybe science will come along and prevent that from happening or maybe it wont, that's a mindset that disturbs a lot of people; that's a mindset a lot of people would prefer not to even engage in, if the alternative is to continue to believe that the whole thing is science-fiction. It's fatalistic but it's calming.

THE INSIGHT: I'm interested in the psychology of people, I guess you can put them into two camps: one doesn't have an inherent understanding of what you're doing or saying, and the other camp willingly resign themselves to living a relatively short life. You've talked to a whole wealth of people and come across many counter-opinions, have any of them had any merit to you, have any of them made you take a step back and question your approach?

AUBREY DE GREY: Really, no. It's quite depressing. At first, really, I was my own only affective critic for the feasibility - certainly never a case or example of an opinion that amounted to a good argument against the desirability of any of this work; that was always 100% clear to me, that it would be crazy to consider this to be a bad idea. It was just a question of how to go about it. All of the stupid things that people say, like, "Where would we put all the people?" or, "How would we pay the pensions?" or, "Is it only for the rich?" or, "Wont dictators live forever?" and so on, all of these things... it's just painful. Especially since most of these things have been perfectly well answered by other people well before I even came along. So, it's extraordinarily frustrating that people are so wedded to the process of putting this out of their minds, by however embarrassing their means; coming up with the most pathetic arguments, immediately switching their brains off before realising their arguments might indeed be pathetic.

THE INSIGHT: I'd be fascinated to know what your dialogue has been like with pharmaceutical companies and why they have not been more forthcoming?

AUBREY DE GREY: So, there's a somewhat different scenario, because that problem of believing that the whole thing is never going to happen is still true, but there are various other aspects that influence the attitude of... well, beyond big-pharma, the medical industry in general. One thing is, they want to make money; they're worried about quarterly balance sheets, they want to make money now; they don't want to make money 20 years from now. They also don't know that the particular approaches that we're taking are the ones that are going to work; they want to buy up ideas that have already gone through and have been through clinical trials, and then run with them and capitalise on them. They know perfectly well that when things are at the pre-clinical stage - especially when they're only in a conceptual stage and haven't even been tested in mice - that the hit-rate is really low, even when the concept is correct, such that the concept has to be retried multiple times before one comes up with an actual substantiation of the concept that works.

Link: http://www.theinsigh...untain-of-youth


View the full article at FightAging

#2 Florian Xavier

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 06:16 PM

History is tragic



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#3 sthira

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 07:39 PM

History is tragic


"...don't get me wrong, in the case of ageing they're going to be grossly pessimistic and everyone's going to end up suddenly being surprised by technologies that are going to happen and wont be prepared properly, and the turbulence that will occur in the transition to a post-ageing world will be much greater than it would have been if people had actually paid attention earlier on..."

#4 Florian Xavier

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 12:00 AM

Nah but History is a bloodbath, it's difficult to imagine an eden garden possible and it's normal. Very normal because they are not wrong man. Not that wrong.

 

I don't think people are stupid creatures that act on their weakness all the time..

 

People are not stupid, they actually think deep sometimes :)

 

So they think that aging is unlikely to be cured anytime soon, and that there are other life-threatening problems. It's not false.


Edited by Florian Xavier, 29 August 2015 - 12:13 AM.


#5 Florian Xavier

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 12:11 AM

Personnaly i hate when people say that people are dumb, acting on their impulses, their cognitives bias etc there is a kernel of truth in every cognitive bias :)

 

For exemple, people are not scammed by the regular "breaktroughts", they are still pessimistic because it is grim that there are so many of them, yet not a single animal bigger than a worm is free from aging. Give them credit, people want respect more vividly than being young :)


Edited by Florian Xavier, 29 August 2015 - 12:17 AM.


#6 niner

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 03:07 AM

 

AUBREY DE GREY: Really, no. It's quite depressing. At first, really, I was my own only affective critic for the feasibility - certainly never a case or example of an opinion that amounted to a good argument against the desirability of any of this work; that was always 100% clear to me, that it would be crazy to consider this to be a bad idea. It was just a question of how to go about it. All of the stupid things that people say, like, "Where would we put all the people?" or, "How would we pay the pensions?" or, "Is it only for the rich?" or, "Wont dictators live forever?" and so on, all of these things... it's just painful. Especially since most of these things have been perfectly well answered by other people well before I even came along. So, it's extraordinarily frustrating that people are so wedded to the process of putting this out of their minds, by however embarrassing their means; coming up with the most pathetic arguments, immediately switching their brains off before realising their arguments might indeed be pathetic.

 

 

I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.  What SENS et al. should do is have canned explanations for each of them that can be quickly linked in any online discussion.  (Kind of like reason did right here.)  Sure, these arguments have all been answered before, but there are close to 8 billion people out there, and 7.99999 billion of them have never seen those rebuttals.  It may be annoying and boring, but we're just going to have to keep plugging away on all these dumb-ass questions until there is a critical mass of people to make the necessary funding happen. 



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#7 Antonio2014

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 12:50 PM

I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.

 

Niner, these argumens do are pathetic. Another question is what do you do about people putting these arguments over and over again, but pathetic arguments they are for sure.

 

What SENS et al. should do is have canned explanations for each of them that can be quickly linked in any online discussion.

 

Yes, I totally agree on this. Maybe they did so in some closed access paper. Some of them are answered on Ending Aging, but it's also closed access. A few of them are answered briefly in SENS website's FAQ. I usually point these people to Reason's blog or this blog.



#8 Florian Xavier

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 03:55 PM

Just tell them than no arguments can stop science, the only question is when. And that science is on the right way.


Edited by Florian Xavier, 29 August 2015 - 04:37 PM.


#9 niner

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 07:24 PM

 

I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.

 
Niner, these argumens do are pathetic. Another question is what do you do about people putting these arguments over and over again, but pathetic arguments they are for sure.

 
Well, sure, they're pathetic to people like us who have thought about them for a long time, but if a person comes along out of the blue, never having considered them, learns about SENS and asks "what about overpopulation?", we can't just tell them that they're pathetic and should go away.  At least not if we want them to support what we're trying to do.
 

Just tell them than no arguments can stop science, the only question is when. And that science is on the right way.

 
This is another way of saying "We're right and you're wrong; we are not willing to entertain your petty concerns."  That's a good way to get people to call their political representatives and tell them that these SENS guys are scary and what they're doing should be against the law.  
 
In order to cure aging, there are two battles to be fought.  One of them is technological, and the other one is political.  It will take a lot longer to win the first battle if we don't win the second one.   One of the keys to winning the political battle is diplomacy-- we need people on our side.  Instead of insulting them, we should politely tell them "Yes, that's a common concern.  It's not the problem that it appears to be, and is addressed right here in the FAQ."


Edited by niner, 29 August 2015 - 07:25 PM.


#10 Florian Xavier

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 10:37 PM

or simply, 100k people per day die of aging so it's an emergency


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#11 sthira

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 12:05 AM

Just tell them than no arguments can stop science, the only question is when. And that science is on the right way.

I think a part of de Grey's point is something like: ready or not, humanity, here come some of stronger health extension technologies we've anticipated. Better heath for all. When I get discouraged about my own narrow concerns, I listen to Kurtzweil's wide open language in his youtube lectures. He flies high. Yet it's hard to differentiate hyperbole from what's real. And it feels like new science may be revealed at any moment. Wonder if I'm delusional -- we've seen so many dashed hopes -- and yet Kurzweil keeps talking about the exponential growth of science and technology, which is fascinating.

or simply, 100k people per day die of aging so it's an emergency

I think de Grey is pretty clear that what he and his organization are after is not immortality. Discussion of immortality is an annoying distraction. He sounds to me like he wants to help make us all healthier before we die on a slower schedule. We live, we wear down the parts of our bodies, we replace those parts, we clear out the gunk, we live healthier and longer, we live longer and healthier, and we suffer less. If I'm reading him correctly: what a magnificent goal. Beautiful, actually. I think there are essentially no problems (beyond the obvious) that we can't solve in this world given enough time and attention to actually make the attempts to solve them.

Edited by sthira, 30 August 2015 - 12:35 AM.

  • Agree x 1

#12 corb

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 01:41 AM

Quite honestly I've seen so many otherwise outspoken people in the field fail to grasp great opportunities that passed their way and quite large ones at that it's a bit humorous in a melodramatic kind of way.

Let me give you one example. The researchers that came up with the molecular tweezers - THAT SAME GROUP THAT CLAIMS THEY CAN TREAT ALS MADE A FREAKING INDIEGOGO CROWDFUNDING WHILE THE ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE WAS RUNNING. AT THE SAME TIME. (the fact EVEN WE didn't know it was going just points out how bad their PR actually is but that's besides the point, well maybe not really, maybe it is the point, but I digress) - without  actually trying to contact anyone in the ice challenge organization or to even make a proper  YouTube video. They were asking for a measly one million dollars - videogames make 5 times that on Kickstarter all the time. And their campaign failed of course. Only about 100 people funded them. Why? How is it possible for someone to botch such a perfect opportunity for publicity?!

The ice bucket challenge gathered a million dollars in a single weekend.

 

I'll tell you why this happens and will continue to happen - Researchers are not PRs. They don't know how to do it.

We need someone who can do that instead of them and do it good. Otherwise we'll miss many more opportunities to overturn public opinion in a massive way and opportunities to gather no strings attached financial support for research like the example I gave.

 

So what I hope to see in the next decade on LongecCity is an organization forming capable of handling grassroots support and PR.
We need to be on the public scene before we go on the political scene.
 And I hope the coffin shaped bus doesn't destroy the tiniest bit of credibility we've ever had in the public eyes to begin with. How do you expect for people to take you seriously if you act like a clown? :sad: Some sides of the American psych I'll never understand.


Edited by corb, 30 August 2015 - 01:43 AM.


#13 corb

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 07:32 AM

With my previous post I was trying to say we should change the public opinion with action instead of with words.

 



#14 sthira

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 09:19 AM

With my previous post I was trying to say we should change the public opinion with action instead of with words.


Good point. And ultimately I think that's how it'll shake out. We're weary of words, promises, Hollywood; successful science will sell healthy life extension. I notice that ChromaDex (the Niagen people) have hired on staff "an Academy Award winning Hollywood producer..." And I'm thinking -- just prove your product does what you say it does, and you'll need no more trickery and illusion to sell your pills.

#15 Antonio2014

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 10:42 AM

Well, sure, they're pathetic to people like us who have thought about them for a long time, but if a person comes along out of the blue, never having considered them, learns about SENS and asks "what about overpopulation?", we can't just tell them that they're pathetic and should go away.  At least not if we want them to support what we're trying to do.

 

That's not what you said.

 

I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.



#16 Florian Xavier

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 04:41 PM

Nature made us to love resolving enigmas, so we do what we have to do like a bird search for prey :)



#17 niner

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 09:58 PM

 

Well, sure, they're pathetic to people like us who have thought about them for a long time, but if a person comes along out of the blue, never having considered them, learns about SENS and asks "what about overpopulation?", we can't just tell them that they're pathetic and should go away.  At least not if we want them to support what we're trying to do.

 

That's not what you said.

 

I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.

 

 

Oh, sorry, I guess that wasn't entirely clear.   I'm just trying to say that we shouldn't publicly act in a way that makes it sound like we think the people asking the questions are dumb.  By and large, they are not idiots, they just haven't researched it.  I think it's worth keeping in mind that we're asking people to accept the largest change to the status quo since we came out of the trees.  The fact that people die of aging is so baked into every aspect of our culture that changing it is going to be seriously disturbing to many people.    It's going to be hard enough for them to accept LE without us being rude to or dismissive of them.
 



#18 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 01:14 AM

I think people are FREAKING SICK of hearing of "aging solutions" by the gouvernement. I mean the gouvernement is always focusing on nursing policies and so on, i think many people want to move on and discuss real solutions.



#19 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 01:21 AM

"I would like to live a good, long life in health and with a youthful attitude. But the prospect of high-tech billionaires funding a long-life X-prise to achieve post-100 year lives for everyone strikes me as bad for society as a whole. With most people, and especially most rich people, living significantly longer, our society would stultify; social change, and even technological change would grind slower and slower.

People retiring later in life would reduce the opportunities for younger people to take their places in positions of authority and decision-making. Fortunes that get disbursed through death of an elder would not spread out to the next generations, and back through society, as quickly (the process is already too slow).

Perhaps most importantly, as Ken Dychtwald observed even about himself, people generally don't start thinking about "what really matters" until they begin to approach death's door. Delaying death until after 100 would just extend our tenure for acting foolishly."

 

 

WOW, ok that's dumb, very dumb.


aw fuck, aubrey de grey is right... that's it.


Edited by Florian Xavier, 31 August 2015 - 01:21 AM.


#20 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 01:26 AM

We must admit as a society that there are evidences of psycological problems relating to the prospect of defeating aging, wich may lead to many unecessary deaths.


Edited by Florian Xavier, 31 August 2015 - 01:27 AM.


#21 niner

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 01:58 AM

 

"I would like to live a good, long life in health and with a youthful attitude. But the prospect of high-tech billionaires funding a long-life X-prise to achieve post-100 year lives for everyone strikes me as bad for society as a whole. With most people, and especially most rich people, living significantly longer, our society would stultify; social change, and even technological change would grind slower and slower.
People retiring later in life would reduce the opportunities for younger people to take their places in positions of authority and decision-making. Fortunes that get disbursed through death of an elder would not spread out to the next generations, and back through society, as quickly (the process is already too slow).
Perhaps most importantly, as Ken Dychtwald observed even about himself, people generally don't start thinking about "what really matters" until they begin to approach death's door. Delaying death until after 100 would just extend our tenure for acting foolishly."

 
WOW, ok that's dumb, very dumb.

 
 
We have to do better than this way of responding to these points.  Why is it dumb?  Which parts of this are obviously wrong? 



#22 niner

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 02:07 AM

We need to be on the public scene before we go on the political scene.

 

 

Any time you're trying to get people to go along with your ideas, you're engaging in some degree of politics.  Perhaps you're saying we should build "grass roots" support before seeking governmental support? 



#23 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 02:52 AM

 

 

"I would like to live a good, long life in health and with a youthful attitude. But the prospect of high-tech billionaires funding a long-life X-prise to achieve post-100 year lives for everyone strikes me as bad for society as a whole. With most people, and especially most rich people, living significantly longer, our society would stultify; social change, and even technological change would grind slower and slower.
People retiring later in life would reduce the opportunities for younger people to take their places in positions of authority and decision-making. Fortunes that get disbursed through death of an elder would not spread out to the next generations, and back through society, as quickly (the process is already too slow).
Perhaps most importantly, as Ken Dychtwald observed even about himself, people generally don't start thinking about "what really matters" until they begin to approach death's door. Delaying death until after 100 would just extend our tenure for acting foolishly."

 
WOW, ok that's dumb, very dumb.

 
 
We have to do better than this way of responding to these points.  Why is it dumb?  Which parts of this are obviously wrong? 

 

 

Man at this point it is very pathologic.



#24 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 02:56 AM

For people who don't anowkledge at least one good side, i think there is no point to debate.

 

at least not dying, less suffering, less grief, more "good time". That's the very least.

 

Being against are not pro is just madness, depending on arguments. But here it IS madness.

 

It's like dawkins and his god debate : I'm sure you are sincere, but you have hallucinations.


Edited by Florian Xavier, 31 August 2015 - 03:02 AM.


#25 corb

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 04:06 AM

 

We need to be on the public scene before we go on the political scene.

 

 

Any time you're trying to get people to go along with your ideas, you're engaging in some degree of politics.  Perhaps you're saying we should build "grass roots" support before seeking governmental support? 

 

 

It gets back to the example I gave I just couldn't conduct my idea clearly enough - there are possibilities out there now that we (or rather the scientists doing the research for the time being) could grasp that are not lifespan extension related or medicine redefining but are lateral and just as important and I feel like especially when it comes to people doing cutting edge research they just don't take them.

 

What SENSF is doing is important and we need for someone to talk about life extension like Aubrey does, but at the same time SENSF has lost a lot of possibilities to promote some of their ideas to the mainstream of medicine as good as they could have, because of that narrative.

In the case of SENSF in particular I feel like the political has taken a bit too much of a center stage.

 

sthira gave a good example all the people jumping on NAD+ they're the other extreme where a researcher is too public. They're are after money so it's understandable and at the same time that makes it just the more unsavory.

I think people working on aging should try to strike a happy medium where we can have a political voice but be commercial at the same time as well. SENSF is really failing to be commercial right now, we had a little talk about that on the SENS forum where John Schloendorn had some ruminations about making the groundwork research but not getting their therapies to the clinic when they should've had.

 

And really in general SENS hasn't done a good job of explaining their therapies and how they can change medicine in general, not just in the context of life extension but in treating disease - this would have opened up potential partnerships with many more research groups and universities than the handful of ones they're working with at the moment.

I'm not sure that partnership can be established now, SENS carries a bit of a "stigma" now.

 

On a more positive note at least technologically a lot of the therapies proposed in SENS are valid and from their methodological merit alone they are at least slightly popular in the field and are being semi actively researched and tested. But that just rubs in the fact they could've been VERY popular if they were "sold" better.

In conclusion I feel like we needed "marketers" instead of politicians. But now it's a bit too late, the discussion has already moved into the political scene in the public eyes as of the last couple of years and I feel like that's not the perfect way this could've gone. Nothing really goes perfectly in life but I think you get what I'm trying to say.


Edited by corb, 31 August 2015 - 04:08 AM.


#26 Brett Black

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 04:27 AM

 

AUBREY DE GREY: Really, no. It's quite depressing. At first, really, I was my own only affective critic for the feasibility - certainly never a case or example of an opinion that amounted to a good argument against the desirability of any of this work; that was always 100% clear to me, that it would be crazy to consider this to be a bad idea. It was just a question of how to go about it. All of the stupid things that people say, like, "Where would we put all the people?" or, "How would we pay the pensions?" or, "Is it only for the rich?" or, "Wont dictators live forever?" and so on, all of these things... it's just painful. Especially since most of these things have been perfectly well answered by other people well before I even came along. So, it's extraordinarily frustrating that people are so wedded to the process of putting this out of their minds, by however embarrassing their means; coming up with the most pathetic arguments, immediately switching their brains off before realising their arguments might indeed be pathetic.

 
 
I think it's an error to consider these arguments, and by extension, the people making them, to be pathetic.  What SENS et al. should do is have canned explanations for each of them that can be quickly linked in any online discussion.  (Kind of like reason did right here.)  Sure, these arguments have all been answered before, but there are close to 8 billion people out there, and 7.99999 billion of them have never seen those rebuttals.  It may be annoying and boring, but we're just going to have to keep plugging away on all these dumb-ass questions until there is a critical mass of people to make the necessary funding happen.

 

Perhaps Aubrey didn't answer that question as well as he could have, but if you read it carefully I think it was actually reasonable. The question Aubrey was responding to was about the psychology of those people who have presented him with arguments against anti-aging efforts, and whether those arguments had any merit. What I really think Aubrey's answer was largely focusing on here was the so-called "pro-aging trance", and how this fuels "pathetic" counter-arguments because it tends to shut down peoples' critical thought processes. So I think he was criticizing the pro-aging trance more than the questions/arguments themselves.

 

In and of themselves, questions/arguments like "What about overpopulation?" are reasonable. However, when such hypotheticals are put in the context of being used as arguments against preventing 100,000 people dying per day right now from a drawn-out debilitating universal health condition, they reasonably could be described as "pathetic."

 

These and similar arguments are rarely if ever raised when people discuss attempting to cure other deadly health conditions/diseases that could lead to similar hypothetical outcomes (e.g. curing AIDS, curing infant mortality, curing malnutrition etc could make the human population grow faster/larger too.) And I could imagine widespread outrage if such arguments were presented as reasons against finding cures for these conditions. So it does seem a peculiar instance of the pro-aging trance psychology being involved here.

 

From a political and advocacy perspective it may not (always?) be fruitful to describe this sort of common psychology in such overtly negative and critical terms though. I'm not even sure if it would be helpful at all to mention the pro-aging trance (although different people may be impressed or repelled by quite different approaches.)

 

I definitely agree that there needs to a list of simple and succinct answers to the most often posed concerns/counter-arguments about anti-aging. I think it probably should be right up front and center on the SENS homepage.


Edited by Brett Black, 31 August 2015 - 04:49 AM.

  • Good Point x 1

#27 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 07:00 PM

Mabe the only reasonable reaction to these arguments is contempt after all..


Edited by Florian Xavier, 31 August 2015 - 07:01 PM.


#28 niner

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 07:15 PM

Mabe the only reasonable reaction to these arguments is contempt after all..

 

How does that help us bring LE around more rapidly?  Note that people will interpret contempt for their arguments as contempt for them as well, and they will not react favorably.  Making enemies in the general public doesn't seem like the right approach.



#29 Florian Xavier

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 07:32 PM

contempt is aversive like low social status



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#30 sthira

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Posted 31 August 2015 - 07:56 PM

Mabe the only reasonable reaction to these arguments is contempt after all..


How does that help us bring LE around more rapidly? Note that people will interpret contempt for their arguments as contempt for them as well, and they will not react favorably. Making enemies in the general public doesn't seem like the right approach.

I think the only way ahead is some science that actually works to slow, stop or reverse aging. Until something demonstrable happens here -- even something progressive in the "easy" targets -- other than more rat studies, and the same old advice: don't smoke, don't ride motorcycles, eat vegetables, blah blah... then LE PR attempts will not be very convincing. They start to sound like lies. Nothing slows aging. But if it's the case that "metabolism is too complex to ever solve" (de Grey) versus "information technology (which now includes medical science) is moving now at an exponential rate" (Kurzweil) then I think exponentialism (if that's a word) eventually trumps metabolic complexity. Meanwhile, we who watch the stage with binoculars from high in the bleachers continue to grumble at each other.




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