How Silicon Valley Is Trying to Hack Its Way into a Longer Life

I've always had a personal saying to short any story or company that appears on the cover of Time Magazine. The thought being that by the time a movement or company is that mainstream it is oversold.

I'm inclined to stick to my heuristic here. I'm not seeing any scientific basis to these life enhancing approaches. Rather, I see extremely wealthy individuals who are afraid of dying.

Lorenzo de Medici was also magnificently wealthy and willing to deploy substantial capital in an attempt to live longer. Supposedly he ate crushed diamonds on the recommendation of his doctors, before he died.

Journalists as a rule exhibit next to no ability to analyze or distinguish varieties of what is going on in the areas of (a) meaningful longevity science that can plausibly produce large gains in life span at some point, (b) dumb "anti-aging" industry nonsense, and (c) longevity science that is not in principle capable of useful gains in life span.

They are given the instruction from above to write something about efforts to live longer in order to fill today's news hole, grab the first five things they come across in a quick search of recent news, rank them all equally, and throw them into the blender. Out pops a popular science article. Little to no attempt is made to gain or convey insight or understanding.

Molecular biology professor at an elite school here with over a decade of experience in what's regarded as one of the most critical aging pathways. Nothing to see here.

We're just in the process of setting up our longer life tech startup. We will guarantee you will live to 120 or your money back.

Summary of pro death arguments

    **Fairness**
    Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.)
    Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)

    **Bad for society**
    Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)
    Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)
    Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)
      Stop having kids
      Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)
    Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)

    **Bad for individual**
    You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)
    You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)
    You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)
    Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)

More people make more progress faster. I'm glad my parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without me in it. Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc, still alive and productive would be nice. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer sucks, we'll know 100 years from now, and decide then. First 220 year old in 2136 unless you know how to make one faster than 1 year per year? And that's if you added 120 years to a 100 year old person starting TODAY.

P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horribles were true, even earlier.

Finding cure to diseases like Cancer is better;