NewLimit: a company built to extend human healthspan
blog.newlimit.com
blog.newlimit.com
Most rich folks would rather preserve their fortune for their offspring or try to make the world a better place. Eventually many people, rich or not, notice that the younger generations are better equipped to run the world.
Not to mention we'd be better off extending human life by preventing and curing diseases and ailments like cancer and heart disease.
In addition, term lengths could be placed on more than government roles to prevent excessive solidification of rules and procedures.
Actually thinking about this more. Collaboration might currently be crippled because of age and death. When you know have a few more years to live, you just want to enjoy what you’ve had. When you have another 1000+ you can take a few to invest into “getting caught up to the times”.
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 nonexistent)
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)
Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.)
Old people suck. (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)
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.)
People will force you to live forever (they aren't able to do this now, why would they begin to be?)
More people make more progress faster. Aren’t you glad your parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great minds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and productive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then.
Man up, save your family, save yourself.
P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier.
> More people make more progress faster.
Really? Have you ever seen an urban slum, or an overpopulated rural area?
> Stop having kids
Even if this were a viable solution (history teaches us it is not) dont you think that this wouldnot deprive many from most of the meaningful aspects of their lives?
> If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then.
What if longevity causes social changes which are difficult or impossible to reverse? What about those who will suffer the many disadvantages?
> Old people suck.
No, they don't. Whoever makes this argument does not deserver a response. What is true however is that most old people seem to have less flexibility to adapting to change, and with accelerating progress the chasm between the generation widens. The generational conflicts may be very high in the ageless society you envision.
There is no courage in choosing death. If people could live forever, and some people suddenly started choosing death at 80, that wouldn't be seen as "courageous" but just plain weird.
> Have you ever seen an urban slum, or an overpopulated rural area?
Historically, higher populations do result in faster progress. This is pretty much fact.
> dont you think that this wouldnot deprive many from most of the meaningful aspects of their lives?
It would be a choice - live forever or have kids. Many people would find life much more meaningful choosing the former.
> What if longevity causes social changes which are difficult or impossible to reverse?
The slow deaths of billions of people, entire generations, is not an acceptable cost for faster progress.
It is absurd to justify the cost of progress with death. If people lived for 10k+ years in a static society, you would be called a monster if you implied that they should be dying slowly and painfully at 80 so some aspects of their society evolve faster.
> The generational conflicts may be very high in the ageless society you envision.
Again, this is not worth the deaths of literally BILLIONS of people! It is mad scientist talk to say that death on such a massive scale is acceptable for any cost.
I said "courage of people wo have no fear of dying" you said "courage in choosing death", very different.
You have not defined what type of "progress" you refer to, but let me just quote one sentence from one random article on that topic [1] "The relationship between population growth and economic growth is controversial." Care to provide a reference for your "This is pretty much a fact"?
> It would be a choice - live forever or have kids.
Wouldn't this mean that within few generations there would be no more kids, as sooner or later each genealogical line will end with an individual who decides to live forever?
> The slow deaths of billions of people, entire generations, is not an acceptable cost for faster progress.
Acceptable by whom? I understand it is not acceptable to you, and I value your perspective, but why do you write it as if it was some form of consensus.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440177360...
But the relationship between population growth and technological growth seems fairly clear.
In either case, whether technological growth happens or not is irrelevant. It's not worth billions of lives. Nothing is.
> Wouldn't this mean that within few generations there would be no more kids, as sooner or later each genealogical line will end with an individual who decides to live forever?
Sure. And that would be a choice. I see no issue with this scenario.
> Acceptable by whom?
Consider a society in which everyone lives forever. You start saying that they should all start slowly dying for the sake of progress, that they likely won't even be around to see.
You'd be regarded as somewhat crazy. We shouldn't have to have (billions of) people die to accomplish our goals. That's like trying to hammer in a nail with a meteoroid.
Not at all. Many of the most densly populated regions in the world are far from the most technologically developed. Many of the most innovative countries (e.g. Sweden) are also quite sparsely populated.
> Sure. And that would be a choice. I see no issue with this scenario.
I do. While not extinction in the traditional sense, the world were the last human was already born. I cannot imagine being part of it.
It would likely be temporary until we find a way to create more space and/or move to a synthetic medium.
In either case, it would be a choice. If you think people would choose living forever over having kids, you yourself are implying that people would find living forever more meaningful than having children, thus not "depriving them of the meaningful aspects of their lives," but rather, introducing something more meaningful: the ability to enjoy life without the Damocles Sword of death.
Bodily autonomy/choice ought to be a part of any society, and that includes dying when you choose to die. Who is anyone to tell an individual when they should die? The best we can do is give them the choice, as it's a deeply personal decision.
No, I am not saying this. Even if only a very small fraction of people decides to live forever (rather than having kids), after sufficient generations all genealogical lines will hit an immortal. Think of it as a human gene-drive. Even a small minority will change the world for everyone.
Thank you for this snarky remark.
Every time I hear people arguing against having kids for reasons (overpopulation, bad for environment, pessimism about the future), I cannot help but think: "why doesn't that argument extend to the present generation - i.e. suicide?"
So far, the best answer I've gotten is equivalent to "suicide is bad" (a.k.a. "I have no good rational arguments but it makes me feel bad")
Also, imagine all the various hardware updates I could get - how cool would it be to see UV/IR?
Context at 1:14, quote at 2:08
For one there is a substantial amount of people just trying get by and being like 50/50 on the choice of rather being dead already or trying to get through somehow 'till the next day, ad infinitum: from depressives who are stuck in a loop of ever growing void of meaningless in "wealthy" countries to factory workers serving as means to an end kept away from "jumping to termination" by saftey nets. And of course those infamous 10% in absolute poverty which nowadays is more like a definition game by statisticians sponsored by the World Bank showing steady progress since the 1800s.
From a psychological point of view it becomes exponentially difficult to not have an inflated ego with more and more wealth. If I would win the lottery today my ordinary psyche would not be able to process it adequately, I would inevitably grossly overestimate my contribution to it, we are simply not finetuned to handle gigantic orders of probabilites. So it comes off as a childish thing for most of us mere mortals trying to overcome your "lifetime" limitations without taking into account your environment the "soil of decaying and growing matter" in a biosphere going around an unimaginable ball of pure "fuel" in its dimension and age seperated by a vastness of nothingness in between.
At some point in the "success-intoxicated" linear chase of an ever increasing personal "lifetime" I would speculate that one would reach a critical point, a no point of return in which the sense of the self would ultimatley shatter, your (biographical) memories become obliterated beyond "recognition", so just another death-life cycle we are seeing and studying already in all life around us.
So, I would appreciate the more sober tone of just improving life in general like addressing immediate, mundane and unspectcular things like e.g. the wealth gap instead of playing on the reptilians chords of our brains by searching the "cure of aging" which kind of gives off a vibe of an coke head.
If you look 100 years back, Rockefeller was the richest man in history (and might still be...), yet 1 of his 5 children died in infancy of a bacterial disease. These days, such diseases are extremely rare for about 1bn people in the western world, all of whom are effectively wealthier than Rockefeller was.
Yes, you can "save" people from poverty by giving them money, but ultimately you're just condemning their children to the same fate (after your money runs out). The only real progress is technology. And billionaires spending on anti-aging is exactly the kind of technology that will immensely benefit billions of people in the future.
Perhaps Mansa Musa [0] has that title?
[0]: https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/human-interest/richest-m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
Of course, there are many others richer, who stole it (kings, tyrants).
They will find it barbaric and terrifying that people could not live life out to contentment, but rather, were forced to die, and people merely accepted it rather than doing anything to fight it.
Finally, addressing the wealth gap is not mutually exclusive from solving much more important problems like death.
It is debatable whether they truely understand the financials of biotech. The grind of basic research will never go away. Many successful biotech company essentially acquihire researchers and work that is already 80% complete, the role of the company is to bring it to production. That itself will make up the bulk of the company's workload. Similarly, SpaceX had the benefit of leveraging an existing pool of talent and resources; you cannot build a heavy launch company in Zimbabwe. If they want to do both active basic research and at the same time trial therapies, then they would need an enormous amount of funding (on the software unicorn level). You will need scale on the same magnitude as Pharma giants like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson to be able to acquire companies, run trials, and discard ideas that do not work. In the current bull market, this is the perfect company to build with Coinbase's founder as the chief fundraiser.
Only Burroughs could truly capture the ghastly consequences.
People generally have a knee jerk hate for such things but I welcome that with open arms too.
It's a philosophy problem about consciousness and continuity more than anything else. Call it the star trek teleporter problem.
Scan and replicate? Heck no. That's just death, with the creation of a new consciousness that behaves exactly like the original, while not being the original.
It would require mature nanotechnology, but it might be possible to transition a whole brain neuron-by-neuron into a simulated space, while proxying existing connectivity between the original not-yet-transferred neurons and newly transferred simulated neurons.
Our brains already experience continuous physical drift while maintaining a continued sense of self. So the gradual, online, ship of Theseus approach might work for uploading as well.
Ultimately I don't think it will be provable as to what is actually required for a non-destructive transfer of consciousness, as a copied consciousness will still perceive itself to be the original.
"Conscious entity doesn't want to die" should be justification enough for not wanting to die. However, it seems that just because we've lived with a naturally imposed expiry date for so long, we are expected to accept death after an arbitrarily imposed time limit.
I live in an artificial structure because I do not accept the natural outdoor conditions that my ancestors lived in.
I communicate with people around the world, using horrendously artificial means, because I refuse to accept the silly natural limitations of local auditory communication.
I choose to accept antibiotics for infections that would otherwise naturally kill or maim me.
And if I can, I will choose to opt-out of death, the greatest disease that afflicts all of us.
As an aside, I do fear the tragedy of the aging process, for both myself and other people, but although that's presently a tightly-coupled problem, I'm assuming we're strictly discussing death and not aging.
I think that’s a legitimate fear, and nothing to do with what happens next to me.
On the other hand, accelerate the burning of the planet by giving more people access to an energy-wasting ponzi scheme.
Your 2 goals are incompatible with each other, Brian and Blake.
Biggest problem with people living longer is the costs of supporting them increase dramatically, and who's going to pay these costs?
Increasing longevity places a burden on our children, and their children
(1) better healthcare, reducing poverty etc. lift the floor of longevity but not the ceiling
(2) "cost of old age" is exactly what longevity research attempts to reduce - noone is interested in living longer as a vegetable; instead, the goal is to increase healthspan - living healthier for longer
In many parts of the worth we are living longer due to these things (or were before Covid)
Longevity research may also be interested in lifting this further but are all these people who now live cor even longer going to want to carry on working?
If not what are they going to live on, how are their pensions going to be paid for, how are we going to mitigate the extra demand placed on earth etc.?
I'm going to die one day and I'm fine with that
Humans are a burden to humans, but we're also humans' best shot at prosperity. Let's not be so quick to deny the upside of living longer, healthier.
(That said I agree with you that up to age 80 or so the recipe for general healthspan is very simple and up to personal responsibility)
I'm not against research to better understand aging and diseases that are a consequence of aging such as dementia and various cancers. But when I read this announcement I feel an air of arrogance that fucking annoys me.
> I'm not against research to better understand aging and diseases that are a consequence of aging
That's like researching the symptoms instead of the cause, it's the wrong way to do medicine
People share this opinion until they're on their deathbed. If offered a pill to be restored to youthful longevity in that moment, most people would give up everything and endure just about anything for a mere chance at it.
People are remarkably shortsighted and don't take the time to comprehend what the horror at the end of the tunnel will really feel like.
It’s just accepted that you get old and your health goes down the toilet, because “that’s life”. Nobody bats an eyelid when we hear “died of natural causes”.
I think it's more about the fear of dying than about actual death. If you just died tomorrow in your sleep, what would it matter? Assuming you didn't have a terminal illness or are of old age, you probably didn't fear immediate death. And you didn't suffer one bit.
Sure, it would suck for your friends and family, but for you, it wouldn't matter.
I fear non-existence more than dying.
The only enticing thing of that pill would be if you'd retain all your memories and material possessions, because let's say you had to compromise that:
- You get a pill but your memory will be wiped;
- The cost of the pill would be so high you'd lose all your material possessions;
What would be the difference between that and dying?
And for a billionaire the second choice is a no-brainer. They lose all the material possessions but still have all the knowledge, experiences and relationships that would allow them to easily get back in the saddle.
On the other hand for a person living day-to-day trying to make ends meet the idea of "enjoying" some more years of the same may not be as thrilling as it is for a millionaire. Sure, nobody wants to die, leave family and loved ones but at some point they may want an out. Some lives are hard or become unpleasant enough to feel like a never ending punishment, like extending a life sentence in prison.
The value of life seems to only be worth if you've got enough material possessions - else, it's a prison.
How messed up is that?
How fucked up are we that this is even a discussion without the prior discussion about the value of life to begin with.
So, this would only make sense if after you take the pill, your memory is wiped and you're given a random geographical location on earth.
Would be fun to see a billionaire having to make it somewhere in the horn of Africa.
"Naked and Afraid 2: Bezos in Somalia."
People would love that. It'd be like Black Mirror S02E05, White Bear.
Cable news outlets would have to air live human sacrifice just to keep up.
Anderson Cooper reluctantly lifts the obsidian blade. He looks distraught. "Do we really have to do this, guys?" From Erin Burnett, he hears a bene gesserit voice of outrage and command. Down plunges the knife. Mixed with the blood, tears stream down Anderson's face.
(On Fox, Tucker Carlson has a pro wrestler do it for him, and they just Photoshop his face on.)
You flip the channel.
Jeff Bezos has somehow acquired a bandolier, and is wearing the pelt of a human being.
"Damn."
People weirdly reject it for some reason, even though there's no catch. I suspect it's a cultural cached response, because taking these pill always mean some sort of catch.
I feel like you just make assumptions here.
And call me cynical but IMO it’s naive to think that this technology would be accessible to the average person. If it makes it to market it’s going to cost a small fortune and every super wealthy person in the world is going to be throwing money at it. It’s going to be the luxury yacht of healthcare.
There's necessarily no reason to think it will be horrifically expensive. Maybe it will be, maybe it will not. mRNA vaccines cost something like ~25 dollars and yet it will save lives for many years to come. It's a very effective medicine.
It's also incorrect to think that this is necessarily one treatment or one therapy. It may be a whole series of therapies that treat one aspect of aging over another.
That's not what I said at all.
It’s not clear whether humans can live on the moon long-term. The more likely solution is that we’ll need to heavily discourage people from having kids. Is that really more humane?
Also that seems like a way more rewarding way to spend life, than meaninglessness, risk-less human zoo, that some commenters are trying to sell, while bashing any project more ambitious than just keeping general population warm and cozy.
The way the wealthy will take responsibility is by taking up the mantle of human zookeeper, restricting lesser people's locations and movements. Just look at where the toll roads are near you, it's already happening.
Then the negative actions necessary to create personal benefit will be limited to the areas of the lesser people. After you find the toll roads, look for the power plants and factories in your area.
There's a reason we keep coming back to fiction that elevates the obscenely wealthy as being beyond the law, beyond the control of governments, and eventually physically beyond the world in floating cities.
It's a small solace that rich people continue to die within the same age range as poor people. I hope I don't live long enough to witness longevity being solved for the 1% only.
edit: changed "gated behind price" to just "gated" since gatekeeping comes in many forms.
There's a reason for that. It makes for entertaining fiction. Why would anyone reads utopian novels anyway? They're boring.
It's also a not a good idea to base your model of society on fiction. Fiction is not evidence for anything.
If longevity comes -- it will be affordable for $1000 once a year for as long as you like in some other part of the world. Or if you live in any other Western country, part of your universal medical plan.
Your feeling of arrogance seems to be a product of a cultural programmed reaction. There's no shortage of movies, cultural works, and tv shows that tell us that immortality is unwanted, unattainable, selfish, or somehow otherwise bad, starting with our oldest myths and stories, Epic of Gilgamesh.
If the goal of medicine is to cure or prevent every diseases and dysfunction in the human body, then we must conclude that as an unavoidable side effect that being healthier will extend long life.
If we care about our fellow human beings, especially the elderly, then we do not want them to live in pain, to be in dementia, or otherwise have a poor quality of life. We must also recognize that many of them may not want to die.
I applaud the pursuit of longevity and health so long it is paired with the egalitarian outcome in that everybody will be entitled and receive it, regardless of who they are and what they did.
And therein lies the crux. I don’t believe that’ll be the actual outcome.
We are also seeing relatively egalitarian drugs like mRNA vaccine against COVID being distributed to the population at large, only that some refused it. Meanwhile, the third world just lag behind in vaccination.
Some of which can be solved through better social cohesion and better systems, but a lot of the challenge will be simply in getting the cost of technology down or finding cheaper way to do something.
Therapies for longevity is unlikely to be a single drug or treatment, more likely a whole series of them. I also don't know if they're going to be expensive or cheap.
However, the best and most effective medicine in the world are often very cheap or relatively so, such as mRNA vaccines(~25 USD or so) and they saved countless lives. I am hopeful that more effective medicine will be cheap and affordable, or at least basically 'self-funding' in that lives saved will dramatically affect the economic balance sheet of countries for the better.
Aren't Americans struggling getting diabetes medicine? And chemo? Is it a reasonable expectation that this treatment, whatever it is, will be any different?
You'd also make the same argument if your life expectancy was 200 years and medicine advancements could let you live to 300.
I think it sad but death is evolved for a real reason and we should not forget Chesterton's fence, even if it was not designed but rather converged on by almost all species except for trees.
> death is evolved for a real reason
Not necessarily true. Evolution only cares that we fuck and pop out kids and they grow up and do the same. Once we've accomplished that goal, we are irrelevant from an evolutionary perspective.
P.S. Don't know why you are being downvoted. Some people find fault in healthy discussion :-/
Also, I am pretty sure that old people were involved in historical changes themselves, or will be forced to confront historical changes anyway.
There will be unintended consequences of humans living longer, of course but those are problems which will be solved by smart people of the future (and present).
The only reason the average value shifted so much is drastically reduced infant mortality rate. If you managed to live to the age of twenty two centuries ago, chances were you'd die as an old man
Even in Roman times healthy individuals lived to 60
Even in antiquity, healthy people lived to their 60s.
That might be the 70s or 80s now, but the quality of life at those ages isn't great - take a stroll to your local elderly home.
It is not just death, it is the long period of chronic illness that currently tends to precede it. Understanding aging will let us combat a thousand diseases at once.
I thin the reason why this wasn't attempted before wasn't humility. Rather, people (including many people today) did not think of aging as something modifiable. Aging has been until today understood as an unstoppable force beyond human possibilities, something like gravity or a hurricane.
Now that the viewpoints are slowly changing, we may be up to picking some low hanging fruit, and if a billionaire or ten decides to fund the necessary research, I won't be complaining. Unless they somehow manage to hoard the necessary knowledge only to themselves, which is rather unlikely in the modern world, where technological and scientific capabilities are spread more than ever before.
To be a little less than polite: fuck cancer, fuck cardiovascular disease, fuck Alzheimers, fuck severe covid etc. And whoever contributes to this great fucking of age-related disease is a friend of the whole humanity.
I'm not a billionaire and have zero prospects of ever becoming one. Maybe this would also be considered arrogance, but I don't want to grow old and die. Neither do any of my friends or family. None of them are billionaires either.
Life is absolutely incredible. Humanity is on the brink of technological progress the likes of which we've never seen before, and I'd love to (selfishly) stick around to experience it. I also don't see anything noble or enjoyable in watching friends, family and other people slowly break down and eventually die. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people share this opinion.
I sadly don't have the resources to direct activity against the scourge of aging and death, and can only hope that fortunately-resourced individuals decide to do so.
Please reconsider sharing this type of thinking, it's too arrogant for anyone.
On the other hand, it could actually provide tangible benefits to some human beings. Saying "I was the first to land a human on Mars" has no such advantage.
I for one am thrilled that society is starting to view death as something we might be able to one day defeat, rather than the resigned acceptance that has reigned throughout the history of our species.
Part of the game is the renewal process of it.
If for once find it way more creepy to have centennial billionaires that are hoarding land and resources, because they have the illusion that things belong to them, when in reality it was never theirs to begin with.
All technologies are expensive at first. To imply that longevity will not some day be available to all is absurd. The riots would collapse society.
Technology becomes affordable over time.
> Part of the game is the renewal process of it.
There is no renewal process. There is only a permanent end. A void that you will never escape from.
--
Whether you agree with that or not, what's clear is that this stuff should be a choice. Who are you to tell someone that they shouldn't live as long as they want? It's their body.
Except you're starting to see the first cracks of that, but we're just too busy to see it: when you have people willing to die for a chance of a better life, then you're not that far from it.
>To imply that longevity will not some day be available to all is absurd.
How can you say that when longevity isn't available to all in the current days?
>There is no renewal process. There is only a permanent end. A void that you will never escape from.
Of course there's a renewal process, old habits, vices, skewed and biased perspectives of the world are all flushed and reset with death. The only void is the space you leave and that will eventually be filled up, and that's ok.
Because technology inevitably becomes cheaper. Your smartphone did not exist 20 years ago, and 15 years ago only the rich could afford it. Today the whole world has one. Such is the way of technology.
> Of course there's a renewal process, old habits, vices, skewed and biased perspectives of the world are all flushed and reset with death.
Let's say people lived forever. Would killing them at 80 years be justifiable because "we need to flush out their ways of life?"
Humanity can progress without death. It might be slower, even glacial, but that is completely irrelevant because you will experience more net progress in the end.
I mean there is decent research on calorie restriction. Of course the huge problem with calorie restriction is the eating less part.
Rather than your judgemental take-- Why not adopt the simpler theory that these are simply parties that can afford fund very expensive efforts which are extremely likely to fail?
[0] unless their ventures are really immature glorifying ways to spend money and produce nothing
Unless they explicitly communicate this, you are just guessing.
According to this, all of medicine is pointless.
Would you not want grandma's back to hurt a little less?
Also asking your employees to work over the holidays (SpaceX Company email) because of your management failures is not a good company culture.
That said, it is definitely foolish the comparison here.
citation needed
Functionally there'll still be an end-date for most "human" lives.
But there's plenty of meaning to be found in 10,000 or 100,000 years of life, without disease and death lurking around the corner every day.
It will still be lurking around the corner and it will change your risk calculus completely. Today, if you go out and get hit by a bus, at worst, you lost 70 years of your life. In the future, you're risking 10-100k years of your life. What's worse is having to accept this risk for your loved ones.
A better question to consider would be, what would people do if they had only 1/5/10 years to live.
We define the meaning of life, not death. I would find my life perfectly meaningful without death.