How to Live Forever or Die Trying (GQ)

On a warm September evening in Garden Grove, California, about three miles south of Disneyland, a group of two hundred or so people gather in the Main Conference Hall at the Hilton to hear the good news: Humanity is baby steps away from vanquishing death.

How exactly this will be accomplished depends on who you ask. It could be through injecting plasma harvested from children. Or it could be through rapamycin, an antibiotic demonstrated in clinical trials to prolong the lifespan of dogs and rodents. Or it could be through what James Strole describes on the mainstage at RAADfest, an anti-aging and longevity conference, as “embracing the immortal mindset.”

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At RAADfest, a lot of people tell me that whatever Johnson is doing must be working because, they say, he looks really young for a guy of 46. “Young” is not really the adjective I would use. Up close, Johnson looks less like a young man than a middle aged man attempting to attain a sort of prenatal vitality, which is to say, he looks a little strange. If anything, his waxy pallor and gaunt physique have a preserved, antiseptic quality that give him the impression of having recently been embalmed.

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If anything, his waxy pallor and gaunt physique have a preserved, antiseptic quality that give him the impression of having recently been embalmed.

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So, you think Putin is following “blueprint” ? :wink: I’m going to try to get a relatively close-up photo of Bryan Johnson at the Longevity Summit in December, and will post here. I wonder how his skin looks up close.

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You’re going to see the raw, unfiltered, imperfect lighting, no-facial fat injection Bryan Johnson

Pic unrelated, or maybe not.

image

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LOL immortal … …:joy::joy::joy:

We’ve come to the point where we can prevent or treat the biggest causes of death (ASCVD, cancer, alzheimers, diabetes, infections), slow down physical aging processes (rapamycin, finasteride, sunscreen) and even partially rejuvinate certain organs like the skin using tretinoin or adapalene. For many other targets of aging you can use supplements/medications, yet even with all that combined it still appears as if there is a hard wall around the age of 110-130. What are the missing keys in our mission to eliminate biological aging?

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Something important to remember with articles like this. The writers aren’t trying inform anybody in a factual way, they’re trying to write an article on a theme that reads in a “fun” or button-pushing way. The actual reality is just a scaffold for the riffing. If it’s more fun to frame everyone as sad losers in denial, then that’s how it’s going to be written.

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Agreed, BUT I’d be totally fine with 120-130 as long as I go there on my own, making my small meals (CR) myself and moving around as needed without the need for a wheelchair. I won’t be jealous if you guys went over 130, but that’s plenty for me and believe it or NOT with what I do now, and what i know at present it is doable. The only thing I know helps immensely but I’m not doing at moment is yoga. One of the things to take up in my future.

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I think you miss the basic point about age based deterioration of function. That AFAICS is what needs sorting out.

AGI is likely to come in around 7 or 8 years so that will be the largest factor if humanity manages to align it with human interests.

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I am invovled in AI work, but I don’t see AGI are being necessarily that likely in a really functional sense in 7 or 8 years.

That’s very optimistic of you. I have greater trust in CRISPR curing all diseases by then.

I don’t think it is optimistic at all. That is the median prediction on prediction markets, and GPT-4 with multimodal functions (image and voice) is already very impressive.

Try working with ChatGPT and you’ll quickly notice its limits. As of now it’s just a superior search engine.

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Sure, but where will it be in 7 or 8 years, that is the question. The improvement looking backwards is linear, but looking forwards it is exponential.

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It could as well be, but a lot was being said in 2010 about the blockchain technology also and to this day 15 years later there is absolutely no mainstream application other than the fact that the whole digital currency thing basically replaced gambling for most part (a lot gambling Co’s have been suffering as of late).

Chatgpt definitely is being used in the real world. I work with it nearly every day to make my life easier.

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I’m not going to lie, i have not even tried it yet lol. But if you don’t mind can you describe couple activities that you are using ChatGPT and has helped you? This a real question, since i have zero experience. Thanks,

When writing software, you often times end up using a search engine for a specific functionality. Prior to ChatGPT, you sometimes found something that was remotely similar and then had to adapt it to fit your needs. Now you just give ChatGPT a description of what you want and it’ll give you code. Most of the times that code will still be incorrect but you can ask ChatGPT to refine its solution by pointing out errors.
Another use case would be to write summaries of articles which you’ve skimmed over. It can even imitate your writing style to some degree so it doesn’t look as “robotically”. Or you can give it a few short sentences and ask it to write a long documentation for you based on the information provided.

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Thanks, quite interesting and definitely there seem to be many applications of the technology. At moment not doing any of the three activities you mentioned but I’m sure in future there will be some application that will make sense to use it (even for us not so tech savvy folks).