Venture Capitalists vs. The Grim Reaper The New Yorker has an intriguing article this week entitled "Silicon Valley's Quest To Live Forever: Can Billions Of Dollars' Worth of High-Tech Research Succeed In Making Death Optional?" Apologies for spoiling the suspense, but the answer to that question is: Not any time soon (and if you ask this non-scientist, likely never). Still, it makes for a fascinating journey, in which Silicon Valley plays the roles of funder, research engine, potential provider—and most likely customer—in a quest whose very mission is so audacious that few outside the Valley would ever realistically embark on it. As I say, I wouldn't read it in the hopes of discovering imminent solutions, but the article is written by the entertaining Tad Friend and includes some trademark Friend-ian (Friend-ly?) quips. He says of one researcher, "Since the F.D.A. requires an authorization for any new tests on humans, he began trying therapies on himself. He'd read the literature on self-experimentation, and tallied the results: eight deaths... and ten Nobel Prizes. Coin toss." Elsewhere, Friend notes, "the most proven way for a man to live fourteen years longer than average is to become a eunuch. Good news/bad news." In the end, the article is as revealing of the Silicon Valley mindset as it is of science. For example: All the leading immortalists started out in tech, and all had a father who died young (as Ray Kurzweil's did when he was twenty-two), or absconded early (as Aubrey de Grey's did before he was born). They share an early loss of innocence and a profound faith that the human mind can perfect even the human body. Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, lost his adoptive mother to cancer when he was in college—and later donated three hundred and seventy million dollars to aging research. "Death has never made any sense to me," he told a biographer. from FORTUNE magazine
There was a story about the tree of life, but, the original couple got booted out of heaven. Looking to it: it was said that people used to live up to 900 years. So it means that today, most die at a "kid age" 90 years, relative to 900 years. It would be interesting if the researchers could find out why this relatively early age.
There is circumstantial and controversial "evidence" that two genetic manipulations to increase aggressiveness and shorten the lifespan were carried out in order to create a fighting people i.e us. With so much bs and disinfo floating around we may never know.
Never heard of this : who would have done this genetic manipulation? agressiveness is linked to stress, so this leading to a shorter lifespan ? may be. any links?
Death is a code written in the program of the natural laws that governors our universe. Man can prolong life but will never be able to defeat death. Either way it will never happen in our life time!
Interesting do u have a link with further info? Conspiracy theories are always fun! Despite likely not true.
Look into the Billy Meier case. If you assign a small nonzero probability that it may be true, look into his 251 contact report.
Steve Jobs>Quotes> Quotable Quote “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.