The Death of Death

The Death of Death N° 143. Longevity, amortality, transhumanism, technoprogressism. February 2021

…will we be able to live forever remains an unanswered question; turning a hundred years old into the new sixty – that is significantly extending human lifespan – has changed from a question of « if » to a matter of « when ». Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, engineer, futurist. Page 179. The Future Is Faster Than You Think.

Theme of the month: Longevity, amortality, transhumanism, technoprogressism

It is one of humanity’s oldest dreams, health without any time limit. We all wish each other this in the New Year. Good health. We know more and more about why and how aging occurs. But we still cannot control senescence.

Not all those who wish to go beyond our biological limits, beyond 100 years of life, will define themselves as transhumanists. On the other hand, almost all transhumanists will describe themselves as longevitists.

What is longevitism?

It is the search for a much longer life, beyond what is possible today, thanks to advances in science and medicine.

Longevitism arouses both attraction and opposition. The opposition isoften motivated by the fear of false hopes, the fear of living longer but in poor health and the fear of therapies only for the rich. 

Longevitists want research for a healthy life, based on serious scientific evidence and are generally attentive to broad accessibility.

Their research may be moderate, aimed at and only a few more years of good health. It can be strong, aiming for a life of well over 120 years.

So the goal of these therapies is to strongly reduce or even eliminate the mechanisms of senescence. The most optimistic will aim at what is called « biological immortality« , the absence of any aging mechanism. The term « amortality » is also used.

What is transhumanism?

Let’s take Wikipedia’s definition: it is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies able to greatly modify or enhance human intellect and physiology.

The word transhumanism sometimes frightens people because it evokes the appealof dangerous, dehumanizing technologies. The vast majority of transhumanists are aware of the dangers linked to technical progress. They actively wish for technologies to reduce risks, especially the so-called « existential » ones, to increase resilience and thus the quality and duration of life.

The improvements that transhumanists aim for can be physical: higher, stronger, further, more adapted to the environment. It can be related to the sense organs (better sight, smell, new sensory capacities…). The improvements aimed at can also be related to intellectual capacities. The goal is then to allow more intelligence, more capacity for empathy, compassion, happiness …

But the improvement most often envisaged by transhumanists is that of the improvement of life expectancy, thus the objective of longevitists. This is the necessary, but not sufficient condition for all other increases, for all human rights. Without sustainable life, there are no rights, no possibilities.

What is technoprogressism?

Technoprogressism is a transhumanism for which the idea of linking technological and social progress is central. When we look at the history of humanity, we see that technological progress has largely contributed to social progress and vice versa. But this is not automatic. Technoprogressists will insist on accessibility to technological progress for all those who want it. This applies in particular, of course, to health and longevity therapies.

One of the main founders of transhumanism, Briton David Pearce, summarized transhumanism by 3 S’s: Superlongevity, Superintelligence and Super well-being. Technoprogressists sometimes add « Super democracy » or Supersocial.

“Biological » longevity and « computer » longevity.

For most contemporary longevitists, the ultimate goal is a much longer life with an « ordinary » body, not so different from the contemporary body.

This concept of « ordinary body » must be put into perspective. We already accept today many things that would have appeared totally unnatural even to the most erudite two centuries ago. We transfuse blood, we almost all have foreign bodies in our mouths. At the end of our lives, most of us will have gone through a physiological state that does not exist outside of medicine, somewhere between sleep and death. We call it general anesthesia. Millions of humans have been conceived in a test tube. Millions of us also have pacemakers, cochlear implants… In fact, what yesterday was unimaginable transgression is today medicine. And today’s transhumanism could be tomorrow’s medicine.

But for some more radical transhumanists and longevitists, we could go far beyond our biological composition. Man-machine « fusion » could develop, concerning an increasingly large part of the body, creating a cyborg. Further still, one day, human consciousness could become independent of the body, be transferred onto a computer medium. This vision was discussed in a letter in 2012. It remains today totally hypothetical within a reasonable timeframe. For most longevitists, and probably also for most transhumanists, this could only become possible where computers reproduce biological processes as well as or even better than the processes themselves.  Where the virtual copy would be better than the original. Like a beautiful film can be more beautiful than reality. Like a game can be more enjoyable than the situation that gave birth to it.

This requires nanotechnology and computer efficiency far beyond current capabilities. Above all, it implies being able to understand and replicate the neural mechanisms of what is often defined as « the most complex object in the known Universe« .

Longevity, transhumanism, artificial intelligence

The IT of the near future is above all the development of an increasingly strong artificial intelligence, developed to facilitate human interests. Longevitists, transhumanists or not, hope, and try, to implement computing processes allowing better and faster research. An acceleration of discoveries for health, longevity and resilience also requires massive data that is easilyaccessible and well organized.

Using research capabilities primarily for these purposes, rather than for competitive, military or consumer purposes, is likely to reduce the risks associated with artificial intelligence. Making the best « brains », both human and computational, work together for a much longer healthy life will reduce the risks of developing intelligence that is far removed from human beings.

This is important because the risks of an artificial intelligence « turning radically wrong » are considered high by many. Among those who are concerned, there are many transhumanists, including Nick Bostrom, author of a renowned book on the subject.

More human, tomorrow

Longevitists generally focus first on medical progress and everything that contributes to it. Transhumanists, especially technoprogressists, also seek to analyze why this progress is important. They will explain that a much longer life will make it possible to have

– a more peaceful life, with less violence and more caution;

– to love each other more and to stress us less, since we will have more time;

– to be more careful about the biosphere because we will know that we are here for the long term. A sustainable body is not possible without a sustainable planet.

– Less overpopulation, and more attention to children. For it is where life is longest that children are the rarest and that we have the most time to devote to them.

For these and other reasons, the age-old quest for the Fountain of Youth is today a more desirable and reasonable goal than ever. Today, we still have to accept death from old age because we have no choice. Tomorrow we may choose.

This month’s good news: Conference and workshops on February 11, 2021 on animal and human testing for longevity. Support from Heales for two studies testing the lifespan of rats treated with young plasma.

The February 11th conference on the topic « Clarifying whether and to what extent current anti-aging approaches work in mice or people » was a great success with more than 100 participants.

Present were specialists on the subject such as Irina Conboy, Nir Barzilaï, Greg Fahy and Liz Parrish to name but a few. If you wish to discover them all, the conference split up by speaker remains accessible.

A synthesis of the proposals made during the workshops has been produced.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Heales association has been supporting two studies, carried out by Rodolfo Goya in Argentina and Harold Katcher in India, each following the maximum lifespan of rats treated with blood products, in order to verify the beneficial effect on longevity of this type of treatment.

If significant longevity results are not achieved, this will « close a door ». If important longevity results are established, this will be extremely important news. The conviction of most researchers and the association is that the first hypothesis is the right one. But we would love to be proved wrong!

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