radical life extension Concepts

The Transhumanist Reader

by Max More and Natasha Vita-More · 4 Mar 2013 · 798pp · 240,182 words

was Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829–1903), a Russian Orthodox Christian philosopher and participant in the Russian cosmism movement, who advocated using scientific methods to achieve radical life extension, physical immortality, resurrection of the dead, and space and ocean colonization. According to Fedorov, the evolutionary process led to increased intelligence culminating, so far, in

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as potential media for artistic options, will expand in creating new practices for designing biosynthetic bodies, sensorial extension, cognitive enrichment, gender diversity, identity transfer, and radical life extension. The modification of biological life systems, from single cells to organisms, increases the transdisciplinarity of the arts and sciences. As noted, some practices have reached

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a developed approach to human enhancement reaches beyond electronic media, bioart, and immersive design. I propose that what is needed is a field focusing on radical life extension, especially at the convergence of NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology, infotechnology, and cognitive science). These technologies and the supporting science relate to the push beyond limited lifespan

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Outcomes Max More In the past, it was possible to approach transhumanism as primarily involving philosophical discussion and technological speculation. While transhumanist goals such as radical life extension, uploading, and cognitive, sensory, and physical enhancement were speculative they were also considered scientifically feasible, even if the technologies to achieve those goals appeared remote

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the same time, we see the convergence of biotechnology and nanotechnology, improvements in prosthetics, and growing success in restoring senses. As their core ideas about radical life extension and human enhancement have spread and become more influential, transhumanists have felt less need for mere envisioning and advocacy and have shifted the emphasis to

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World

by Jamie Bartlett · 12 Jun 2017 · 390pp · 109,870 words

that excite transhumanists like Zoltan are life extension, cryonic freezing and mind uploading. Each of them is advancing quickly. But they are also highly speculative. Radical life extension seeks to use a variety of medical advances—tissue rejuvenation, regenerative medicine, gene therapy, molecular repair—to slow and eventually stop the process of ageing

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil · 25 Jun 2024

, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. To an extent we can reduce these risks through lifestyle, diet, and supplementation—what I call the first bridge to radical life extension.[106] But those can only delay the inevitable. This is why life expectancy gains in developed countries have slowed since roughly the middle of the

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mitochondrial genetic mutations, reduced telomere length, and the uncontrolled cell division that causes cancer.[110] In the 2030s we will reach the third bridge of radical life extension: medical nanorobots with the ability to intelligently conduct cellular-level maintenance and repair throughout our bodies. By some definitions, certain biomolecules are already considered nanobots

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that the next twenty years of advances will be roughly like the last twenty, but this ignores the exponential nature of the process. Knowledge that radical life extension is close at hand is spreading, but most people—both doctors and patients—are still unaware of this grand transformation in our ability to reprogram

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in this chapter, the 2030s will bring another health revolution, which my book on health (coauthored with Terry Grossman, MD) calls the third bridge to radical life extension: medical nanorobots. This intervention will vastly extend the immune system. Our natural immune system, which includes T cells that can intelligently destroy hostile microorganisms, is

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our remaining life expectancy for each calendar year that passes. The sands of time will start running in rather than out. The fourth bridge to radical life extension will be the ability to essentially back up who we are, just as we do routinely with all of our digital information. As we augment

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about equity and inequality. A common challenge to these predictions about longevity is that only the wealthy will be able to afford the technologies of radical life extension. My response is to point out the history of the cell phone. You indeed had to be wealthy to have a mobile phone as recently

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the nature of what it means to be human.[82] This would include modifying our genes and our protein folding, and taking other steps toward radical life extension. This opposition will ultimately fail, however, because the demand for therapies that can overcome the pain, disease, and short life spans inherent in our version

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1.0 bodies will ultimately prove irresistible. When people are presented with the prospect of radical life extension, two objections are quickly raised. The first is the probability of running out of material resources to support an expanding biological population. We frequently hear

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example, we have nearly ten thousand times the sunlight we need to theoretically meet all of our current energy needs.[83] The second objection to radical life extension is that we will become profoundly bored doing the same things over and over again for centuries. But in the 2020s we will have virtual

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and AR connected directly to our nervous systems by nanobots feeding signals to our senses. We will thereby have radical life expansion in addition to radical life extension. We will inhabit vast virtual and augmented realities limited only by our imagination—which itself will be expanded. Even if we lived hundreds of years

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, and as of 2023 there is active research working toward addressing all of them. This doesn’t have to immediately totally cure aging to allow radical life extension—the tipping point will be when, every year, medicine adds at least one additional year to our life expectancy, allowing people to get ahead of

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(Kurzweil), 164 Age of Spiritual Machines, The (Kurzweil), 4, 8–9, 13, 63, 112, 164 aging, 5, 192, 255–57, 259 slowing and reversing. See radical life extension agricultural runoff, 180, 181 agriculture, 169–70, 171, 201–3, 227 farm labor, 199, 201–3, 203, 219 vertical, 169, 171, 178, 179–83 Agüera

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, Richard, 246 Fiala, John, 104 Fifth Epoch. See epochs filtration technology, 178 financial crisis of 2008, 139 firearms, 3D-printed, 186–87 first bridge to radical life extension, 134–35, 255, 348n First Epoch. See epochs FitMyFoot, 184, 208 fixed action patterns, 32–33 Fleabag (TV show), 220 Flinders University, 237 floating-point

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FOOM (intelligence explosion), 60–61 Forbes, 213 foreign language translation, 48, 222 fossil fuels, 59, 209–10 replacement of, 154, 172–76 fourth bridge to radical life extension, 136, 192–93, 348n Fourth Epoch. See epochs fractals, 86 France Asilomar Principles, 280 crime, 149 education and literacy, 125, 125, 127 nuclear weapons, 269

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, 62, 133–36, 255–56, 258 technological progress and, 114–15, 135–36 in UK, 114–15, 136 in US, 137, 216 life extension. See radical life extension LifeStraw, 178 literacy, 111–12, 122–27 growth since 1820, 125 rates by country, 125 Little Sophia (robot), 101–2 locked-in syndrome, 76 logic

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fingers and sticky fingers problem, 249–50 gray goo, 249, 275–78 medical, 192, 251, 257, 258–63, 276–77 molecular assemblers, 249–50, 252 radical life extension, 135–36 risks and perils, 273–78 self-replication of, 5, 30, 96, 246–49, 252, 260, 273–75 nanocrystals, 172 Nanosystems (Drexler), 250 nanotechnology

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, 111–21 quantum computing, 251 quantum dots, 172 quantum emulation, 104 quarks, 97 qubits, 251 R racial disparities and policing, 150 Radical Abundance (Drexler), 169 radical life extension, 189–94, 255–65 first bridge to, 134–35, 255, 348n second bridge to, 135, 348n third bridge to, 135–36, 191–92, 348n fourth

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satellites, 87 scaling, 47, 54 solar electricity, 174–75 scanning tunneling microscope, 251 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 100 Scientific American, 247 Searle, John, 48 second bridge to radical life extension, 135, 348n Second Epoch. See epochs Sedol, Lee, 41 selection bias, 98–99, 114–15 self-assembly, 249–50 self-assured destruction (SAD), 270 self

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, 272, 276, 278 theory of everything, 87 theory of mind, 37, 56 “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” (Feynman), 246 third bridge to radical life extension, 135–36, 191–92, 348n Third Epoch. See epochs thought-to-text technology, 70–71 3D printing, 144, 178, 183–89 of buildings, 170, 187

100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family And

by Sonia Arrison · 22 Aug 2011 · 381pp · 78,467 words

with another realm? Scholars of religion have already started discussions about this quandary. In the seminal compilation on the topic, Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, edited by religious studies professors Derek Maher and Calvin Mercer, Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff predicts that longer lives will make religious messages weaker. “The longer

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predict how Jainism might incorporate radical longevity into its mind-set. She posits that Jains could interpret “the longer life spans of humans, resulting from radical life extension technology, as the result of humans’ better ayus (life) karma that was fixed in their previous lives.”53 And for those unable to afford access

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home for the future. Hell is the experience of frustration tinged with remorse and regret.”58 Such a reinterpretation of heaven and hell would make radical life-extension work well with Muslim doctrines, Musa argues, and a longer life would certainly offer “Muslims more opportunities to attain knowledge, gain wisdom, and practice piety

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, January 3, 2008, www.economist.com/node/10423439. 5 Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, “Becoming Yet More Like God: A Jewish Perspective on Radical Life Extension,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Derek F. Maher and Calvin Mercer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 69. 6 Sherry E. Fohr, “Karma, Austerity, and Time Cycles

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: Jainism and Radical Life Extension,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Maher and Mercer, 82. Jainism is an Indian religion that teaches nonviolence and austerity. 7 Ronald Cole-Turner, “Extreme Longevity Research

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: A Progressive Protestant Perspective,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Maher and Mercer, 59. 8 Ibid., 60. 9 Phone interview with Lawrence Iannaccone, April 1, 2010. 10 Peter Berger, “Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with

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,” 72. 56 Ibid. 57 Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Amy Michelle DeBaets, “Be Careful What You Wish For? Radical Life Extension Coram De: A Reformed Protestant Perspective,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Maher and Mercer, 44. 58 Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, cited in Aisha Y. Musa, “A Thousand Years, Less Fifty

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: Toward a Quranic View of Extreme Longevity,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Maher and Mercer, 127–128. 59 Musa, “A Thousand Years, Less Fifty,” 128. 60 Livia Kohn, “Told You So: Extreme Longevity and Daoist Realization

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,” in Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension, ed. Maher and Mercer, 87. 61 Ibid., 95. 62 Ibid., 96. 63 Ibid. 64 Lawrence R. Iannaccone, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” American Journal of

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fundamentalists percent of population belonging to religion or no religion(fig.) unexpected religious movements See also Bible, God; under Education Religion and the Implications of Radical Life Extension (Maher, Mercer, and Dorff) Renaissance era Renouncers Reproductive technology. See also Fertility technology/clinics Resource depletion/allocation. See also Food shortages Resveratrol Retirement Reverse engineering

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil · 14 Jul 2005 · 761pp · 231,902 words

that will result from a single trend in to day's world as if nothing else will change. A good example is the concern that radical life extension will result in overpopulation and the exhaustion of limited material resources to sustain human life, which ignores comparably radical wealth creation from nanotechnology and strong

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processes underlying life, we are starting to learn to reprogram our biology to achieve the virtual elimination of disease, dramatic expansion of human potential, and radical life extension. Hans Moravec points out, however, that no matter how successfully we fine-tune our DNA-based biology, humans will remain "second-class robots," meaning that

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Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, which I coauthored with Terry Grossman, M.D., a leading longevity expert, we discuss these three bridges to radical life extension (today's knowledge, biotechnology, and nanotechnology).12 I wrote there: "Whereas some of my contemporaries may be satisfied to embrace aging gracefully as part of

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follow. Evidence from the genome project indicates that no more than a few hundred genes are involved in the aging process. By manipulating these genes, radical life extension has already been achieved in simpler animals. For example, by modifying genes in the C. elegans worm that control its insulin and sex-hormone levels

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ideas to confront and resolve each such problem . ·We can apply the enormous leverage provided by the acceleration of technology. A notable example is achieving radical life extension through "a bridge to a bridge to a bridge" (applying today's knowledge as a bridge to biotechnology, which in turn will bridge us to

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the era of nanotechnology).4 This offers a way to live indefinitely now, even though we don't yet have all the knowledge necessary for radical life extension. In other words we don't have to solve every problem today. We can anticipate the capability of technologies that are coming—in five years

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, memories—to another substrate. Although the new entity would act just like me, the question remains: is it really me? Some of the scenarios for radical life extension involve reengineering and rebuilding the systems and subsystems that our bodies and brains comprise. In taking part in this reconstruction, do I lose my self

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humanism": opposition to any change in the nature of what it means to be human (for example, changing our genes and taking other steps toward radical life extension). This effort, too, will ultimately fail, however, because the demand for therapies that can overcome the suffering, disease, and short lifespans inherent in our version

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

by Mark O'Connell · 28 Feb 2017 · 252pp · 79,452 words

, and thereby the broader cultural imagination of technology. Transhumanism’s influence seemed perceptible in the fanatical dedication of many tech entrepreneurs to the ideal of radical life extension—in the PayPal cofounder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel’s funding of various life extension projects, for instance, and in Google’s establishment of its

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religious offshoot. It was a faith, or “movement,” based in the idea of “personal cyberconsciousness,” in the spiritual dimension of things like mind uploading and radical life extension. I had read about Jason Xu, too—about a protest he’d helped to organize recently, the first-ever transhumanist street action in the U

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first set about arguing me out of any ambivalence about the desirability of eradicating human mortality. People’s standard reasons for rejecting the principle of radical life extension—that it would somehow rob us of our humanity, that life was given meaning by its finitude, that living indefinitely would actually be hellish—were

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best way to postpone the effects of old age. But they don’t want to risk their funding through any association with the notion of radical life extension, because it’s perceived as total science fiction—even though, as I say, it’s entirely logical. They find it absolutely necessary to distance themselves

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-called “experts,” without examining the vested interests of those “experts,” their need to say what they were saying—about his work, about the feasibility of radical life extension—even if it didn’t necessarily accord with what they themselves believed. They dared not be seen holding controversial positions, he said, for fear of

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?” This Roen Horn, I learned as we walked down the eerily deserted main street, was a volunteer for Zoltan’s campaign, a zealous advocate of radical life extension who was also making a documentary about the Immortality Bus. This latter vehicle of transcendence was currently moored in the parking lot of a nearby

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’t transhumanism precisely that: a wholesale projection of the formative relationship with God onto the figure of Science? Wasn’t all of it—brain uploading, radical life extension, cryonics, the Singularity—a postscript to the oldest of narratives? I wrote in my notebook: “All stories begin in our endings.” — Roen’s austere calorie

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to greater heights of influence and power. Frequently, he spoke of the environmentalist movement as a model for how he planned to build transhumanism, and radical life extension particularly, into something the general public, and eventually governments, would be forced to take seriously. It was clear that he thought of himself as the

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me smiling less indulgently at our son’s persistent questions about death. I felt no increased attraction toward cryonic suspension, or whole brain emulation, or radical life extension; I felt no greater urge toward becoming a machine. But I was by no means unflinching, either, in the face of my own animal mortality

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris · 14 Feb 2023 · 864pp · 272,918 words

adepts has formed around this kind of “transhumanist” thinking, and it is centered in Silicon Valley. These people are concerned with super AIs, but also radical life extension, cryogenics, space travel, and the idea of uploading human consciousness to the cloud. It’s low-hanging fruit for psychoanalysts and theologians, but this kind

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

by Tamara Kneese · 14 Aug 2023 · 284pp · 75,744 words

just to one heterosexually defined spouse. Mormon transhumanism is still centered on reproduction and kinship. Transhumanism proper is notoriously unfriendly to sexual reproduction in that radical life extension or immortality makes it unnecessary for people to procreate at all. As the media theorist N. Katherine Hayles has described in her critiques of the

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.”82 Brand acknowledges that some people are living longer, referring to Bruce Sterling’s science fiction work Holy Fire, which examines the possibilities afforded by radical life extension. For Brand, life extension also leads to greater responsibility, as increasing life spans will change the structure of the world. That responsibility, however, is based

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organizing movements through and around platforms. There is an immense gulf between the sanitized digital afterlives imagined by technologists, who build posthumous chatbots or other radical life-extension technologies, and the people on the ground whose lives and deaths are subject to the machinations of platform necropolitics. In this conclusion, I juxtapose the

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human. No matter how niche such examples may seem, the Terasem Movement Foundation has major institutions and VC funding behind it. At a conference on radical life extension, Rothblatt exclaimed, “It’s enormously gratifying to have the epitome of the establishment, the head of the National Academy of Medicine, say, ‘We, too, choose

Immortality, Inc.

by Chip Walter · 7 Jan 2020 · 232pp · 72,483 words

cure aging—even death itself. Levinson had been aware, vaguely, of various efforts to extend life. He had heard of Ray Kurzweil’s prescriptions for radical life extension, had come across Aubrey de Grey’s work on abolishing aging here and there, and suspected the National Institute on Aging (NIA), Harvard, MIT, and

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. But, in the early 2000s, Kurzweil was not the only eccentric who was gathering the attention of those riding the bleeding edges of science and radical life extension. A lanky, biblically bearded computer scientist with a prodigious thirst for ale had also emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, from among the musty labs and

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died, never had children, and eventually became all the same age. As he saw it, those would be the inevitable results of a world where radical life extension was common. De Grey said he understood those concerns, and he could see why people came up with the elaborate rationalizations they did to explain

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to make them good ones rather than the painful, long goodbyes that marked the ends of so many lives. Not that he was opposed to radical life extension. If Art Levinson and the researchers over at Calico could manage to create a pill that jumped human life span to a healthy few hundred

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a small part of an ever accelerating drive for death-defying endeavors. In 2017, suddenly and everywhere, the media were again alight with discussions of radical life extension, just as they had been three and four years earlier. Except now there was a twist: It was all about Silicon Valley. Longevity venture funds

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. “The Hallmarks of Aging.” Cell, June 6, 2013. Masci, David, and Funk, Carolyn. “Living to 120 and Beyond: Americans’ Views on Aging, Medical Advances and Radical Life Extension.” Pew Research Center, August 6, 2013. pewforum.org/2013/08/06/living-to-120-and-beyond-americans-views-on-aging-medical-advances-and

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-radical-life-extension. ———. “To Count Our Days: The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Radical Life Extension.” Pew Research Center, August 6, 2013. pewforum.org/2013/08/06/to-count-our-days-the-scientific-and-ethical-dimensions

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-of-radical-life-extension. McCracken, Harry, and Lev Grossman. “Google vs. Death: How CEO Larry Page Has Transformed the Search Giant Into a Factory for Moonshots.” Time, September 30,

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by Not Increasing With Age.” eLife 7 (2018): e31157. elifesciences.org/articles/31157. Shermer, Michael. “Radical Life-Extension Is Not Around the Corner-Can Science and Silicon Valley Defeat Death?” Scientific American, October 1, 2016. scientificamerican.com/article/radical-life-extension-is-not-around-the-corner. Sifferlin, Alexandra. “How Silicon Valley Is Trying to Hack Its

Architects of Intelligence

by Martin Ford · 16 Nov 2018 · 586pp · 186,548 words

into our bloodstream. One application of these medical nanorobots will be to extend our immune systems. That’s what I call the third bridge to radical life extension. The first bridge is what we can do now, and bridge two is the perfecting of biotechnology and reprogramming the software of life. Bridge three