Quote: “Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it”
- Ray Kurzweil
Too much time…..
Why this person is important:
Computer scientist, inventor, and futurist (one of the greatest of the modern era)
What is Longevity
- Dictionary – long existence or service
- Medicine and Science – long duration of individual life
What is Geroscience:
- Gero (Greek - old)
- A field of biomedical research that focusses on understanding the biology of aging and how aging contributes to disease
- Geroscience, geroscientist, geroprotective, gerontocracy, gerontophobia
Why Longevity
- Longer Life? People want to live longer and better? More time young. Not more time old.
- live forever? Scares many. Plasticity of youth would be so important in this case
- look good and do the things we love for longer? Yes!
I believe: Longevity and understanding/controlling aging are key to human advancement and long-term success.
Key Points:
- Right philosophy: Medicine must start looking at the whole person over the entire trajectory of their life, Through the scope of longevity, the full scope.
- More viable healthcare system: This will turn healthcare from a business liability to a business asset as instead of treating the ill we will be optimizing performance and helping people reach stated goals.
- Makes deep space travel possible: Longevity (anti-aging) medicine will be needed for long durations space travel and exploration, space will melt our flesh without it.
- Increases Economic Productivity: Solve the “aging-population” and “low birth rate” problem increasing societal productivity. It takes a long time to train a human to be productive. If productive years could be extended, this would be a huge economic win.
- Increase the value of life.
- Lead to discoveries that we cannot yet see. (e.g. GPS and Internet born out of the Space Race)
- Better Medicine: Improve prevention and treatments of most all chronic diseases as aging is the primary risk factors
Paradigm shift is needed – People just need to understand why this is important and the money will then follow. At the Dublin Longevity Summit everyone kept stating the lack of funding was the biggest limitation. I agree funding is needed, but this starts with changing the minds of the populous.
Big 4 Technology Hurdles to Climb for Human Advancement
- Longevity (Medicine, biochemistry, Biotech)
- AI (chips, software architectures like transformer, quantum compute)
- Space capabilities (vehicles, communications, engineering advancements)
- Fusion/Energy Production and storage
I believe breakthroughs in the above 4 problems will lead to profound knowledge growth in the field of fundamental physics that will truly allow us to control our environment and long term future
Kardashev Scale (Civilization Capabilities Based on Technology and Energy Production)
- made by soviet astronomer in 1964
- we are stage 0
- stage 1, harness the power of a planet - Avatar
- stage 2, harness the power of a star – star wars and star trek, somewhere between a 2 and 3
- stage 3, harness the power of a galaxy (black hole)
- stage 4, harness the power of a universe – not sure we can really conceptualize this very well yet
Why is stage 1 so important: It greatly increases the chances of long term survival for our species and planet earth.
References
- none for this show
- check out the Kardashev Scale if you are nerd
Thanks,
Bill Brandenburg, MD
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