Fight Aging!

It seems Second Life is even more popular post-grey goo; no such thing as bad publicity. Mark your calendars: Anders Sandberg will be giving a presentation on healthy life extension in the virtual space:

It is not a coincidence that the oldest remaining literary epic is the one about king Gilgamesh’s search for the herb of immortality: the dream of eternal youth is as old as mankind. But what has so far mainly been wishful dreaming is increasingly becoming medical and demographic reality. Today life is routinely extended and ageing slowed in lab animals. We live in a rapidly greying society where the average lifespan, health and vigor would have seemed nearly divine to king Gilgamesh, whose subjects had a life expectancy at birth around 25 years. As researchers increasingly see ageing as something mutable - and hence potentially treatable - we have to start considering how to deal with the changes it will cause in society and our lives.

Extending lifespans is something many do not take seriously. It is in the realm of wishful thinking, science fiction and health gurus. But if one is concerned about the current demographic trends and the somewhat long-term future, then one ought to at least consider progress in extending lifespans as one possibility to take into account. In his report “Keep on raging against ageing” Anders Sandberg, research director Eudoxa and transhumanist par excellence, will make a moral and scientific case for life extension.

As for a number of other transhumanists of a more philosophical bent, Sandberg has come to be a part of the new Future of Humanity Institute. The transhumanist community builds as it goes, a sort of diffusive expansion into the broader world, and one that produces interesting secondary reactions, vortices and calcifications. Such is the evolution of most movements from a small core community with an intense, pinpoint vision, out to dilution, evolution, change and a widespread acceptance of ideas once too radical for adoption.

Twenty years from now, it will be hard to explain to the young folk just how ridiculed and shunned was the concept of scientific research to extend healthy longevity - and it will be our shame that we and those who came before advanced this cause too slowly to benefit the billion who will die between now and then.

Technorati tags: advocacy, life extension, presentation