As a side note: why are you bullish on LEV?
Keeping up with the literature, it seems very much like the 'code' of why aging occurs/effects us the way it does has almost been cracked. In short, the information that our cells use to reproduce starts to accumulate errors from both internal and external causes and their ability to repair those errors diminishes in kind (the more errors to repair, the more strain on the repair system). This leads our cells to A) become cancerous, B) Become senescent (nonfunctional but still 'active'), and C) change/mutate to a different type of cell, which obviously isn't helpful.
Eventually this cascades to full organ failure, and we die.
i.e. the science seems to 'know' the reason we 'get old.' The systems behind it are becoming better understood, and now the hunt is on for various methods or drugs or therapies that can trigger or reinforce natural repair systems or otherwise keep the cells reproducing accurately for much longer.
This is an actually tricky question, but a LOT more interest in this area has led to increased funding. It does seem likely that a couple silver bullets might emerge in the near future.
There's the obvious question of "where are the immortal mice?" And I think that's probably the thing that gives me the most doubt. If there's a surefire solution, then labs should be able to demonstrate it by pumping some mice full of it and showing that they just don't die naturally.
But watch out for interventions to extend canine lives. There's clearly something brewing.
And of course. "where are the immortal Billionaires," who could obviously afford any treatment they want, regardless of how experimental or illegal? Although I'd certainly suggest that the Billionaires just hitting their 50's and 60's these days are looking less decrepit than usual.
And I want a Goddamn explanation for how Tom Cruise is still hanging from airplanes in his early 60's. That doesn't invoke Thetans.
However I am reserving some bearishness for the possibility that the whole field is suffering from the current scientific crises where p-hacking, fraud, and failed replications are running rampant. For instance, studies of Blue Zones where extreme human longevity seems to be more common, seems likely to suffer from poor record-keeping, which is to say we can't be sure anyone is really as old as they say.
And that means the information gleaned from studying them will be inherently flawed. This might have ripple effects on the field's validity, if their model of 'extreme' longevity (and thus the metrics they're chasing) are on shaky grounds.
But the motivation to solve this issue is huge, and AI drug discovery is already a thing, so I'd expect some breakthroughs to emerge relatively soon. Maybe we get those immortal mice.
and in the meantime there are definitely a number of smaller interventions that, when done consistently, can up your chances of keeping healthy long enough to survive until aging reversal becomes feasible.
faceh
3mo ago
Found an even better example, which has a number of tells, but if you told me this was a clip from a TV show I might believe you at first:
faceh
3mo ago
I actually found the rally car one the most impressive, because holy cow that's a lot of details to keep consistent, including The water splash on the camera lens, and the vehicle itself doesn't do any weird shape changing even as the water obscures it, and the audio was good enough that I would not have called that it was an AI producing it rather than a professional Foley artist.
Camera motions seem slightly unnatural but THE CAMERA IS MOVING and the scene retains coherence. Actually mind-blowing.
faceh
3mo ago
maybe they're right, but never materialized during the Cold War.
I mean, if they were right, then in most timelines, a ton of humans died/were never born, and thus it is just more probable that you were born into the timeline where we narrowly avoided the doomsday scenario.
Or you could go back and look at any number of doomsday cults, even including early Christians anxiously awaiting Christ's return in their lifetimes.
My issue here is that we can see and interact with the 'messiah' this time. There are compelling arguments for why it will keep getting smarter. And if it gets smarter, there are plausible ways it can wipe out decent swaths of humanity.
I will grant that it is almost impossible to take anyone completely seriously because in both the scenario where we get Utopia AND the scenario where we get annihilated, nobody will care about the accuracy of the predictions that led up to it, so the incentive to be truthful and honest is minimal.
Just be cautious about normalcy bias, when things have been getting rapidly weirder for a while now.
The investment value of BTC is either an underlying "BTC will become so convenient to transact with that everyone will want to keep balances in it" (which looks less likely to happen the longer it goes without happening) or a meta "you can sell your BTC to someone who'll pay even more for it for some reason" (which happens, but can't happen forever without a non-circular reason).
The Bitcoin Maxi case at this point is that it is digital gold. More fungible and easier to store, and readily convertible to whatever currency you need. I don't buy it all myself, but Bitcoins ongoing survival is proof of something.
And if you think a dollar collapse is pending, then BTC is probably where people flee to in at least the short term.
Personally, I just wish I knew what to advise my kids.
I think I can make a case for NOT following certain paths, but as for actionable "Do this to prosper in the future" advice I am at a loss. Its not like you can just say "Plastics" and nudge them off in the direction of the next big technological gold rush.
10-15 years ago "learn to code" would have been SOLID advice. No longer. I'm increasingly reading that AI models are really good at various parts of the practice of medicine... and SUPPOSEDLY robot surgery is here. So the Med school investment looks a bit questionable.
And as for college funds... why should colleges even be a thing, at least with their current business model, when AIs are generally capable of teaching at the level of even the best professors, across any subject?
Yeah, for Gen Alpha, there is probably NO career advice that previous generations can offer them based on experience other than "wait and see."
Being able to personally push the boundaries of knowledge into previously uncharted territory used to be what you needed to do to get a PhD, not what you needed to do on a regular basis just to remain economically viable.
I can imagine a world where the AI is doing all the knowledge work but keeps giving humans various tasks that it needs to complete in order to push the boundaries of knowledge forward. Tasks that will seem completely nonsensical to the individual performing them but in the aggregate allow the AI to improve things, iteration after iteration, and thereby keep most humans 'employed' and paying them in some currency they can spend with other humans and thus the 'economy' chugs along but in effect everyone on earth is a 'gig worker' who gets tasks assigned to them as needed, and gets rewarded for performance.
A scarier version is that the AI requires you to be Neuralinked up to it so it can inject arbitrary commands into your brain as needed, but also rewards you handsomely for helping out.
My hedge is that I'm saying its >50%, so not a certainty, but I want to be clear that IF it happens I wasn't caught off-guard and if it doesn't happen (or indeed never happens) I did stick my neck out and will accept the derision.
Because obsessive auteurs (or autists) with time on their hands and the proper tools CAN in fact create amazing works in relatively short time frames. It took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the Sistine Chapel. Would we agree that with modern tools and a few decent assistants, in the current era he could easily knock it out in less than 1?
Bo Burnham produced an acclaimed 87 minute-long special all by his lonesome in just over a year.
A small and dedicated team that animated an 84-minute long film over 5 1/2 years using free tools totaled about 40-50 people working on it but was mostly down to just two guys doing the critical work.
(Incidentally, "Flow" is also what Google is calling their AI video workspace)
So if the AI is sufficiently good to 10x the productivity of the creators, a team of about 5 could probably get something that's Netflix-Worthy (derogatory way to put it, granted) done inside of a year, if they share a vision and have maniacal but competent leadership.
faceh
3mo ago
It’s hard not to care, because for now the problems still exist. It will take solving them to end those concerns.
Add on that there's so many people I care about who are just living life without much awareness of what appears to be on the horizon... and it feels literally impossible to explain to them why they should perhaps care a bit about what we're seeing. There's so many disparate chapters of lore I'd have to catch them up on so they can see the whole picture like I do, I'd look like the crazed conspiracy theorist with red thread until they finally got up to speed and it clicked for them too... if it ever does.
Bit lonely being unable to bridge the gap on a topic that I find important. Hence why I'm here.
There are things I want to do and experience, but most are regular life milestones. Going full hedonist and spending all the money / becoming a drug / sex / gambling / food addict doesn’t seem to make the people who do it happy, end of the world or not.
There's wisdom in that, but I can think of certain things I could be indulging in that would ABSOLUTELY make me happier, and I would do more of them if my time preference where about 5-10% higher.
One thought that springs forth recently: If I quit my job and sold my house and everything in it, I could afford to buy a decent camper van and then take a year, maybe two to drive around the Country with my dog. And why not? It won't hurt anybody, and I'll rack up a pretty fulfilling experience that will take my mind off the pending event. And that's without touching my own (modest) retirement savings. Which reminds me: What the FUCK am I supposed to with with a 401(k) as someone who is under 40?
Seriously, although I understand the benefit of having a money stash that you can't easily touch, the idea that I will want to keep adding to this pile of money that I will be unable to draw from until I'm in my 60's feels farcical under current expectations. Like, I just do not believe that the future is one where I diligently tap away at a series of steady jobs, watch my savings grow over a couple decades, and then have to draw on that money in old age for a peaceful retirement.
Can someone lay out the path to 2050 where the most likely outcome is that the market grows about 5-7% every year on average, we don't have a debt crisis, or catastrophic event, OR an AI-fueled industrial revolution that pushes things parabolic for a bit, and I, when I hit 67, will be SUPER grateful to my past self for diligently squirreling away U.S. Dollars (rather than betting on BTC, for example) over that whole period.
I will grant, if I cash in all my chips now and the "NOTHING EVER HAPPENS" brigade is right, I'd look very stupid later. And the Gods of Copybook headings have been undefeated for centuries.
But even if 'NOTHING EVER HAPPENS,' there are still enough small happenings that keep piling up that it really seems like the standard assumptions that go into the ol' "Put aside 15% of your pretax income in an index fund and never touch it" advice are not going to hold over the future. I don't think there's a reason to give up on saving entirely, but it suggests one should be taking wilder risks and being much less concerned with historic returns as a guideline for future probable outcomes.
There's a reason I do expect someone (or a very small team) to produce a feature-length film on a shoestring budget using AI by year's end.
The different modalities were already demonstrated, the only thing that was needed was someone to combine them into an extended, coherent end product.
This one makes it probably an order of magnitude easier. In my previous post I speculated that they could produce 1 minute of usable footage a day and pull it off. Well, now you can get a minute or so of 'usable' footage in two hours, apparently.
Won't be long until you can type a sufficiently detailed prompt into one of these things, pay a couple thousand dollars worth of credits, and it can spit out a whole movie for you.
Yeah, a lot of contradictory thought patterns emerge if I ruminate about the future more than like 2 years out.
Should I live as conservatively, frugally and healthily as possible to ensure I make it to there in good shape, or should I be more reckless and try to enjoy life as much as possible since it could all end? (obviously if EVERYBODY does the latter, we might not make it there at all).
Assuming we survive, are we bound for a future of exploring the stars and colonizing new worlds, or do we get stuffed in VR experience machines that satisfy every psychological desire we have without going anywhere? Will I even have a choice?
Is there any point in breathlessly following every notable development in the AI/Robotics space to try and guess when the big moment will arrive, or would it be more constructive and mentally healthy to divorce almost entirely from it and just read escapist fiction all the time so I don't worry about something I can't really control?
Should I continue to behave as though I expect society to persist into the next century and thus be very concerned about e.g. birth rates, pollution, government's fiscal policies, and/or immigration policies? Or does none of this matter in 10-15 years, and thus I should just do the bare minimum to keep things running but hey, let the kids do what they want in the meantime. The AI can fix the mess later.
It is in my nature to prepare, both mentally and financially, for things to go south. I don't buy the hype and promises without skepticism, but I can't deny that every 6 months for the past, what, 3 years? The SOTA models have demonstrated new capabilities that check another box off my "is it smarter than humans?" list. The temptation to just give up 'trying' and go with the flow is strong.
A bit of optimism, I do believe that I'm young and healthy enough that I'm likely going to be around when we reach Longevity Escape Velocity, if the AGI stuff never fully manifests we've got all the pieces to fix most age-related problems in humans so as to give us functional immortality by 2050. Which will create a whole host of new and exciting issues if the AGI isn't already in charge.
faceh
3mo ago
Money.
Their experience with the actual act of parenting is probably good.
Their experience with the difficulties this adds to every other aspect of life is probably not representative.
Same reason we get those articles about "how I bought a million dollar property at age 24!"
The secret sauce is the parents gave them a ton of money, which is not replicable by 90%+ of people in their situation.
faceh
3mo ago
As the oldest child, I was often put 'in charge' of the house with the younger ones for most of a day if needed.
I was given instructions and restrictions by dad (sometimes mom), and I just had to make sure nothing really caught fire, and know what to do if some emergency DID happen. I took a class centered around first aid and CPR for children when I was, I think, about 13 years old? Had a kit and everything.
My younger cousins lived around the corner from us for a while, so I also helped out there sometimes.
Helps that we lived in a safe neighborhood, with neighbors who would have helped out if something went very wrong.
The daughters of the family across the street were also available for babysitting regularly. Tragically, I'm pretty sure neither of them married.
When I got my driver's license and had about a year of experience under my belt, they would trust me to shepherd the younger sibs around too.
In short, I'm certain that I'd make an excellent father.
faceh
3mo ago
It's a 'yellow flag' at the very least.
It also occurs to me that she could 'return' the scarf to the hotel at the end of the night, thereby mitigating the possible harms.
I guess I'm trying too hard to read motives, but this is not what I would say a high conscientiousness person acts like.
Sorry, edited it after posting.
That being said the lady's family is a little more spry but... have their own problems. Man this whole thing is scaring me off of having kids not gonna lie.
It really shouldn't if you have a worthwhile community to draw on.
My roommate from college and his wife have popped out 5, and while he makes enough money to support them all, easily, he puts in his fair share of effort, and he and his wife are VERY CATHOLIC so there's a deep well of local experience to draw on.
I think the fear of having kids is really just the projection of having to raise kids all by yourself. In an atomized society that's terrifying. If you have the support network, its very doable. Every single generation before us was able to do so, to varying levels of competence.
faceh
3mo ago
Or more precisely, colleges don't count childcare as 'extracurricular activity.'
faceh
3mo ago
That's some high-powered advice distilled down to a single page. Makes you wonder why writing a full on book was really needed.
faceh
3mo ago
I think the blues vision of parenting is having 16 year olds instead and the relentlessly unpleasant nature of it all is by trying to make it more like tiger parenting a late teenager
Interesting point. Perhaps for the blue tribe the portion of the kid's life where they're 'useless' and have to learn all the basic stuff just to function at all is very tedious (and distracts from more 'important' pursuits) and feels like a pure cost center, then their post-adolescence of finding a passion, learning 'real' ideas, and finally being able to have an impact on the world seems like an 'investment!' Under that model, they would 'tiger parent' their young child solely to ensure they're prepared to launch as early as possible, then pull every string they can to get their kid into the elite circles and to boost their status since the parents are acutely aware of how 'important' that status is to outcomes. Which is why they don't like to hear:
‘you don’t have to do that. Major state schools are fine and your kid probably is not getting into Harvard anyways’.
Oy, yeah. Funny enough I did in fact get an interview for Harvard, but did not get in, and went to a State School and had a fine time.
But I was brought up not being certain I would go to college at all so this was not a major disappointment for me!
It wasn't until years later that I finally realized that the Ivy league is just the "budding elite factory" and that if I had optimized harder for getting in, and I managed to attend, my life trajectory would have been MASSIVELY different. And not in all positive ways, I think.
Power laws rule everything around me, and Blue Tribe is probably HEAVILY aware of that, whereas Red tribe may sort of understand it but to them it at best seems a fact of nature, rather than a game to be played.
I think it goes underrated how helpful it is, when it comes to raising kids, to:
A) Come from a mostly intact family, and
B) LIVE NEAR that family.
Some of my best/earliest memories are being dropped off at my grandparents house. My dad's parents had a really cool pool and waterfall and a boat. My mom's parents had... well they had some cool birds who could sort of talk to you. And my step-grandfather taught me chess at an early age. Either way, they were more than happy to pitch in with caring for and raising us, which is to say taking massive cognitive, physical, and financial load off my parents.
My brother has a <1 year old child now, and both his parents and his wife's parents are <20 minute drive away from them. My mother is ECSTATIC to look after the kid regularly, and that kid will have a large extended family (myself included) looking out for her as she grows. My brother has had to make some sizeable sacrifices, but even if he lost his job and home there's several fallbacks because someone would absolutely take his family in on a moment's notice.
Also, he's not going to lose his job since he works for my dad's (the child's grandfather) company, so there's another layer of security.
I think this general arrangement of "living very close to parents who are actively supportive of you raising kids" was extremely common just a generation ago and before, and any advice around raising kids aimed at someone who is not independently wealthy should specify "live near your parents, and lean on them to the extent appropriate" to reduce the stresses that come with it.
Anyway, I think Bryan and Scott suffer from the glaring weakness many elites/intelligentsia have and don't even notice. They aren't exposed to the direct impacts of their own policy ideas or the ACTUAL outcomes of their thinking. Sure, they're aware of it on an intellectual level, but they're far enough removed that they don't feel the impacts enough to truly account for them.
I note the same thing about Bryan's stance on open borders.
Bryan does not live around or interact much with the modal immigrant to the U.S., he pretty much solely gets to reap the benefits of immigrants and doesn't have to, e.g. endure the friction of language barriers, the competition for housing, the notable decrease in social cohesion, and often the increased crime that comes with being 'forced' to live in such communities.
He's a college professor, and he admits happily to staying inside his carefully maintained bubble. That's fine! Indeed, he's an anarcho-capitalist, so he can readily point out that under his preferred system the world would look very different, so his internal consistency is maintained even if it wouldn't interact well with the existing (sub-par) system.
But the reality on the ground is relevant, and those of us making decisions while in contact with that reality probably possess some important information that alters the calculus. You can argue that makes decisions 'more biased' than when you do it from the 10,000 foot level, looking at raw numbers without an emotional connection. Sure.
But as I say often, there needs to be SOME cost for being wrong, especially in ways that harm other people.
Love his clarity of thought when it comes to the world of pure theory, but decades inside your bubble is going to leave you without the tangible tie to 'the real world' that helps you viscerally understand the impact of a given policy.
faceh
3mo ago
I think I know what you're talking about, and I, too, have seen it more often than I'd like.
People get some deep sense of unease or a feeling of 'impending doom' that doesn't seem to be caused by any one factor in their life. They feel tired and 'stuck' and feel like IF ONLY they could figure out what the cause was they could finally break through and be happy.
And so they start to assume its because of their job, or their location, or their significant other. SOMETHING that is omnipresent in their life, just as the feelings are.
Couple it with some existential "What am I doing with my life/where am I going?" angst.
I saw something similar with me Ex. She would pick up a new hobby or distraction or obsession and, like clockwork, abandon it without hesitation at about the six month mark.
Any given thing she took up, unless external factors forced the issue, she'd eventually just stop doing it when it became too stressful or difficult and she would then zero in on a new thing to try.
And of course eventually ditched me, too.
Tend to agree that it manifests in people who have an internal locus of control, but very bad model of other people. They THINK they can enact the changes that need to happen, and they aren't really considering the impact on others when they do it.
faceh
3mo ago
Sometimes you just roll a bad woman, I think she wasn't the right class for him.
Problem is she presented mostly green flags.
A lot of anxiety lurking under the surface, but she carried herself well, was active in her Sorority, held down a job, had a decent education background, and close family too.
I spent a lot of time with both of them over Covid times since it was very hard to socialize otherwise and we lived close to each other. I would have judged her as a woman with a "good head on her shoulders" and generally "responsible." Slightly antisocial but was not unpleasant to be around.
She's pushing 30 now, and I have it on very good authority that she spends most of her evenings playing MMOs and other video games, no social life to speak of. Its very much a damn shame. Just never gained maturity?
Its not clear what she was 'fleeing' from in the marriage, other than perhaps the ultimate expectation that they would have kids and raise 'em together.
faceh
3mo ago
It actually sounds like it would be a viable business model for a side hustle.
It looks like Gucci scarfs can sell for $60-$150(!) on ebay. Spend two hours hotel hopping and that's a pretty good return if you find some good ones.
A) I don't think the impact is going to be very large. Scarfs are a commodity. Harm is small. Arguably it was going to get thrown out anyway. Maybe there's a small net benefit in the world where that scarf helps bolster a relationship.
B) That said... scarfs are a commodity. Wouldn't it be just as thoughtful/romantic to pop into the nearest store and buy one? Does the fact that she broke a mild social taboo make it a more meaningful act? Either one demonstrates 'agency.'
C) Its surely less bad than something like going around to all the hotels in the area and collecting nice scarfs to resell on Ebay, since she can at least claim altruistic motives. But then there's the question: if we 'approve' of her doing this one thing in this one instance, what precisely lets us object when someone else exploits this for more direct personal gain.
At any rate, my COMPLETELY UNWARRANTED speculation is that this is Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory. It was so TOTALLY RANDOM and it introduced some harmless spontaneous fun into his life which means he'll overlook the more troubling implications.
Well that's the first time I've read the term "goombling.'
But yeah, and the second course does at least offer a small (vanishingly small, but present) chance that you actually hit it rich and can, if you're halfway smart, parlay that into some semblance of 'happiness.'
The former course has a lot of fringe benefits, yet the task of convincing another human being to come into and stay in your life for the long term does NOT become much easier the more effort you put into it. The social pressures you're fighting are simply beyond what any one person could oppose. Hence even billionaires don't bother.
Yep.
There's a 'clumping' effect on the bottom end when there aren't strong incentives to stay in the middle road (due to that not getting you what you want, and STILL carrying the risk of losing it all) and its too hard to climb to the top rungs (without a ton of help).
You either have so much wealth that you can afford to lose tons of it, or you have like NO wealth, and don't give a single care due to having nothing TO lose.
And as you indicated (and as young men are noticing...) if you can't catapult yourself to the former position of fuck you, then it starts making MORE sense to drop down the to latter, lower position, because at least you can do what you WANT to do, rather than play by rules you can't change and punish you heavily.
If the middle position is the only one where punishments matter, very few will want to stay there, even if its overall best for the collective.
faceh
3mo ago
Its MORE likely that Gen Z guys are "inadequate" because
A) They've grown up in a society that both teaches them they're worthless AND that women are inherently better than them. (also gives them almost no real 'purpose' to contribute to)
B) The women they interact with have ALSO ingested that same message, and will reinforce it to those men.
C) There's literally no reward for resisting this message, and fewer women are worth BECOMING adequate for.
I dunno, I think that's the basic causal situation. There's literally no other way you can spin it.
Porn and gambling addictions, for example, are much more widespread in this generation than in the previous ones, and male employment is often less stable.
And this just swept up young guys on its own? A bunch of guys just UNILATERALLY, for no reason whatsoever, decided not to become worthy? Just like that?
Why?
The end result being that women are unhappy seems incidental to the devaluation of masculinity.
Its not that 'absolutely nothing' has happened, but more that every advance has been marginal, so even if you follow ALL the best advice, you're getting an extra 10-15% of extra lifespan at best.
If you want to see the absolute extreme limit of human longevity science, follow Bryan Johnson.
More options
Context Copy link