Matt, my Significant Other, is a fellow engineer and quirky-geeky sort, and he’s been very supportive of my continuing involvement in activities relating to life extension, transhumanism, etc. However, he isn’t really the “activist” type, and doesn’t tend to get irate like I do about things like death and discrimination, or gleeful to the point of running around in circles about how awesome being alive is.
Nevertheless, I’ve found that his mellow is an ideal counterpart to my unbridled exuberance—and he cares deeply about ethics and has always been interested in following certain kinds of technological progress. What tends to (pleasantly) surprise me occasionally, though, is that he will sometimes suddenly come out with some long and well-thought-out observation about topics I had no idea he was even listening to me talk about.
The other night’s discussion emerged, oddly enough, from something that initially began with some musings about genetically modified crops and the patenting of DNA. I’m not sure how we got to life extension from that, but I’m not particularly surprised, seeing as any conversation I’m in long enough will generally turn to that particular topic. Anyway, Matt made a few comments that I figured I’d share—sort of as an interesting cross-section of ideas from someone who, while not directly involved in longevity advocacy, certainly picks up on some of its fringes through associating with me and my assorted cohorts.
One thing that tends to happen to me, as a result of spending so much of my online time communicating with people who already agree that healthy life extension medicine is a direction well worth pursuing, is that sometimes I forget just how weird some of my favorite ideas might sound to John Q. Public. It is hard for me to fathom how anyone could really and truly make excuses, and mean them, for the fact that so many people are killed every day by their own failing bodies, but apparently people do.
Matt thinks that, judging from what he’s heard from me and others in the healthy life-extension community, we might be fighting a losing battle if our goal is to actually attempt to shift aging itself more solidly into people’s minds as a thing that needs to be treated. Personally, my own approach is much more positive than negative (e.g., based on the premise that life is good, and therefore people should be able to enjoy as much of it as they’d like), but I see his point. Public opinion is a fickle and flighty thing, and not necessarily based on either scientific data or seemingly obvious observations about reality.
Basically, Matt is suggesting that if the end-goal is to actually hasten the development of effective longevity medicine, it might be counterproductive to attempt a memetic shift of the magnitude that some would favor—yes, it might work, but it might also backfire and result in a reactionary (and potentially successful) opposition to the notion of longevity medicine. And while I do think that it’s fairly obvious that if you offer people the means to stay healthier, stronger, and more resilient, they aren’t likely to get the diseases that tend to kill elderly people to begin with (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.), I also think that Matt makes a good point in suggesting that we ought to start with reference points people can relate to. I honestly have no idea how many people in the public, right now, can really relate to the idea of truly radical life extension, and what the effects might be of approaching the subject in particular ways.
Matt thinks that maybe we ought to start simple—e.g., unless specifically grilled on the end-goals of longevity research, we should simply attempt to frame it as a natural extension of medical care. The purpose of medicine, after all, is to save lives, so longevity medicine really ought to be a no-brainer. The only reason it isn’t for a lot of people might be due to the way it can sometimes end up being framed, so framing it properly is undeniably important.
This is a subtle point, but possibly one worth mulling over. I have become reasonably convinced that focusing too heavily on specific diseases in terms of research could be harmful—that is, it might encourage progress in a direction that results in treatments that really only apply to people who are already experiencing dangerous or even deadly symptoms—but I am not convinced that talking about the diseases that anti-aging medicine could help people avoid would be a bad thing. After all, there are already plenty of charities and research programs devoted toward finding specific cures for things like cancer and cardiovascular disease—it’s obvious that when it comes to specific causes of death, people are pretty reluctant to embrace them.
If “aging” can be considered to be something that also kills people, then talking about addressing it is fine and something to be encouraged, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about the benefits that solving the aging problem will have for people who might otherwise have developed, and died of, other specific diseases. In short, we can’t go wrong by emphasizing and acknowledging all the benefits of effective longevity medicine!
Matt suggests that rather than starting in the future and trying to capture people’s imaginations regarding what could be, perhaps it is better to start now and try to reach people on the basis of things that they can personally identify with, and go from there. He thinks that, for instance, as soon as the concept of “living forever” is brought up, about 70% of the population will likely start tuning out—and similarly, he thinks that healthy life extension and cryonics are completely separate entities and that associating healthy life extension with cryonics could be somewhat counterproductive due to the “yuck factor” associated with vitrification and the controlled sawing off of one’s cranial unit. (Personally I find a much more impressive “yuck factor” in the idea of being burned to a crisp, or the idea of buried in the ground only to bloat, decompose, and become a snack for the worms, but I can only speak for myself in that regard!)
I’m not necessarily saying that I agree with every one of Matt’s comments; I do actually think that memetic engineering can go a long way, particularly when the Internet is utilized as a medium. It is possible that with the more extensive (and highly interconnected) media tools available today, it will be possible to shift public opinion in time to start saving lives sooner. And I think that the healthy life extension community is definitely right to keep emphasizing the fact that individuals deserve (and have the right to fight for) the longest, healthiest lives possible, which will certainly necessitate the development of effective longevity medicine (as opposed to treatments for specific age-related diseases). Nevertheless, I did appreciate getting Matt’s perspective as someone who might now be considered an intrigued bystander.
Feel free to prove me wrong here, but I don’t think any of us can afford to get too stuck in some sort of insular techno-optimist bubble, lest we suffer the fate of many of the first-wave transhumanists that preceded us. As I see my family members growing older, and as I hear of retired co-workers still dropping dead in their 60s and 70s (despite the fact that it’s already 2007), I am justifiably concerned about trying to help shape the best path forward toward a world in which people plan for their second, third, and fourth careers, rather than for their funerals!
Anne Corwin was an IEET intern 2006-2007, and is an engineer and technoprogressive activist in California. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association, and is active in the longevity movement through the Methuselah Foundation and in the neurodiversity movement addressing issues along the autism spectrum. Ms. Corwin writes the blog Existence is Wonderful and produces a related podcast.