My perspective on The Intrinsic Perspective

Every once in a while, you come across a thinker so captivating and refreshing that you end up binge-reading their entire body of work. As of late, I found myself doing exactly this with neuroscientist Erik Hoel, exhaustively consuming his excellent substack, The Intrinsic Perspective, which I highly recommend1.

In addition to being a gifted yet accessible writer (a difficult balance to strike), Hoel’s commentary on science, technology, and futurism has been particularly evocative. More specifically, he has some rather pointed – and I would say, contrarian – opinions regarding the precise manner in which the future should unfold, which has both deeply resonated and sharply conflicted with my own thinking in this domain. Given the pertinence of this topic to much of what we will eventually consider here in Methuselah’s Library, I want to address some of what Hoel has written over the preceding months – giving it the obvious and appropriate moniker, Hoelian futurism – and use it to expand on my own views.

Thus, while I never anticipated myself writing “A Response” to anyone in particular, I feel compelled to do so now, using a number of Hoel’s posts as a lens to bring some of my own hazy ideas into focus. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this piece a commentary, as this is in no way an attack piece or criticism of Hoel’s work2, but instead an intellectual exercise to further explore a question of the utmost importance: what does a fulfilling and positive future entail and how do we bring it forth?

As avid readers of Methuselah’s Library will have noticed, we are once again taking a break from the Methuselah dividend series. But if you continue reading, you will find that radical life extension will play a crucial role in my argument to answer the aforementioned question. Thus, we will maintain a thin veneer of coherence between our meager (but growing) collection of essays.

Finally, while not entirely necessary (as I will be quoting relevant passages at length), I would suggest checking out several of Hoel’s essays before continuing with this post, a list of which I have provided in the following footnote3. If nothing else, I would encourage you to read “How to prevent the coming inhuman future”, which was the primary inspiration for this writing.

A Hoelian future is a human future

As you may have gathered from reading some of his essays, Hoel’s vision of the future – while permissive of much of what one might call traditional science fiction (i.e., space colonization, life extension, etc.) – is a distinctly restrained and tempered techno-optimism. There is no tolerance for the excesses of transhumanism and its explicit goal of replacing organic intelligence with something supposedly superior…something synthetic. Instead, a Hoelian future gives primacy to biological humans and is willing to sacrifice any technological incursion that threatens this essence. I think this is best illustrated in the following passage from “How to prevent the coming inhuman future”:

There can still be an exciting and dynamic future without taking any of these paths. And there’s still room for the many people interested in longtermism, and contributing to the future, to make serious, calculable, and realistic contributions to the welfare of that future. Humans might live on other planets, develop technology that seems magical by today’s standards, colonize the galaxy, explore novel political arrangements and ways of living, live to be healthy into our hundreds, and all this would not change the fundamental nature of humans in the manner the other paths would (consider that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, many of the characters are immortal). Such future humans, even if radically different in their lives than us, even if considered “transhuman” by our standards (like having eliminated disease or death), could likely still find relevancy in Shakespeare.

This commitment to preserving not just a semblance, but the majority, of what makes us biological humans – messy, fleshy beings with both prefrontal cortexes and limbic systems – as we wade into the future is what sets Hoelian futurism apart. Hoel is not shy about this core aspect of his outlook either. If there was any doubt about where humans belong in his worldview, let it be dispelled by the conclusion of the above quoted essay:

Humans forever! Humans forever! Humans forever!

While I personally find this sort of jubilation excessive, I greatly admire Hoel for so emphatically staking his position – a position I find intellectually courageous given how out of step anthropocentric futurism has become in our current era.

The Kurzweilian Consortium

It almost goes without saying that Hoelian futurism as I have characterized it is an unpopular position amongst the vanguard of modern futurists. Indeed, in some quarters, Hoel’s vision of the future would be described as some combination of backwards bio-chauvinism and downright Luddism. But before delving into why such insults are undeserved, I will try to more fully define those who would oppose a Hoelian future. Enter the Kurzweilian Consortium4.

If you have dabbled in futurism at any point in the last thirty years, you have probably come across the work of Ray Kurzweil5. In my opinion, the man has probably influenced the conversation around the trajectory of technology more than anyone else over the past few decades, most notably through his formulation of the Technological Singularity. If you have never heard of him, consider this tweet as a first impression:

Jokes aside…if you are a reader of Methuselah’s Library, you probably are already familiar with the Singularity – that somewhat nebulous point in time when technology will accelerate so quickly that we cannot even begin to comprehend its nature or implications. Usually, including in Kurzweil’s conception of the Singularity, this involves the advent of some kind of artificial superintelligence that continuously increases its cognitive capabilities, resulting in a runaway intelligence explosion6. The central piece of evidence underpinning this thesis is the long and impressively constant superexponential growth in computation over the past century:

Extrapolate this graph further, and at some point in the next few decades (Kurzweil very precisely predicts 2045), we will possess the computational power to create god-like artificial general intelligence (AGI), at which time the Singularity will be upon us. And here we see the manner in which Kurzweilian futurism most glaringly comes into conflict with Hoelian futurism: the centrality of AGI in bringing about the Singularity. In stark contrast to those who expect and welcome the invention of AGI, Hoel has made clear his thoughts on the matter. I will quote a passage from “We need a Butlerian Jihad against AI”:

An actual progressive research program toward strong AI is immoral. You’re basically iteratively creating monsters until you get it right. Whenever you get it wrong, you have to kill one of them, or tweak their brain enough that it’s as if you killed them.

Far more important than the process: strong AI is immoral in and of itself. For example, if you have strong AI, what are you going to do with it besides effectively have robotic slaves? And even if, by some miracle, you create strong AI in a mostly ethical way, and you also deploy it in a mostly ethical way, strong AI is immoral just in its existence. I mean that it is an abomination. It’s not an evolved being. It’s not a mammal. It doesn’t share our neurological structure, our history, it lacks any homology. It will have no parents, it will not be born of love, in the way we are, and carried for months and given mother’s milk and made faces at and swaddled and rocked.

And some things are abominations, by the way. That’s a legitimate and utterly necessary category. It’s not just religious language, nor is it alarmism or fundamentalism. The international community agrees that human/animal hybrids are abominations—we shouldn’t make them to preserve the dignity of the human, despite their creation being well within our scientific capability. Those who actually want to stop AI research should adopt the same stance toward strong AI as the international community holds toward human/animal hybrids. They should argue that it debases the human. Just by its mere existence, it debases us. When AIs can write poetry, essays, and articles better than humans, how do they not create a semantic apocalypse? Do we really want a “human-made” sticker at the beginning of film credits? At the front of a novel? In the words of Bartleby the Scrivener: “I would prefer not to.”

Since we currently lack a scientific theory of consciousness, we have no idea if strong AI is experiencing or not—so why not treat consciousness as sacred as we treat the human body, i.e., not as a thing to fiddle around with randomly in a lab? And again, I’m not talking about self-driving cars here. Even the best current AIs, like GPT-3, are not in the Strong category yet, although they may be getting close. When a researcher or company goes to make an AI, they should have to show that it can’t do certain things, that it can’t pass certain general tests, that it is specialized in some fundamental way, and absolutely not conscious in the way humans are. We are still in control here, and while we are, the “AI safety” cohort should decide whether they actually want to get serious and ban this research, or if all they actually wanted to do was geek out about its wild possibilities. Because if we're going to ban it, we need more than just a warning about an existential risk of a debatable property (superintelligence) that has a downside of unknown probability.

Tell us how you really feel, Erik. This repudiation against the development of AGI is remarkable in that it stems from a place of upholding the importance of biological human dignity, and not simply the cold calculations of every Effective Altruist’s favorite category of existential risk7:

While I think serious attempts to quantify existential risk are important, we should recognize that Hoel’s grievances against AGI are unique from the sort of utilitarian approach so often employed by the Rationalist community. That is, Hoel approaches the problem of machine intelligence like an actual human being instead of…well, a machine.

And while I do think Hoel is directionally correct in opposing the rapid development of superintelligence, which certainly threatens the preservation of a human future, the draconian nature of his remedy – a complete moratorium, no…a jihad – is where I start to break with Hoel8. Perhaps a libertarian bias clouds my judgment, but I do not think a total ban on AI research would be feasible or enforceable in reality. It also replaces one form of extremism with another, which does not seem to be the appropriate prescription to the problem9.

That said, despite not fully agreeing with the degree to which Hoel objects to AGI, I am encouraged that there are voices countering the Kurzweilian program, which seems more concerned with accelerating the creation of AGI than contemplating its risks. Thus, if we lived in a hypothetical world where only the binary choice between Kurzweilian accelerationism and a Hoelian moratorium was all that existed, I would choose the latter.

Having discussed how the Kurzweilian and Hoelian perspectives are nearly diametrically opposed with respect to AI, we will now consider other important differences. While an AGI-induced Singularity is the core element of Kurzweilian futurism, there are other aspects of this outlook that clash with Hoel’s central principle of preserving the dignity of biological humans.

Transcending biology = inhuman future?

We must look no further than the subtitle of Kurweil’s magnum opus, The Singularity is Near, to understand the litany of ways in which a Kurzweilian future would usher in the inhuman future that Hoel warns against. The tagline, “When Humans Transcend Biology”, of the tome makes explicit what is under contention.

Importantly, it is not the advent of superintelligence alone that risks debasing a human-dominated future. You see, there many ways to forsake our humanity if you seek to shed these pesky meat-suits we call bodies and accelerate towards the Singularity. The crucial question here is as follows: to what extent does transcending biology risk forsaking our humanity?

Now, any prudent commentator of the future should answer this question with humility and admit that it is a very open question. We simply do not know what consequences – be they positive or negative – radical alterations or outright replacements to our biology will have. However, we can speculate about the collection of technologies that would enable humanity to transcend biology. In addition to the already discussed creation of superintelligence, I have named four additional technological programs – all central aims of Kurzweilian futurism – that potentially threaten our humanity, which roughly mirrors what Hoel has expressed concern about previously:

1. Creating extremely immersive virtual realities.

2. Enhancing our minds and bodies via advanced biotechnology.

3. Integrating collectively with brain computer interfaces.

4. Uploading or emulating our neural processes in inorganic substrates.

To be clear, I am not asserting that any of these projects will necessarily lead to catastrophe, but the major issue with the Kurzweilian Consortium is an unwillingness to take seriously the possibility that these technologies may lead to an undesirable outcome for humanity. There are many ways in which the future can unravel if we are not careful. In short, this is why I find Hoelian futurism so refreshing; humans, and the desire to preserve that which we already know makes a human life worth living, are the indispensable ingredients that the future must contain. A Kurzweilian future provides no such assurances, and if you squint, you may glimpse that it guarantees the opposite.

To be clear, it is not my intention to brand any particular group as nefarious, including those who ascribe to Kurzweilian ideas. Indeed, there was a time in my youth I would have counted myself as a transhumanist singularitarian. And I still sympathize with the enthusiasm such people have for a potentially wondrous future that the aforementioned technologies could unlock. However, it is my suspicion that the future can go wrong in far more ways than it can go right…and if the world adopts a Kurzweilian rather than a Hoelian perspective, the likelihood of failing the future is far higher.

This leaves us with the obvious next question: if we are not to accelerate into a bewildering and dangerous Kurzweilian future, then how should we proceed?

Temporary technological incrementalism and a path forward

At this point, you would be forgiven for accusing me (to say nothing of Hoel) of being a raving Luddite, so let me attempt to dispel you of that notion with some qualifications and by proposing a path forward. Part of the irony in writing this essay is that, along many axes, I actually think technological progress is slowing down, which puts me, along with Hoel, firmly in the Stagnationist camp – a perspective I have touched on previously. Being someone who is broadly excited about the future and loves technology, I would be thrilled to see at least some of these trends reverse. Regardless, it is possible…perhaps even likely, that technological progress becomes more incremental – a trajectory that Hoel appears to endorse:

If you want to predict the future accurately, you should be an incrementalist and accept that human nature doesn’t change along most axes. Meaning that the future will look a lot like the past. If Cicero were transported from ancient Rome to our time he would easily understand most things about our society. There’d be a short-term amazement at various new technologies and societal changes, but soon Cicero would settle in and be throwing out Trump/Sulla comparisons (or contradicting them), since many of the debates we face, like what to do about growing wealth inequality, or how to keep a democracy functional, are the same as in Roman times.

To see what I mean more specifically: 2050, that super futuristic year, is only 29 years out, so it is exactly the same as predicting what the world would look like today back in 1992. How would one proceed in such a prediction? Many of the most famous futurists would proceed by imagining a sci-fi technology that doesn’t exist (like brain uploading, magnetic floating cars, etc), with the assumption that these nonexistent technologies will be the most impactful. Yet what was most impactful from 1992 were technologies or trends already in their nascent phases, and it was simply a matter of choosing what to extrapolate.

In a sense, this is a hopeful trend with respect to managing the inhuman future that Hoel portends, as it may give us more time to acclimate to whatever disruptive technologies are introduced. However, I do not think we should rely on this being the most likely outcome given the complacency it will breed in the face of possible catastrophe.

This concern is bolstered by the fact that most of the technologies Hoel worries about are undergirded by progress in information technology, which is the one technological domain that does not appear to be facing headwinds – Thiel’s atoms verses bits thesis. Furthermore, technological trends are subject to change, and it is certainly possible that an unexpected discontinuity could interrupt a regime of apparent technological incrementalism.

In any case, I cannot in good conscience support a technological program that would bring about the implicated technologies in a compressed period of time, such as two or three decades, which is what Kurzweil hopes for and predicts. Instead, I would propose a policy of technological incrementalism be applied to those those technologies that threaten our humanity10. I suppose this makes me a kind of selective Luddite, but given the conundrum we find ourselves in, it is a label I will reluctantly accept.

That said, most of my misgivings regarding Kurzweilian futurism and my current preference for a more Hoelian outlook boils down to a matter of approach and timing. I do not, in fact, think that the ultimate aims of the Kurzweilian Consortium, even AGI, are off the table into perpetuity, which is where I might part ways with Hoel.

As alluded to above, the primary flaw with Kurzweil’s ideas, and perhaps Singularitarianism more specifically, is the rapid recklessness with which technology is pursued. Technological acceleration is treated as an immutable destiny, which leaves no room for the cautious contemplation that the future deserves. Alternatively, if the technological programs that risk violating our humanity are approached with the time, preparation, and wisdom they require to get right, then a timeline that both contains Kurzweilian wonders and preserves the essence of what makes humans human may be possible.

Radical life extension as the portal to an optimal future

While not immediately obvious, I believe radical life extension may be the key to unlocking such a future. Furthermore, I think ending aging should be our first priority as a civilization, partially due to the advantages it would grant in facing a future bent on diluting our humanity. Let me explain why.

First, the pursuit of radical life extension is congruous with both the Kurzweilian and Hoelian perspectives. Kurzweil has long talked about how longevity science will serve as a bridge to more radical forms of digital immortality, and Hoel includes the defeat of aging in his conception of an acceptable future:

Such future humans, even if radically different in their lives than us, even if considered “transhuman” by our standards (like having eliminated disease or death), could likely still find relevancy in Shakespeare.

More importantly though, serious progress in the battle against aging might serve to dampen the frenetic pace at which the Kurzweilian Consortium seeks to achieve its aims. I suspect that part of the motivation underlying the race to develop AGI is the belief that such technology is required to defeat death – or at least required to do so within the lifetime of the individual nerd in question11. The stakes are lowered once longevity escape velocity seems like a realistic possibility. Who cares if the Singularity is delayed another thousand years?…you are already endowed with a practically indefinite lifespan. As we have discussed previously, radical life extension has the inherent byproduct of lowering time preference and incentivizing a long term mindset.

In addition to tempering the ambitions of the Kurzweilian Consortium, radical life extension might also convince someone of a Hoelian bent that a future populated with genetically enhanced individuals harmoniously interfacing with superintelligent synthetic minds might not be completely devoid of humanity. While we have already begun to explore how radical life extension will enable the acquisition of knowledge to a deeper and wider extent, it will also allow us to better decide what to do with that knowledge. Wisdom cannot be bought; it is earned through experience that is paid in years lived.

Thus, while I would not trust our current civilization with the task of, for example, ethically and safely bringing AGI into the world, I would expect a society populated by multicentenarian sages to have a far higher chance of success. Or has Hoel (when writing about something entirely unrelated) poetically put it:

Right now we are children in a dark room, waiting for the hallway light to turn on and an adult to come save us.

For these reasons, I see radical life extension as a portal to an optimal future and the single technological program that can perhaps bridge the Kurzweilian and Hoelian perspectives.

Conclusions and future directions

Unfortunately, there are issues with my solution to the aforementioned Kurzweilian dangers. Not least of which is the following: at the current rate, anti-aging technologies appear to be progressing at a slower clip relative to at least some of the aforementioned more risky technologies. Even in an environment where all technological progress is less rapid than in the past, this is still a problem. Thus, until this is no longer the case, I will consider myself more of a Hoelian than a Kurzweilian. Promethean fire can either light and warm your town or set ablaze everything you hold dear…and at the moment we are risking a conflagration.

On that rather uplifting note, I will conclude with the observation that the ideas discussed herein are underdeveloped. I hope to formalize them in the future into a more coherent outlook – my own breed of futurism that can stand alongside the Kurzweilian and Hoelian perspectives12.

In the meanwhile, we will return to the Methuselah Dividend series where we will explore the “accretion of wisdom”, a concept briefly invoked above that deserves much more attention. As always, if you find this content worthy, please subscribe below and spread the good word:

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The growing problem of information overload

The world is becoming increasingly complex, leading to a ever-expanding torrent of information that is, quite literally, too overwhelming for a mere mortal to absorb. The combination of this data deluge and limited lifespans is part of the dynamic that is driving the trend of specialization across all fields and disciplines. As collective knowledge deepens, expertise must narrow – a compensatory response that is necessary, but not ideal.

An unfortunate consequence of this situation is that knowledge has become increasingly fragmented across billions of individual brains. The polymath is an endangered species, if not already extinct. It is as if human expertise is a fractal becoming evermore granular – each of us in possession of an already diminutive, and constantly shrinking, shard of knowledge. Thus, while the absolute quantity of knowledge is greater than ever and continues to expand, the ability of an individual to make sense of and build upon that knowledge has decreased in tandem1. “Multimodal mastery”, the second aspect of the Methuselah dividend we will explore, is one remedy to this problem.

In my previous essay regarding unbounded deep scholarship, I explained how radical life extension would enable exhaustive – or at the very least, limitless – exploration of a given domain of knowledge. Here, I will expound on a similar, but ultimately different concept – multimodal mastery. This refers to the ability of a very long-lived being to acquire skills and knowledge across many disparate domains of expertise.

Now, when compared with unbounded deep scholarship, multimodal mastery may seem to be a distinction without a difference2. However, the consequences of mastering ostensibly unrelated subjects will be altogether different than those associated with exhaustively mining one area of knowledge. This is attributable to the way innovations – whether they be scientific, technological, or cultural – are birthed through the interaction of previously isolated ideas3. Before elaborating on how multimodal mastery enabled by radical life extension will help solve the problem of knowledge fragmentation, I will briefly describe how progress is hindered in our world of non-extended lifespans.

Innovation is interdisciplinary and requires specialization

Even under current circumstances, many paradigmatic advancements within science and technology occur at the interface of different fields. The reason that such interdisciplinary research and development is so fruitful stems from the way knowledge tends to become siloed within human organizational structures. There are invisible barriers between various academic fields and departments, companies and career paths, and intellectual traditions and schools of thought. This artificial segregation of knowledge inadvertently impedes progress because it prevents information from readily combining in new and potentially useful ways. Thus, when such abstract compartmentalization is dissolved and ideas are able to combine with each other more promiscuously, innovation is more likely to occur4. Given that interdisciplinary work (by definition) consists of combining two or more areas of knowledge or expertise, it inherently facilitates such conditions.

Of course, under the current regime of sub-centenarian average lifespans, successfully innovating at the intersection of different domains of knowledge is easier said than done. In today’s world, such ventures are undertaken by teams of specialists, each group in charge of some segment of the endeavor; each person an expert in an even narrower area. While this strategy obviously works, there are enormous inefficiencies inherent to such an organization5. I have enumerated some of the more obvious examples of this below:

• The coordination of various specialists striving to achieve a common goal.

• Conflict arising between different specialties due to mutual misconceptions of each other’s role or importance.

• The proliferation of veto power within and the bureaucratization of any effort requiring more than a few dozen individuals.

These are just a few examples, and there are likely others, but the first bullet point alone is enough to make the argument. Imagine just what a monumental task it is to synchronize the specialized efforts of dozens of individuals, each not fully understanding what the other is actually doing6. This is partly a product of the sluggish and low-fidelity nature of human-to-human communication, which is less than ideal with respect to conveying abstractions7.

I do not mean to disparage the entire concept of a division of labor, which – put most simply – is what I am describing here. In fact, I would agree that specialization has been an essential ingredient in advancing our civilization to its current standard. I am also not suggesting that we could rid ourselves of the division of labor in a world populated by extremely long-lived individuals. Rather, I mean to point out that radical life extension will allow individual humans to continuously acquire knowledge and stack skills indefinitely, which will alleviate the plague of over-specialization that burdens our innovative efforts in an evermore complicated world.

Radical life extension enables multimodal mastery

A reasonably intelligent person with a normal lifespan who is also committed to lifelong learning can actually acquire an impressive array of skills. An excellent description of exactly this comes from Robert A. Heinlein, one of the fathers of science fiction. Heinlein writes the following to characterize his idea of the “competent man”:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects8.

As I said, impressive. This list truly captures what a capable human being can be expected to master in a single non-extended lifespan. That said, there are limits to the ambitiousness of such a list, especially when we consider the time it takes to acquire certain forms of knowledge. Some extremely useful yet difficult skills – for example, neurosurgery – take the better part of a decade to master9. Furthermore, many such skills cannot be mastered in parallel, given that a high intensity of training may be required to truly acquire the subject under study10.

Radical life extension allows us to imagine the possibility of possessing countless centuries to acquire a diverse repertoire of skills and knowledge. Let us reconfigure the previously quoted Heinlein passage to illustrate what an individual with a radically extended lifespan might be able to do – a “supercompetent” person, if you will:

A multicentenarian being should be able to raise multiple rounds of children, understand the geopolitical history of all major nations, run a self-sufficient farm, pilot various types of aircraft, build structures in a personal architectural style, write 1000-page novels, speak ten languages, perform orthopedic surgery, understand the social customs of every influential culture, be familiar with all math discovered up though the 20th century, design a computer, cook with everything from mole to molecular gastronomy, be proficient in genetics and molecular biology, and contribute to longevity science so that one may only ever die gallantly. Specialization is for those who age.

This is my construction of what true multimodal mastery might look like in an individual many hundreds of years old11. Now, a civilization populated with people capable of what is mentioned in my alteration of Heinlein’s quote would be incredible indeed. This level of human capital is simply unattainable today, except perhaps to our greatest geniuses, of which there are very few12.

However, this is not even the primary benefit multimodal mastery would offer humanity. More important than an individual being able to master centuries worth of skills and expertise per se is the fact that all of that knowledge would live within a single, integrated mind capable of making frictionless connections betwixt concepts and ideas accumulated over the centuries. Such minds would both be able to keep pace with our increasingly intricate world and serve as engines of innovation unrivaled by almost anyone alive today. This is how multimodal mastery will remedy the problem of knowledge fragmentation and overcome the limits imposed on innovation in an overspecialized world.

Conclusions and a challenge

It is impossible to conceive of what wonders a multicentenarian multimodal master might devise with their degree of experience and knowledge. However, attempting to do so is a useful and stimulating exercise. Narrowing the subjects under consideration into just a few domains and only thinking about the near-term future makes this a more manageable task. For example, by imaging what someone with decades of experience in the following – molecular biology, cooking, otolaryngology, animal behavior, and botany – might decide to do, I imagined a hypothetical (and somewhat facetious) scenario involving the creation of the first four-star Michelin restaurant.

Perhaps I will write a post in the future detailing the feasibility of this idea but, to make a long story short, imagine expanding the human sensorium by expressing transgenic gustatory and olfactory receptors – those capable of recognizing chemicals heretofore entirely unknown to the human palate13. Then, consider creating a dining experience for those with such enhanced chemosensation, utilizing ingredients that have been dark to the human senses for millions of years. Ergo, a feat worthy of the first four-star Michelin restaurant.

The individual responsible for such an innovation would need to have deep knowledge in each of the aforementioned domains (and likely many others) to achieve this. Maybe this example seems fantastical, or even silly, to you. But the only way we can begin to sketch the outlines of what would be possible in a world of multicentenarian multimodal masters is to stretch our imagination a bit. So, if you feel so inclined, I challenge you to leave a comment below with your own such example.

And lastly, I thank you for taking an interest in multimodal mastery, and by extension, the Methuselah dividend. In the next post of the series, we will begin to move away from the purely intellectual benefits of radical life extension. Instead, we will consider how superlongevity will enable the “accretion of wisdom”. As always, if you find this content worthy, please subscribe below and spread the good word:

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An unlikely link between blockchain and blocking aging?

For this essay, we will take a break from the Methuselah dividend series to focus on another topic that is near and dear to my heart: Bitcoin. You may be wondering why someone supposedly interested in exploring the Biotechnological Revolution and all its repercussions would decide to veer off into a discussion revolving around the world’s largest and oldest blockchain-based cryptocurrency.

Well, lest you think I have abandoned our current theme of radical life extension, my objective in this piece is to define the relationship between money and superlongevity. As we shall see, this will inevitability lead us to consider Bitcoin. Indeed, not only is Satoshi’s invention compatible with radical life extension, it is surprisingly synergistic. This synergy may even explain the curious intersection of people interested in both cryptocurrency and life extension.

As the frighteningly smart Allen Farrington has written, Bitcoin is Venice, as well as many other things. Here, I will attempt to demonstrate that – in addition to all else Bitcoin is – Bitcoin is money for Methuselah.

The extropians and the legend of Hal Finney

Before delving into how Bitcoin and radical life extension are related, I want to first acknowledge the common cultural roots of the respective movements that have coalesced around these ideas. Indeed, the extent to which the forerunners of Bitcoin – the cypherpunks – and the early proponents of radical life extension existed within a single community is greatly underappreciated. This community was known as the extropians.

Now, I will not pretend to be a cultural historian of the various futurist movements of the 1980s and 1990s. I was too young to participate in these communities in their heyday, and it is difficult to precisely demarcate where the extropians began and the cypherpunks ended without substantial reseach1.

Therefore, I will quote a lengthy and informative excerpt from an episode of What Bitcoin Did featuring the Bitcoin journalist, Aaron Van Wirdum (someone who has invested the time understanding this history), which characterizes the relationship between these respective groups. Here, Van Wirdum describes how the cypherpunk movement was born out of the expansive and fertile intellectual environment fostered by the extropians:

The extropians started in the 80s, they were a group of California-based, super optimistic futurists basically. They got interested in nanotechnology, life-extension technology, space exploration and they saw science progressing at an increasing, exponential pace even, and they started to philosophize about where that could lead society. That led to very futuristic ideas, including eternal life, which is a big one. They believed that it was very possible that, even within their own life spans, and some of them are still alive today, so who knows, science would progress to the point where we'd cure all diseases, as well as old age. So we could live forever.

That was one of the key goals they had, but also, like I mentioned, artificial intelligence, and mind uploading that I mentioned. All sort of these crazy, or I don't know if they're crazy, they didn't think they were crazy for sure. They were taking it very seriously. One of the interesting things about them, a lot of futuristic ideas around that era, they foresaw the future as managed by some sort of super wise, perfect government kind of thing. Something like Star Trek comes to mind when I think of that.

There's perfect government that will make humanity happy. These extropians had a very different idea of how humanity should progress, and it was a very libertarian idea, and it was very influenced by Austrian economics. They saw government as a roadblock to that future. So they got interested in digital cash as well, from an Austrian perspective and also from the privacy perspective, as you can't have a tyrannical government watching over all your transactions, and also realize a utopian future.

So these guys were thinking about digital cash. Next step is, I think Eric Hughes, he moves back to California, or he was looking to relocate in California, or something like that. I think he wanted to live closer to the beach, I think that was it. Then he met up with Tim May, because he lived somewhere close to the beach, that was an old friend of him. Tim May, was one of these extropians and so he was thinking about digital cash, and he was thinking of digital cash in the context of information markets, which is an interesting topic, if you want to get into that.

But Eric Hughes and Tim May, they started talking about digital cash, the future of the internet, and then they basically... It was like a meeting of the mind kind of thing, where they just kept talking about this stuff for days and days. Then at some point, they got the idea that they should form a group to protect privacy, to actually make this work, to use the tools of cryptography that were available, and to start building stuff that was useful. John Gilmore was also one of the three unofficial founders of the Cypherpunks.

So they met up, they invited a bunch of friends and a lot of these friends were also extropians, so there's a lot of overlap. Nick Szabo was in the extropian group, Wei Dai was in the extropian group, Hal Finney was there and a lot of these extropians came to this Cypherpunk meeting, which wasn't called the Cypherpunks yet. The Cypherpunks was kind of a joke they came up with at one of these meetings, was a play on cyberpunk of course.

They started meeting, and they started discussing how to realize this stuff, how to realize anonymous remailers, which are sort of the precursors to Tor, digital cash, information markets, how to ensure that the future of humanity would enjoy some level of freedom through encryption.

Interesting history for sure. Notice how integral the concept of radical life extension was to the extropian ethos – one of their “key goals” was to “live forever” per Van Wirdum.

To further illustrate how closely these communities were interwoven, let us consider the story of a man beloved by bitcoiners, Hal Finney2. Most bitcoiners know that Finney was the first person other than Satoshi to engage with the Bitcoin protocol3 – his involvement immortalized by the following tweet:

What is perhaps less well known is that Finney also took steps to immortalize himself in a much more material manner by cryonically preserving his body after a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis4.

Cryonics, which involves the vitrification of the recently deceased and their long-term storage in liquid nitrogen, is the extropian solution to death in a world that currently lacks robust anti-aging technology; the hope being that future restorative technologies will enable revival5. Indeed, the founder of extropianism, Max More, served as the president of the leading cryonics firm, Alcor, for nearly a decade.

Finney’s involvement with Bitcoin at its origin and his decision to become Alcor’s 128th patient perfectly encapsulates the overlapping ethos – which clearly involved a defiance of death – of the cypherpunks and extropians. While this is just one man’s story, we will see that this convergence lives on in our current era.

An enduring alliance between crypto and longevity

In some sense, extropianism per se has withered and its original proponents are no longer the vanguard of futurist thought6. That said, many of the central tenets espoused by the extropians – including radical life extension – have been subsumed by a more encompassing and persistent movement, transhumanism. Indeed, the ideological lineage is rather direct, given that the aforementioned Max More was also instrumental in defining the philosophical underpinnings of transhumanism, coining in 1990 the modern use of the term in a short essay, Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy7.

Regardless of these historical details, even a casual observer of the cryptocurrency space in our current era may have noticed the disproportionate interest many proponents of the space have in – if not transhumanism more broadly – life extension specifically8.

It is interesting to ponder why, even across different eras and generations, there is an overlap between those interested in cryptocurrency and superlongevity - two seemingly disparate ideas. Is this just an example of nerds being interested in nerdy things, or is there something more fundamental going on? Perhaps those interested in both domains are predisposed to this predilection by something more first-order. We will consider the logic of this ideological affiliation in due course, but first some examples…

Vitalik Buterin, creator of the second largest public blockchain, Ethereum, has made multiple multi-million dollar donations to various anti-aging research organizations, such as the SENS Research Foundation and the Methuselah Foundation, and has made his pro-longevity views known:

Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong has also signaled his interest in life extension by posting a link to Nick Bostrom’s classic fable on the insidious tyranny of death and why we should oppose it. More recently, he has publicized his support of specific projects headed by serious longevity researchers, such as Matt Kaeberlein:

There are many other examples that I could cite9, but there is one individual in particular who quintessentially exemplifies the shared enthusiasm for both life extension and cryptocurrency (especially Bitcoin). If Hal Finney is the archetypal example of this enthusiasm from the extropian era, Balaji Srinivasan is carrying the torch in our time.

The purpose of technology

In addition to being intimately involved in both the biotechnology and cryptocurrency industries10, Balaji has theorized about the relationship of technology, scarcity, and time, which will bring us to the crux of this essay. In his short but influential piece, The Purpose of Technology, Balaji explains the logic of technological progress and how it inevitably leads us to consider life extension:

If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality.

At first that sounds crazy. But let's start with the premise: is the proximate purpose of technology to reduce scarcity? Think about how a breakthrough is described: faster, smaller, cheaper, better. All of these words mean that with this new technology, one can do more with less. In the digital world, Google made information on any topic free to anyone with an Internet connection, and WhatsApp made it free to communicate with anyone. In the physical world, innovations like the Haber Process or the Green Revolution allowed us to produce more with less. In a real sense, these technologies reduced scarcity.

Now for the second half of the sentence, the logical implication. Is the ultimate purpose of technology to eliminate mortality? Well, mortality is the main source of scarcity. If we had infinite time, we would be less concerned with whether something was faster. The reason speed has value is because time has value; the reason time has value is because human life has value, and lifespans are finite. If you made lifespans much longer, you'd reduce the effective cost of everything. Thus insofar as reducing scarcity is acknowledged to be the proximate purpose of technology, eliminating the main source of scarcity – namely mortality – is the ultimate purpose of technology. Life extension is the most important thing we can invent.

This is excellent, and closely resembles the reasoning behind why I have always given primacy to the pursuit of superlongevity. Balaji is essentially making the claim that developing the anti-aging technology that will enable radical life extension is the most important technological endeavor because no other advancement will afford us more time – our most precious commodity11.

As brilliant of an articulation as this is, I think Balaji could have taken things further by integrating cryptocurrency – and more specifically, Bitcoin – into his model. To understand how, and to finally consider why Bitcoin is money for Methuselah, we must consider the economic concept of time preference.

Time preference: the link between Bitcoin and radical life extension

Time preference refers to the value an individual places on a receiving a good or service earlier rather than later. So, possessing a low time preference means forgoing immediate gratification in pursuit of longer term, potentially more valuable, goals12. Bitcoiners are always eager to point out that, given Bitcoin's 21 million coin supply cap13, holders of the digital currency are incentivized to save rather than spend since they are not prone to inflationary pressures. This, in turn, promotes the allocation of capital towards only truly worthy objectives14.

Indeed, many bitcoiners testify to the fact that the simple act of holding the currency seems to engender lower time preference behavior15. While this fascinating psychological shift is surely beneficial, the expectation of death puts a limit on how low time preference can be, which bounds the ambition of any project undertaken by an individual with a non-extended lifespan. Radical life extension would drastically change this calculus, given that the time preference of a person with an indefinite lifespan could operate on the order of centuries or millennia16.

Therefore, given that the advent of radical life extension will smash through the hard floor on the lowering of time preference and the fact that Bitcoin’s supply hard cap makes it the obvious choice for the long-term planner, there is a natural synergy between superlongevity and the original blockchain-based cryptocurrency17. This is why Bitcoin is money for Methuselah.

Considerations and conclusions

Before closing, we can return to the question posed earlier regarding the curious overlap of those attracted to both the cryptocurrency and longevity spaces. While owning Bitcoin or having the luxury of time may encourage an individual to acquire a lower time preference, I do think that some people intrinsically possess this quality. As such, they may have an affinity – consciously or not – for things, such as hard money or life extension, that could enhance that lower time preference even further.

This may explain some of the overlap between the two camps, but certainly not all of it. Astute readers will have already identified problems with this theory coming from multiple directions. There are many cryptocurrency enthusiasts who prefer coins that do not possess the hardness of Bitcoin, but who are still very interested in life extension. Inversely, there exists a potent strain of bio-Luddism in some Bitcoin maximalist circles that is squeamish on the idea of radical life-extension. Many of these same people extol the virtues of possessing a lowered time preference. Obviously, it is complicated and there are many competing values to consider.

So, lacking any quantification of how the preferences in these various groups breakdown, I cannot claim if the overlay in question is explained by some fundamental psychological predilection. However, that is okay, because that is not actually important, nor is it the point of this essay. The point is that Bitcoin and radical life extension are philosophically harmonious in that they both foster lower time preference and have the capacity to incentivize individuals to build a better world.

Bitcoiners like to quip, “Bitcoin fixes this”, in response to the litany of problems our civilization faces. Given that the rationale for this statement relies upon the concept of lowering time preference, I propose a corollary: Life extension fixes this.

We will return to the Methuselah dividend series in the coming weeks with our next installment exploring the notion of “multimodal mastery”. As always, if you find this content worthy, please subscribe below and spread the good word:

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The limitations of learning as a mortal

Under the current regime of certain mortality, even the longest-lived of us are restricted to less than a century of scholarship1. Today, we consider someone who has devoted the majority of their adult life to a particular subject an expert. Realistically, this is not very much time given the vast quantity of knowledge available on an even relatively narrow subject. These limitations are magnified further when we consider the ever-increasing amount of time it takes to catch up to the intellectual frontier of any chosen field, as well as the inevitable erosion of cognitive capacity that accompanies natural aging. Thus, for most of us, only the middle third of our lives – perhaps three decades – is ripe for intellectual achievement.

Considering the impact this arrangement has on humanity in the aggregate, we must wonder how our species makes any progress at all. This statement is obviously rhetorical hyperbole, so perhaps it is more appropriate to invert this logic and instead ask the following: how much faster might our civilization advance if, once reaching some threshold of intellectual maturity, individual scholars possessed a potentially unlimited amount of time to pursue knowledge? To better understand how we may eventually address this question, we must first characterize “unbounded deep scholarship”, the first feature of the Methuselah dividend.

Unbounded deep scholarship

Deep scholarship is the ability of an individual to exhaustively and comprehensively investigate a given field. Of course, even today, this is possible within sufficiently narrow domains of knowledge2. Alternatively, in highly technical fields or intellectual traditions that go back centuries, unenhanced humans are confined to a relatively superficial level of scholarship outside of a very narrow niche. Such self-imposed restriction is made out of necessity given the opportunity cost of straying too far outside of an area of concentration. Thus, what radical life extension would allow is truly unbounded deep scholarship.

When conceptualizing “unbounded” in this context, the obvious inference is that such a scholar would simply have more time. While any curious person who loves to learn would find having more time extremely appealing, and it is clearly an important aspect of unbounded deep scholarship, there is much more to the meaning of this word. Indeed, the seemingly trivial effect of knowing that you have more time performs several powerful second-order functions, which are distinct from having more minutes at your disposal per se.

Here, in defining unbounded deep scholarship, I will describe both the first-order consequences of a society populated by multicentenarian experts, which is a commonly cited boon of radical life extension, as well as several second-order effects that may be slightly more original. Specifically, we will examine the following three aspects of unbounded deep scholarship:

• The prevention of the constant destruction of human capital, which has the potential to mitigate structural technological stagnation.

• The disincentivization of high time preference intellectual work in favor of seeking proper epistemological foundations.

• The encouragement of heterodox pursuits and the dissolution of intellectual monoculture.

Additionally, while the Methuselah dividend series is meant to explicitly showcase positive repercussions of radical life extension, I will also provide a counterargument to the often-argued, but poorly reasoned, idea that radical life extension would worsen scientific stagnation by preventing entrenched falsehoods from dying with their purveyors.

Making the fruit low-hanging once more

Despite proclamations that a Kurzweilian future is imminently going to subsume humanity as we know it, the Singularity does not appear to be bearing down on our species just yet3. In fact, the fantasies of my techno-utopian friends have been foiled by the stagnationists, who have effectively demonstrated that – outside of the realm of information technology - technological progress has slowed compared to earlier epochs following the Industrial Revolution.

While the ultimate cause of the Great Stagnation is still hotly contested, one hypothesis posits that the majority of low-hanging fruit has already been picked from the orchard of innovation, rendering further scientific and technological advancement beyond our grasp4. Indeed, the observation that ideas are becoming harder to find and that science may be stagnating is so vexing that even the most ardent techno-optimist bloggers struggle to counter this gloomy diagnosis5.

This state of affairs is not entirely surprising. Granted, as our technological capabilities advance, we invent new tools and methods that help enable the next wave of discoveries and development. This basic mechanism is essentially responsible for the explosion of progress the world has experienced over the last quarter millennium. However, this positive feedback loop is not guaranteed to continue; the collective ability of humanity to perceive and master reality need not scale linearly with the difficulty of understanding the complexity of that reality.

Teasing apart this difficulty, one structural limitation in our efforts to maintain a respectable level of Schumpeterian growth is the constant destruction of our most precious resource - human minds. It may not be an exaggeration to say that we lose a Library of Alexandria worth of knowledge several times over every single day6. Of course, much of this knowledge is transmitted down through the generations via the extracranial preservation of information, but not everything (e.g., tacit knowledge) is amenable to being preserved through records. Moreover, the process of education is extremely laborious and time-consuming. Thus, we find ourselves empty-handed in the orchard of innovation, staring up at countless branches adorned with bountiful high-hanging fruit.

Imagine instead if the most important form of capital, human capital, did not slowly begin to degrade and then eventually expire altogether. What if the billions of dendritic trees that comprise a brain – intricately self-organizing through decades of learning and collectively representing the crystallized intelligence of a individual7 – did not have to perish after a mere century or so? Not only would civilization cease paying such a costly tax to the gods of mortality, but the continued contribution of skilled and knowledgeable minds would serve as an additional source of compounding progress8.

Indeed, it is difficult to estimate just how powerful a positive feedback loop radical life extension would be for the progression of humanity. My guess is, even without any other fundamental human enhancements, defeating death would shatter the Great Stagnation and usher in an era of accelerating scientific and technological returns. Returning to the low-hanging fruit metaphor, a society populated by individuals practicing unbounded deep scholarship would be endowed with an ever-extending reach, always capable of plucking the next highest fruit.

Finding intellectual bedrock

I am particularly interested in the way the incentives under-girding intellectual work would be restructured once the prospect of death is eliminated. The most straightforward shift would be the way a scholar might initiate a novel program of inquiry, which is a second-order repercussion of having more time9. Even today, when approaching a new question, extensive background reading and a familiarization with adjacent topics is a prerequisite to making any future progress. The foreknowledge that a career does not have an expiration date would incentivize a far more thorough survey of, not just the lay of the land, but its entire geologic history.

For example, it is one matter to read all the papers on a given topic from the past five years and accept this as the current state of knowledge; it is something else entirely to retrace of the origin of each and every citation upon which a given piece of information is built. By doing this, a comprehensive understanding of the architecture of knowledge is gained10. Now, even today, committed intellectuals do this, but given the degree of investment it demands, I would argue it is not particularly common11.

Instead, the tyranny of time – manifested as a ticking tenure clock, the desire to front-run a competitor, or simply the realization that nothing material (regardless of its quality) has been produced in the last six months – incentivizes the generation of shoddy intellectual work. Worse still, others operating under the same perverse incentives build atop this faulty foundation, compounding the problem further12. Thus, truth is sacrificed on an altar beneath the words, “Publish or Perish”. Radical life extension would mitigate this corrosive dynamic; there would no longer be an excuse to not spend the time establishing a complete understanding of intellectual bedrock – something most serious academics would seek, if they only had such luxury.

The promotion of heterodox thought

While certainly not the only contributing factor, there is a way in which intellectual careers constrained to several short decades stifle rigorous work outside of the institutional mainstream13. Deviations from orthodoxy in any respective field are partially neglected for a simple game theoretical reason: any aspiring heterodox thinker has only several decades of mental acuity to build up an academic reputation, which may be squandered if the work is conducted in an obscure or shunned domain. While a minority of disagreeable purists will study whatever their mind compels them to work on, most people – regardless of their intelligence – bend to incentives. Having an indefinite life expectancy would, in addition to providing countless additional years of scholarship, dissolve this short-term social calculus almost completely.

Currently, much of the motivation for intellectual achievement is status-centric – the expectation of peer recognition for accomplishing something worthwhile. Again, I commend those who are immune to such social forces, but the reality is that most individuals want to experience their ideas accepted by a wider audience before they die14. Given that the dominance of entrenched scientific or intellectual dogmas often outlast the careers (or even the actual lifespans) of their proponents, it is unambiguous why countless academics acquiesce to the prevailing wisdom. It is easier to suppress the urge to be contrarian than to go against the crowd.

On the other hand, the deathless scholar is unencumbered by this worry, as well as the academic monoculture it engenders. Regardless of the number of decades or centuries spent committed to an unpopular hypothesis, if proven correct, the payoff would eventually come and be commensurate with the degree and duration of adherence to the theory. For example, imagine the prestige that would be accumulated by unwavering devotion to a heterodox hypothesis that eventually toppled an established paradigm after hundreds of years of doubt. While I still prefer seeking truth for its own sake, this dynamic could serve as potent form of motivation for the more megalomaniacal amongst us.

Science need not progress one funeral at a time

An essay on the relationship between radical life extension and scholarship would not be complete without addressing that old Planck-derived adage, “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” This morbid statement is accepted by many to be an accurate description of how our civilization slowly improves upon our scientific understanding of the universe15. While, in my opinion, the validity of this pithy saying as it relates to our current world is up for debate, it is not the relevant argument to have when factoring in unbounded deep scholarship.

My purpose is to disabuse you of the notion that radical life extension will exacerbate this problem and lead to permanent scientific stagnation, an idea longevity Luddites are happy to propagate16. Indeed, I will argue that superlongevity is more likely, if anything, to alleviate this supposed problem. For the sake of complete epistemological honesty, I will willingly state that we (i.e., those on either side of this argument) cannot know without empirical evidence precisely how ending aging will effect a complex social dynamic such as this. What I can say with confidence is that, when detractors of radical life extension extrapolate Planck’s principle to a world without aging, they map the incentives elderly scholars face today onto an hypothetical without considering how those incentives might change if the expectation of death was no longer certain.

To elaborate, we must first consider why elderly scientists are apparently so reluctant to change their minds when clever, young researchers begin to threaten the status quo. Imagine devoting your entire life to a set of ideas, only to find out that what you believed in for so many years was wrong. For many, the cost of bearing the burden of such a realization outweighs the self-deception that is required to convince oneself of an untruth. Such a self-imposed ruse need only be employed until death finally comes17.

We are essentially touching on the importance of legacy to the identity of an accomplished individual. The crucial point here is that, in a world where radical life extension was a reality, going down the wrong path for forty years would not represent an insurmountable blunder. Instead, it would represent a disappointing yet valuable learning experience and a chance at redemption18. Even if we grant that the anguish of admitting intellectual defeat after decades of battle would be equally painful regardless of life expectancy, the incentive would still be to move forward, given that the alternative is to be eternally wrong.

There is potentially another mechanism by which scientific stagnation would be mitigated in a world without death. At the risk of coming across as ageist, it is possible that, on average, people become increasingly inflexible or “set in their ways” as they get older. Given what we know about how neuronal plasticity declines with biological age, this is not wild speculation. It is plausible that, even without the aforementioned shift in incentives, old yet youthfully vigorous scientists would be more inclined to explore and consider alternative hypotheses, even those diametrically opposed to their own.

Live long enough to learn forever

While I do not think this piece is an exhaustive exploration of unbounded deep scholarship, it is a decent start. In addition to discussing the beneficial repercussions of simply having more time, we also described a few less obvious ways in which having a far longer lifespan would engender low time preference behaviors in the intellectual realm. That said, I am probably neglecting other positive externalities that would result from such a change in prioritization, so this framework many need an addendum in the future.

Before closing, I would like to invite you to reflect on how you would engage in deep unbounded scholarship if radical life extension was possible. As for me, my primary intellectual love is, of course, biology – a realm of knowledge so vast and open-ended that even a literal Methuselah would only have time to truly explore a small fraction of its wonders. In any case, given this passion, my mission is to learn enough about the biology of ending aging during my first hundred years so that I may learn about the biology of everything else in my next thousand. Now, I turn the question to you: what would you do with a mind that never deteriorates?

Finally, thank you for taking an interest in unbounded deep scholarship, the first truly substantive post in this series. The next installment will focus on a related concept, but one that deserves to be treated as a distinct feature of the Methuselah dividend: that is, the notion of “multimodal mastery”. As always, if you find this content worthy, please subscribe below and spread the good word:

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We begin at the end

In beginning an exploration into the concept of radical life extension, it would probably be appropriate to start with some scientific or industry fundamentals. Indeed, some of my more prominent pro-longevity blogging forebearers have been doing an exceptionally good job of this. For example, if you want an excellent introduction into longevity science, please see this incredibly thorough post from José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente1. Or, if you find yourself overwhelmed by molecular biology, perhaps you would rather start with Nathan Chang’s impressively comprehensive coverage of the burgeoning longevity industry. Maybe you want a little of everything, and should subscribe to Reason’s seasoned weekly blog, Fight Aging!2, which has been spreading the good word for well over a decade. There are others still, but these are some of my favorites3.

So yes, it would make sense to follow in the footsteps of these talented folks and start with the basics. However, that is not what I am going to do, at least not at this juncture4. Instead, I will start at the end and concentrate on the effect ending aging will have on the broad contours of human civilization. Speaking generally, this has been done extensively by many science fiction authors and futurists of various stripes. However, my purpose here is to describe specifically what I believe will be the overwhelmingly positive repercussions of such a momentous achievement. Therefore, in a series of upcoming posts, I will attempt to thoroughly enumerate and categorize various aspects of such a change. To define the constellation of concepts I am going to describe, we need a new term: enter, the “Methuselah dividend”5.

Methuselah dividend > longevity dividend

Mainstream longevity enthusiasts are fond of popularizing the “longevity dividend” – the idea that delaying age-related disease will result in an economic benefit to society. Usually, this is presented in the context of expanding healthspan, rather than extending maximum lifespan. While I take no issue with this formulation of the longevity dividend – which I see as a valid short-term goal – my focus in this series will be on an analogous, but far more consequential, concept. The Methuselah dividend explicitly refers to the benefits – economic, but also otherwise – that radical life extension, and not mere heathspan maximization, will confer upon our societies. To be even more specific, my definition of radical life extension, and thus my conception of the Methuselah dividend, entails the complete eradication of biological aging and not a mere doubling or tripling of natural maximum lifespan6.

Lest you think it premature to begin discussing such changes given that maximum lifespan has hardly budged in the last few centuries of progress, it is entirely plausible that we are on the cusp of such a development right now. Indeed, given the nature of longevity escape velocity, it is difficult to predict how far, or how startlingly close, we may be to the point in time when increases in life expectancy exceed the passage of time itself. Aubrey de Grey has dubbed the arrival of this event, the “Methuselarity”7. Of relevance, Aubrey has recently articulated an ambitious schedule for the Methuselarity:

Naysayers of radical life extension must be countered

However, irrespective of how close longevity science is to pushing out the human maximum life expectancy curve, there is a need for individuals passionate about the prospect of radical life extension to articulate a positive and comprehensive vision of such a future. This is not to say there are no negative externalities of radical life extension – an important set of concerns that I will address in future work. But, as you probably have noticed if you follow this space even intermittently, the proposed problems stemming from radical life extension (e.g., overpopulation, economic and environmental collapse, immortal dictators, eternal boredom, cultural/scientific stagnation, etc.) are overrepresented in discussions surrounding the topic of superlongevity. When anti-aging enthusiasts attempt to counter these objections, the framing typically is as follows: Reaching the Methuselarity will present a variety of novel societal problems, but the singular achievement of defeating death outweighs them all and, therefore, is worth doing.

While I agree with this statement, it completely ignores the collection of civilizational benefits that will accrue in a world with radical life extension. Indeed, on balance, I believe the positive externalities alone outweigh the negative consequences, regardless of the value of ending aging per se. Thus, given the preponderance of fear, uncertainty, and doubt promulgated by naysayers of the anti-aging movement, I am motivated to produce a series of pieces describing each dimension of the Methuselah dividend.

Memes matter

I am not the first to be interested in this idea; please do not mistake me as claiming that the concept of the Methuselah dividend is heretofore original. I am aware of a range of sources – everything from books and academic publications to blogs and YouTube channels – that consider the effects of radical life extension on civilization in one way or another8. While I have not yet come across a systematic and detailed description of how indefinite human lifespans will alter humanity, I am sure that someone has probably done a fantastic job of this9. Indeed, by simply browsing the right corners of social media, you can find high-quality chatter on the Methuselah dividend itself10:

In addition to trying to refine the ideas that others have put forth previously, I also hope to propagate the use of something that is novel – the phrase, Methuselah dividend. This may seem trivial, or even self-serving, but I believe neologisms are important. Words carry meaning, or more specifically, the right words strung together serve as efficiently packaged memes that have the potential to rewire neurons.

Why does this matter? Well, I would wager that, due to the aforementioned perceived dangers of radical life extension, political opposition to delaying death may end up being more of an obstacle than the actual challenges of longevity science itself. Thus, communicating a coherent, appealing – and dare I say, glorious – vision of what radical life extension could offer humanity is worthwhile. So, if you think our newly coined term has a certain ring to it, please appropriate it for use in your own writings and discussions; I claim no ownership or copyright.

Epistemological limitations

It is relatively easy to extrapolate current socioeconomic dynamics to accommodate an understanding of extending healthy lifespan to ~115, something exponents of the longevity dividend have done convincingly11. The same cannot be accomplished when considering the Methuselah dividend, which would radically alter the socioeconomic landscape to a degree unseen since the Industrial Revolution12. Like the process that began to unfold in 18th century Britain, or perhaps the Agricultural Revolution thousands of years before that, the Methuselah dividend would represent a phase transition in the organization and capability of civilization.

Given the multifactorial manner in which the Methuselah dividend will change the world, it is epistemologically challenging to paint even the broad strokes of such a new paradigm. This difficulty will limit me to mostly qualitative descriptions, since quantitative measures of the Methuselah dividend would likely be wildly inaccurate13. That said, I will obviously endeavor to be directionally correct in what I describe here. Additionally, given the already daunting task of trying to envision such a world, I will not consider the interplay of other radically transformative technologies (e.g., intelligence augmentation) with radical life extension, even though the development of such innovations will likely overlap in reality14.

Finally, thank you for reading the introduction to this series. I do hope you are looking forward to our next installment where we will explore the first component of the Methuselah dividend: “unbounded deep scholarship”. As always, if you find this content worthy, please subscribe below and spread the good word:

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You have entered Methuselah’s Library, a place filled with wisdom collected over the centuries; a space pervaded by the musings of a multicentenarian elder1. Here, we will explore only those ideas worthy of a mind a millennium old.

Or at least, that is my ambition. Obviously, the technology that will enable radical life-extension does not yet exist, so I – with hardly a few decades of experience under my belt – am at best a naïve pretender and at worst an egregious imposter. That said, I will strive to live up the name of this endeavor, and only write things worth your time.

So, what will this blog actually be about? While in the long run I would like the content of my writings to be unrestricted (after all, I would imagine the tomes filling an actual Methuselarian library would be wide-ranging indeed), for the foreseeable future my focus will be on the consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution, which I believe is only now just beginning. After many decades of incubation, this revolution is about to blossom in a manner that will transform every facet of human life. Indeed, it will alter what it even means to be human.

The unfolding of the Biotechnological Revolution is a big topic. Much like biology itself, it is open-ended and self-perpetuating, as is technological innovation in general. Given the difficulty of predicting the far-reaching repercussions of the this complex development, I will try to be as systematic and comprehensive as possible2. Furthermore, in addition to addressing the philosophical and socioeconomic changes advanced biotechnology will render upon humanity, I will go as deep as necessary – and perhaps even further – into the underlying science3. We will not shy away from the technical here at Methuselah’s Library.

While I will always attempt to be intellectually honest, I will also exercise a certain editorial license when discussing matters of subjective preference. To be fully upfront about my bias, I think the Biotechnological Revolution is an incredibly exciting and positive development, with beneficial repercussions that are nearly impossible to overstate. Thus, this will be a distinctly “biotechno-optimist” blog, where we will explore the wonders that advanced biotechnology will enable without implying that such power will inevitably culminate in disaster, which is frustratingly common in mainstream media4. This is not to say that the many dangers associated with the Biotechnological Revolution will be completely ignored – my perspective is not blindly Promethean5 – but we start with the assumption that the possibilities this technology unlocks are fundamentally desirable and worth pursing, despite the risks involved.

So, where to begin? As the name of this blog implies, I am fascinated by the idea of radical life-extension. Therefore, it only seems appropriate to start our journey together exploring this topic, which is but one of many eventualities the Biotechnological Revolution will enable. Without any further ado, please subscribe below, and welcome again to Methuselah’s Library.

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