The main thing that people misunderstanding is the actual relationship between aging and the diseases of old age – and this is largely the fault of gerontologists….people would go out and say, all the time, ‘Aging is not a disease’ – that’s not useful. Ultimately it’s very counter productive. What happened was people would think to themselves ‘well ok then, aging is this natural thing that’s never going to be amenable to medical intervention, because it’s not a disease – and also because it’s not a disease, then why should we care about it?’ – so it was absolutely the wrong thing to be saying… it’s even more the wrong thing to be saying because it’s not even true. Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey is the chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) public charity that is transforming the way the world researches and treats age-related disease.
The research SENS funds at universities around the world and at SENS own Research Center uses regenerative medicine to repair the damage underlying the diseases of aging. The goal of SENS is to help build the industry that will cure these diseases.
Aubrey de Grey was interviewed by Adam Ford in 2012.
Synopsis: In this talk we articulate a positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications. We introduce two key insights that, when taken together, synergize in powerful ways. Namely, (a) the long-tails of pleasure and pain, and (b) the correlation between wellbeing, productivity,…
Synopsis: Octavia Butler’s fiction underscores heightened empathy as a possible feature of the future humans (who may be co-evolved with alien species, in Butler’s imagination). Yet, in Butler’s fiction, the morally enhanced beings ponder over the freedom they now possess. This talk, building on the view that ME requires multiple virtues (James Hughes), examines the linkage…
Abstract: The technological singularity refers to a hypothetical scenario in which technological advances virtually explode. The most popular scenario is the creation of super-intelligent algorithms that recursively create ever higher intelligences. After a short introduction to this intriguing potential future, I will elaborate on what it could mean for intelligence to explode. In this course,…
There is an interesting discussion at Quanta “Solution: ‘Is Infinity Real?’” – Is infinity a real physical phenomenon outside our models? Max Tegmark doesn’t think so – while admitting it is indisputably useful for mathematical models of physics, he believes that nothing is truly continuous – including space and time. Would an infinitely X* phenomenon…
People used to say ‘morality is too complex for machines’. Then we started asking machines for advice about relationships, therapy, medical decisions, and legal dilemmas – because apparently we enjoy living dangerously. To help us think clearly about what’s happening, I interviewed Dianca Dillion. Danica looks at a surprising finding from Moral Turing Test–style research:…
A talk at EAGx Melbourne by David Pearce about suffering and how to get rid of it. David predicts we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today’s peak experiences. David Pearce: First, I’m going to outline…