Based Camp: Why Life Extension is Evil

Join us in today's thought-provoking conversation as we delve deep into the topics of life extension, mortality, immortality, and the interplay of these themes with societal progress. We discuss the importance of healthspan expansion and how it differs from life extension, as well as the potential implications of life extension on intergenerational dynamics. We also touch on the conflict within the tech accelerationist communities between life Extensionists and pro-natal factions and how this could shape the future of humanity. Tune in to hear our take on these complex topics and why we champion the cause of intergenerational improvement.

A terrible transcript:

Hello, Malcolm. Hello

Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. What are we talking about?

On a scale of one to 10, how excited are you to die? 10. Same. The best. Today we will talk about life extension, mortality and immortality, and I think it's a uniquely fun conversation for both of us because we have a view that deviates from, the typical intuition that people have about mortality because we are genuinely not in favor of life extension. We're in favor of healthspan. Expansion. So we like the idea of having longer productive years, longer years when our bodies are fully functioning, both from a rep reproductive, but also mental standpoint.

We believe in longer periods when people are able to work and contribute to society. 100%. What we aren't in favor of is indefinite life, and there are some very concrete reasons why we hold that to you. I'm here

indefinite, let's say 500 years.

Yeah. Like we're okay. We're okay with. Some life extension, but living forever causes some serious problems.

And I think people don't realize

that. And I would also point out that we aren't against this at a government level. Like I would not promote anyone limiting access to this technology. We are against it at a family and cultural level. And I think we think that our family will always be better off if we focus.

On intergenerational improvement instead of intragenerational improvement.

Yeah, and I think you make a really important point here though, is that with this and pretty much every other stance on what people do with their bodies and a whole lot more for that matter, we may have our own stances on what we think is best for us.

But we think that any stance that is coercive or that would impose rules or restrictions on other people, especially against their will, that is the height of evil. Absolutely. The height of evil. One of the reasons actually why we don't. Like life extension, philosophically speaking, is that we actually think that it puts more people in positions where they will want to impose their will on others against their consent,

I, I would say that even goes to the core of why we don't like life extension. But go on.

There's a growing antagonism within the tech accelerationist communities between the life Extensionist and the pro natal faction. It, it surprises a lot of people that there is such the, such a level of antagonism, but it makes sense in that really only one of the factions can win.

At the end of the day, if all the technology that we both hope is realized, the life extension affection, there would just be too many people in the world if no one ever died. And so they think they can solve the problem of falling fertility rates by extending the lifespan of the existing people.

Whereas if you talk about prenatal as a philosophy is often predominated by the idea that it is the height of arrogance to think that you are the cumulative of all human, cultural and evolutionary improvement. That is to me to believe. That you are a superior race. Like you think that you can't do better than who you are .

And so we believe very strongly in okay, creating another generation. But the problem is there is always a. Vested advantage that people have if they have been in the system for longer. If you look at the world today, this is why you often have these old stogy people in positions of power. It's why when you look at the Congress of the Senate and the President, it's increasingly an aging demographic.

Do you really want these people living forever? Do you really want the boomers potentially control human civilization for the rest of human civilization? Now they might be doing that whether or not we have life extension if they screw up enough.

The way we view life extensionist versus non-life extensionist is that they are individuals. If their job is to maintain an ancient Athenian fleet, Their plan to do that is to take every board of the fleet, dip it in resin, have it stay exactly the way it is for 5,000 years.

Whereas the intergenerational improvement people, they see the job as to regularly replace the ships with new models and what that means is that when you go 500 years into the future, one is a fleet to Athenian warships and the other is a modern warley with submarines and aircraft carriers And, yep.

So what you're missing is what a life extensionist would say is, oh, you're implying that I who plans to live forever will not be iteratively improving myself. I will be improving my biology, I'll be improving my mind. But the problem with that kind of stance is ultimately if that's what you're doing, you are changing so much that ultimately biologically and mim medically, you will not be the same person We are not.

For the most part, the same people we were when we were five years old. That person is long gone. And so the idea that you wouldn't just follow a far more efficient pathway and have kids or, pass on your ideas to other people and let those ideas strengthen themselves through different perspectives and different bodies is ridiculous.

Like, why would you? Why would you undergo these crazy interventions to somehow iterably improve, technically in the same body or technically in a discontinued string when you could just do the system that has worked

for Millennium? I love that point so much. And so to use the analogy I was using before.

It would be like the person who's no, I'm not dipping all the board in resin. What I'm doing is like technologically upgrading the ships and everything like that. So in 500 years the ship that used to be a trireme will now be a modern submarine or an aircraft carrier. Exactly. And your point being, so you've functionally done nothing.

You haven't preserved anything. So why are you so afraid to give another generation a shot? And I think the answer is transparent. The answer is that they don't really plan to change that much. They want to maintain some level of continuity with who they are today. And if we look historically, generations just don't do that.

People very rarely after, and I don't expect to myself, after I am 50 or 60, do I really expect myself to change or update my beliefs that much? No, hold

on. We actually, we have plans for that. Like we plan, for example, when we feel like we are starting to. Mim medically and mentally ossify, that's when we go hard on psychedelics.

Because that's when the gullibility versus open-mindedness trade off starts to be worth it for us, and when in which we're okay with being a little bit more gullible in exchange for responsibility.

Absolutely. And I think. There are ways around this, and this is one of the things that Life Extensionist will say.

They'll say if you extend young age until later in life, people's mental ossification won't happen in the way it happens with existing people today. And I think that is a hypothesis, but I think we will find that hypothesis is wrong as soon as life extension is invented. And I'd actually love it if life Extensionist could take a stand if it turns out that people don't actually update their beliefs that much when they're able to stay young for