Bryan Johnson

Narz said:
You don't think avoiding death is a good thing?

Also why do you think you're an expert on his internal experience?

As someone who's engaged in cultural norms (drinking, staying up late, overconsumption of all manners) and who's tried to 'maximize life', maximizing life is much more satisfying (even if others are like 'meh it's not even working, he's still f-ed up', it's not really about them)

And if you have the $$ to actually track metrics it's even more satisfying because it softens the criticism of naysayers to actually have results in front of your face.

You can call him egoic or attention seeking or even accuse him of trying to make money (everyone has to make a living) but I don't get hating on people trying to be healthy. I've never understood that (even if I think someone's ideals are foolish I commend anyone who actually wants to take care of themself in a society that is selling you bad habits every millisecond).
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You're taking this too personally.

There are people who track their metrics and feel like trash even though their metrics say they should be feeling great, but then there are people who don't track metrics and feel great despite being far from ideal. It's more of a human perception thing than probably anything biological unless the differences in, say, sleep depth and time were so obvious that one wouldn't need an app to tell them they're under-rested.

Bryan Johnson says he goes to bed strictly at 8PM. Never later. Never, never, never. Watch the video of him with his father and son doing the plasma exchange. He's trying to make it seem like he's reconciling with his father after years of being apart, but all he can focus on when the mask slips is that his bedtime is approaching and he can't allow himself to stay later after the photoshoots or to hang out. They have a strict filming schedule, and then they go to bed. I'd rather die 5 years earlier and go to bed a little later or a little earlier so I can, you know, enjoy my day's activities. Imagine playing an amazing video game, having an amazing conversation, spending time with a long-lost friend, but your crippling fear of death keeps you on a schedule that says you need to cut this short so that you sleep at 8PM every night. Watch the video about how much he hates to travel because he can't perform is dozen+ "longevity" rituals while on the road, and how he'd never be able to bring his specific diet with him. In his videos it's clear he's a nervous basket case. I don't bemoan him for being rich, and he can do what he will with his money, but I pity him because he clearly doesn't use it for any other purpose than to combat his crippling fears of oblivion while presenting poorly-fitting mask of normalcy under the guise he's just an eccentric billionaire who's also doing this for the benefit of humanity. I don't see him as vain as much as I see him terrified.

In short, I don't see him crying about getting a scar on his face, but if you told him this facial scar shortens his estimated life expectancy by 1 year, he'd lose his mind trying to get rid of the scar tissue (or pay his doctors millions to do the mental labor for him). Hence, his appearance isn't about vanity as much as it is about him not looking old so that he isn't reminded of his mortality.

He reminds me of a TV show about mental disorders where two borderline anorexic twin girls felt so connected to one another, fearing that one would die before or without the other, that they ate the exact meals (barely anything), followed in one another's exact footsteps, and when one picked up something for some reason, the other tried to duplicate it exactly afterwards while the other waited for them so that they spend the same amount of calories. These girls were not "living life" with one another. They were so afraid of losing one another that they spent each day obsessively avoiding death or the thought of being out of the other's presence.

If Bryan's doctors were actually honest with him rather than being his highly-paid yesmen, they'd diagnose him with OCD and anxiety.
 
Sounds like armchair psychoanalysis.

He doesn't come off as anxious.

It he wants to go to bed @ 8pm what's the big deal?

I get it you'd rather stay up & play videogames, you do you, he does him.

Maybe you don't care as much about being in control so you can't relate. I like being in control. I think a look in the mirror might be more enlightening than so much analysis of Bryan. You think he's anxious and you're free, I get it, I wish I could stay up late and eat hotdogs and drink booze but actions have consequences and the ideal of freedom that we're sold everyday is as much as a salve for anxiety as anything Bryan is doing but containing less self awareness. In reality there's no such thing as freedom and the oppression with death seems on your end.

Maybe you're ok with not making as many decisions and outsourcing them to society's norms and letting some religious mumbo jumbo act as a salve for thinking about death (altho it doesn't seem to be working) but I don't think that makes you mentally healthy and another person obsessive.

I dunno to me a life without obsession doesn't seem worth living.
 
Narz said:
Sounds like armchair psychoanalysis.

He doesn't come off as anxious.

It he wants to go to bed @ 8pm what's the big deal?

I get it you'd rather stay up & play videogames, you do you, he does him.

Maybe you don't care as much about being in control so you can't relate. I like being in control. I think a look in the mirror might be more enlightening than so much analysis of Bryan. You think he's anxious and you're free, I get it, I wish I could stay up late and eat hotdogs and drink booze but actions have consequences and the ideal of freedom that we're sold everyday is as much as a salve for anxiety as anything Bryan is doing but containing less self awareness. In reality there's no such thing as freedom and the oppression with death seems on your end.

Maybe you're ok with not making as many decisions and outsourcing them to society's norms and letting some religious mumbo jumbo act as a salve for thinking about death (altho it doesn't seem to be working) but I don't think that makes you mentally healthy and another person obsessive.

I dunno to me a life without obsession doesn't seem worth living.
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We're both doing armchair psychoanalysis.

He comes off as very anxious, as I've said.

He wants to go to bed at 8PM forever, regardless of events in his life. Obsession with perfectionism with routine is a classic sign of OCD.

Everyone likes being in control, but outcome independence is needed to not feel like you're mentally falling apart at every little thing that doesn't follow through. I don't drink booze at all or eat hot dogs. I'm not religious at all either, and I think death is probably like being asleep.

The "life without obsession doesn't seem like a life worth living" seems romantic until you start asking what the obsessions are and realize that some obsessions are more mentally healthy than others.
 
Narz said:
You're vering into structural issues that are beyond the scope of of one individual.
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Very true. But I think they're linked, especially when discussing millionaires or billionaires.
Narz said:
I mean would you watch a movie review channel and curse the skies because you don't even have time to watch movies while this SOB gets paid to watch them?
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No, but if the guy told me to do X because X was good for me, I would also recognise that he's able to do things that I cannot. This means we should adjust the value of the advice they're giving accordingly.
Narz said:
These are legit points but no reason to fall full on into fatalism.
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I agree - I don't mean to sound fatalistic about it.
 
Plains-Cow said:
We're both doing armchair psychoanalysis.
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I'm trying not to psychoanalyze tho of course we all do w each other. I'm trying to analyze his words and ideas because that's more interesting and relevant to me than wondering about his mother.

He comes off as very anxious, as I've said.
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His affect does not appear anxious. It seems like you're saying if you lived your life like he did you'd be anxious which is not the same.

He wants to go to bed at 8PM forever, regardless of events in his life.
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He hasn't said that exactly but wanting a consistent bedtime or to eat healthy regardless of circumstances seems like a good way to introduce control and consistency into an otherwise chaotic life.

Plains-Cow said:
Everyone likes being in control, but outcome independence is needed to not feel like you're mentally falling apart at every little thing that doesn't follow through.
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I don't feel like I'm falling apart if I miss the gym but I feel way better when I go so I prioritize going.

You're framing this as a cope whereas it doesn't seem like a cope to me.

Choosing outcomes you desire in life and following steps to achieve them is really enjoyable. Falling off course due to social pressure, poor planning, poor goal selection, etc is really annoying.

As I said above you're seeing this as something he's grimly forcing himself to do because he's scared but that doesn't seem to be the case. At the end of the day no one knows another's lived experience so he could be miserable and forcing himself for some pathological reason but I doubt he'd be able to sustain results if he was doing it that way.

I'm not religious at all either, and I think death is probably like being asleep.
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There's no reason to think death is like sleep.

Plains-Cow said:
The "life without obsession doesn't seem like a life worth living" seems romantic until you start asking what the obsessions are and realize that some obsessions are more mentally healthy than others.
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No doubt. That's for each individual to decide.
 

Good convo once they get going (bypass the ads), they ask good questions and don't let up til he answers
 
I saw an interview with a scientist regarding longevity and he claimed that even if we don't understand every reason behind it, but getting older than 120 is probably impossible as even the most extreme statistical outliers are just up to that with several billion data points.
The question is how long are you how healthy - IMHO there is no need to get over 100 when you are suffering from serious physical and mental health issues.
Also one point to consider: Do you really want to be the last person left from your generation, when all friends and even your kids have long gone? It's a high prize to pay.
 
Narz said:
Good convo once they get going (bypass the ads), they ask good questions and don't let up til he answers
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I haven't watched the whole of this, but I've dipped into a few places, and so far all the answers he's given are some combination of wrong, rambling irrelevance, and total word salad.

For example, since it's in the title I skipped to the "AI is already designing all of our drugs" section. To begin with, that claim is straight up wrong. To a comparable extent that the statement "we already have vast metropolises on Mars" is wrong. There are people who aspire to do that, and argue that somewhere way down the line in the future it'll happen. But there are no drugs yet that are in even the vaguest sense "designed" by AI. The most impressive AI accomplishment in this area is so far Alphafold for proteins, but that's not designing drugs. It's a tool which can be useful to answer certain specific questions that are useful to a human scientist who is trying to design drugs. And thanks to the length of drug development processes, I don't think there's anything out yet that's even made much use of it.

But this guy isn't just wrong on that basic fact. He then goes off into rambling about "engineering atoms, and molecules and biological systems". Technically you could argue that's a description of biochemistry as a subject, but it's incredibly clumsy, and "engineering atoms" in particular will be getting some dubious looks from anyone with even a basic understanding of this subject. It's the handwaving of someone who knows some relevant words but is very unclear on what they mean.

And then we go shooting off to "We can engineer digital reality - we can engineer all of reality!" Which is where he completely loses touch with reality :lol:. To be fair, the interviewer guy makes a couple of attempts to drag him back to answer what he even means about engineering atoms and molecules, but all we get is a rambling irrelevant tangent about "how big is reality?" and "how big is consciousness". This isn't even good mystical blithering. It's mostly non sequiturs and even the worst blagging I've heard from students is better than this.

I stuck it out to the bit on gene therapy. To be fair his answers here are clear enough to be merely wrong - they're not total gibberish. But it's clear he's still throwing words around without really understanding what they mean. Your plasmid has a kill switch that's tetracycline? Yeah, I know what kind of system he's referring to, but I'm pretty sure his understanding of how this works is at best, back to front here. The plasmid delivers the protein and the protein just sets up shop in the nucleus? He's throwing around real words like "vectors" and "delivery systems", but he clearly doesn't understand even the basics of DNA, protein and expression. And then I quit when they veered back off into "AI is magic and can rewrite reality itself" babbling.
 
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MrCynical said:
I haven't watched the whole of this, but I've dipped into a few places, and so far all the answers he's given are some combination of wrong, rambling irrelevance, and total word salad.

For example, since it's in the title I skipped to the "AI is already designing all of our drugs" section. To begin with, that claim is straight up wrong. To a comparable extent that the statement "we already have vast metropolises on Mars" is wrong. There are people who aspire to do that, and argue that somewhere way down the line in the future it'll happen. But there are no drugs yet that are in even the vaguest sense "designed" by AI. The most impressive AI accomplishment in this area is so far Alphafold for proteins, but that's not designing drugs. It's a tool which can be useful to answer certain specific questions that are useful to a human scientist who is trying to design drugs. And thanks to the length of drug development processes, I don't think there's anything out yet that's even made much use of it.

But this guy isn't just wrong on that basic fact. He then goes off into rambling about "engineering atoms, and molecules and biological systems". Technically you could argue that's a description of biochemistry as a subject, but it's incredibly clumsy, and "engineering atoms" in particular will be getting some dubious looks from anyone with even a basic understanding of this subject. It's the handwaving of someone who knows some relevant words but is very unclear on what they mean.

And then we go shooting off to "We can engineer digital reality - we can engineer all of reality!" Which is where he completely loses touch with reality :lol:. To be fair, the interviewer guy makes a couple of attempts to drag him back to answer what he even means about engineering atoms and molecules, but all we get is a rambling irrelevant tangent about "how big is reality?" and "how big is consciousness". This isn't even good mystical blithering. It's mostly non sequiturs and even the worst blagging I've heard from students is better than this.

I stuck it out to the bit on gene therapy. To be fair his answers here are clear enough to be merely wrong - they're not total gibberish. But it's clear he's still throwing words around without really understanding what they mean. Your plasmid has a kill switch that's tetracycline? Yeah, I know what kind of system he's referring to, but I'm pretty sure his understanding of how this works is at best, back to front here. The plasmid delivers the protein and the protein just sets up shop in the nucleus? He's throwing around real words like "vectors" and "delivery systems", but he clearly doesn't understand even the basics of DNA, protein and expression. And then I quit when they veered back off into "AI is magic and can rewrite reality itself" babbling.
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He can be a bit overzealous

Re : "AI is the primary drug designer" he probably should have said "AI will be instrumental in the designing of new drugs"

Can't address all your points, way beyond my scope of knowledge.

Plains-Cow said:
The amount of clothes this guy wears with children's themes is weird. That interview with the mustache guy is a good example.
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You're avatar is a toddler book cow
 
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Samez said:
I saw an interview with a scientist regarding longevity and he claimed that even if we don't understand every reason behind it, but getting older than 120 is probably impossible as even the most extreme statistical outliers are just up to that with several billion data points.
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Currently but w gene editing and future theapies who knows.

The question is how long are you how healthy - IMHO there is no need to get over 100 when you are suffering from serious physical and mental health issues.
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Most positive habits like good diet and exercise help both quality and quantity. Agree that length without quality is pointless, I don't want to be demented for my last 20 years.

Also one point to consider: Do you really want to be the last person left from your generation, when all friends and even your kids have long gone? It's a high prize to pay.
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I got kids so I can be friends w their friends.

One thing I know for sure when I'm 80 I don't want to look, feel and act like your average 80 year old now. I don't think anyone does really, at best they'll accept it as inevitable but given the choice anyone would want to feel/look younger in a second, fitting in be damned.

Ideal is your bring your friends w you. I don't want to live indefinitely alone of course why would I?

I don't think I have to worry about doing health so hard I'm gonna be the last man standing. I got enough issues at my age already.
 
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Narz said:
You're avatar is a toddler book cow
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I feel like that only becomes relevant when @Plains-Cow evangelizes on how to become immortal.

Maybe I already am, in a sense, in my consciousness. If you believe it is separate from the physical neurons or whatever bouncing around the brain.

Take it from me, my avatar is from a 30-year-old video game.
 

This future is already here

Oh gotta watch on YT, it's a short about wealth inequality from that Israeli guy who wrote sapiens
 
Gorbles said:
Based on MrCynical's thorough reply, I think we're past "overzealous" and into "plain wrong".
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If it works it works (or not). Can nitpick wording from sidelines and I wouldn't necessarily want to try all this cutting edge stuff but glad others are willing to :)
 
Narz said:
Someone's fashion isn't really relevant at all
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Maybe you are uniquely gifted, and I don’t mean it sarcastically, to not discriminate based on appearance—but I think most of us do, and we connect the choices people make with their appearance with the things they are saying to us. If he was dressed as a 16th century European knight, I’d listen to him spin a good yarn about a heroic warrior in the Black Forest, but I wouldn’t ask him about 10-year treasury bonds.
 
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