RAAD Festival

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jordansparks
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Posts: 224
Joined: Thu Aug 27, 2015 3:59 pm

RAAD Festival

Post by jordansparks »

RAAD Fest 2017 is being promoted, and it makes me sick. What a bunch of suckers.
http://raadfest.com/
To be absolutely clear, there are ZERO life extension technologies currently available. So here's how they advertise it:
"Learn everything from the latest life extension science, to how to strengthen your immortal mindset, to ageless sexuality, nutrition, fitness and financial planning for forever."
Yes, diet and exercise can keep you from dying too young, but they certainly don't help you extend life beyond the norm. This festival is pseudoscience at its worst.
Mati_Roy
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:42 pm

Re: RAAD Festival

Post by Mati_Roy »

The first year it was done, in 2016, I was pretty annoyed that they extended their early registration discount many times. I felt like they were creating a false sense of urgency.

For the 2016 edition, registrations opened on November 15, 2015, and here are various limit dates I could find for the early registration discount (there might have been more):
-January 31 limit: https://www.facebook.com/peopleunlimite ... 580847791/
-February 29 limit: https://www.facebook.com/JamesStrolespe ... 133115296/
-April 30 limit: https://www.facebook.com/JamesStrolespe ... 6727222803
-June 13 limit: https://www.facebook.com/events/1665028 ... 271601657/
-July 14 limit: https://www.facebook.com/JamesStrolespe ... 5208027288
-July 20 limit: https://www.facebook.com/events/1665028 ... 926771758/

From a quick search, other years seem to have been similar. And James Strole (the main organizer) dared say "Your life could extend indefinitely... but this special registration pricing doesn't."

But more importantly, I think, some of their claims are much too strong, and lack nuance in a way that is probably misleading to many. And I feel like there's a lot of group thinking going on there (which reminds me of Yudkowsky's post on "Applause Lights" after the Singularity Summit in 2007: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu ... use-lights).

The RAAD Fest has speakers I respect a lot, and they created new art on life extension that I appreciate. But I think it could be much better, and I fear they are currently damaging the image and trustworthiness of some legitimate research areas associated with them. Maybe they think "elevating" life extension to religious status is a good strategy to push for accelerated development of those technologies? I think that's wrong. Among other things, this generally won't attract (/will push away) smart people IME.

I hope the rational-minded people affiliated with the RAAD Fest are pushing to improve this.
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