Anti-aging vs Brain Preservation

[jordansparks]

I was fairly surprised when I went to Vitalist Bay conference a few weeks ago by the number of people there and the level of enthusiasm. It was a 4 day event, with biostasis only prominent for about half of one day. Over the 4 days, I believe there were hundreds of speakers. That wasn't the surprising part. But when the biostasis portion started, many of the audience drifted away. As the series of speakers continued, the size of the audience dwindled further. At one point, for one portion, there were maybe a dozen people left in the audience. And then, soon after in the same room, there was a talk by a young guy about cryoprotectants, and the room was once again filled to bursting with maybe 4 times as many people. I've been pondering that ebb and flow for weeks, and I think I've finally identified the pattern.

At its core, the level of interest seems to be directly proportional to how soon the topic seems like it will be relevant. There was a perception by those involved that reversible organ cryopreservation was coming very soon. I heard that repeatedly. They seemed to feel like they were just one tiny breakthrough away (spoiler: they're not). But even more enthusiasm was obvious in the anti-aging crowd. They felt that, not only was it imminent, but that it would also directly benefit them in the near term. The enthusiasm for brain preservation was comparatively reserved because the timeframe was so much more extended.

In other words, it was basic human psychology on display. Humans crave immediate reward and have a harder time getting excited about delayed gratification that would require waiting for many decades.

For brain preservation to win that battle for attention, two things will be required: First, the perceived immediate reward from life extension must somehow go down. I'm not really sure if that's possible because the fountain of youth is and always has been probably the most alluring reward ever marketed. Humans have been falling for that gimmick since the beginning of time. It permeates our society at every level. Brain preservation doesn't really provide youth per se, so we can't compete directly. So the second thing that would be required would be for the timeline for the reward of brain preservation to be condensed. This should happen naturally over time. With a shorter reward timeline, it might actually start to appeal to people, but it will continue to be hard to compete with the promise of youth, which is so much more than indefinite survival.

[Mati_Roy]

I literally heard people say they're not signed up because they prefer the anti-aging path, which is weird to me because they're not really competing at a consumer level (you can still be signed up) and anti-aging isn't available now.