I’d like to know what your vision of LER is, specifically?
My vision of life extension is something that allows maximum and average lifespan to increase significantly. The most effective way to do this would be to cure aging. Also I think drastically increasing the effectiveness for heart disease, cancer treatments, and Alzheimer’s will be important (although these might also be significantly decreased by any treatment that reverses the aging process itself). I think the mechanism that will eventually drastically increase human lifespan should ultimately be some sort of nanotechnology that can repair damage to the cells. I think Aubrey de Grey may have some good ideas on what to repair from what I’ve read about his work (Mostly what I know about his research is in the Ending Aging book he wrote with Michael Rae, and from various internet articles).
What kinds of technologies do you think realistically offer you a chance at indefinitely, or even moderately extending your healthy lifespan?
I don’t think that any current technologies are likely to help for anything except possibly modestly increasing my lifespan by perhaps a couple decades at best. On the other hand, given the rate at which medicine is advancing, I feel some optimism that this could increase in my lifetime. I continue to watch advances in this area with great interest.
When do you think they might be available, and with what restrictions (if any) and at what likely cost?
I don’t really know, but I hope that there will be something I can take advantage of in my lifetime. Since I am very risk averse, I prefer to invest in medical interventions that are better understood. I prefer to avoid ones that are poorly understood, given that they could make my situation worse instead of better (by definition, if they don’t work, they have made my situation worse since they have drained some amount of time and resources from me.) On the other hand, I am open to the idea of putting some money into making poorly understood treatments into better understood ones.
How long do you think it is likely that advances in LER will be able to extend your lifespan—including as incremental bridges to increasingly better technologies?
I do not know enough to guess, but if I had to pick a number that looked likely, I’d say to 150. At this point, I don’t know what type of technology would give me that option, just that something probably will. If I’m lucky, this will be a large underestimate.
Finally, how much of your income are you currently contributing to LER, and if I could ask, to what kinds of LER are you contributing money?
Currently less than 1% (I was not in the habit of donating money to any cause at all for most of my life, but in recent years I have started working on changing this). For life extension research, I have been contributing money here.
Incidentally, the message board Help seems to have disappeared for me (can’t find it under the comment box anymore), so I wasn’t able to markup your questions.
I’d like to know what your vision of LER is, specifically?
My vision of life extension is something that allows maximum and average lifespan to increase significantly. The most effective way to do this would be to cure aging. Also I think drastically increasing the effectiveness for heart disease, cancer treatments, and Alzheimer’s will be important (although these might also be significantly decreased by any treatment that reverses the aging process itself). I think the mechanism that will eventually drastically increase human lifespan should ultimately be some sort of nanotechnology that can repair damage to the cells. I think Aubrey de Grey may have some good ideas on what to repair from what I’ve read about his work (Mostly what I know about his research is in the Ending Aging book he wrote with Michael Rae, and from various internet articles).
What kinds of technologies do you think realistically offer you a chance at indefinitely, or even moderately extending your healthy lifespan?
I don’t think that any current technologies are likely to help for anything except possibly modestly increasing my lifespan by perhaps a couple decades at best. On the other hand, given the rate at which medicine is advancing, I feel some optimism that this could increase in my lifetime. I continue to watch advances in this area with great interest.
When do you think they might be available, and with what restrictions (if any) and at what likely cost?
I don’t really know, but I hope that there will be something I can take advantage of in my lifetime. Since I am very risk averse, I prefer to invest in medical interventions that are better understood. I prefer to avoid ones that are poorly understood, given that they could make my situation worse instead of better (by definition, if they don’t work, they have made my situation worse since they have drained some amount of time and resources from me.) On the other hand, I am open to the idea of putting some money into making poorly understood treatments into better understood ones.
How long do you think it is likely that advances in LER will be able to extend your lifespan—including as incremental bridges to increasingly better technologies?
I do not know enough to guess, but if I had to pick a number that looked likely, I’d say to 150. At this point, I don’t know what type of technology would give me that option, just that something probably will. If I’m lucky, this will be a large underestimate.
Finally, how much of your income are you currently contributing to LER, and if I could ask, to what kinds of LER are you contributing money?
Currently less than 1% (I was not in the habit of donating money to any cause at all for most of my life, but in recent years I have started working on changing this). For life extension research, I have been contributing money here.
Incidentally, the message board Help seems to have disappeared for me (can’t find it under the comment box anymore), so I wasn’t able to markup your questions.