Bioquark Inc. (www.bioquark.com) Interview in MoneyWeek
Read whole story: http://moneyweek.com/who-wants-to-live-forever/
In is now quite clear that aging is not a simple phenomenon and it will not be overcome by using simple approaches. We need to increase the complexity and sophistication of our efforts in order to be in a better position to develop strategies against it. For this reason, I set up the ELPIS Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans (www.elpisfil.org) which is a scientific research organisation aiming to study aging from a complex evolutionary perspective.
The foundation’s research methodology is based mainly upon the ELPIS hypothesis (www.elpistheory.info). The initials stand for ‘Extreme Lifespans through Perpetual –equalising Interventions’. I developed this hypothesis in 2010 whilst trying to examine the reason behind the presence of aging. It was clear that aging is not an essential component of our evolutionary development, and if we find ways to study why nature has developed it, we may then be able to eradicate it. Currently, the chances of us dying from aging are heavily against us. By developing suitable interventions, we may be able to equalise the odds against us dying (i.e. remove aging as a cause of death).
Our method is different from most existing approaches aiming to eliminate aging. We are mainly interested in the ‘connection-approach’ and not so much in the ‘component-approach’. We believe that it is important to study how the different components of the organism are interconnected and regulated, rather than just repair the individual components. It is the ‘why aging happens’ rather than the ‘how it happens’ that interests us most. In order to make this clear let me mention an analogy with poliomyelitis.
Polio
*How it happens? There is inflammation and necrosis leading to damage of motor neurons and, ultimately, muscle weakness and paralysis
* Why it happens? Because the poliovirus causes it
Continue reading “Defying Aging: The ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans” »
Kant is often misconstrued as advocating radical conformity amongst people, a common misconception drawn from his Categorical Imperative, which states that each should act as though the rules underlying his actions can be made a universal moral maxim. The extent of this universality, however, stops at the notion that each man should act as though the aspiration towards morality were a universal maxim. All Kant meant, I argue, was that each man should act as though the aspiration toward greater morality were able to be willed as a universal moral maxim.
This common misconception serves to illustrate another common and illegitimate portrayal of the Enlightenment tradition. Too often is the Enlightenment libelled for its failure to realize the ideal society. Too often is it characterized most essentially by its glorification of strict rationality, which engenders invalid connotations of stagnant, statuesque perfection – a connotation perhaps aided by the Enlightenment’s valorization of the scientific method, and its connotations of stringent and unvarying procedure and methodology in turn. This takes the prized heart of the Enlightenment tradition and flips it on its capsized ass. This conception of the Enlightenment tradition is not only wrong, but antithetical to the true organizing gestalt and prime impetus underlying the Age of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment wasn’t about realizing the perfect society but rather about idealizing the perfect society – the striving towards an ever-inactualized ideal which, once realized, would cease to be ideal for that very reason. The enlightenment was about unending progress towards that ideal state – for both Man as society and man as singular splinter — of an infinite forward march towards perfection, which upon definitively reaching perfection will have failed to achieve its first-sought prize. The virtue of the Enlightenment lies in the virtual, and its perfection in the infinite-perfectibility inherent in imperfection.
This truer, though admittedly less normative, interpretation of the Enlightenment tradition, taking into account its underlying motivations and projected utilities rather than simply taking flittered glints from the fallacious surface and holding them up for solid, tangible truth also serves to show the parallels between the Enlightenment gestalt and Transhumanism. James Hughes, for one, characterizes Transhumanism as a child of the Enlightenment Tradition [1].
