Paul Graham wrote essays — and got Y Combinator. Misha Batin wrote essays — and look how many people he helped find themselves as immortalists. Yudkowsky wrote essays. Well, we all make mistakes. Kidding, he's YouTube star, prophet of the apocalypse, and actually a great guy.
I'm starting an essay series.
I'm in my thirties. I have a mom who is aging. Two cats and a dog who will age faster than she will. Friends I'm burying — from heart attacks, cancer, COVID, war. A grandfather I never got to know — he built hydrogen engines for civilian aircraft and rockets, and I got secondhand stories instead of conversations.
I have coffee in the morning, and I want to drink it in 2150. With cookies. With the people I love. And I don't understand why that's considered insane.
If nothing changes — none of us will make it to 2150. Not even the people born today. We're all in the same boat.
So this is our shared goal. Coffee in 2150. The uploaded can drink theirs virtual, cryopatients get it cold, sideloads get theirs in tokens.
This will be a series about how ordinary people — founders, scientists, students, investors, activists — are trying to survive into a world where dying of old age is no longer the default.
And about how the present world makes us cringe.
Why civilization spends half its budget on the consequences of aging and rounding error on the cause. Why 37% of people say they want to live forever, but rounding error goes out to protest. On the poverty of the rich and the wealth of the future. On politicians who manage their fear of death with armies and pensions — but haven't thought to aim that same fear somewhere it might actually work. On what it would take for immortalism to find its people. On science being ready while the public demand is not. And on how to create that demand.
My fuel is anger and hope.
So — before the gate, while the light is still vivid, before the spirit spills out of me like a scalding liquid — I'll write
Those who are about to die salute you.
Paul Graham wrote essays — and got Y Combinator. Misha Batin wrote essays — and look how many people he helped find themselves as immortalists.
Yudkowsky wrote essays. Well, we all make mistakes. Kidding, he's YouTube star, prophet of the apocalypse, and actually a great guy.
I'm starting an essay series.
I'm in my thirties.
I have a mom who is aging.
Two cats and a dog who will age faster than she will.
Friends I'm burying — from heart attacks, cancer, COVID, war.
A grandfather I never got to know — he built hydrogen engines for civilian aircraft and rockets, and I got secondhand stories instead of conversations.
I have coffee in the morning, and I want to drink it in 2150. With cookies. With the people I love. And I don't understand why that's considered insane.
If nothing changes — none of us will make it to 2150. Not even the people born today. We're all in the same boat.
So this is our shared goal.
Coffee in 2150.
The uploaded can drink theirs virtual, cryopatients get it cold, sideloads get theirs in tokens.
This will be a series about how ordinary people — founders, scientists, students, investors, activists — are trying to survive into a world where dying of old age is no longer the default.
And about how the present world makes us cringe.
Why civilization spends half its budget on the consequences of aging and rounding error on the cause.
Why 37% of people say they want to live forever, but rounding error goes out to protest.
On the poverty of the rich and the wealth of the future. On politicians who manage their fear of death with armies and pensions — but haven't thought to aim that same fear somewhere it might actually work.
On what it would take for immortalism to find its people.
On science being ready while the public demand is not. And on how to create that demand.
My fuel is anger and hope.
So — before the gate,
while the light is still vivid,
before the spirit spills out of me like a scalding liquid —
I'll write