Sixteen archetypes of how people relate to defeating death

A half-serious, MBTI-flavoured classification of how adults relate to aging, death, and the project of defeating them. Four binary axes, sixteen combinations. None of the axes split the population in half; none of the sixteen cells contain the same number of people. The point of the exercise is to make visible how rare the most useful combinations are — and how unevenly distributed everything else is.

Four axes

1. Cooperative / Self-oriented

A cooperative person directs their strategy at outcomes that benefit a very large group, often everyone: science funding, lobbying, public infrastructure, regulatory reform, mass communication, population-scale research. A self-oriented person concentrates the same energy on themselves and a small circle — their own health, their own longevity protocol, their family's wealth, their loved ones' care. Looking after one's loved ones is still classified as self-oriented here: the scope is local, not population-wide.

Being cooperative does not mean a person neglects themselves. Cooperative people still look after their own health, their own family, and their own affairs — the cooperative work is in addition to that, not instead of it. The axis tracks whether the person also directs significant strategic effort outward at population-scale outcomes.

2. Efficient / Questionable

Efficient means the strategy looks well-chosen: the methods could plausibly produce the stated outcomes, the resources are deployed coherently, the person seems to know what they are doing. Questionable means the strategy is suspect: the methods may not work, the framing may be confused, the results are likely modest relative to what is being spent. This axis is the most subjective of the four. One person's "questionable" is another's "boldly contrarian." The classifications below are the author's calls; many individual placements are arguable.

3. Poor / Rich

"Rich" here means roughly one million dollars or more in deployable personal wealth — not billionaire-level wealth, but enough to create strategic freedom. At this level, a person can plausibly work on a project for years without immediate financial pressure, hire help when needed, support a serious advocacy effort, or fund a multi-year independent project out of pocket. Everyone else, including most of the comfortable middle class, falls under "poor" for this typology's purpose. Real cooperative work at scale costs money. So does most personal longevity infrastructure beyond supplements and a gym membership.

4. Vitalist / Fatalist

A vitalist actively wants disease, aging, and death to be defeated, and treats this as a real, tractable empirical target. A fatalist is resigned, even if they would happily agree in conversation that "it would be cool if science one day defeats them." The dividing line is between active orientation and passive acceptance. Most adults are fatalists; most are pleasantly polite to vitalism in conversation; very few actually live as if defeating aging is the most important project they could be part of.

These splits are not 50/50

None of the four axes splits the population in half. Approximate orders of magnitude:

• Vitalist vs. fatalist: ~1% vs. ~99%. Real, durable vitalism — the kind that organises a life around the problem of mortality — is rare even in the educated, secular West. Most people who would say they want death defeated do nothing differently with their week as a result.
• Cooperative vs. self-oriented: ~0.1% vs. ~99.9%. Most people optimise locally — health, career, family, immediate community. Cooperative work at population scale demands both resources and a temperament that finds it natural.
• Efficient vs. questionable: ~5% vs. ~95%. Most strategies pursued by most people are not well-calibrated to their stated goals. This is partly a matter of opinion and partly a matter of having looked at the evidence — and it is the axis where readers will most often disagree with my placements.
• Rich vs. poor: ~5% vs. ~95%. Even at a relatively low threshold of a million dollars in deployable wealth, the rich are a small minority of adults globally — and a smaller minority still once one screens for the kind of wealth that produces strategic freedom rather than just an owned house and a pension.

The combinations multiply unevenly. The most common cell — self-oriented, questionable, poor, fatalist — is probably a majority of all adults globally. The rarest cell — cooperative, efficient, rich, vitalist — is a few dozen named individuals worldwide. Most of the other fourteen cells sit between these extremes, sometimes by orders of magnitude.

The four axes are also not independent: being rich correlates mildly with being efficient (one common path to wealth runs through efficiency), being cooperative correlates mildly with vitalism (durable cooperative work at this scale tends to require conviction), and so on. The population shares cited below are eyeballed accordingly.

Naming convention

The label for each archetype puts the axes in this order: cooperative / self-oriented, then efficient / questionable, then poor / rich, then vitalist / fatalist. So "cooperative efficient rich vitalist" parses as: cooperative scope of strategy, efficient execution, rich resource base, vitalist orientation. The acronym CERV is used as shorthand.

The sixteen archetypes

1. CERV — Cooperative Efficient Rich Vitalist

Estimated population: a few dozens globally.

The rarest combination per capita and the most consequential. Has the resources to deploy at scale, the strategic acumen to deploy them well, vitalist conviction directing the effort at defeating aging and death, and cooperative scope — the work benefits everyone, not just the deployer. A single decision in the top tier of this cell can shift the trajectory of an entire field by a decade. The broader $1M+ tail is much larger but quieter: effective cooperative vitalist donors and operators who fund labs, seed organisations, and underwrite multi-year projects below the headline level.

Examples (author's classification): Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman.
Additionally, a few wealthy sponsors of cryonics companies.

2. CEPV — Cooperative Efficient Poor Vitalist

Estimated population: hundreds globally.

The activist-leader archetype that does cooperative work at population scale — running organisations, lobbying, organising research priorities, writing the position papers, building the institutional infrastructure — but with only restricted personal wealth to fund it themselves. Has to assemble resources from others, which is often itself most of the job.

Examples: In my mind immediately comes Felix, who achieved in my opinion incredibly much for a person who doesn't have say $1M of deployable wealth. Also, many people who were involved in creating cryonics companies.

3. CQRV — Cooperative Questionable Rich Vitalist

Estimated population: hundreds globally.

Has the resources, has the vitalist orientation, deploys cooperatively — but the strategy is suspect. The methods may be premature, the bets badly diversified, the public framing counter-productive, or the chosen vehicles low-yield. The contribution is real (the field would be smaller without it) but the same capital deployed efficiently would have done more. Classifications here are especially contentious because "efficient" versus "questionable" in longevity strategy is itself an open argument.

Examples: Bryan might be the most obvious example here (although he is also SERV). I would argue that Mikhail also belonged to this group; some might disagree.

4. CQPV — Cooperative Questionable Poor Vitalist

Estimated population: thousands globally.

Wants the cooperative outcome, has the vitalist conviction, and shows up — but the work is of debatable strategic value. Loud online presence with thin substance; endless discussions that move no needles; actions that may look meaningful up close but vanish at scale. This is a much-discussed cell because the line between "questionable" and "merely early" is genuinely hard to draw in advance, and because many CQPVs eventually mature into CEPVs once they accumulate craft.

Example: literally every poor vitalist who genuinely tries to do smth useful but you don't believe in the strategy they've chosen. This article is arguably a nice example of CQPV-style action.

5. SERV — Self-oriented Efficient Rich Vitalist

Estimated population: tens of thousands globally.

Wants to defeat death, has the resources to seriously be useful, executes with discipline — but the scope is personal. Runs structured protocols on themselves, hires the right specialists, tracks the right biomarkers, may be a paying customer of the cutting edge but not a funder of the cooperative infrastructure. The energy that a CERV would put into the field, the SERV puts into their own body.

Example: Bryan Johnson (Project Blueprint — disciplined, well-resourced, transparently documented personal longevity project; cooperative spillover via openness is real but incidental). Plus the (less public) wealthy individuals who run analogous protocols quietly through longevity-medicine clinics.

6. SEPV — Self-oriented Efficient Poor Vitalist

Estimated population: hundreds of thousands globally.

The methodical personal-longevity practitioner without significant capital. Reads Outlive, follows current evidence, maintains a structured protocol (zone-2, lifting, sleep, diet, sensible supplementation, screening), tracks own biomarkers, participates in citizen-science studies. Genuinely vitalist in orientation but the strategy is entirely personal. Has a good potential to transition into SERV.

7. SQRV — Self-oriented Questionable Rich Vitalist

Estimated population: hundreds of thousands globally.

The wealthy individual who wants to defeat aging personally, has some money to try, and spends it on methodologically thin protocols: undocumented peptide stacks, unregulated stem-cell tourism, off-label cocktails of half-validated drugs, expensive clinics with strong marketing and weak follow-up data. Often a customer of practitioners who would themselves be classified SQRV.

8. SQPV — Self-oriented Questionable Poor Vitalist

Estimated population: low millions globally.

The biohacker tourist. Sincerely vitalist in orientation, no capital to deploy at scale, and a protocol assembled from whichever supplement the algorithm surfaced last week. Buys NMN and resveratrol off Amazon, rotates through fasting fads, etc. The energy and conviction are real; the strategy is whichever way the social feed pointed. A large fraction of online "longevity-engaged" audiences sit here.

9. CERF — Cooperative Efficient Rich Fatalist

Estimated population: thousands globally.

Same resources, same strategic competence, same cooperative scope — but the orientation is set toward conventional public-good problems that take mortality as a given. Climate, global health, education, poverty reduction. Most "good billionaire" philanthropists fit here. The work is often genuinely impactful; it simply does not target the upstream problem the vitalist would prioritise.

Examples: Chuck Feeney / Atlantic Philanthropies — “giving while living” at large scale, with major support for education, health, youth, human rights, and scientific institutions, but not for defeating diseases and aging. Quite often, they are reachable to a varying degree via good people working in their funds.

10. CEPF — Cooperative Efficient Poor Fatalist

Estimated population: dozens of thousands globally.

The competent, mortality-neutral organiser. Does effective cooperative work, but on causes that take aging and death as background facts: climate, global health, animal welfare, development economics, civil rights, criminal justice reform. Includes the bulk of effective altruism's serious practitioners, the seasoned NGO operators, the staff of well-run advocacy groups, the researchers and policy people behind most measurable public-interest progress of the last half-century.

Examples: the operational leadership of Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, Doctors Without Borders, the Gates Foundation programme teams, ClimateWorks, the Center for Global Development.

11. CQRF — Cooperative Questionable Rich Fatalist

Estimated population: tens of thousands globally.

Wealthy, conventionally philanthropic, oriented at public good — but the chosen vehicles are vanity foundations, prestige causes, ineffective altruism in general. Real money is moved; the impact-per-dollar is conventionally weak. A large fraction of "named foundation" giving sits in this cell, even at the highest tiers.

Examples: archetype rather than named individuals — most readers can populate this cell from their own region's society pages.

12. CQPF — Cooperative Questionable Poor Fatalist

Estimated population: about a million globally.

The performative activist. Cares about something larger than themselves, joins the marches, posts the right things, signs the petitions — but the strategic contribution is more identity than output. Numerically large because the cell collects most first-time and casual activists from every conventional movement.

13. SERF — Self-oriented Efficient Rich Fatalist

Estimated population: low millions globally.

Successful in the conventional sense, manages wealth and career well, takes care of family, accepts mortality as a fixed fact. Includes the bulk of the upper class: the partners at large law firms, the senior hedge-fund and private-equity professionals, the successful business owners with no philanthropic or vitalist orientation. The cell is large by global standards and almost invisible from inside the longevity movement.

14. SEPF — Self-oriented Efficient Poor Fatalist

Estimated population: dozens of millions globally.

The competent middle-class professional. Optimises career, finances, family, health — but within the implicit assumption that aging is non-negotiable. Reads sensible advice, exercises, sleeps enough, sees doctors, saves for retirement.

15. SQRF — Self-oriented Questionable Rich Fatalist

Estimated population: tens of millions globally.

Wealth, no public-good orientation, no vitalist orientation, no particular discipline. Conspicuous consumption, status games, collected art, yachts, watches, accumulation for accumulation's sake or for impressing partners and peers. The cell is large relative to other rich cells because most wealth, once accumulated, defaults here unless an explicit cause or orientation pulls it elsewhere.

16. SQPF — Self-oriented Questionable Poor Fatalist

Estimated population: most of all adults globally.

The modal human. Works, consumes, takes care of those nearby as best they can, makes generally mediocre health and financial decisions by their own lights, accepts mortality as the structure of life rather than the problem at the centre of it. Not cooperative, not efficient, not rich, not vitalist. This is not even usually a moral failing — most people in this cell have lived under conditions that did not afford the alternatives. It is just the cell that absorbs everyone the other fifteen have failed to filter out.

What the table is good for

The table suggests where the cheapest or the most useful conversions live. Adjacent cells — cells that differ on a single axis — are far more reachable than distant ones.

• One letter conversions into CERV are arguably the holy grail of the movement.
• SERV => CERV (convincing tens of thousands of self-oriented efficient rich vitalists into participating in cooperation strategies)
• CERF => CERV (convincing thousands of reasonable effective altruists into becoming vitalists)
• CEPV => CERV (attempts of hundreds of cooperative poor vitalists to gain the wealth needed to operate at larger scale)
• CQRV => CERV (trying to convince hundreds of cooperative questionable rich vitalists to concentrate on strategies that would give better chances)

Converting an SQPF — the cell with the majority of human beings in it — to anything else, by contrast, requires crossing a few axes simultaneously, which is why population-level outreach mostly does not work. Simultaneously, that's the type of conversion that so many CQPVs are focusing on.

There are hundreds of thousands of vitalists belonging to SQRV type. Even if a two letters off, it's a very large pool.

A note on the value judgements. The labels here are strategic descriptors, not character verdicts. The typology tracks what someone's energy is pointed at, not whether they are a good or bad. Many of the good people the author knows are classified in cells that, in the language of this typology, do not flatter.