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The Manhattan Beach Project (2000, 2009, ...)


KHashmi317

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MBP was briefly mentioned in the intro to ADJ's Ending Aging.

 

Since the Archs are still down as of this writing, I dunno what was posted on the List, if anything, re: MBP. The invited guests and speakers seem to have been pre-selected. 

 

Most of the Nov. 2009 MBP Conf. has been on YouTube for 6 years (!!)

 

This was (is) a major major AA/LE project with some big big names and supporters (Kurzweil, Michael Rose, Michael West, et. al. see links below)

 

Relevance to CR? Aubrey de Grey, Stephen Spindler and Peter Voss were among the handful of presenters in 2009:

 

 

 

 

 

Much of the orig. underwriting of MBP was by LEF.org and maxlife.org/ Not sure what the state of the project is today.

 

Despite the high-quality content, topic importance and superb video production, the YouTube channel has very few subscribers; and the videos themselves are (Views-wise) almost invisible to the Public.

 

 

Links:

 

http://www.manhattanbeachproject.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/maxlifefoundation

http://maxlife.org/

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Thanks Khurram,

 

I'd never heard of that effort. Here is a recent (2015) slide show on the Manhattan Beach Project. It looks like the slide show is intended for potential investors - trying to raise $30M / year to fund longevity research projects, among them, SENS research. Very ambitious! I wonder what Michael and Aubrey's perspective is on the effort.

 

--Dean

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I wonder what Michael and Aubrey's perspective is on the effort.

At the very end of the Conf. (last video from Brainstorming #17), there was discussion on how to keep the ball rolling. I think AdG volunteered to touch base with those interested in furthering the Project, phoning or emailing every Sunday henceforth (???).

It's been 6yrs and the Project has kept a low profile. 

SENS has grown, financially, many order of magnitude since 2009 (e.g., de Grey's $16 million inheritance from his mother's 2011 passing, most of which he supposedly put into SENS). When your cake gets bigger however, there is often more greed so less to share than prev. 

 

Seems like many anti-aging projects, CRS included, never make it past a certain "threshold". Most projects fail, so the fact that CRS and MBP are still puttering along all these years is a good thing. 

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Khurram,

KHashmi317, on 28 Jan 2016 - 12:26 AM, said:

Seems like many anti-aging projects, CRS included, never make it past a certain "threshold". Most projects fail, so the fact that CRS and MBP are still puttering along all these years is a good thing.


There is a lot to be said for surviving :)xyz, but none of these efforts, including SENS, is yet achieving the kind of exponential growth that seems like it will be required to really succeed. I hope SENS can continue gaining momentum as Aubrey's inheritance runs out...

There appear to be several deep-pocketed anti-aging efforts underway, like Calico, so there is hope. Or perhaps some small effort like BioViva's will gain "escape velocity" driven by a charismatic personality like Liz Parrish.

Or maybe a big breakthrough will happen out of nowhere, far sooner than anyone expects, just like what appears to have happened with the game of Go. I'm not holding my breath though. :)xyz

--Dean

Fascinating video on Google's AlphaGo Go-playing computer program (along with a quick tutorial on the game). AlphaGo is taking on the world champion in March.

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... but none of these efforts, including SENS, is yet achieving the kind of exponential growth that seems like it will be required to really succeed. I hope SENS can continue gaining momentum as Aubrey's inheritance runs out...

There appear to be several deep-pocketed anti-aging efforts underway, like Calico, so there is hope. 

It definitely is a dense, complex and dynamic "field".

 

SENS, with deeper pockets, relocated to Mountain View, CA some time back ... home of Google which started the mega-$ Calico project.

To some extent, a common geographic location helps breed ideas: intelligentsia, Vienna Circle, etc. 

Yes, AdG made/makes some very bold predictions; but, I think he (and his team) genuinely believe(d) in them. So maybe this early enthusiasm (realistic or not) got the ball rolling (which was something AdG has stated from the start) ...

If SENS doesn't pan out, maybe it will become incorporated by Calico? Or members from the SENS team may defect to Calico because Google has better ... uh ... re$ource$. I know Michael wouldn't mind a bigger pay check ;)

 

Speaking of resources...

I think someone in CR or AA/LE needs to approach Elon Musk*. One of his lifetime goals is to send humans to Mars--the main reason behind his creation of SpaceX. A moderately CR'd crew, with lower cancer risk (think: solar flares, cosmic rays, extra-Van-Allen-Belt nasties), fewer colds, excellent cardio, etc., etc...... would greatly improve the success of the mission. Further, the emotional/psychological bennies some of us CR long-haulers can attest to would be helpful during mission stress.

From Wiki's Elon Musk/SpaceX page: "In 2001, Musk conceptualized "Mars Oasis"; a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse on Mars, containing food crops growing on Martian regolith, in an attempt to regain public interest in space exploration." The connection to CR is, of course, Bio2 and their CR diet -- they got very healthy, with fewer resources; and the medical results are academic ;)

 

* I don't think Musk's support in this area is wishful thinking. He was the other billionaire co-founder of PayPal, besides SENS-supporter, AA advocate and billionaire Peter Thiel.

 

P.S. 

Several links to other AA projects/Initiatives is here (look in right column under Initiatives):

https://www.fightaging.org/

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" ....... as Aubrey's inheritance runs out...  ....  "

 

Hopefully it is invested some place sensible, and only the return (or the return beyond the inflation rate?) is being contributed to SENS's ongoing operations, so that the inheritance will never run out, and its real value preserved.

 

Rodney.

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Rodney,

" ....... as Aubrey's inheritance runs out...  ....  "

 

Hopefully it is invested some place sensible, and only the return (or the return beyond the inflation rate?) is being contributed to SENS's ongoing operations, so that the inheritance will never run out, and its real value preserved.

 

Nope. From this 2013 interview with Aubrey:

 

Life Extension Magazine: You recently inherited a large sum of money and chose to donate most of it to the SENS Foundation. Will you provide some details and explain your motives?

 

Aubrey De Grey: My mother died in May 2011 and I was her only child; the upshot is that I inherited roughly $16.5 million. Of that, I assigned $13 million to SENS (I won’t bore you with the legal details, which were tedious in the extreme). It was pretty much a no-brainer for me: I’ve dedicated my life to this mission, and I dedicate all my time to it, so why not my money too? I retained enough to buy a nice house, but beyond that I have inexpensive tastes and I have no doubt that this is the best use of my wealth. It will accelerate research considerably, and also it will have indirect benefits in terms of helping us to put more resources into raising the profile of this work and garnering more support.

 

LE: Who are the other major donors to the SENS Foundation, and what proportion of the budget is covered by the money you donated?

 

AdG: My donation will be spent over a period of about five years, and it roughly doubles the budget we had previously, from $2 million annually to $4 million. The number one external donor remains our stalwart supporter Peter Thiel. Additionally, another internet entrepreneur, Jason Hope, has recently begun to contribute comparable sums.

 

LE: What will the SENS Foundation do when your donation money runs out?

 

AdG: It’s hard to look ahead as far as five years, the projected duration of my donation, but we certainly have great confidence that our outreach efforts will bear fruit in that time. My hope is that five years from now we will be big enough that the expiry of my donation will go relatively unnoticed.

 

From Aubrey's perspective, he's trying to catalyse a movement. Even $13M is a small down payment on what will be needed to conquer aging. Doling his inheritance out slowly so the money will last indefinitely, but not enable enough projects to be funded or additional outreach efforts made so as to kindle wider interest, doesn't make sense from his perspective. At least that is my interpretation. 

 

I actually didn't realize this aspect of Aubrey's commitment to SENS until recently. He has quite literally put his money where his mouth is in a very big way, and you've got to admire him greatly for that - if one didn't already admire him a great deal. 

 

--Dean

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Regarding Elon Musk,

 

He, perhaps more than Aubrey, is one of my heroes. If anyone is going to change the world for the better, it is likely to be Elon IMO, although I think he's pushing deployment of autonomous cars faster than is safe or warranted...

 

I wish he'd get interested in calorie restriction, or even health, if only for himself! It would be a tragic for the world to lose someone with his vision and drive - if he keeled over from a heart attack.

 

Unfortunately he doesn't appear to take very good care of himself, either his diet or lifestyle. See the video below. He's trying to cut back on his diet coke and coffee habit (0:00 - 1:00), usually skips breakfast, eats lunch in "5 minutes" during a business lunch, and then "eats enough for two people" at dinner, again usually during a meeting. He says he exercises "once or twice a week", but you can tell he's stretching the truth even with that. The section on his diet/exercise is from 2:30-4:30.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I00quUJmM9M

 

Regarding a mission to Mars, Khurram wrote:

 

One of [Musk's] lifetime goals is to send humans to Mars--the main reason behind his creation of SpaceX. A moderately CR'd crew, with lower cancer risk (think: solar flares, cosmic rays, extra-Van-Allen-Belt nasties), fewer colds, excellent cardio, etc., etc...... would greatly improve the success of the mission. Further, the emotional/psychological bennies some of us CR long-haulers can attest to would be helpful during mission stress.

 

You forgot the two most important character traits we CRer's possess - many of us are quite comfortable with social isolation, and have inured ourselves to some of the physical hardships a (semi-)permanent Mars crew would likely encounter - e.g. hunger and cold. Plus, we can grow our own food, and would certainly be excited to "science the sh*t" out of Mars.

 

Where do I sign up?  :)xyz

 

--Dean

 

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He, perhaps more than Aubrey, is one of my heroes. If anyone is going to change the world for the better, it is likely to be 

Aubrey is far less concerned about his public image ... one of the worst (best) examples of this is this early 2010 lecture at Singularity Univ. where ...

https://youtu.be/HTMNfU7zftQ?t=1893

...and in the 2007 Ch. 4 Documentary here ...

https://youtu.be/5qfwSoJdWsg?t=2384

...and ...

https://youtu.be/5qfwSoJdWsg?t=2003

But he dislocated himself from Methuselah Found. in 2009( devoting exclusively to SENS) to, I think, shake the Cargo Cult following  M.Found attracted.

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Thanks Khurram!

 

Yes - Aubrey his surprisingly cavalier about his personal health and the potential impact of his beer drinking on it. Three pints by 10am! He clearly considers his work important for the future of humanity and unlike some longevity-oriented folks (like Ray Kurzweil - https://youtu.be/5qfwSoJdWsg?t=36m13s),he's focused more on helping humanity than defeating aging so he can personally live forever. But he doesn't seem to believe that to maximize his impact it might be prudent to take better care of himself, and to set a good example for others who he's trying to help.

 

I loved this one:

 

https://youtu.be/5qfwSoJdWsg?t=2384

 

Both because right after Aubrey it shows the Wisconsin monkeys (the control monkey looks like crap!) and even better, it has a nice segment featuring Michael and April. They make a very cute couple.  :)xyz

 

--Dean

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Or maybe a big breakthrough will happen out of nowhere, far sooner than anyone expects..,

I think this may be the likely scenario, fwiw. I mean, we're all great at moaning about lacks of speed and certainties regarding how best to slow down aging and take care of these dragging bodies.

 

But looking out of my sockets I see many, many great minds and forming organizations now focused on increasing health span and lifespan. Was this the case ten-years ago? I don't think so.

 

There are great reasons to be optimistic, I think. Ahem, but there are also great reasons to be pessimistic, I think. And of course reasons in the boring middle-grounds. Which is where we are? Sending those dollars in? Waiting?

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