Shannon Vyff's Talk In London Nov. 28th '09

Playlist: http://www.youtube.c...141E48E9CAB3018

Adam
____________________________________________________________
General Outline of Video Sections

1-2 General info about the Immortality Institute

2-4 Lots on Calorie Restriction

4-6 General immortality/cryonics

7 Life extension advocacy, marketing

8 Expectations, religion, and lifestyle related to life extension

9 Teaching life extension to kids, political lobbying

10 Timeframes, male/female attitudes, CR and ecology

11 Psychological/spiritual topics on ImmInst Forum

I recommend this to everybody. Its inspiring to watch people present on the cause. I watched the whole thing. For getting the word out there and drawing interest and curiosity in imminst I thought it was great. I thought you did great on many of the points. I thought you possibly down played the direction we are headed in and could have worded what we have done a little differently, but I could be wrong, and it was still good. I also felt like they threw you a few curve balls.

We can all learn from these, learn Shannons talking points, improve in places, be inspired by her work to get out there and spread the word in more of these crucial public appearances. If any of you want to discuss getting in to this kind of thing more, helping us continue to pursue this kind of path, then please do give your ideas at this spokesperson topic as well.

Great job Shannon! Thanks for all your inspiring work.

Of course I could have done better (and someday I'll watch the videos ;-) ) but mainly I wish I had a photographic memory so I could recal more of the details of things I know Thanks brokenportal for your positive comments--you are right though that I'm usually more of a "realist" and thus try or tend to appeal to a wider audience. The main thing anyone should take away from the videos is that anyone can get out there and talk about all the exciting developments in life exetension--and just getting out and talking educates people, they can then delve in as deeply as they like with reading about said topics

Thank you Adam for recording and getting the video up

Playlist: http://www.youtube.c...141E48E9CAB3018

Adam

Shannon asked me to watch the videos and comment.
Although I was interested in how her presentation went, the idea
of watching eleven ten-minute videos seemed a bit daunting
to me. In case others have the same reaction, it occurred
to me to try to note what topics were covered in case
others might only want to look at the ones of special
interest. Here is my rough outline:

1-2 General info about the Immortality Institute

2-4 Lots on Calorie Restriction

4-6 General immortality/cryonics

7 Life extension advocacy, marketing

8 Expectations, religion, and lifestyle related to life extension

9 Teaching life extension to kids, political lobbying

10 Timeframes, male/female attitudes, CR and ecology

11 Psychological/spiritual topics on ImmInst Forum

These generalizations are very rough because
the entire hour and fifty minutes was questions
and answers, which could be all over the map.

The Immortality Institute and the life extension
movement is lucky to have such an attractive and
enthusiastic presenter as Shannon Vyff. A photo
of her presenting is nothing short of drop-dead
beautiful. http://bit.ly/4R2VG8

Shannon knows about things that I do
not know of – and I learned from her presention
– but she did make some mistakes.

Shannon mistakenly spoke of Marce Johnson being President
of Alcor rather than correctly saying that Marce was
President of the Cryonics Society of California. (Shannon
did acknowledge that she was unsure on this point.)

Shannon spoke of the Japanese researcher Suda taking
cats down to liquid nitrogen temperature, but he
could not have gotten the cats that cold and gotten
EEGs upon rewarming, although I can't remember
how cold he got the cats.

Shannon mistakenly said that calorie restriction
has extended the lifespan of humans, but later
that was corrected to rodents. She was also
unclear about whether maximum or average lifespan
has been extended. CR has extended the **maximum**
lifespan of many species, but humans and even
primates have too long of a lifespan for definitive
answers to be given (there are tentative positive
results for other primates, despite many questions
about the conditions under which the primates
have been studied).

Shannon said that she had learned much about
supplements on the ImmInst Forums, but didn't
say anything about what she had learned.

Shannon does not believe that women are
less amenable to life extension than men. But
in my experience I see vastly more interest
from men than from women. In Cryonics Institute
Membership males greatly outnumber females, and
many of the women are spouses. That is not to
say that the opposite does not occur or that
there are not many women genuinely interested
-- but I think that the numbers are pretty
unmistakable.

Shannon mentioned talk of a cryonics
organization starting in China. I have
not heard of such a thing, and if it is
true, I would like some links or references.
I did get a letter on the subject a year
ago, but finally concluded it was bogus.

Shannon is a bit more pessimistic than
I am about when aging will be eliminated
-- I think she mentioned a couple of
hundred years. I believe Aubrey de Grey
has said that there is a good chance there
are people currently 60 years old who will
benefit from rejuvenation -- perhaps even
enough to achieve "escape velocity".

One question which I found interesting
was from a questioner who wanted to know
what would be the benefit to mankind of
life extension. From my point of view
the benefit to mankind would be that
people would get to live longer. What
"mankind" is he thinking about? Shannon
was good in responding about the loss
of wisdom and skills that happens when
people age and die. A comment was made
concerning overpopulation about people
being producers as well as consumers.
I even thought the issue was touched-upon
that there may be more waste of resources
by having to retrain new generations
than in allowing older generations to
age and die.

I hope the above comments do not give
the wrong impression. I commented on mistakes,
without mentioning all of the things that
Shannon explained well. There was far, far
more that she explained well than what I
believe was mistaken.

-- Ben Best

The outline is useful -thank you, as different topics were indeed covered.

Don't worry Ben, I knew I made mistakes (per my wish for a photographic memory ) I think I corrected that I thought Marce was president of an predecesor organization to Alcor, anyway -thank you for putting the corrections up. I had thought I'd need to go through and add in the notes here, but you've done it for me ;-)

Right, I knew that about the cat brains not being as cold as liquid nitrogen--good point, that was something that my brain lumped with liquid nitrogen. Here is the bit from Brian Wowk's paper Medical Time Travel (I had the paper up yesterday as a member here has that name, my son saw the name-and I showed him the paper that it came from, I've used it from time to time as it explaines cryonics well though)

Perhaps the most extreme example of brains completely stopping and later starting again are the experiments of Isamu Suda reported in the journal Nature [12] and elsewhere [13] in 1966 and 1974. Suda showed recovery of EEG activity in cat brains resuscitated with warm blood after frozen storage at -20°C (-4°F) for up to seven years.

Reversible experiments in which all electrical activity stops, and chemistry comes to a virtual halt, disprove the 19th-century belief that there is a "spark of life" inside living things. Life is chemistry. When the chemistry of life is adequately preserved, so is life. When the chemistry of a human mind is adequately preserved, so is the person.

Suda's frozen cat brains deteriorated with time. Brains thawed after five days showed EEG patterns almost identical to EEGs obtained before freezing. However brains thawed after seven years showed greatly slowed activity. At a temperature of -20 C, liquid water still exists in a concentrated solution between ice crystals. Chemical deterioration still slowly occurs in this cold liquid.

I know people get a lot more technical about CR than I do, I enjoy reading the CR society digest where new research and ways to do CR are shared, and focusing on the healthiest ways of eating each day in my own life.

The following quote is not a "mistake" --frankly if anything I'd add, "The info on supplements has changed over time--I've learned which ones I want to take, which to avoid--and where to buy the best quality for the lowest price", but what I said sufficed

Shannon said that she had learned much about
supplements on the ImmInst Forums, but didn't
say anything about what she had learned.

About China, I've only heard rumors and I think I said that, I've heard it from Alcor and CI members--but I've done searches myself and have not come up with anything concrete. I still feel we may see something there in the next few decades.

I don't think I'm pessimistic about aging being ended, I've read Ending Aging, plus Kurzweil's latetest books--amongst some others that are popular in the extreme life extension field--I think I see how daunting the task is and am more realistic about it being a couple of hundred years. That's not to say a wild card event like singularity level AGI could occur (PS the wink is there because I know that is subjective, as some see the previous statement as occuring for sure in the next 30 to 50 years). For how slowly our society has advanced in the past, and how many different problems we have to solve--a couple of hundred years seems overly exhuberant to me.

One question which I found interesting
was from a questioner who wanted to know
what would be the benefit to mankind of
life extension. From my point of view
the benefit to mankind would be that
people would get to live longer. What
"mankind" is he thinking about? Shannon
was good in responding about the loss
of wisdom and skills that happens when
people age and die. A comment was made
concerning overpopulation about people
being producers as well as consumers.
I even thought the issue was touched-upon
that there may be more waste of resources
by having to retrain new generations
than in allowing older generations to
age and die.

Now Ben, you'll be labled pessimistic unless you go ahead and point out the positives ;-) just ribbing ya--much appreciation for labeling the sections and giving the feedback!

Great work, Shannon. I also really appreciate Ben taking the time to review your videos, provide an outline, and offer feedback on areas that he thought were incorrect. That said, I don't think I would characterize your opinion on the end of aging as "pessimistic," I agree with you that it is realistic. Or, at the very least, reasonably conservative. Sometimes the life extension movement does indeed suffer from over exuberance. As Mark Plus often likes to point out, much to our chagrin, futurists from the past all too often overstate the rate of technological progress.

Great work, Shannon. I also really appreciate Ben taking the time to review your videos, provide an outline, and offer feedback on areas that he thought were incorrect. That said, I don't think I would characterize your opinion on the end of aging as "pessimistic," I agree with you that it is realistic. Or, at the very least, reasonably conservative. Sometimes the life extension movement does indeed suffer from over exuberance. As Mark Plus often likes to point out, much to our chagrin, futurists from the past all too often overstate the rate of technological progress.

"Hear, Hear!"

Thanks Jonathan, and yes Mark Plus posts the most entertaining links to some of the crazy optimistic predictions of the past That is actually another aspect of our forum community that I've learned from over the years, the history of futurism and the discussions/comparrisons of current predictions. We'll get there, we need the main-stream cheerleaders like Kurzweil--we also need the hard working/networking scientists, engineers, researchers and volunteers...

The outline is useful -thank you, as different topics were indeed covered.

Don't worry Ben, I knew I made mistakes (per my wish for a photographic memory ) I think I corrected that I thought Marce was president of an predecesor organization to Alcor

OK, Shannon, now I can correct my own mistakes, one of which being
that you did qualify your statement with uncertainty about whether it was
Alcor where Marce was President. And you did say things about what
you learned about supplements, but they were general rather than
specific -- I wanted to hear "Vitamin X puts hair on your chest". The gender
difference in life extension shows up most strongly on the male side
for cryonics. But women are far more concerned about the effects
of aging on their appearance. (For better or worse, a woman's
success in life is strongly affected by her appearance, whereas for
men accomplishment counts more strongly.) In saying that Shannon
mistakenly said CR has extended lifespan in humans, I should have
said she mistakenly said CR has been proven to extend lifespan in
humans. I do believe that CR has extended human lifespan, but
it is hard to prove without many more decades of data that we have.
Actually, last summer when I was in Japan a Chinese cryobiology
student told me there was interest in doing cryonics in China --
though this still seems pie-in-the-sky. There is interest in having
a cryonics facility in Europe, but no tangible steps are being taken
toward having one.

My final and most important mistake is that I do a bad job
of commenting on the positive, and focus too much on the
negative (as I am doing for myself this time). Shannon's
coverage of the Immortality Institute was quite informative,
and the reason there was so much discussion of calorie
restriction probably had to do with Shannon having so
much interesting to say on the subject. Shannon is a
seasoned life extensionist -- she showed her versatility
in being able to effectively field questions on a wide
variety of subjects.

Shannon was good in responding about the loss
of wisdom and skills that happens when
people age and die. A comment was made
concerning overpopulation about people
being producers as well as consumers.

Shannon also mentioned uploading and space
travel as possible solutions to the always-raised
overpopulation concern. And she said that
overpopulation is more a worry than an
actual immediate problem. At the SENS4
conference Leonid Gavrilov did a demographic
analysis intended to debunk the overpopulation
worry mathematically:

http://75.126.26.34/...p;g2_itemId=167

The problem I see with Gavilov's analysis is that he was
extrapolating the demographics of Sweden to the rest of
the world -- assuming a considerable reduction in
reproduction per person, as well as assuming that
if people stopped aging they would not increase
their reproduction.