# An alarming fact about the anti-aging community

Past and Present
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Ten years ago teenager me was hopeful. And stupid.

The world neglected aging as a disease, Aubrey had barely started spreading memes, to the point it was worth it for him to let me work remotely to help with Metuselah foundation. They had not even received that initial 1,000,000 donation from an anonymous donor. The Metuselah prize was running for less than 400,000 if I remember well. Still, I was a believer.

Now we live in the age of Larry Page's Calico, 100,000,000 dollars trying to tackle the problem, besides many other amazing initiatives, from the research paid for by Life Extension Foundation and Bill Faloon, to scholars in top universities like Steve Garan and Kenneth Hayworth fixing things from our models of aging to plastination techniques. Yet, I am much more skeptical now.

Individual risk
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I am skeptical because I could not find a single individual who already used a simple technique that could certainly save you many years of healthy life. I could not even find a single individual who looked into it and decided it wasn't worth it, or was too pricy, or something of that sort.

That technique is freezing some of your cells now.

Freezing cells is not a far future hope, _this is something that already exists, and has been possible for decades_. The reason you would want to freeze them, in case you haven't thought of it, is that they are getting older every day, so the ones you have now are the youngest ones you'll ever be able to use.

_Using_ these cells to create new organs is not something that may help you if medicine and technology continue progressing according to the law of accelerating returns in 10 or 30 years. We _already know_ how to make organs out of your cells. Right now. Some organs live longer, some shorter, but it can be done - for instance to bladders - and is being done.

Hope versus Reason
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Now, you'd think if there was an almost non-invasive technique already shown to work in humans that can preserve many years of your life and involves only a few trivial inconveniences - compared to changing diet or exercising for instance- the whole longevist/immortalist crowd would be lining up for it and keeping back up tissue samples all over the place.

Well I've asked them. I've asked some of the adamant researchers, and I've asked the superwealthy; I've asked the cryonicists and supplement gorgers; I've asked those who work on this 8 hour a day every day, and I've asked those who pay others to do so. I asked it mostly for selfish reasons, I saw the TEDs by Juan Enriquez and Anthony Atala and thought: hey look, clearly beneficial expected life length increase, yay! let me call someone who found this out before me - anyone, I'm probably the last one, silly me - and fix this.

I've asked them all, and I have nothing to show for it.

My takeaway lesson is: whatever it is that other people are doing to solve their own impending death, they are far from doing it rationally, and maybe most of the money and psychology involved in this whole business is about buying hope, not about staring into the void and finding out the best ways of dodging it. Maybe people are not in fact going to go all-in if the opportunity comes.

How to fix this?
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Let me disclose first that I have no idea how to fix this problem. I don't mean the problem of getting all longevists to freeze their cells, I mean the problem of getting them to take information from the world of science and biomedicine and applying it to themselves. To become users of the technology they are boasters of. To behave rationally in a CFAR or even homo economicus sense.

I was hoping for a grandiose idea in this last paragraph, but it didn't come. I'll go with a quote from this emotional song sung by us during last year's Secular Solstice celebration

> [Do you realize? that everyone, you know, someday will die...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzR7u4rwFSY)
> 
> [And instead of sending all your goodbyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzR7u4rwFSY)
> 
> [Let them know you realize that life goes fast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzR7u4rwFSY)
> 
> [It's hard to make the good things last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzR7u4rwFSY)