To hell with biohacking

Stoicism is a new fashion in pursuit of immortality in Silicon Valley

Anna Samoydiuk, Rusbase, based on Medium materials:
Jeff Bercovici, Silicon Valley’s Latest Lifehack: Death For links to sources, see the original article

Entrepreneurs and billionaires in the US continue to invest their time, money and bodies in projects to cheat death. But they find solace in something else: in the philosophy of stoicism, which proclaims the acceptance of death as something inevitable.

Peter Thiel, a billionaire technology investor and at one time a Trump adviser, has an interesting attitude to death. "By and large, I'm against it," he says when someone brings up the subject. And it rises quite often, because Thiel has spent millions of dollars to fund research on life extension. He shared that he is "very, very interested" in parabiosis, an aging treatment that involves plasma transfusion of young people. He also employs a medical consultant whose task is to investigate new discoveries in the field of medicine and report on them.

Of course, many do not want to die. Thiel's good friend and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin definitely doesn't want to die, who said he hopes to cheat death by uploading his mind to a supercomputer.

Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, has paid a company that promises to euthanize him before his natural death and embalm his brain.

Inventor Raymond Kurzweil is also struggling with death. He takes 70-80 pills every day to postpone his aging for 27 years. He believes that during this time there will be super-smart computers that will give us eternal life.

Kurzweil's example is followed by his bosses, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded the company Calico, which will deal with the problems of health and well-being of people and explore the possibilities of life extension. Mark Zuckerberg has launched an initiative designed to cure all the diseases of this century. Oracle founder Larry Ellison funded aging research. There are a lot of such examples. In Silicon Valley, attempts to cheat death no longer surprise anyone.

However, over the past few years, the epicenter of death resistance has changed. Entrepreneurs, opinion leaders and billionaires continue to invest their time, money, and bodies in projects to deceive death, but they find solace in something else: in the intellectual tradition of the Ancient Greeks, which considers the natural rhythms of the life cycle – namely death – as a key fact of existence.

Stoicism originated around 300 BC in the works of the philosopher Zeno of Kitia. This trend owes its modern popularity to the "king of philosophy" of Silicon Valley, Tim Ferris, who advised everyone on Ryan Holiday's book "How Strong People Solve Problems."

Since then, fashion has taken on a life of its own. Uber engineer Susan Fowler, who accused the company's employees of sexual harassment, shared that stoicism gave her the courage to tell the world about it. Y Combinator has added William B. Irwin's book "Guide to the Good Life" to the list of recommended literature for entrepreneurs. Recode editor Kara Swisher helped popularize the WeCroak app, which sends reminders to users that we are all going to die soon.

These neo-Stoics are the same people who believe that life expectancy is just another obstacle to overcome, which is a bit strange, since true Stoics hold the opinion that death should not be avoided, it should be accepted and even welcomed.

According to the teaching, a wise person strives only to be virtuous, since virtue does not require health, wealth, or anything depending on luck and circumstances. "When you ask the questions "how long can I live?”and “will I become immortal?"it gives the impression that you have climbed where you shouldn't," said Nancy Sherman, a philosophy professor at Georgetown University.

Bill Irwin, a philosophy professor at Wright State University, was surprised when he learned that his book had become an example for a generation of entrepreneurs. "When I hear in which direction they want to move, I start to think that they have a different understanding of stoicism. It seems to me that they accepted some aspects of this teaching, but decided to ignore others. For example, not to hold fast to life," he said.

Just as the number of bitcoins that can be mined is limited by mathematics, so the finiteness of life is what makes it so valuable. "If you have an infinite amount of something, you will waste it. If you say that there is life after death, and therefore immortality, the Stoic will be suspicious even of this," Irwin said.

Stoicism is not a doctrine of patient suffering. This is a strategy for finding satisfaction and meaning in life by distinguishing between the things that cause suffering that we are unable to change, and the suffering itself, which is often the product of expectations or ego.

Fowler, a former Uber engineer, has her own version of why philosophy has become popular among transhumanists. "I suspect stoicism is fashionable because people extract an idea from it"I don't care what others think. It's just about me and my control over things."" She considers Seneca's text "On the Transience of Life" an argument that "if they were real Stoics, they would not be bothered by the question of longevity."

Irwin suggests that it's all about the love of hacking. Compared to Buddhism, for example, the basic principles of Stoicism are relatively easy to learn, and the potential benefit of less suffering seems to be something that deserves effort. "You can try it on some weekend and find out if it suits you. If you are a very practical, rational person looking for a solution that works now and not in 20 years, stoicism is a great option," he said.

This is how Jeffrey Wu, the founder of HVMN, a company that produces supplements aimed at improving mental and physical abilities, sees it. He is an influential figure in the San Francisco biohacker community.

In stoic teachings about death, such as Marcus Aurelius' exhortations to "live every day as if it were the last," Wu sees a parallel with the oft-quoted speech of Steve Jobs in 2005. Then the Apple co-founder was already ill with pancreatic cancer. He said that death is "the best invention of life," and urged the audience to take everything from life: "Your time is limited, don't waste it on living someone else's life."

This view of life helps to "make the right decisions," Wu believes, likening Jobs' philosophy to Jeff Bezos' "regret minimization system." "This way we can focus on short-term results, have a clear understanding of what we want now, and gain more time."

When I spoke to Thiel in 2015, he also mentioned Jobs' speech, but only to challenge his claim that mortality is motivational. "I totally disagree with that," Thiel said. He told about his great-uncle, who at the age of 85 said that he would have studied even longer if he had known that he would live so long. "Maybe when people think they don't have much time left, they try not to do anything grandiose," he said.

Whichever argument you find more convincing, it should be noted that both sides adhere to the idea of making the most of their time on Earth. In the cult of Silicon Valley productivity, various spiritual practices, such as meditation and fasting, are aimed at giving everything at work. Philosophy is just another time management technique, like the "Tomato" method.

Dave Asprey, founder of the food supplement company Bulletproof, is a stoic proponent who hacked the hack. To overcome the experience of death, instead of meditating for four months, he attached electrodes to his skull and locked himself in a neurofeedback chamber, where he systematically removed his body's instinctive reactions to thinking about death.

"I sorted out all my fears and eliminated them programmatically. And I think it works because I write a new book every year, run a big company, host a podcast and raise children, and I don't worry at all," he said.

Esprit is not going to live forever, he wants to live longer than usual. "I'm absolutely not worried about dying. I want death to be a conscious choice," he says. Esprit suggests that his colleagues striving for immortality could benefit from his exercise – not spiritually, but physically, since stress accelerates aging.

Esprit also believes in the benefits of gratitude and argues that extra time on Earth is needed not only for productivity, but also to help society. "I'm trying to live for a long time, because I have a lot of important things that I consider significant. And they are not for me, but for others," he shared.

If you set altruism, stoicism and prolongation of life as the goal of your survival, you can get along: since only virtue is important to Stoics, while you are engaged in acts of virtue, you can associate the extension of your life with stoicism.

But if you consider life as a means for future achievements, you will negate many of the advantages of stoicism, says Hans Bergwall, the creator of WeCroak. This is an application that reminds the owner of a smartphone five times a day that he will die someday. This is not done to get people to be more productive and get to work faster. Bergwall believes that to be happier, you need to think about death more often. We pay great attention to ambitions and sacrifice a rich spiritual life.

Bergwall was inspired to create the app by his entrepreneur father. He worked day and night, eventually decided to sell the company after 15 years. A year after that, his wife died. "He wanted to travel with her, he had huge plans to spend time together. He never got anything. If he could turn back time, he would choose a more balanced life," Bergwall said. He considers the pursuit of immortality to be pure stupidity.

Nevertheless, many can argue with Bergwall's assumption of death. Some scientists talk about the development of new drugs that will slow down aging, and life expectancy will begin to grow every year.

Indeed, it can be assumed that the teachings of the Stoics will be more important if we manage to slow down aging. There is little reason to believe that our relationship with mortality will change for the better if we live 200, 500 or 1000 years. Maybe we will be paralyzed from existential fear, we will be afraid to get out of bed – and even more so to take altruistic or brave actions – because of a possible software error of an unmanned vehicle. Perhaps our personalities will wear out from centuries of change, we will be bored or we will simply drown in apathy. "Choose death while you can; if you wait too long, it will probably become impossible," wrote Roman philosopher Gaius Muzonius Rufus. Immortality can make us all Stoics.

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