John K. Davis
I’ve written a philosophy book about life extension, but this blog essay isn’t drawn from my book, nor is it philosophical in content. This is a political and policy piece. However, if you’re interested, my book is titled New Methuselahs: The Ethics of Life Extension. It was published by MIT Press in 2018, and you can order a copy from MIT Press or Amazon.
The right way to reach the public
Eight years ago I published a philosophy book arguing that life extension is a good thing, and tried to provide a comprehensive review of all the plausible arguments for and against it. I’m glad I wrote that book, and I would change very little about it now. Such books are necessary so that we can dive to the bottom of those issues and be confident we got them right.
However, as a way of reaching beyond the world of academic philosophers and talking to the general public, a book like mine won’t accomplish much. That’s okay; such books are important, but we need to be humble about their impact.
If we want to galvanize public opinion in favor of life extension research and development, we need a social media campaign, and we need it to go viral.
Many people writing and thinking about life extension have social media skills, and can do this well. However, many of us do not, and certainly I’m the wrong person to attempt this. (I had to google a list of social media platforms when I drafted this essay, and I’ve never even seen Tiktok.)
Exploit your students!
But help is available, for we can delegate this to the young. I know of a philosopher in Sweden who is in contact with student longevity clubs on several campuses, and anyone who teaches students about life extension science, ethics, and policies has a built-in audience of young people who might be interested in forming such a club.
And they might be interested in developing video clips about life extension for Instagram, Tiktok, X, Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. Let’s face it, the young are good at this, and they have the idealism and energy to make it work.
Many of us who are in or aligned with the life extension movement work in academic settings. If you’re teaching, especially at the college level, you might consider giving your students extra credit for social media clips about life extension. Allow them to work in groups and share the extra credit; students like that. Allow them to produce longer pieces but encourage them to develop the kind of short, pithy, clever video clips that can go viral. (Example: the “brat girl” video clips Kamala Harris’ fans posted during her 2024 run for President.) Avoid long text-based posts or long YouTube clips. We live in an Age of Distraction and people are reading a lot less. I will deplore this in a certain kind of conversation, but if we want to reach the public then we must work with the world as it is. Start a longevity club on your campus if you don’t already have one, and serve as the faculty advisor.
Things your students can post about
You can give your students some guidance in the form of ideas and concepts they might post about, such as:
- The longevity dividend; perhaps different clips for each of the ways the dividend might happen.
- Geroscience and the evolutionary story behind aging. This isn’t my field, but there’s a lot to talk about here. And it’s fascinating.
- Why life extension is a realistic possibility, and ways it might happen (perhaps different clips for different ways; don’t pile it all into one video).
- Humorous clips about what a world with life extension might be like (your great grandmother might look like a hot 25 year-old—this has the virtue of being transgressive).
- The possibility that widespread life extension could cause overpopulation. We need to acknowledge possible downsides to life extension, and in my experience, young people are particularly concerned about this issue. Besides, this isn’t hopeless; there are things we can do to prevent this. The clips can tell that story.
- Ways we can make life extension available to everyone. (See my previous blog essay about access outrage.)
- Video clips about why death isn’t a blessing, and why extended life won’t be meaningless, boring, etc. It’s easy and fun to shoot down the death-is-a-blessing arguments, and there’s room for some good-natured, humorous mockery here.
- Although I don’t think it’s realistic to say we’ll solve the overpopulation issue by colonizing outer space, students may find it interesting to talk about this, whether or not they buy the idea.
And let them pick issues or topics that aren’t on this list. It’s meant to be suggestive, not confining. Caution them not to try to use AI to do the entire post or video. We want to avoid AI slop, and students shouldn’t get extra credit just because they can prompt AI—if that’s all they do. Perhaps have them use a class hour to start work on this in small groups, so you can be available to offer advice if they get stuck. Add this project to whatever online discussion forum you use in your classes, if any.
The important thing is to let students own this, and not constrain what they say or what position they take, even when we disagree with them. If they’re skeptical about life extension, give them extra credit so long as they accurately report what they’ve studied. We don’t want to tell them what to say. Students hate it when their professors do that.
Besides, these projects will tend to attract students who favor life extension, so in the spirit of free speech, tolerate any who do not.