-Longevity Escape Velocity-
Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) is the concept conceived by the Methuselah Foundations founder Dave Gobel, and championed by people like Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzwei. It outlines how each short term gain in biological life extension can help us stay alive until another short term gain in life extension gets here. If we can get some of the short term breakthroughs done now, then we can stay alive until every mortal biological condition is eliminated.
To think of this another way, we don’t necessarily have to wait for every indefinite life extension breakthrough to happen at the same time in order to have a chance to live indefinitely. Although the amount of time that a given breakthrough could grant us is unknown, the average educated guess on that amount of time is roughly 20 years. The defeat of other similar diseases and afflictions will typically give a person 20 or so years of additional life. So if breakthrough A. allows you to live to 100, and breakthrough B. gets here when you are 99, allowing you to live to 117 or so, and breakthrough C. gets here when you are 116, allowing you to live to 141, then you could continue on like this and obtain indefinite life extension in this way.
The significance of this is that even though estimates for the total success of indefinite life extension research may leave a lot of older people feeling pessimistic about their odds of getting indefinite life extension themselves, the concept of longevity escape velocity outlines for us why that pessimism is irrational. Even if we don’t inform the world any time soon, even if we don’t go all out to get this done, we have longevity escape velocity on our side. Because of longevity escape velocity, we all already have shot at indefinite life extension right now, the 1 year olds, and the 100 year olds.
Many people think that aging cannot be conquered in our life times and so they would rather trick themselves into thinking that aging is ok so they don’t have to face the horror of what they think is its inevitability. LEV though lends great support to the idea that we can get research to end aging done in time for us. The first third or so of this Aubrey de Grey lecture goes over it well. Watch this video from time to time. Absorb the notion of the longevity escape velocity so you can use it as another tool to help get world support for this crucial, life or death cause.
http://youtu.be/1q_YZuKUq5A
Edited by brokenportal, 13 November 2011 - 09:02 AM.