Mind Expanding 17 Feb 2023: Longevity special👴📈🧒brain as resonance chamber🧠computational colonialism🌐LLMs and theory of mind😶‍🌫️

Be the next evolution of human

Hi,

Welcome to the first Memia Mind Expanding links post of 2023, sharing some of the deeper dives and bigger thinks I’ve come across while compiling the Memia newsletter each week.

(The aim is to get these posts out at least fortnightly from now on, let’s see how my other commitments allow!)

In today’s post:

👴📈🧒Longevity special a more in-depth look at “Professional rejuvenation athlete” Bryan Johnson’s groundbreaking Blueprint program - and a broader scan across recent advances in longevity research.

🧠Resonance chamber does the brain work like a resonance chamber?

😶‍🌫️Large Language Models and Theory of Mind The recent explosion of AI into the public consciousness provides a new challenge for age-old philosophical questions.

🎼The neuroscience of loving music How humans Humans are musical animals four million years in the making

🌐Computational colonialism How imperialist economics is implicitly baked into current models of climate justice

🎧📚Listening and Reading This week’s podcast and book suggestions for longer immersion.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think of the new format if you have a chance.

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👴📈🧒Longevity special

In the very first Memia newsletter way back in January 2020 I included a review of David Sinclair’s book Lifespan: Why we age and why we don’t have to in which he outlined his explains his information theory of aging which argues that cumulative loss of epigenetic information over time causes cells to stop repairing themselves, loss of cell identity, cell senescence, disease and eventually death.… and the tantalising vision of being able to rewind aging itself.

Things have come a long way even since then. The concept of radically increasing longevity (“healthspan”) and, indeed, actually reversing one’s biological age are now beginning to make their way into mainstream narratives.

Among the foremost healthspan extension exponents is centimillionaire “professional rejuvenation athlete” Bryan Johnson and his 1-person, open source Blueprint programme. Johnson claims he has achieved the following results so far: