New Age Woo-Woo With Internet-Age Efficiency

September 9, 2022 8:35 AM

He gets why, on the surface, Longevity House may sound like a Handmaid’s Tale spinoff—an exclusive society that grants eternal life to the uber-rich—but he insists that what he’s offering is evidence-based and within Health Canada guidelines. The possibilities, he believes, are endless, from both a health and a business perspective. And, while he can get a little starry-eyed from time to time, he is definitely tapping into something. A recent report from the consulting firm McKinsey and Company projected that biohacking could be a $1.3-trillion industry within the next two decades. from The Death Cheaters by Courtney Shea
posted by chavenet (66 comments total)

Never trust McKinsey.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:41 AM on September 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

I just do not understand the desire to live forever.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:47 AM on September 9, 2022 [24 favorites]

I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:49 AM on September 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

Personally I look around at the 115 degree weather and I welcome death. Let the uber rich roam the desertified plains and eat cockroaches without my help.
posted by latkes at 8:56 AM on September 9, 2022 [14 favorites]

I really wish the author had pressed back a bit on this quote by Nguyen:

> Don’t all breakthroughs start off as someone’s outlandish idea? Wasn’t Galileo convicted of heresy for his audacious insistence that the Earth orbits the sun? Isn’t it possible that my staunch allegiance to science will leave me on my deathbed while the biohackers skateboard into the next century?

I'm only vaguely aware of a number of the techniques described in the article such as using a "Biocharger", but I'm of the understanding that they have essentially no well collected evidence behind them actually working. But obviously Nguyen thinks that what he is doing is 'science', so... what exactly does he think science is?

I guess less charitably, I imagine he doesn't care - he seems to have buyers for what he's selling, and 'Science' is just a part of the brand.
posted by Kikujiro's Summer at 8:56 AM on September 9, 2022 [7 favorites]

Nguyen is not a doctor or health professional. He has no certifications in the wellness field, which he says is a good thing: “I come at all of this with a different lens. I can ask the right questions.”

This is not the flex he thinks it is.

“There are a lot of people who are a bit sheepish about what we do here,” Nguyen says, “I think because it seems like a rich guy’s endeavour.”

My brother in Christ, it IS a rich man's endeavour. Especially rich white men who want to live forever so they can make the rest of everyone else's lives miserable.
posted by Kitteh at 8:59 AM on September 9, 2022 [23 favorites]

Isn’t it possible that my staunch allegiance to science will leave me on my deathbed while the biohackers skateboard into the next century?

This is just Pascal's Wager: the potential upside of investing in a woo life extension tech is more or less infinite, so you can reason yourself into justifying spending basically any amount of money on it, if there's a nonzero chance of it working. What's $100,000 against a nonzero chance of living forever? A 0.01% chance of infinite life is arguably worth infinity dollars, so you should spend the $100,000.

Of course, this is how charlatans get you.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:02 AM on September 9, 2022 [25 favorites]

A nice antidote to these weirdos (and the less-extreme trickle down version of this that most of us have absorbed) is the recently deceased Barbara Ehrenreich's takedown of 'wellness', Natural Causes. Life expectancy in Canada and the US basically tracks to income/zip code so these fuckers will outlive most of us whether they 'biohack' (ie: buy a lot of overpriced bullshit like AI stationary bicycles??) or not.
posted by latkes at 9:06 AM on September 9, 2022 [15 favorites]

“There’s always going to be a certain amount of resistance when you’re leading the charge,” he says. Nguyen is not a doctor or health professional. He has no certifications in the wellness field, which he says is a good thing:

I rarely say this, but it will be sorta funny when all these people die
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 9:17 AM on September 9, 2022 [15 favorites]

The science is slippery, but few would dispute that getting outside and going for a swim is a healthier choice than more Netflix, Uber Eats and Wordle.

Ah yes, the deadly Wordle epidemic is finally getting the attention it deserves
posted by glaucon at 9:18 AM on September 9, 2022 [34 favorites]

When I feel sad about dying someday one comfort is that everyone dies, including genocidal assholes and hate filled bigots, and so death is a good thing even if I don't want to go because it takes them too. Sometimes the only good thing I can think about someone is that eventually, they'll be dead.

Having said that, it's time for Kissinger to shuffle off this mortal coil. Chop chop, buddy.
posted by emjaybee at 9:23 AM on September 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

I mean, sooner or later there's a passenger-side collision, virus mutation, or bear-mauling with your name on it, just as sure as the monkeys can type out Macbeth.
posted by bendybendy at 9:31 AM on September 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

This thread is enlivening. Thank you, fellow Mefites, for getting my afternoon off to a good start.
posted by eviemath at 9:33 AM on September 9, 2022 [8 favorites]

If I buy something, take it home, and it doesn’t work, then, in most cases, I can return it and get my money back. But this “health” stuff is different. If I put up my money now, use their machines, eat their stuff, and then get sick, they can always say you didn’t use it correctly. Not our fault. If you drop dead way short of 120 years, then same thing. All you need is a good sales pitch, “eternal life!” and somebody with a lot of money, low critical thinking skills, fear of death, and bang! the perfect scam. Is it surprising that there are a lot of rich men out there who seem to meet these criteria?
posted by njohnson23 at 9:34 AM on September 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I just do not understand the desire to live forever.

Especially when one spends way more than 99.999999999999999999999999999999% of one's life so shriveled as to make a dried apple look like a baby's butt in comparison.
posted by y2karl at 9:36 AM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

It’s hard to imagine that so much focus on the quest for perfection doesn’t create as many mental health problems as it solves. And, while I love the idea of feeling 50 at 90 as much as the next person, doesn’t it all feel a bit like virtuous, pseudoscientific window dressing laid over an age-old obsession with tight bodies and youth? Never mind the not-so-subtle shades of eugenics. When the goal is optimization, what happens to those of us who are, well, suboptimal? Who decides what “optimal” means, anyway? These are just some of the pertinent ethical questions surrounding the biohacking mission, most of which are predicated on the assumption that any of this stuff actually works.

This is a pretty good point, and it's got its historical antecedents, like John Harvey Kellogg. But at least we got breakfast cereal out of that guy.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:58 AM on September 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also, it's been a while since I've felt the white-hot frisson of a Toronto Life hate read, so thanks for posting this.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:59 AM on September 9, 2022 [8 favorites]

Also, it's been a while since I've felt the white-hot frisson of a Toronto Life hate read, so thanks for posting this.

Ooh I love hate-reading Toronto Life too when I remember it exists
posted by Kitteh at 10:02 AM on September 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.
posted by Apocryphon

Due to climate change, it won't be very nice at all.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:02 AM on September 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Eternal life is readily available to all, if you know where to go for it.
posted by Czjewel at 10:05 AM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

The science is slippery, but few would dispute that getting outside and going for a swim is a healthier choice than more Netflix, Uber Eats and Wordle.

How fucking long does it take these people to do the Wordle?

Honestly, though, the whole thing sounds like the craftiest gym membership plan ever. Instead of a monthly fee that you'll eventually try to cancel after you realize you never go to the gym, they get the whole $100k up front. Brilliant.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:07 AM on September 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

I do wish this article played less fast and loose with the term "biohacking" — I think this is describing a pretty different scene than the "biohacking" scene that I think of, and it sounds like the person this article is about sort of acknowledges that, and tries to avoid the term "biohacking" because of that.

Like, when I think of "biohacking" I think of stuff like DIY gene therapy to improve lactose tolerance on the cool side of things (although there are still lots of things to complain about with that) to, like implantable RFID chips, magnets and computers on the cringe side of things. This biohacking scene has a lot of problems, certainly (I could write a very long post detailing them), but I think it also has a lot of redeeming qualities (around the politics of bodily autonomy, especially). But it's a completely different thing than what's described in this article, which is rich bozos getting scammed by snake oil salesmen, as rich bozos are wont to do.

I guess it's possible that I'm out of touch and all the people who were implanting magnets in 2013 are selling miracle supplements now, but I don't think that's the case, for the most part, and I wish this article was more interested in understanding how this stuff happens, how the rhetoric has shifted around it, etc, rather than just sneering. Like, these people do deserve to be sneered at, and I enjoy that, but I don't think I really gain anything from doing that. There's a interesting article to be written about the co-option of many parts of the fundamentally politically cyberpunk biohacking scene by millionaires and billionares, and indeed, the ways that people in the biohacking scene deliberately chose to make that shift (particularly due to the cost and importance of gene sequencing and editing tools, I think), but this article isn't that.
posted by wesleyac at 10:10 AM on September 9, 2022 [12 favorites]

njohnson23 is right, admire this guy for cashing in on the perfect rich person grift:

"This rock makes you immortal, just a few million and it's yours!"

"Does it really work?"

"Tell you what, if you die, bring it back for a full refund. I stand behind my products."
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:12 AM on September 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

Don’t all breakthroughs start off as someone’s outlandish idea? Wasn’t Galileo convicted of heresy for his audacious insistence that the Earth orbits the sun?

As Carl Sagan put it: "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

Mainstream opposition to an idea does not necessarily mean that the idea is secretly brilliant.
posted by jedicus at 10:14 AM on September 9, 2022 [18 favorites]

I'm not particularly religious, but I do think it would be ironic if all these would-be immortals succeeded and condemned themselves to be trapped on this plane of existence while the rest of us progressed into whatever the next world is that awaits us.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:24 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’ve seen the word “frisson” on Metafilter twice today and I wonder if I’m missing out on something.

Probably nothing to get excited about.
posted by swift at 10:25 AM on September 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm of the understanding that they have essentially no well collected evidence behind them actually working

It's people like you who laughed at Edison for inventing the toothbrush.
posted by flabdablet at 11:18 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

You know what this money would be better used for? Actually making other people live longer. There's mind-blowing research that shows that providing your employees with adequate health care really does prolong their life! Who fucking knew?

You wanna live longer? Invest in anti-guillotine technology.
posted by adept256 at 11:23 AM on September 9, 2022 [16 favorites]

"So, uh, Tim, how's it going?"
"Great, great, I'm invested in biohacking. I'm sitting in a room with a buzzing machine in order to live longer."
"That sounds great. You working with a doctor on this?"
"No nononono. This guy use to make pants and shirts. It helps him ask the right questions."
posted by stltony at 11:31 AM on September 9, 2022 [14 favorites]

swift: I’ve seen the word “frisson” on Metafilter twice today and I wonder if I’m missing out on something.
It's the follow-up to potato season, this 'frisson season' has come about so y'all go find tingly links so you can FPP the blue.

My anti-guillotine cream comes with the instructions "Guillotine me? Well these zipties mean I'm not going anywhere, but first let's you and them fight."
posted by k3ninho at 11:37 AM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

From the article:

At Longevity House, there is talk of “decentralizing” health care the same way the crypto community wants to decentralize our financial systems.

Are you fucking kidding me? Or, as they say on TikTok: B. F. F. R., be fucking for real.

I suppose this might be analogous to the obvious typos and ludicracies that email scammers put in their emails. Linking (or even likening) your scam to crypto may increase the chances that the people who get pulled into your scam are ripe for the scamming.
posted by mhum at 11:41 AM on September 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

I used to work for a clinical trials-related software company that was bought by Oracle. Somewhere along the way I read that Larry Ellison (who did not die this week) said "Death makes me angry."
I figured that's why he got into Life Science Solutions- to live forever. This would be right up his alley, as the money is not a problem.
posted by MtDewd at 1:36 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

All I could think of is that scene in What We Do in the Shadows where Nadja's ghost asks whether she has accomplished all of her dreams, living hundreds of years as a vampire, and all she's done is dick around doing basically nothing.

These dingbats honestly think they're going to make good use of eternity when half of them haven't even made good use of the time they've already been here.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:13 PM on September 9, 2022 [10 favorites]

This is an aside and maybe a bit of a derail but I sometimes wonder if some of the (not particularly religious) people who get upset and angry at the concept of their own death imagine "being dead" as an experience of some kind. In my mind, there really is no concept of "being dead" any more than there is a concept of "being before you existed". As Wittgenstein put it:

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.

posted by treepour at 2:26 PM on September 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

As yet, Longevity House has no female members

Then who are all the women in the photos?
posted by mrgrimm at 2:44 PM on September 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

Handmaids. Out of uniform.
posted by y2karl at 2:51 PM on September 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

One of the photos is labeled prospective members so I assume they haven't coughed up the 100k yet.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:21 PM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

You rang?
posted by wittgenstein at 5:12 PM on September 9, 2022 [8 favorites]

I do love a trendy supplement or diet, I'll admit. So it's always annoying when I'm peacefully snickering at the silly people spending their money on such silly things and then I see mention of whatever goofy thing I've bought at Costco this week (Collagen! Ashwagandha!).
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:51 PM on September 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I threw out my half-frisson bread dough, but I have to live with my butt. $100,000 dollars to go to a stranger's house. I think you could go on a dozen nice vacations with that money, or get a degree in wellness. It seems desperate, they need some of them thar Arkansas flying mudbaths.

Whoooee!
posted by Oyéah at 5:59 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

> Then who are all the women in the photos?

One is an actress or model, Charlot Daysh, who says in a YouTube video that she was invited there for a preview (video is not particularly interesting). The others could probably be determined but I'm starting to creep myself out.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:29 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm not particularly religious, but I do think it would be ironic if all these would-be immortals succeeded and condemned themselves to be trapped on this plane of existence while the rest of us progressed into whatever the next world is that awaits us.

My guess is they think they are cleverly cheating the hell that they so richly (ahem) deserve.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:14 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

actress or model, Charlot Daysh
It's interesting to me in this picture how many of the men are covertly (or not) staring at her. I'm presuming that's her. For a certain value of 'interesting'.
posted by glasseyes at 2:32 AM on September 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

And of course when ayahuasca comes up so does Rythmia, the crooked resort that unsuccessfully sued the podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie for accurately reporting on their bullshit claims. Says it all that these con artists are teaming up with those con artists.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:05 AM on September 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

A hundred k, for access to a house with barge boards falling off at the front?

Well OK then.
posted by flabdablet at 7:02 AM on September 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Due to climate change, it won't be very nice at all.

Planet's atmosphere, though a gasping death to humans and most animals, is paradise for Earth plants. The high nitrate content of the soil and the rich yellow sunlight bring an abundant harvest wherever adjustments can be made for the unusual soil conditions.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:02 AM on September 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Young blood transfusion."
Beyond the obvious scam is some heavy duty cult weirdness.
Literal vampires (Libertarian vampires).
posted by zoinks at 11:41 PM on September 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh and regarding Abehammerb Lincoln's comment: A few years ago I spent a day in a McKinsey training seminar and same thing. A scam and a cult, but there the cult members are also doing the scamming.
posted by zoinks at 11:49 PM on September 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's a certain degree of ruthless managerial efficiency to that.
posted by flabdablet at 2:32 AM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I just do not understand the desire to live forever.

This feels like protesting too much. The basic appeal of living forever seems pretty obvious. People have fantasized about doing so for ages. It’s the details and practicalities that get a lot messier. And people have fantasized about doing so for ages.
posted by atoxyl at 4:14 PM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

The basic appeal of living forever seems pretty obvious

I...but what is it tho?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:59 PM on September 11, 2022

I don’t know about you but I put some effort into continuing my life on a regular basis. If what you’re getting at is that forever is a daunting prospect - sure, there are of course any number of monkey’s paw scenarios deriving from attempts to take the idea of immortality really seriously. But substitute “an arbitrarily long period of good health” and isn’t that something most people are implicitly looking for?
posted by atoxyl at 8:53 PM on September 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

I...but what is it tho?

Me personally? Reading and learning stuff, writing, talking to people, eating ramen, drinking coffee, sipping bourbon, walking the dog, listening to music, having sex, sailing a small boat in a brisk wind, riding a bicycle downhill... YMMV, but the list of things you can do if you're dead is a lot more limited. (List: "be dead". List ends.)

The hand-wringing over immortality never resonated with me (which is ironic given that there have been several moments in my life when I've been very close to deciding the whole business wasn't worth it). I'd be quite happy to live to 200 or 500, hell maybe more, provided that I got most of those years in some semblance of health and not as a locked-in brain-in-a-box.

The assigned virtuousness of accepting death has always seemed to me to be more about terror management ("we can't avoid death, so might as well accept it!") and resource constraints ("but what about the economy! and the job market!") rather than any actual downside to living that long.

Although it's true that most of the increase in average lifespan during the 20th century has been due to decreased infant mortality, there have been some increases in actual longevity, particularly in the reduced mortality of common diseases... and very few people I've met who've survived e.g. cancer or heart disease seem particularly bummed about not being dead. On the whole, being not-dead seems to be rather popular with those who've had the chance to enjoy it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:22 PM on September 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

Then again, a certain degree of sampling bias seems unavoidable.
posted by flabdablet at 2:30 AM on September 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

Reading and learning stuff, writing, talking to people, eating ramen, drinking coffee, sipping bourbon, walking the dog, listening to music, having sex, sailing a small boat in a brisk wind, riding a bicycle downhill...

"Die" is certainly on that list for anybody I would count as a fellow inner space cadet.

As you correctly note, though, it's an experience that puts a severe crimp in one's ability to have any others afterwards so on my own list I keep it all the way down at the bottom, right after "acquire and enjoy all-consuming no-holds-barred heroin addiction for as long as possible".
posted by flabdablet at 2:39 AM on September 12, 2022

I just feel like i am already bored probably 70% of the time, and the prospect of filling my remaining generally-allotted 40ish years is daunting enough without having to figure out how to while away another 600 or 700.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:41 AM on September 12, 2022

On the upside, you'd have hundreds of years to get it figured out.
posted by flabdablet at 10:40 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

This feels like protesting too much.

Gentle suggestion: that we not do the thing where we assume or imply that people who have different values or experiences from us are either broken or wrong about their own feelings or experience.
posted by eviemath at 11:18 AM on September 12, 2022

Fine: “Wow, that is completely alien to me. To clarify, you really mean X and not Y?”

Not okay: “You can’t possibly mean X; no one ever means X. You must mean Y instead.”
posted by eviemath at 11:24 AM on September 12, 2022

The assigned virtuousness of accepting death has always seemed to me to be more about terror management ("we can't avoid death, so might as well accept it!") and resource constraints ("but what about the economy! and the job market!") rather than any actual downside to living that long.

For me, it's mostly about looking at what thinking a lot about wanting to live forever seems to do to people's brains. The community of people that I'm aware of that seems to have the most fear of death is the silicon valley rationalist scene, and those people manage to completely seriously convince themselves that cryonics is a good idea. Not to mention the multitude of different ways AI offers immortality:

Note that we now have four independent ways in which superintelligence offers us immortality:

1. A benevolent AI invents medical nanotechnology and keeps your body young forever.
2. The AI invents full-brain scanning, including brain scans on dead people, frozen heads etc., that let you live in a computer.
3. The AI "resurrects" people by scanning other people's brains for memories of the person, and combining that with video and other records. If no one remembers the person well enough, they can always be grown "from scratch" in a simulation designed to start with their DNA and re-create all the circumstances of their life.
4. If we already live in a simulation, there's a chance that whoever/whatever runs the simulation is keeping proper backups, and can be persuaded to reload them.

This is what I mean by AI appealing to religious impulses. What other belief system offers you four different flavors of scientifically proven immortality?

Beyond that, though, I think death is a thing that absolutely terrifies some people, and just… doesn't for others, and it can be hard to communicate between those two worldviews. While living is pretty nice, and I do try to keep doing it, I personally on some level don't see why you should really care whether you're dead or not — after all, when you're dead you fundamentally won't be able to care. I don't see that being dead can be bad, exactly, because "bad" is a concept that only really applies in the realm of the living.
posted by wesleyac at 11:46 AM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yeah I'm not trying to be virtuous (nor suicidal) when I say I look forward to death. It's just how I actually feel. Life is a lot of work, and the idea that it will come to an end gives me some solace. I'm sure I will also have fear, regret, sadness etc as the time approaches, but I have zero desire to extend my life, only to attempt to maximize the functionality of my body and brain while I'm still here on earth. I do think there's something inherently creepy about the people in this article though, if for no other reason than the dystopian prospect of immortality for douchebags while the majority on earth struggle to meet their basic needs for sustenance and liberty.
posted by latkes at 12:49 PM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

On the upside, you'd have hundreds of years to get it figured out.

Literally do not have the language to express how depressed that hypothetical makes me feel
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:54 PM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Actually now that I've pondered it a bit I wonder if the wealth aspect of these forever-livers doesn't go both ways; first, you need an assload of money to join these eternity cults, and second, when you have an assload of money, you have enough leisure time and wealth to actually enjoy things about living.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:11 PM on September 12, 2022

Gentle suggestion: that we not do the thing where we assume or imply that people who have different values or experiences from us are either broken or wrong about their own feelings or experience.

Fair enough, the original comment was actually pretty narrow and personal. It’s just that since the fear of death is such a commonplace experience, and such a recurring cultural theme, and since even belief systems that are not averse to death in the material sense still tend to promise some sort of life after death of the body, there’s something about asserting an indifference to it that also seems a little flippant about the experiences of others.
posted by atoxyl at 5:08 PM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’ve certainly seen examples of folks being derisive or dismissive of folks who do fear death before. I would say that would be reading over-much into any of the comments in this thread, which seemed to be people describing their own personal experience or viewpoint, however.
posted by eviemath at 5:20 PM on September 13, 2022

I agree, the first comment I responded to was actually pretty narrow in scope and I asserted my own thing on top of it unnecessarily. But understand I wasn’t really thinking “this is personally offensive to me/those of us here on MeFi who do fear death.” I was just thinking - this is a topic that touches on the belief systems of billions of people now living and throughout history, there are many resources to consult if one actually wants to get insight into the appeal of immortality to others.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 AM on September 14, 2022