Video summary
In this discussion regarding longevity and future health, Bryan Johnson frames his approach through the lens of a massive return on life investment. He argues that while investors typically seek 3x to 10x financial returns, staying alive long enough to witness emerging technologies could yield exponential gains in quality and quantity of life, potentially reaching multipliers of hundreds or thousands. This concept is closely tied to "longevity escape velocity," a threshold where technological advancements outpace the rate of human aging, effectively allowing an individual to extend their lifespan indefinitely by sticking with current protocols until that tipping point is reached. Johnson emphasizes that his goal is not merely theoretical but practical; he aims to consolidate all available scientific evidence into one person's body to test whether the "Fountain of Youth" exists today or how close humanity has come to it, thereby generating real-world data rather than relying on speculation. The core framework of Bryan Johnson's Blueprint protocol relies heavily on extensive measurement and a rigorous cycle of assessing evidence, implementing protocols, and repeating the process to refine outcomes. Although there is no universal agreement among anti-aging scientists regarding optimal protocols—even when reading the same papers—Johnson believes that an "N of one" approach using himself as the subject offers valuable insights compared to having zero data points. His regimen includes a preference for veganism driven by ethical considerations and goal alignment rather than strict necessity, with the only exception being collagen peptides which he is actively seeking vegan alternatives for. This dietary choice stems from his belief that future intelligent systems should possess compassion, viewing humanity's current dominance as temporary and advocating for an expansion of compassionate attributes across all forms of intelligence, including AI agents and biological cells. A significant portion of Johnson's philosophy addresses the complex problem of goal alignment at both individual and societal scales. He posits that while humans struggle to align billions of people or nations with global goals like climate cooperation, they rarely apply this same rigorous self-examination internally. Inside every human being exists a "balkanized war" among various selves driven by contradictory desires for status, relationships, business success, health, and fun. Johnson describes his past state as chaotic and out of control, where he engaged in destructive behaviors like overeating until reaching fifty pounds above his healthy weight. To resolve this internal conflict, he adopted the Blueprint algorithm to wrestle chaos into order, prioritizing survival as the primary objective before pursuing other metrics like muscle mass or VO2 max. Ultimately, Johnson's journey highlights the difficulty of self-deception and the lack of a simple metric for determining one's true desires amidst fluctuating biochemical states that change throughout the day. He acknowledges that humans are not in complete control of themselves, often harboring destructive behaviors they do not fully understand until it is too late. By trusting no single internal voice but instead adhering to an external algorithmic process, he has freed himself from what he describes as insanity and established a structured path toward reducing entropy within his 35 trillion cells. The overarching conclusion of the discussion suggests that mastering self-control through objective data and ethical alignment represents the ultimate challenge for humanity's success, surpassing even monumental feats like traveling to Mars or achieving AI safety without succumbing to internal contradictions.
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what is the projection presuming that
you don't get into a car accident at
some point what is the projection of
your age
your potential longevity
yeah I mean people are a familiar frame
of reference would be what is the return
of investment on this company and
investors typically want like a 3X
return or a 5x return or a 10x return
will be out of the park
think about that on lifespan if you can
be around for the future of these
Technologies coming your return on Life
Investment could be 5x 10x 100x 1000x no
one knows you could have a massive
return in life and so the goal is be
around it's worth doing the hard work
right now to dramatically slow your
speed of Aging what I've been trying to
do with blueprint is when people talk
about aging it's always this oh it's
coming and oh it's exciting and wouldn't
it be amazing if but no one had in my
estimation said okay let's take all of
the current scientific evidence let's
put it in one person and let's see where
we're at let's just give it a go let's
see what the data says is the Fountain
of Youth here right now if not how close
how far where are we at and that's what
I've been trying to do is to say
actually you know what it's it's pretty
compelling what's available right now
are you familiar with the concept of
longevity escape velocity
I am yeah so it sounds like you're kind
of referring to that basically that the
longer that you stick about the better
the technology will be down the line
which means that it will be able to
extend your life longer and if there is
a point at which the technology is able
to bypass or uh the technology gets
stronger than the rate at which we age
you go okay well my point is to stick
about until that and that would be
longevity escape velocity so I've had a
ton of people on the show talking about
longevity health and fitness and it
seems that the conception the
overarching principles aren't
necessarily as universal especially when
we add your approach into the mix what
is the overarching principles that guide
your approach for longevity
yeah this is this has been a fun
learning for me
you can have four anti-aging scientists
read the same five papers
and then ask them to design an
anti-aging protocol and you'll get five
different anti-aging protocols
there's just no agreement and there's
not a way of settling the agreement and
that's why I've endeavored to do this is
I do it and then I share my data and yes
there's limitations of it's n of one but
it's better than n of zero
okay
given your markers given what you have
learned
what does the framework look like or
what does the what are the principles
and the longest levers that you're
looking at and it's a process of
measuring
extensively I think I'm potentially the
most measured human in all of history
that is taking that data and it's trying
to assess the very best evidence now
that's
that's an art because again you can have
scientists look at the same data and
they come with come with different
conclusions so it's looking at the
evidence then it's implemented protocol
in a subject like myself where I'm
trying to be perfect in protocol
adherence and then it's repeating data
evidence protocol and do it again and
again and again
why are you vegan what's the thinking
behind that uh by choice so it blueprint
does not express opinions about anything
it doesn't say whether veganism is good
or bad or meat is good or bad it just is
a process to say measurement evidence
protocol and so I basically just asked
my team is it possible
for us to do a vegan protocol and be
within the targets of the optimal
clinical outcome ranges so the only
exception is I take collagen peptides
I'm trying to find a vegan source for
that but yeah it's a preference not a
necessity why do you prefer it
uh because I would like to
I hope
that a scale a scaling law of technology
that
the more
intelligent
a system gets
the more compassion that it has
so this is an ethical veganism substrate
a little Foundation that you're playing
on top of reducing animal suffering I'm
gonna guess
it it's a
it's a contemplation that
the the problem that Humanity the only
problem we have to solve as a species
really is goal alignment
we have these god-like Powers now
we just simply need to figure out not
simply we need to figure out how to
cooperate and that means not just humans
but humans and planet Earth and humans
and AI like trillions and trillions and
trillions of Agents of intelligence
whether they're cells or whether they're
Bots or whether it's plants or whatever
it is we have this gigantic tapestry of
computational goal alignment
and it's a problem of a size and scale
that just baffles the mind it so far
exceeds anything we're content we're
we're capable of and so when I think
about the real game we're playing here
at the largest possible scale of this
mathematical model uh I hope that we
Trend towards compassion
because while we are alpha on this
planet right now that's not I don't
think we're Alpha anymore and I think
that we are going to want the attribute
of compassion to exist in this broad
tapestry of intelligence
would it potentially be
easier
simpler more efficient more effective
for you to add animal products in have
you ever considered trying to do that is
there a point in the future at which
you'll say let's do a six-month test
where
fish comes in or seafood comes in or or
red meat comes in yeah
I've shared everything I've shared the
entire blueprint protocol so people can
do it
and they can share their data I
personally don't want to do it
right I understand
in order to get the nutrients that you
need without touching on animal products
I imagine that that's a very large
amount of vegetables that you need to
eat
I mean I don't know large I mean the my
if you just look at the evidence and you
say it might I'm trying to goal align 35
trillion cells
that make up me and the objective
function is to reduce entropy
so I'm I'm running this this massive
computational model with 35 trillion
cells on goal alignment with myself
and I'm basically saying can everything
inside of me try to go after one goal
Which is less entropy
and we're looking at all the evidence
we're looking at all the different data
but to me it's a really interesting
quandary because we think about goal
alignment and cooperation of can we get
AI to align with eight billion humans
can we get a hundred and you know 60
some odd nation states to cooperate on
planet Earth like we're always thinking
about these big cooperation problems
but the the cooperation problem the goal
alignment problem Almost Never
is asked of each one of us we get to
always Point our finger at everyone else
and blame everyone else and ask everyone
else to align their goals with ours
we're not being asked to do the tough
work to say hey you know what inside of
each of one of us is an absolute War
it's a balkanized war with our with our
various selves and so to me the Mastery
of self is the ultimate challenge for
anyone to go after it's harder than
going to the moon it's harder than going
to Mars and that's I think where if
we're going to succeed as a species
that's the hard work we need to do
we do not have complete control over
ourselves though right we don't even
know what ourselves are we are
self-deceptive we often have
contradictory and destructive behaviors
and desires that we want to engage in
and how do we know we don't we don't
have a metric that says I want it I want
a relationship but I also want to be
good at business but I also want status
but I also want to have fun with my
friends but I also want to sleep well
and I also want to be healthy you know
for us to be able to pull all of these
together yeah is challenging and I want
to get on to self-destructive behaviors
but before we even get to that
how can someone work out what it is that
they want to want in life
so if uh
uh this is fun talking to you
um
this is the exact problem I've been
trying to solve and this is why I say
the mind is dead
so when I approach this problem with
myself the difficulty I had was
I myself was out of control I would
overeat
I would engage in all kinds of
self-destructive behaviors I was 50
pounds heavier than my healthy weight I
was marching myself into the grave and I
couldn't stop myself no matter what
and so that was like the like the
personal problem I was trying to solve
which then Maps like some other
Ambitions I had
but when I look at myself
and I'm trying to distill those kinds of
questions like who am I what do I want
what are my goals
there's thousands of Brian's chiming in
like right now it's you know it's 10 30
a.m Brian speaking 5 30 PM is going to
have a different brains on every
different answer Saturday Brian's gonna
have a different answer with friends
Brian's gonna have different answers
like there's thousands of different ways
I'm going to answer it based upon my
biochemical State I trust none of them
and that's why you know I don't know how
to tackle this complexity so what I said
is like what is the most basic and
simplest possible thing I could do that
would actually wrestle my chaos into
some order and you know like
try to eliminate the unruliness of of my
existence and that's what blueprint has
done and that's why I follow the
algorithm it's it's freed me from this
Insanity which used to be me
but you have to make a value judgment at
some point right you had to say that the
goal that I'm going for isn't to
maximize status it's not even within the
world of health and fitness to maximize
muscle mass to compete in a bodybuilding
show to maximize my endurance or my HRV
or my VO2 max or whatever it might be
there was a point at which you had to go
through a process of stepping back and
saying what do I want to want
yeah that was the first step that had to
be the first step yeah yeah
and step number one don't die stay alive
well that's the problem with alignment
right you know that's the concern that
everybody has as soon as you get a
self-aware recurrent Improvement AGI
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peace
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