The best approaches to influencing the influencers, educating the educators, and motivating the motivators

Eureka!

Sometimes we have a breakthrough realization, when thoughts creep up on us and we suddenly see something in a new light. This often happens while we’re away from work settings – we might be cycling, walking in a woodland, or having a shower. For Archimedes, his Eureka moment happened in the bath.

Can society as a whole change its mind, on important matters, in an instant? For example, what caused society to alter their view of slavery, from something unpleasant but tolerable, to something that should be abolished?

What might it take for society to see robust medical control over age-related disease not as an ethically questionable fantasy, but as an achievable humanitarian goal? Let’s consider a change of view that would push society to decide that it is deeply desirable to provide much more funding for experiments on how to reverse biological aging.

These changes in mindset seem unpredictable and mysterious. So mysterious, indeed, that many advocates for ending aging have almost given up hope that their ideas can ever become mainstream. Humans are just too irrational, these dejected advocates conclude.

Let me offer a model as a basis for greater optimism.

In this model, four main factors can influence people to change their minds:

1. Surprising new facts – such as showing that mice were treated with anti-aging interventions and then lived much longer, and more healthily, than normal mice
2. Credible theories – which make sense of these new facts, showing how they fit into a broader pattern, and light the way to even greater results
3. Internal compatibility – whether these theories challenge, or seem consistent with, your deeper beliefs and desires
4. External reference – whether these theories seem to have the support of other people you respect such as community leaders or social influencers.

If factors 3 and 4 oppose a new theory, that theory will have a hard time! For example, many people seem to be deeply committed to beliefs such as the following:

• “Good people don’t try to take more than their fair share of lifespan”
• “The only people who desire significantly longer lifespans are naïve, immature, or egocentric”
• “It’s pointless to raise hopes about ending aging – such hopes will only lead to disappointment”
• “The natural state of human existence is cyclical: a rise and fall in health, and a passing of the torch to new generations”.

Find someone with these beliefs and try to talk to them about new experimental results that seem to delay the onset of aging: you’ll find they avert their attention or find some excuse to denigrate the experiment.

To overcome this internal resistance, we can list four approaches – which build on the four-factor model given above:

1. Uncover and highlight facts that are even more surprising and incontrovertible – “look, here’s another example from nature in which there’s no biological aging”
2. Talk about theories which are more engaging and more compelling – “there’s nothing mysterious about this, it follows from some very basic principles”
3. Take time to build bridges with the system of values that the person cherishes – health, community, liberty, courage, service to others, and so on – and show how the new theory supports these values after all
4. Find influencers (broadly defined) who are willing to understand the theory and then become its champions.

All four of these approaches are important, but it’s the fourth that potentially has the most leverage.

That’s the simple version of the model of change. Now let’s take a deeper look.

A pessimistic model of societal influence

We’re all impacted, to greater or lesser extents in different contexts, by the views expressed by people we can call ‘influencers’ or ‘thought leaders’. These may include the most popular children at school, respected aunts and uncles, community leaders who have an aura of wisdom, writers who strike us as being particularly smart and knowledgeable, performers who reach us emotionally as well as rationally, podcast hosts who seem to be on top of changing currents, the stars of cinema, music, or sport whose accomplishments we admire, and so on.

Hence the general advice for any would-be social movement: “influence the influencers”. This is often coupled with two similar pieces of advice: “educate the educators” and “motivate the motivators”.

This pushes the basic problem back one stage. Rather than figuring out how to cause a member of the general public to change their mind, we now have to figure out how to cause various social influencers to change their minds.

In some cases, influencers respond to the views of domain experts. The reputations of the influencers depend, in part, on saying things that relevant domain experts consider credible.

Before an influencer decides to become an advocate for a disruptive view – such as “the end of aging is nigh” – they are to consult the views of the most renowned scientific researchers in the field of longevity.

Here another major problem arises. The community of longevity researchers by no means speaks with a single voice. Instead, it contains plenty of scepticism. Apparently well-credentialed researchers in longevity science express opinions like “it may take 100 years to learn how to comprehensively solve aging”. Others say things like “we still don’t know what causes aging”.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that many would-be social influencers shy away from bold statements about the possibility of ending aging quickly.

The conclusion of this line of analysis: changing opinions within the community of longevity research scientists would be the most valuable move. Imagine if this community transforms from its present cautious pessimism into more full-throated excitement!

What could cause that transformation? What could influence the influencers of the influencers?

Well, since these ‘influencers of influencers’ are scientists, the answer should be clear. What should change their minds, other things being equal, is a combination of the first two points listed above, namely –

1. Surprising new facts – such as showing mice being treated with anti-aging interventions and then living much longer, and more healthily, than was previously expected 
2. Credible theories – which make sense of these new facts, showing how they fit into a broader pattern, and light the path to even greater results

There’s a catch: every experiment that might lead to “surprising new facts” requires funding, and there’s a limited amount of that going around.

Worse, many of the most promising longevity experiments have little prospect for immediate commercial payback to investors. They are experiments whose results are public goods, without any lock-up of IP (intellectual property).

Accordingly, while some important anti-aging experiments can be funded by venture capitalists or other financial investors anticipating a commercial return (through sales of medical treatments), many others require funding from philanthropic or public sources such as government agencies.

This pushes the problem back one more time. Now the question is: how to influence the decision-makers who control those sources of funds (whether philanthropic or public)?

So long as members of the general public express apathy, or even hostility, toward experiments that might reverse aging, decision-makers who control funding will be reluctant to challenge that stance.

It may seem that we have reached a vicious cycle:

• Members of the general public won’t change their minds until social influencers change their minds
• Social influencers won’t change their minds until the community of longevity scientists change their minds
• The community of longevity scientists won’t change their minds until scientific experiments challenge their current scepticism
• These scientific experiments won’t take place until more funding is made available for them
• People who control large public funds won’t approve spending on anti-aging research until the public changes their minds.

It’s as I said earlier: it’s no surprise that many advocates for ending aging have almost given up hope that their ideas can ever become mainstream.

An optimistic model of societal influence

But wait. We shouldn’t think just in binary terms. It’s not a matter of complete failure versus complete success. It’s a matter of gradually changing minds – in the wake of increasingly significant experimental results.

The simple description of this new model is: “Good experimental results generate social excitement, leading to more funding, and to even better results.”

An even simpler description is: “Positive feedback loops generate exponential acceleration”. That is, the first few loops may generate only slow, incremental improvements, but subsequent loops can generate much larger changes.

The model can be expanded into a diagram with (count them!) 25 steps:

The model is shown as having three loops, but that’s an arbitrary number. I’ve chosen three for simplicity.

Let’s walk through the 25 steps:

The model starts (step 1) with an assumption that at least some researchers want to find ways to end aging, and that some funding has been promised to them. These researchers design an initial experiment (step 2) and utilise some available funds to carry out the experiment (step 3).

At this point, the following sequence may happen – perhaps several times over:

• The experiment fails to live up to expectations (step 4)
• The researchers rethink their theories (step 5)
• They update the design of their experiment (step 6)
• They apply some more funds to carry out the updated experiment (step 7).

Eventually – and in the next section I’ll explore the plausibility of this step – the experiment produces results that can be described as ‘promising’ (step 8) rather than ‘weak’ (step 4). In turn, this leads to the following cascade:

• At least some members of the broader longevity research community become more enthusiastic about the possibility of ending aging in the relatively near future (step 9)
• At least some of society’s influencers (television personalities, podcast hosts, etc.) speak more warmly than before about the case for ending aging (step 10)
• Influenced by the influencers, a greater proportion of the general public allow themselves to express hopes, desires, and demands for society to rally behind the project of ending aging sooner rather than later (step 11)
• Influenced by the general public, some political leaders, along with other decision-makers who control significant sources of funding, switch their outlook from apathy or hostility regarding ending aging to at least some cautious optimism (step 12)
• These decision-makers approve funding researchers who have promising ideas for anti-aging interventions (step 13)
• With these additional funds, the researchers design bolder experiments, with more comprehensive anti-aging interventions (step 14), and carry out these experiments (step 15).

This might be followed by one or more loops of increasingly promising results, or one or more loops of comparative failure.

Eventually, the outcome of an experiment goes beyond what could be called ‘promising’ (step 8) to ‘breakthrough’ (step 16). This breakthrough result unleashes a more powerful cascade of reactions:

• The community of longevity researchers moves from merely enthusiastic to solidly convinced; indeed, some scientists who previously kept quiet about their actual views, for fear of being labelled ‘cranks’, no longer self-censor, and now speak out strongly in favour of shorter timescales (step 17)
• The community of social influencers moves from excitement to exuberance (step 18)
• The general public moves from mere excitement to activism and mobilization (step 19)
• Politicians now find themselves free to express their own (perhaps long-suppressed) views that, actually, ending aging would be a profound social good (step 20), and therefore deserves huge amounts of funding (step 21)
• With ample funding available at last, longevity researchers can design (step 22) and carry out even bolder research (step 23).

Perhaps after one or more additional turns of this loop, the results will be so conclusive (step 24) that the vast majority of society unites behind the cause of ending aging, and adopts in effect a wartime mentality of ‘whatever it takes’ to reach that goal without any further delay (step 25).

Double-checking plausibility

Where might the above model of change encounter its most serious blockages?

The biggest leaps of faith involve believing that experiments on rejuvenation treatments will indeed produce results that can be described as ‘promising’ (step 8), ‘breakthrough’ (step 16), and ‘conclusive’ (step 24).

Reasons for thinking that experiments will in due course have such outcomes include:

• A simple extrapolation of previous experiments, which have had their share of promising outcomes
• The strengths of various theories of aging, not least the theory which I personally judge to be the most compelling, namely the damage-accumulation theory of aging.

Some readers may prefer a different theory of aging, with central roles given to (for example) hormones, bioelectricity, the immune system, or genetically programmed decline. If you have a favourite theory of aging and believe it to be credible, you will share my assessment that good outcomes will eventually result from anti-aging experiments. These readers will regard it especially important to change/update theories (step 6). (For these readers, the ‘update’ will require more than a change of parameters; it will be a total change of paradigm.)

Reasons for thinking that anti-aging experiments will not in due course have promising outcomes include:

• A pessimistic assessment of the rate of progress in recent years
• Criticisms of theories of aging.

I’m not impressed by any general extrapolation from “slow progress in the recent past” to “slow progress in the indefinite future too”. That extrapolation entirely fails to appreciate the exponential-acceleration model I’ve described above. Indeed, there have been plenty of other fields (such as artificial intelligence) where a long period of slow progress transitioned into a period of more rapid progress. Factors causing such a transformation included:

• The availability of re-usable tools (such as improved microscopes, molecular assembly techniques, diagnostic tests, or reliable biomarkers of aging)
• The availability of important new sets of data (such as population-scale genomic analyses)
• The maturity of complementary technologies (like how a network of electrical recharging stations allows the wide adoption of electric vehicles; or a network of wireless towers allowed the wide adoption of wireless phones)
• Vindication of particular theoretical ideas (like how understanding the importance of mechanisms of balance allowed the earliest powered airplanes to take flight; or the germ theory for infectious diseases)
• Results that demonstrate possibilities which previously seemed beyond feasibility (such as the first time someone ran a mile in under four minutes)
• Fear regarding a new competitive threat (such as the USSR launching Sputnik, which led to wide changes in the application of public funding in the USA)
• Fear regarding an impending disaster (such as the spread of Covid-19, which accelerated development of vaccines for coronaviruses)
• The availability of significant financial prizes (such as those provided by the XPrize Foundation)
• The different groups of longevity researchers committing to a productive new method of collaboration on issues that turn out to bear fruit.

That leaves questions over how to assess which theories of aging are credible. To be clear, it’s in the nature of scientific research that the validity of theories cannot be known in advance of critical experiments. That’s why research is needed.

I accept that it’s possible that the biological aging of humans will turn out to be comprehensively more complex than I currently conceive. It’s also possible that alternative theories for how aging can be ended will fail too. But these are only possibilities, not what I would expect.

I doubt there’s any meaningful way to measure the probability of such a failure. However, until someone produces a good counterargument, I will continue to maintain there’s at least a 50% chance that aging can indeed be defeated, sooner or later, by a programme of rejuvenation interventions.

Even if that probability were considerably lower – just 5%, say – that would still be a reason for society to invest more of its discretionary financial resources to fund a number of the anti-aging experiments that, on paper at least, appear promising.

These experiments will provide important data to help answer the questions:

• Do our theories of aging appear to be on the right track?
• If these theories are on the right track, is it sooner, or instead later, that we are likely to obtain conclusive results from anti-aging experiments?

Short-cuts and warnings

In a moment, I’m going to switch from the theoretical to the practical. That is, I’m going to suggest ten ways that each of us might be able to help accelerate the end of aging. I’ll do so by referencing the above model.

But first, it’s time to admit that, of course, there are many pathways of influence, education, and motivation beyond the ones represented by the arrows in the above diagram.

For example:

• Some members of the general public may change their minds, not because they are inspired by a social influencer, but because they consult science publications directly
• Some important experiments can proceed, not because they receive funding from public institutions, but because a group of volunteer citizen scientists provide their services free of charge
• Sometimes individual politicians can prove themselves to be visionaries, championing a cause ahead of majority public opinion 
• There are special kinds of influencers, such as patient advocates, who can play their own unique roles in magnifying flows of new understanding throughout society.

In other words, the arrows in the above diagram show only the mainstream flows of influence, and omit many important secondary influences.

With that in mind, let me now offer some answers to the question that I often hear when I speak about the possibility of defeating aging. How can people help to bring about this possibility more quickly?

In all, I’ll offer ten suggestions. But watch out: in each case, there’s a risk of taking the suggestion too far.

1. Learn the science

As stated earlier, two of the most powerful tools to change minds are to share new information and to share new ideas. That is, to draw people’s attention to surprising facts discovered by scientific investigation, and to credible theories, which make sense of these surprising facts.

Before we can share such information and ideas with others, we need to understand them ourselves. That’s why one of the key ways to help accelerate the defeat of aging is to keep learning more about the facts and theories of aging – as well as the facts and theories of how aging can best be reversed.

What’s more, the better our collective scientific understanding of the aging process, the more likely it will be that an appropriate set of anti-aging experiments will be prioritized – rather than those who are championed by people with loud voices, large wallets, or unfounded scientific prejudices.

I acknowledge that subjects such as biochemistry, immunology, nutrition, pharmacology, comparative evolution, genetics, and epigenetics can be daunting. So, take things step by step.

Two foundational books on this overall set of topics are Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime, by Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae, and Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old, by Andrew Steele. In the last 12 months, I’ve also benefited from reading and thinking about (among others)

• The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, by Richard Dawkins
• Two books by Nick Lane: Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, and Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
• Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon
• Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, by Venki Ramakrishnan.

There’s a lot more that can be learned from Youtube channels, podcasts, and real-world presentations and gatherings.

But beware: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you should take no action whilst there are still gaps in your understanding of the science. The solution of aging involves engineering as well as science. Engineering involves finding out what works in practice, even though there may be gaps in scientific explanations.

Indeed, it may well be possible to remove or repair the damage which constitutes biological aging without knowing the exact metabolic sequence that gave rise to each piece of damage.

In other words, don’t let imperfect knowledge be a cause of inaction.

2. Become a citizen scientist

Even if your knowledge of science is far from comprehensive, you may still be able to assist important anti-aging projects by methods such as:

• Literature searches, looking for articles relevant to the design or progress of an experiment
• Data analysis and review
• Self-experimentation: becoming a participant in studies on fasting, supplements, or biohacking
• Organizing small-scale experiments using low-cost lab facilities.

Even small contributions can make a big difference over time.

A citizen scientist often devotes only a portion of their spare time to such projects. After retiring from their main job, some even become full-time citizen scientist researchers.

But beware: Each project tends to build its own momentum, and the motivation of participants can change from “I’m doing this to help reverse aging” to “I’m doing this because I want to finish the project and be able to list it on my CV” or even “I’m pivoting this project away from focusing on aging to focusing on something more commercially rewarding”.

In other words, be sure to keep the goal foremost in your mind.

3. Learn the broader arguments

As covered earlier, there’s a lot more to changing people’s minds than merely quoting scientific facts and scientific theories. In practice, people’s minds are heavily influenced (consciously or unconsciously) by their views on religion, philosophy, economics, and politics. To help change people’s thinking on the desirability of ending aging, we need to become familiar with the counterarguments from these fields – and we need to become adept at responding to these counterarguments in ways that are respectful but also persuasive.

Again (as with science) we don’t need to learn about these non-scientific topics just to influence others, but also so that we can free our own choices and actions from biases and prejudices that we previously didn’t recognise.

In the last 12 months, I’ve personally benefited from reading and thinking about the following books (among others) which addressed those subjects:

• The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives, by Andrew Scott
• Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History by Jonathan Kennedy
• The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It, by Marty Makary
• The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death, by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston.

But beware: There’s little point in pursuing precise calculations of the economic benefit of rejuvenation therapies. Whether an anti-aging healthcare intervention, applied across an entire society, would be worth $3 trillion in healthy life-years gained, as opposed to just $1 trillion, won’t change the minds of many more people. Instead, the primary reason people resist calculations of vast economic benefit is because they don’t believe in the scientific arguments about the interventions. They don’t believe the interventions will work. Accordingly, it’s the science that they need to come to trust, rather than going more deeply into economics.

The primary reason they fail to accept the scientific arguments is often that they experience a painful cognitive dissonance with the picture they like to hold of themselves as being (for example) hard-hearted, or self-sacrificing, or undemanding, or religiously pure, etc. Accordingly, the conversation that is needed in this case is about values, or identity, or other philosophical foundations. Or perhaps it’s not even a conversation that’s needed, but rather that the person needs to feel comfortable with whoever is expressing these new ideas.

As is often said, when it comes to controversial topics, few people will care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.

In other words, what matters isn’t just the message, but also the messenger. (Which is another reason why well-admired social influencers can have a disproportionate impact upon public opinions.)

4. Steer conversations

Once you’ve learned at least some of the scientific theories about aging, and at least some of the broader philosophical arguments, then you’ll in principle be able to help steer both private and public conversations toward the conclusion that ending aging in the not-so-distant future is both scientifically credible and morally desirable.

That is, you’ll be ready to become an influencer too – albeit one who is less influential than media stars or broadcast personalities. You’ll be able to correct various misconceptions and distortions about aging – and how it might be cured.

To do this well, you’ll need to develop communication skills, which may include one or more of the following:

• Good writing
• Good listening
• Good questioning
• Good speaking
• Good humour
• Good graphics
• Good narrative construction
• Good music composition
• Good video composition

But beware: Not every argument is worth winning. Not every conversation needs to be pursued to an agreement. Sometimes it’s prudent to step back from an interaction, especially if it’s with people who delight in trolling, or who are unprepared to change their minds.

Also note that how you conduct an argument is often as important as what you say in that argument. If we are perceived as being obnoxious, or arrogant, or dismissive, etc, we can do more harm than good.

In other words, pick your battles carefully – and remember that your behaviour can have a bigger impact than your message.

5. Anticipate larger narratives

As people think more seriously about the possibility of biological rejuvenation, they’ll frequently start to wonder about some larger questions:

• If rejuvenation therapies can undo damage in our bodies and brains, might similar therapies enable us to live ‘better than well’ – with significantly better fitness, vitality, strength, and so on, than even the healthiest people of previous eras?
• Indeed, why stop at physical rejuvenation? What about using technologies to rejuvenate our minds, our emotions, our relationships, and our spirituality?
• If we can eliminate the pain of aging in humans, why not also the aging experienced by our pets, and by other animals with whom we share the planet?
• Alongside rejuvenation of vitality, what about rejuvenation of fertility? Might someone choose to keep on having babies into their nineties and beyond?
• Is ‘til death do us part’ still the best principle to guide marriage, if lives and good health extend far beyond the biblical figure of threescore years and ten?
• Would ending aging worsen inequalities? Or result in irreparable damage to the environment?
• If generations no longer retreat from the workforce due to declining vitality, making way for younger employees to be promoted, how will workforce dynamism be preserved? And won’t there be a cultural stagnation in fields such as the arts and politics? Indeed, what about immortal dictators?

There are three general types of reactions to these questions:

1. These possibilities are awful, which is a reason to oppose the ending of aging
2. Lives will for the most part remain the same as before, except that they will become much longer
3. Human experience is likely to be transformed in many other ways, beyond simply living longer; our lives will be expanded rather than just extended.

In case you’re unsure, the third reaction is generally the correct one.

Accordingly, advocates for ending aging need to decide whether to remain silent on the above sorts of questions – switching the conversation back to more comfortable topics – or instead to have thoughtful answers ready.

The good news is that communities such as transhumanists, vitalists, cosmists, singularitarians, and other radical futurists, have already explored these questions at some length. The bad news is that the writings of these groups are sometimes bewildering, contradictory, or disturbing.

That’s a reason for longevity advocates to start to become familiar with the twists and turns of this philosophical landscape. If you have nothing to say when a conversation turns in these directions, someone may conclude that you haven’t thought through the consequences of your beliefs, and that, accordingly, you aren’t to be trusted.

But beware: Although it’s good to be prepared for conversations turning to subjects such as transhumanism, cryopreservation (also known as biostasis), human-machine cyborgs, replacement bodies, and longtermism, it’s probably best in most cases not to start a conversation on these topics.

If people perceive you as being more interested in these topics than, say, extended healthspans for all, they may decide that you are too weird, and break off their conversation with you.

In other words, be ready for conversations to turn radical, but avoid premature radicalisation.

6. Beware snake oil

I’ve already mentioned how well-intentioned advocacy for ending aging sometimes does more harm than good. Examples include:

• Speaking rationally but without empathy or sensitivity
• Disregarding value-systems which are held dear by people listening
• Introducing topics that frighten listeners, and which switch listeners from open-minded to closed-minded

There’s one other way in which ill-judged advocacy can rebound to make the anti-aging field weaker rather than stronger. Namely, if anti-aging enthusiasts champion treatments, therapies, potions, pills, processes, lifestyle habits, or whatever, that have limited scientific credentials, or, worse, have evidence that they cause harm.

Some of this over-selling arises from naïveté: the enthusiast has put too much trust in a friend, colleague, or social influencer, and hasn’t done good research into the ‘solution’ being advanced.

On other occasions, the over-selling can be deliberate. Think of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Adam Neumann of WeWork, Trevor Milton of Nikola, or Sergei Mavrodi of MMM Healthcare.

On yet other occasions, the perpetrator of the fraud has no expectation that the “solution” will ever become viable. They are simply in the business of finding a gullible audience, telling the audience what they want to hear (for example, “this remarkable treatment is scientifically proven to add years to your healthspan”), taking as much money as possible, and then disappearing from sight. (“So long, sucker!”)

In all three cases, a number of harms can result:

• People can have their health ruined by the so-called solution – perhaps even dying as a result of a misdiagnosis
• If their biological health remains OK, they may nevertheless suffer a big hit to their financial health
• Financial resources that should have been applied to treatments with a stronger scientific basis have been wasted on bogus ones
• People viewing from outside may deduce that the entire anti-aging field is full of cranks, cheats, and charlatans; accordingly, they may close their minds to the entire subject.

To avoid these harms, all of us need to keep firmly in mind the principles of scientific investigation. These include:

• Checking statistical results, rather than isolated cherry-picked examples
• Looking not just for confirming evidence, but also for dis-confirming evidence
• Being alert for ‘motivated reasoning’
• Ensuring that trials can be replicated
• Considering alternative hypotheses
• Requiring independent investigation by researchers with no direct ties to the solution
• Resisting appeals to apparent authority
• Requiring clear explanations, rather than a flood of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.

But beware: Attention to the risks of solutions possibly being flawed should not result in analysis paralysis. Absence of complete evidence should not cause all investigations to stop. It is still possible to recommend various treatments even in the absence of full medical trials, so long as recipients are made aware of the risks involved.

In other words, caution should be our companion, but not our master.

7. Join a business

In recent decades, most of the technological transformations of the human condition have involved businesses that converted research ideas into products for which customers would willingly pay. Consider motor vehicles, airplanes, musical instruments, washing machines, dishwashers, computers, phones, contraceptives, heart pacemakers, hip replacements, and stem cell therapies. A competitive marketplace spurred innovation, quality improvement, price reduction, and greater consumer choice. It will surely be the same with many of the interventions that will help to reverse aging.

By using a combination of the skills already mentioned, you can join a company that is already working on solutions related to the anti-aging cause. Options include:

• Joining an established company, or a startup
• Joining a company that is already committed to anti-aging, or one that has products that could be repurposed or re-oriented for anti-aging purposes
• Joining a company in a role similar to one you’ve had earlier in your career (e.g. HR, marketing, finance, legal, I.T., consulting, validation, or R&D), or instead taking more of a risk and starting a new career trajectory, probably at a lower rung in the ladder.

As always, when deciding to join a company, you’ll need to weigh up a variety of considerations:

• Corporate culture
• Leadership acumen
• Product suitability
• Product roadmap
• Balance of risk and reward 
• The calibre of your potential new colleagues
• Working conditions
• Salary and other compensation

Before you can obtain a job that attracts you, you may need to undergo further training or take an interim role in a position which could become a stepping-stone to your intended destination.

In this way, you could make a significant contribution to bringing important new anti-aging products to the market.

But beware: Businesses can take on a life of their own. Meeting business deadlines can, stage-by-stage, cause you to deviate from what you previously considered to be your true purpose. Instead of supporting R&D into new anti-aging products, your efforts may be diverted into personality conflicts, corporate politics, products that have little to do with anti-aging, or pursuing profits instead of solving aging.

Accordingly, anyone working in a business ought to organise a ‘time-out’ for themselves every few months, in order to reflect on whether their current business role is still the best use of their energy, skills, and resources.

In other words, businesses should be our allies, but not our overlords.

8. Make financial contributions

Rather than applying our time into many of the above activities, we can apply our money.

This could be a one-off contribution, or a recurring donation.

It could be an investment made with some expectation of a financial return in the future. Or it could be a philanthropic gift, made just with the thought that millions (indeed, billions) of people could benefit in due course from the anti-aging products and solutions whose development your gift supports.

Of course, deciding which financial contributions to make is as complicated as deciding which job offer to pursue. The range of potential recipients can be overwhelming.

To help you decide, here are some factors to consider:

• The potential of your gift to trigger a cascade of further investment by other people, via the kind of feedback cycles in the model described earlier in this article
• Whether you prefer to make a relatively safe investment to support some incremental research into an application of some technology that is already reasonably well understood, or instead an investment to help understand core platform mechanisms with potentially many implications
• The track-record of the people who will receive your donation
• Potential tax-efficiency in the methods by which you make your donation.

But beware: An organisation that you judge to be the best recipient of a donation at one time may no longer be the best such recipient at a later time:

• Personnel may change at the organisation
• The organisation may change its strategy
• New research findings may provide better options elsewhere.

Accordingly, the task of giving money away can be just as challenging as the task of earning it in the first place. To get the best results, we need to remain informed and attentive.

In other words, don’t allow momentum to get the better of your better judgement.

9. Build bridges

This brings us to perhaps the most significant way that many of us can accelerate the defeat of aging. Rather than just relying on our own energy, skills, and resources, we find ways to unleash the energy, skills, and resources, of whole communities of people.

For example, even if you have only limited finances at your own disposal, you presumably know some people who are wealthier than you. Even if you personally lack deep knowledge of science, you presumably know some people with better training in researching the scientific literature. Even if you are personally unable to create engaging videos, you presumably know some friends or colleagues who could take on that task.

This idea lies at the heart of the multiplicative effects of the model of societal change featured in this article. It involves us sharing, with any groups of people who may be ready to respond, news of scientific breakthroughs, updates in scientific theories, and the humanitarian philosophical ideas that validate the radical extension of healthspan.

This bridge-building activity is in some cases fairly straightforward, when we reach out to people who have similarities with ourselves. The kinds of ideas that changed our own minds may well change their minds too. But not always, since the ideas at the backs of people’s minds often differ in unexpected ways.

Accordingly, an important skill in bridge-building is to be perceptive – to listen carefully to any feedback, and to notice whether ideas seem to be received well or badly. It is sometimes wiser to wait for a better opportunity, when your conversation partner may be more receptive.

The most impactful bridge-building can take place when you establish links with a community where, at first sight, you have little connection. However, with creative insight, you can find the right leverage point.

Examples include connecting with:

• Patient-support groups, where members are already attuned to the benefits of life-extending treatments, and who may be ready to consider radical alternatives
• People with a different political persuasion to you, but who may nevertheless share your conviction that defeating aging should be a clear priority
• People from different religious traditions, but who value the possibility of remaining in good health for extended periods of time
• People who have earned money in ways differently from you (for example, by crypto investments).

Although the core messages you eventually share with these diverse groups will ultimately be the same, the initial overtures will vary considerably. Communication must be adapted skilfully.

But beware: Not every bridge has equal priority. If you keep encountering opposition from a group you thought should be receptive, the most practical thing to do could be to switch your bridge-building efforts to a different community.

In other words, choose your bridges wisely.

10. Take care of yourself

Before we can apply much effort in any of the above activities, we need to maintain our health, our passion, and our focus.

If you fall ill and die of some avoidable condition, you can only support the anti-aging cause in weak ways for a short period of time. It is far better to remain in tip-top condition for as long as possible.

This is at least as important for psychological health as for bodily health. Being full of energy is important, but it’s even more important to keep orienting these energies in the ways which will have the greatest effect. Keeping our wits sharp can make all the difference between a productive and an unproductive investment of our energy.

In other words, as well as taking the time to exercise our bodies, we need to keep on exercising our minds, and, indeed, to keep on reflecting on the issues that matter most to us.

Hence the advice I gave earlier: be sure to keep the goal foremost in your mind.

That advice forms part of a broader set of suggestions that I have woven into my description above of the ten ways that people can help accelerate the end of aging. For convenience, here are these pieces of advice gathered into a single list:

• Be sure to keep first things first in mind
• Don’t let imperfect knowledge be a cause of inaction
• What matters isn’t just the message, but also the messenger
• Remember that your behaviour can have a bigger impact than your message
• Pick your battles carefully
• Be ready for conversations to turn radical, but avoid premature radicalisation
• Caution should be our companion, but not our master
• Businesses should be our allies, but not our overlords
• Don’t allow momentum to get the better of your better judgement
• Choose your bridges wisely.

These pieces of advice can be summarised as “self-mastery”. Without self-mastery, our impact will be reduced.

But beware: The time and effort we put into improving our self-mastery is time and effort taken away from our primary task.

To make the potential danger here easier to grasp, consider a simple model. Imagine that someone can reasonably expect to live another ten years, if they continue to follow their present lifestyle. Imagine also that the availability of significant aging-reversal treatments is estimated at being twenty years in the future. As things stand, that person is likely to die ten years before anti-aging treatments would be able to save them.

By changing their life habits, such as dietary supplements, more regular sleep, and careful monitoring of biomarkers, it’s possible that the person could extend the number of years they might expect to live. But other changes in their life habits, such as staying up late at night creating new videos, or travelling to speak at more conferences, might catalyse an acceleration in the positive feedback cycles described earlier in this article. That could bring forward the date at which aging-reversal treatments become available.

Out of these two choices, which would be preferable? Different people may answer that question differently. But bear in mind that, in the second case, the benefits would apply to everyone still alive (and still aging) on the planet.

In real life, the choices are more complex. Ideally, we can find ways to keep ourselves healthier and more active for longer, and to accelerate the defeat of aging.

But my point is this: there’s more to life than self-mastery.

Going forward

I’ve described a set of ten possible courses of action:

1. Learn the science
2. Become a citizen scientist
3. Learn the broader arguments
4. Steer conversations
5. Anticipate larger narratives
6. Beware snake oil
7. Join a business
8. Make financial donations
9. Build bridges
10. Take care of yourself

Different people, in different stages of their lives, and in different contexts, will likely decide to divide their focus in different ways between these ten courses of action.

This question – how to divide your personal focus – may benefit from candid advice from people who know you well who are also well grounded in the anti-aging movement. Interacting with communities of such people should help you make better choices. Consider joining the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, and/or the community of Mobilized Vitalists. Also consider attending a conference such as RAADfest and talking to lots of people while there.

There’s an even bigger question: which rejuvenation experiments have the best chance to trigger fast progress around the outer loops of the model of societal change? These are the experiments that most deserve additional funding and support.

This ‘which experiments?’ question is hotly debated among advocates of ending aging. Rather than me stating my own answer to that question, I’ll instead urge you: connect with longevity researchers, listen to what they say, do your own research, and then act.

Dedicated focus on the experiments with the potential to ramp up the excitement levels of the longevity research community should lead to a dramatic acceleration toward the end of aging.

Archimedes and the lever

If we can obtain the right perspective, even the hardest tasks can become simple.

Archimedes is known, not only for his post-bathtime dash through the streets of Syracuse exclaiming “Eureka”, but also (among many other reasons) for the insight captured by this saying: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world”.

The task of solving aging might seem as daunting as moving the entire world. However, three points of leverage render this task feasible after all:

• The leverage of an actionable theory of aging – namely, in my assessment, the damage accumulation theory of aging
• The leverage of an actionable theory of societal change – as covered in the earlier parts of this article
• The leverage of specific actions that each of us can take that will accelerate the loops of positive change – actions described in the later parts of this article.

Now let’s get to it!

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge valuable discussions on these ideas with members of the LEVF leadership team and also with participants of the Mobilized Vitalists Telegram channel.

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