Name: Dr. Aubrey De Grey
Info: Chief Science Officer and co-founder of SENS Research Foundation.
Conversation: Dr. De Grey has spent the last 15 years becoming a professional conversationalist. Because his research is funded by donations, a lot of his work includes promoting SENS by giving talks, doing interviews, and networking at conferences. As a few examples, he has spoken at TED and (you're going to love this) appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast twice.
Ideas: The controversial idea that aging is not an immutable fact of life. Specifically, that we don't have to suffer illness, frailty, and cognitive decline as our (chronological) age increases. Dr. De Grey has identified seven categories of age-related damage at the cellular and molecular level, each with a corresponding medical intervention to repair it. It is his belief that science and technology will allow us to repair this damage before it gets severe enough to become the pathology associated with old age.
Pitch:
Ending Aging would be probably good for bodily autonomy. Check out Aubrey de Grey's book too.
The most comprehensive approach to me looks like the one Aubrey de Grey and SENS are spearheading, trying to target all of the seven kind of damages of aging, so addressing senescent cells accumulation and cell depletion too. I very much recommend reading Aubrey's book Read Ending Aging.
Read Ending Aging, by Aubrey de Grey if you didn't already. Introduction video here.
On the "you're seen as crazy if you seriously consider X" topic, I was going to ask about Grey's opinion on cryonics. However, after googling, it turns out they already talked about it around a year ago (link, it's around 10 minutes long), and I had just forgotten. Upon re-listening, I can even remember 2016-me being frustrated that Brady's objection was very uncommon, so most people listening with objections wouldn't have their point addressed.
For more information about cryonics, I'd recommend Tim Urban's Wait But Why article, Why Cryonics Makes Sense.
For more information about an end to aging, I'd recommend the first few chapters of Aubrey de Grey's Ending Aging.
Besides the already mentioned site and its associated standard work here, this book also contains lots of sources. This book is useful too. It isn't about vegan diets but it discusses every aspect of aging and nearly all are made worse by animal based diets.
Google scholar is also an amazing way to quickly find the latest scientific information on just about anything. Another amazing tool is sci-hub.cc and /r/Scholar for finding articles. Whole books can easily be found on gen.lib.rus.ec the current location of Library Genesis which contains millions of scientific textbooks.
Ending Aging. The paperback is the most updated with an entire new chapter. Here's a very broad overview by Aubrey de Grey, one of the authors, in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAwnA5WvLc
Phoenix has gone but I'll attempt to field this with my own answers:
Whenever we actually have something like Freitas' nanomedicine, and that will only come online once we have real APM. From my limited perspective 2030 looks like a reasonable date to expect effective but primitive APM created microbivores and pharmocytes. I'm assuming that APM will be reached by moving from a DNA origami basis.
Yes. As Drexler talked about back in 1986 with EoC nanoscopic robots that could start and stop metabolism could bring on true biostasis and the conquest of death.
Completely ignore them. The corporations will attempt to use the very state that they partner with for mutual defense in order to suppress competition. A rejection of both entities and widespread encrypted communications containing the plans for creating these bits of nanomedicine is probably the only way around until a new society is strong enough to defend itself from the death throes of the old.
Whatever aging actually is, it's a process that affects us physically. Nanotechnology (or APM) is essentially mastery of the material universe, of which human bodies are a part. By making, breaking, preserving, or preventing chemical bonds essentially anything not expressly prohibited by physical law can be done. This includes reversing aging.
You'd likely be able to look however you want to look. It'll probably be freaky to have a talking newborn though. I think some of this is covered in Aubrey de Grey's "Ending Aging".
Yes, and I think he hits the mark pretty much everywhere. But he usually does.