Reading a term like Longevity Escape Velocity probably doesn’t mean much to you. It’s a simple collection of three words that don’t seem to have anything to do with each other, but they may just change the meaning of human life and how long we get to be around on this spinning rock of a planet. Business Insider recently published an article on it and they go into detail about what it means and what it means to you. If you want to know what life will be like in the next few decades, this is what you should know.
Longevity Escape Velocity
Let’s take a look at the words and figure out what they mean. The Longevity Escape Velocity is a theoretical concept that mostly explains itself with the last two words. An escape velocity is a physics principle that tells you the speed needed to escape the pull of gravity. For example, the escape velocity of the Earth is 11.2 km/s. That means that, if you could go at that speed, which translates to 40,000 km/h, or 24,854.8 m/h, you would break the pull that the planet’s gravity has over you and blast off into space. That’s what these scientists want you to think about when they explain the Longevity Escape Velocity, or LEV.
They suggest that at some point in the not too distant future, the human race will advance so rapidly in science and health that they’ll escape the now inescapable pull of their ever encroaching deaths. Humanity will learn to live indefinitely and never have to worry about their quality of life or their ailments of old age. It sounds pretty fantastical, but real scientists with real idea and knowledge believe it may just happen.
How Soon is Soon?
There’s a Harvard geneticist by the name of George Church who believes that we may see this LEV achieved in our lifetimes. There’s also Sourav Sinha who happens to be the head of strategy at the Longevity Vision Fund who attended a panel discussion on October 5th, 2023. He suggested that we may be able to reach this pinnacle of human achievement within the next few decades. However, he qualified that by saying that it will require the right investments from the financial, scientific, and medical communities to make it even a slight possibility.
Next up, there’s Aubrey de Grey. Not only does he speak positively about LEV, he’s also the guy who coined the term, so he knows a thing or two about it. He believes that we could have it by the middle of the 2030s, which is about a decade away, give or take the time it takes you to read this. Finally, there’s Ray Kurtzweil who works as a futurist and he has the best outlook by far. It’s his opinion that we’ll reach LEV by 2028 or 2029 but take his estimate with a grain of salt. That wouldn’t be enough time for drugs or treatment to be approved by their regulating bodies.
Don’t Cash out your Life Insurance Policy
Before you run out and cancel your life insurance policy or book a trip to the Bahamas for the year 2383, keep in mind that this is all theoretical and the idea has its fair share of detractors. One of them is Thomas Perls and he’s a Geoscientist that thinks it’s all just a bunch of hooey. His stance is that the basis of LEV is a valiant cause, but believing we’ll just happen upon a time when aging stops is silly and backwards. He believes it’s all a bunch of rich people nonsense that you should just ignore.
As he puts it, “These billionaires, of course, they’ve seen: if you throw enough money at a particular problem, you solve it.”
He also says that we haven’t figured out how to maintain a quality of life past the age of 90 yet. If we barrel into extending the lifespan, we’re still going to be just as sick and fragile as we are now and that’s a big problem. Sure, we can extend basic life expectancy, but those same diseases will be around to make sure none of us actually hit it.
Health over Lifespan
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher and futurist who believes we should focus on living healthier lives opposed to longer ones. In fact, he believes that could lead to humans living to see the age of 1,000 while feeling like a 15-year-old and that sounds like a much better option that simply existing in a state of pain and decomposition. He wants pharmaceutical companies to invest in artificial intelligence to come up with better treatments for our ailments and that’s what will give us the longer lifespans we’re all after.
Imagine, for example, people and AI working together to eradicate all human diseases. If you never come down with anything, you might just end up living forever. That’s where the key to LEV lies and that’s what he hopes we’ll end up doing. In fact, he believes we would have been close to it by now if we had given it a serious go 20 or 30 years ago.
Live Long and Prosper
So, that’s where everyone stands on the issue of LEV right now. Some people think it’s possible in the future, others think it’s possible in the next few years, and still other believe we should focus on our health and hope that longevity comes along with it. Needless to say, no one’s going to flip a switch next week give the human race eternal life. The best course of action is to invest in drugs and treatments to finally get rid of all the things that are really killing us. Then it’s just going to be a matter of doing the same thing for all the dogs. After all, is a long life really worth living if you don’t have a best friend to spend it with?