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How Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel Plans To Live 120 Years
HughPickens.com writes Bloomberg News reports that venture capitalist and paypal co-founder Peter Thiel has a plan to reach 120 years of age. His secret — taking human growth hormone (HGH) every day, a special Paleo diet, and a cure for cancer within ten years. "[HGH] helps maintain muscle mass, so you're much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis," says Thiel. "There's always a worry that it increases your cancer risk but — I'm hopeful that we'll get cancer cured in the next decade." Human growth hormone also known as somatotropin or somatropin, is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction and regeneration in humans and other animals. Thiel says he also follows a Paleo diet, doesn't eat sugar, drinks red wine and runs regularly. The Paleolithic diet, also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a modern nutritional diet designed to emulate, insofar as possible using modern foods, the diet of wild plants and animals eaten by humans during the Paleolithic era. Thiel's Founders Fund is also investing in a number of biotechnology companies to extend human lifespans, including Stem CentRx Inc., which uses stem cell technology for cancer therapy. With the 70 plus years remaining him and inspired by "Atlas Shrugged," Thiel also plans to launch a floating sovereign nation in international waters, freeing him and like-minded thinkers to live by libertarian ideals with no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.
And no doubt they will import labor and pay them subsistence, since no one in this floating nation will be willing to collect the trash. So we will have floating favelas.
Well, at least if it turns wrong no one will say it was unexpected...
Based on my exposure to his ilk it's about 20 years more than they deserve.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seriously, he's going to die like the rest of us. I've seen how far we've come in medicine and I see how far we haven't gotten yet. The body starts failing one way then another way and it just keeps piling up as you get 70-90 years old. Cancer is just one of many, many things that are likely to kill you before you're 120.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
With so much of his time devoted to maintaining the caveman diet, there's a good chance Thiel could actually die of boredom. He's kinda boring me already.
Is this sig nificant?
The paleo diet might end up being silly, but just once I'd like to see this discussion without the kneejerk "20-30 year life expectancy".
If you made it to 15 years of age or so in a hunter-gatherer society, you might reasonably expect to survive to 60. As an infant, you are highly likely to fall prey to disease or poor care, pushing the life expectancy at birth way down on average even though those deaths usually had nothing to do with the diet of a mature adult in the community. Adults didn't usually drop dead at 30 from poor nutrition.
I actually am a scientist, and coincidentally, I work for the National Cancer Institute (a part of NIH). While I don't want state anything in absolute certainties, I seriously doubt we'll be able to "cure cancer" in 10 years. Other than the exercise, I fail to see how any of those things will help him live to 120. They may give him a high chance of reaching 80, or something like that, but most of his approaches are probably being used for the wrong purposes. I mean, cavemen (and women!) didn't live very long lives, even accounting for frank injuries from dinosaurs, sharktopus, and whatnot.
Disclaimer: Didn't watch the video.
What? You didn't read the book did you? Galt "gave up" because he didn't want the owners of the company to take his idea. It had nothing to do with railroads.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Read up on the anthropology, especially about the value of grandparents. Also be careful to avoid means as averages in such cases.
Hint: healthy humans don't undergo menarche until they're about twelve, and human children do not survive well if their parents die off before they're eight.
There's evidence that life expectancy went down with agriculture, though housing heralds an improvement for infant mortality so the means go up, though tempered by increased disease.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As long as he is in our memories, he'll live on in our hearts.
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Hedley Lamarr: My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
Taggart: God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It's just nonsense - to build on a sea platform would require tremendously strong buildings and no owner of such a platform would permit shacks to be built there as crumbling buildings would threaten the platform and its other occupants. The notable difference between a seastead and local building codes is that such agreements on a seastead would be entered into voluntarily, not by fiat backed by violence.
The people who would live and work there would need to be attracted to live on a sea platform, so low-paid workers and destitute beggars aren't even an issue. This isn't a model for society, it's more of a Galt's Gulch.
I still think it's silly to get all the anarchists on a platform that can be sunk by a torpedo (see the Free State Project for a more sensible option) but TFS is written as if by a seventh grader who's heard something about libertarians.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Or many of the other old age related diseases of which there is no treatment. Wishful thinking.
He's 47. He's got more than two decades before those are likely to affect him. I'll bet that in 2034 we have effective treatments for most all of them, with genomic analysis and gene therapy being available at the shopping mall, next to the place that does nails. OK, probably not FDA-approved (possibly even banned in the US due to costs of welfare if people don't die off) but that's what medical tourism is for. You might need to fly to Theil's boat to get it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Puberty starts 8-12 in modern humans. Puberty of women is the only thing that matters (a single post-pubescent male can inpregnate hundreds of women, but one woman can't carry more than one child at a time (exceptions for rare twins and such). And it doesn't matter if you live after giving birth, other than to reproduce again. It's only been about 100 years since the number 1 killer of women was childbirth. The non-breeders raised the breeders. One man would impregnate as many women as possible, and fertile women would be pregnant as much as possible, until dead.
6-8 years of parenthood was enough. And the tribe would raise the children jointly, as the males died often getting food or warring with others, and the mothers were either pregnant or dead.
Learn to love Alaska
If pirates attack is Galt's Gulch island or the mercenary soldiers he had hired to protect the island, imprison him and take over all his wealth, would he just shrug and accept his fate?
The most successful pirate, Ragnar DanneskjÃld was a founding member of Galt's Gulch. You just make sure the people with the guns are on board and that they aren't all under a single point of control.
Supposedly brilliant chap, and just because one stupid railroad executive refused to build a railroad track to his pet project he just gives up?
Sounds like you ought to read the book sometime. You could alternate it with something like Das Kapital, if you're afraid of picking up Rand cooties.
Another childless, rich, white male plans to live(practically) forever - STOP THE PRESSES!
Dude, have a kid. It's cheaper, more reliable and far more fun.
It's no more or less voluntary than agreeing to the social contract of any other sovereign nation ... and you will be held to your contract with violence too.
The only difference is that the contract is explicit instead of implicit.
Ultimately, you can't be a slave to any ideology or fad. You have to actually have some self knowledge. You need to observe yourself and adjust accordingly.
We are not factory stamped duplicates. We are each a very complicated machine each a fork of some very complex bio-mechanical software. The idea that we are not all the same should be obvious to anyone on this site.
The idea that some of us thrive on habits that would be bad for others should be not terribly controversial.
You just have to be methodical and make the observations and sort yourself out and not blindly follow anything else.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Puberty starts 8-12 in modern humans.
Very modern humans with excellent nutrition. It can be delayed by poor nutrition. I'm pretty sure I've seen people talking about that number dipping lower in recent centuries. I suspect it was higher in neo/paleolithic ages, when the food supply was less consistent.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Wait until you are looking death in the face. You may change your mind.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You are confused. His goal is not to improve humanity by creating cures for all of the things that will kill him before he turns age 120. His goal is to give a big "f*ck you" to the society that will create all of those cures for him.
He intends to benefit from society without contributing to it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
One of the issues of the paleo diet is which paleo tribe will you follow. While this Scientific American article is a bit antagonistic, the research on the variation of diets was interesting.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
That's silly, people lived well into their 40's, 50's, and 60's. Most 60 year old adults are not invalids. Life expectancy of a 20 year old was not vastly different from today, now life expectancy of an infant is another story.
Cheap storage VM.
Probably started killing one another over religion.
Dementia cured in 20 years, I wouldn't bet on that. The blood brain barrier is not an easy thing to get around. The most likely thing that will slow down brain impairment is a diet rich in the appropriate short and medium chain fatty acids and mental exercises. I.E. not the Paleolithic diet.
He is also missed two other significant factors that contribute to significant life extension, A calorie restricted diet and fair amount of exercise(which lengthens Telomeres). A large early death factor centers around people not taking care of their kidney's.
And then there is are number of man made environmental factors. Poorly tested chemical additives.. GMO crops and the ever increasing amounts of glyphosates that goes with them. Other classes of Pesticides, Modern artificial sweeteners, etc Ingestion /inhalation of man made radioactive isotopes. Any one of which can sink his life extension plans before he knows it.
Next on the hit list is family history of long lived relatives(genetics) or just being a bit too tall or fat. A Large body mass has a tendency to were out organs, and shorten lifespan.
My bet he'll be dead by 75, maybe 80. Most rich persons aren't willing to make the appropriate life style changes to really slow down the aging process.
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I'm not sure how one can give up sugar and drink red wine?
Cheap storage VM.
someone needs to give this guy a primer on cancer and its 'cures'.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Yes, the #1 killer of Paleolithic people over 30 was failing to outrun the velociraptors.
So let's summarize this. Some rich person think they are smarter than everyone else and that they have the ills of the world figured out. Namely: a cure for cancer is just around the corner (based on what evidence?), so they choose a diet that is totally unproven to do anything good or bad, they plan to live forever and they will retreat to some mystical artificial island where they can do what they want and not be bothered by anyone not of their own kind. So far so good.
What I don't get is why they think welfare is bad. Obviously they don't need it, they're rich. But not everyone can be rich, this would be the same as everyone being poor. So given that in any society there will be richer and poorer people, welfare simply ensures that even the poorest get some minimum access to services, typically health care. This does not prevent richer people to get better services. Explain to me why this is bad? Given that rich/poor status is mostly a question of luck, being anti-welfare has always struck me as being selfish.
No, it was failing to outrun your fellow hunters who were fleeing at the same time.
I agree with you on that count, but the paleo diet is still flawed in that its fundamental premise - that at some point in the past mankind was somehow in sync with their environment, and their diet at that point was perfectly aligned with their nutritional needs.
This is apparently because our ancestors evolved to a stable state on one diet over a very long period of time.
This is a massive, and wrong, assumption. Humans were never in perfect harmony with their environment, even if such a condition is at all possible.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Part of the problem is the paleo enthusiasts and other fad diets are that they don't have the courtesy to test these things on their own, which can end up influencing the food supply for the rest of us. Full fat content yogurt can be nigh impossible to find in some places because of years of preaching about the dangers of fat.
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I vaguely remember one story where someone was traveling in space at near light speed, and expected to outlive everyone back on Earth because of the time dilation. Instead, the people on Earth had a cure for old age, but it had to be administered before the age of 50. The returning astronaut was just over that age, meaning he'd be the last person on Earth to die of old age.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
With his libertarian-no regulation ideas, no doubt his floating nation will simply discharge raw sewage directly into the ocean. Just the kind of thinking we need to save marine ecosystems and humans from extinction.
At the heart of every libertarian is the notion that "I want the freedom to sh*t on you". No wonder there are so many corporate sponsors.
Mr. Thiel,
You were born rich to obviously rich parents who could afford to send you to Stanford for your undergraduate and graduate degrees.
You're still rich today.
Congratulations. You did not lose your fortune, something almost impossible today due to favorable taxation for the wealthy.
Once you're rich you stay that way forever in the United States unless you're a very stupid person.
Sincerely,
The 99%.
The fact that he has wacky ideas does not surprise me. Rich people are born that way, being given every advantage in life. People don't get rich by being particularly intelligent. They pay people to do everything for them, and unless they're very stupid they get much richer in the process.
The interesting thing is when researchers did plots of estimated ages of paleolithic skeletons, the population showed exponential decay from the age of maturity. For modern populations in advanced societies the # deaths vs. age of death curve is relatively flat until you start getting into the 60s and 70s.
What this tells you is that paleolithic people didn't die from age related causes. They got picked off by accident, mishap, violence or infections that cut down people in their prime, so it made no difference whether you were 16 or 30, your chances for surviving another year were the same.
So this kind of makes sense; he's looking to move into a population which does not die from age. It's the kind of thing that makes intuitive sense, but often doesn't pan out. What *might* make sense is a counter-intuitive move: fasting, or intermittent fasting where you fast on alternate days. This reproduces the way paleolithic people consumed calories: not three meals a day on the clock, but feasting after a kill and making
Taking HGH is just proof that having money doesn't make you smart or well-informed. He is going to need that cancer cure soon if he keeps that up. His plan is like pouring oil on a smoldering fire and hoping they develop really good fire extinguishers soon. It also seems very un-paleo to me. Paleolithic people went through periods where they had plenty of HGH (feasting) and periods with low HGH levels (fasting). Some researchers believe the fasting period confers many aging related health benefits.
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Puberty does not start with 8-12 ... it is rather 12-14/15 with 14 likely the average.
The cases where kids came into puberty and fertile even before 10 are extremely rare, perhaps 10 per year on the whole planet.
It's only been about 100 years since the number 1 killer of women was childbirth.
Yes, and you ever wondered why? The answer is super simple. Around that time "medical" doctors still experimented with corpses of the dead. And they had no clue about bacteria and sterilization.
There is a reason why women giving birth preferred nurses from female abbeys as midwives over "high decorated medical doctors" who infected them with bacteria from rotting corpses.
The rest of your post is only an attempt to be on conclusion with your start ... both parts are wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A calorie restricted diet and fair amount of exercise(which lengthens Telomeres) ... how do you come to that idea?
Neither exercising nor a low calory diet lengthens telomeres
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Socialism is doing just fine in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Canada and anywhere else it's really been tried, thank you very much.
Fascist dictatorships who borrow socialism's rhetoric to excuse stealing everything for themselves (China, USSR, North Korea) don't work so well, but then again they're not socialist, so it all evens out.
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Welfare: inefficient government-run money stealing program that discourages the creation of goods.
Building codes: Are you aware that in one of Boston's tonier regions, vinyl window frames are illegal? Residents must use wood. Not all aspects of building codes are good.
Minimum wage: If you're 5 years old and want to buy a comic book, you probably can't do anything that anyone is willing to pay you minimum wage for. But you might find a neighbor willing to pay you $2 an hour to pull weeds from a garden, and you might even be worth that much. Why deny the child the ability to earn a comic book? Why deny him the training that may help him to be more successful later in life?
It's also well established that the effect of minimum wages in the United States especially hurts young Negros. Minimum wage laws are racist.
Weapons: weapons laws in the U.S. are capricious at best. Limitations of the caliber and firing mechanisms on firearms are silly. Laws on garrottes, brass knuckles, and knives vary by state and in some cases by city.
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Sorry, just wrong. There's nothing about being a nation that requires that the UN recognize it. And one of the Central American or northern South American countries has no military, just a police force. Apparently, its neighbors aren't evil enough to consider it worth invading.
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all meats in america are processed to some level
Yes but only if you mean butchered by a professional, wrapped in butcher paper, and flash frozen. Granted this isn't common and you are correct that most meat is packed in carbon monoxide and/or treated with ammonia as well as being pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones all while being fed a crap diet. It is however possible to get good meat that hasn't had all of that done to it but you won't find in a regular grocery store. Go to a small meat processor in a small town that sells to the public and you would be amazed at what you can get when compared to the crap at the grocery store.
Time to offend someone