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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.
Well, at least if it turns wrong no one will say it was unexpected...
They'll dump it overboard and let the market incentivize cleanup.
mh
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.
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.
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
Cancer is just one of many, many things that are likely to kill you before you're 120.
Yup... and its not even the worst of the bunch. I'd put Alzheimer's on the top of the list; maybe advanced Parkinson's after that. Or a bad stroke...
Yeah, I think people underestimate the difficulty of extending life.
It isn't just one thing that needs to be fixed, some immortality gene that needs to be turned on. It's everything.
Our bodies are designed to work really well for about 45 years, and decently well for another 15-20 after, but after that we're operating outside of spec.
None of our systems evolved to work after seventy, they don't all breakdown at the same rate, but they all break down.
I think we'll hit the singularity or cyborgs before we hit average humans passing 120.
I stole this Sig
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."
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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You know what get's me about people who dream of building these Atlas-Shrugged inspired libertarian paradises? Such places already exist. They tend to be shit holes because that's what you get with no civic cooperation.
I've been to a few of them. Guatemala is, surprisingly, a true a libertarian paradise. There is, theoretically, a limited government, but in practice it does... nothing. Everybody has to provide for their own security, which leads to some interesting sights. Like AK-toting private guards at MacDonalds. I shit you not, this exists. People die pretty regularly when shoddy buildings collapse. It's not because Guatemalan engineers are too stupid to build sturdy buildings, it's just they don't have to... so why bother? Communities terrified by judicial impunity have banded together to form self-protection rings, and the result is regular lynchings. Clean water? forget it. Oh, and now flooding is an annual issue because there is no land management and the forests were all cut down (arg! evil environmentalism!).
He can build his floating libertarian paradise. It will suck, just like every other libertarian paradise. Then these dumbass Randians will simply forget it, and their new dream will be to build... A LIBERTARIAN PARADISE IN SPACE! Yeah, that'll work. A system of government that's been an abysmal failure everywhere it's been tried on earth will definitely work out IN SPACE!
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.
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
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.
Sigh. "Socialism in particular fails because the only motivation []is to improve the lives of others."
You need to go talk to people who work in a co-op business. A co-op is The People Owning The Means Of Production. Socialism. And it's awesome. It's not about making life better for others. It's about making life better for YOU. Imagine if you can, owning part of your workplace. Being able to have a say in how it's run. Being able to share in the gains. That's a LOT better (and a little riskier) than being a wage slave like you are now. It's also Totally Worth It.
I hate it when people make sweeping generalizations about something they have no practical knowledge of. Slashdot Armchair Philosophers, oh, socialism fails... You should go experience it and see just how awesome it can be.
Also, socialism isn't the best way. Neither is pure capitalism. The countries that have the happiest people in the world are mixed economies, and embrace that idea. Anyway.... I just wanted to gripe.