Among the most potent archetypes of our time is the elite who seeks eternal youth, whose power is drawn from the blood of lower mortals. And the most prominent of our current elites is the small upper echelon of capitalists whose technologies — social media, online retail, artificial intelligence, data surveillance — determine our present and mold our future ….
The man perhaps most associated with this desire is Peter Thiel, who once outlined his interest in blood plasma transfusions from the young as a means of extending life. …
The OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has invested $180 million of his own fortune in Retro Biosciences … aimed at stalling and potentially reversing human aging. Jeff Bezos is reportedly among the major funders of Altos Labs, a company that hopes to find stem cell therapies to extend human life spans. …
And then there is Bryan Johnson, who has devoted his online-payments fortune to the monomaniacal pursuit of eternal life through a bewildering array of approaches ….
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For now, though, no matter how greatly a person is enlarged by his wealth, his own power and prestige, there is no escaping the determinism of death.
