All In The Mind Our millennia-long obsession with immortality
17 snips
May 2, 2026 
Aleks Krotoski, social psychologist and tech journalist who wrote The Immortalists, tours the long human fixation on dodging death. She sketches bizarre historical experiments and Silicon Valley biohacking. She maps competing immortality camps, debates merging with AI, and flags the wealth, politics and biases shaping who gets to chase forever.
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Why Wealth Drives Immortality Obsession
- Wealth enables longevity pursuits because rich people have time, money and comfortable lives.
- Aleks Krotoski argues mostly Western, Judeo-Christian, often white men in Silicon Valley treat aging as the next solvable technical problem.
The Mortality Paradox Drives Our Projects
- The mortality paradox fuels civilization: we can't truly imagine non-existence yet we live pretending we won't die.
- Aleks Krotoski cites Stephen Cave's concept that fear and incomprehension of death drive human projects.
Longevity Escape Velocity Strategy
- Biohackers aim to maintain low biological age now so future advances can prevent disease — called longevity escape velocity.
- Aleks Krotoski explains the strategy: stay biologically young long enough to benefit from future cures.
