The Immortals - Ep 7: Vitalik

Intrigue

BBC

True Crime, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.6 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vitalek Buterin is the billionaire founder of Ethereum, one of the most successful blockchains and cryptocurrencies in the world. With his fortune, he is attempting to solve the problem of death by creating a longevity state - which will fast track life everlasting, without the need for regulation. They will crowdsource their longevity solutions and organise them through the blockchain. His north star is the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant. In this series, technology reporter and psychologist Aleks Krotoski explores the frontiers of the extreme longevity pioneers. They've made their money in Silicon Valley. And with their technology solutions - PayPal, Facebook, cryptocurrencies - they've ushered in the world that we live in today, with all its unintended consequences. Some of them now want to solve the "problem" of aging, or even death, and they are making bigger strides than we may think. Can they? Should they? A Pillowfort production for BBC Radio 4 New episodes released Mondays. If you're in the UK, listen to the full series of Intrigue: The Immortals first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3WEQS5W

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, a parable where the dragon represents aging, didn't always
0:11.4	have the influence in Silicon Valley it does now.
0:14.8	Entrepreneurs like Brian Johnson, who we heard from in the last episode, keeping himself
0:19.6	young with high tech rejuvenation therapies.
0:23.2	When it was written, defeating aging seemed like a crazy idea, one for the distant future.
0:30.6	Freests and magicians called down curses to no avail.
0:35.1	Warriors armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the Smiths could produce attacked
0:40.6	it.
0:41.6	But were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike.
0:45.7	It was first published in 2005 in the Academic Journal of Medical Ethics.
0:51.1	Its author was Professor Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford.
0:55.4	The Fable probably got 20,000 views.
1:00.3	Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them.
1:05.4	But the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite.
1:09.9	Eleven years later, a few more people saw it when it was republished in Philosophy
1:15.0	Now magazine, still a rarefied audience.
1:19.0	The dragon's claws, jaws and fire were so effective.
1:23.3	Its scaly arm was so impregnable and its whole nature so robust as to make it invincible
1:30.0	to any human assault.
1:32.3	The Fable made its leap to the big time, 13 years after the original publication when
1:38.8	an animated adaptation landed on YouTube and was picked up by one of the most successful
1:45.2	technology entrepreneurs of the last decade.
	...

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