Longevity's Tower of Babel
- Emmanuel B. Harel
- Jan 14
- 8 min read
How an ancient quest is leading us towards the same pitfalls
“Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech….Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:7–9)
The story of the Tower of Babel is perhaps one of the most commonly understood concepts around unchecked human arrogance. It describes the story of an ancient people, striving to achieve the impossible - build a monument that would be large enough to touch and surpass god. To put shame to the natural order of things, to redefine what it means to be human. At the same time a description of human ambition and arrogance, it also clearly describes how forced communication breakdown, not the supernatural, caused the entire project to crumble down.
I believe that if we’re not careful, the entire Longevity domain will go through a similar collapse. But in this case, our downfall will not be due to a supernaturally disturbing force, rather, it risks being self-inflicted - through sustained miscommunication and misalignment of critical aims.
I elaborate on this below, focusing primarily on misaligned aims around what constitutes longevity, the dearth of truly radical innovators, the paradox of living, quantification of ‘life extension’ and miscategorisation of aging as a disease. To be clear from the outset, I am writing this precisely because I am pro-longevity, and want to ensure that we figure the complexity around aging for all mankind.
Longevity is an ancient pursuit
The term ‘longevity’ seems to have reemerged in the past 4 years following the mass health-quantification event that was COVID. However, the desire for mankind to live towards the extremities of ‘eternity’ are not a novel, 21st century tech enabled, pursuit. Since antiquity, man has desired to break the chokehold of our biggest foe - death. In ancient Babylon, the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the story of King Gilgamesh’s pursuit for a plant that will grant him eternal youth.“But if you can possess this plant, you'll be again as you were in your youth”
In medieval times, myths around the “Philosopher’s stone” and the fountain of youth were rampant, allowing the common man to believe that a quest for eternal life was indeed possible. Even in modern times, throughout the 1800s and 1900s, as the scientific method prevailed, newer and more medically motivated treatments arose - from the injection of animal testicle extracts, to the concept of calorie restriction and cryonics. The quest for eternal life, was always biology’s north star.
However, what the more modern methods have lost is the initial wonder and desire to push the limits that the slow march of the ‘scientific method’ has placed upon the field of eternity. Calorie restriction may extend life, but it will not make us live significantly longer than we do now. Here begins the disconnect between true longevity and short-term fixes.
1. Supplements are not radical enough.
If we truly believe that we are pushing the limits of human lifespan, we must question why we are anchoring ourselves to non-novel ideas around health extension. Yes, we can extend life by understanding ‘Blue Zones’ or learning that certain natural supplements help individuals potentially live longer. But are these not negligible in the grand scheme of things?
You don’t have to look too far to realise this is the case.
Natural remedies, holistic diets and cures existed well before the 1900’s. Yet when you look at the life expectancy chart across all regions, a true explosion of health only occurs in the 1900s and continues until the present day. Just 100 years ago, the average lifespan in the Americas was 45 years old. Today we are pushing on 80.
The argument here is that to obtain substantial, significant life extension, we need to be radical. We need to push the limits of tech and science and not succumb to rotating through an endless cornucopia of supplements expecting meaningful change. Although we have much to learn from the ancients, defying death is not a matter of tradition, it is a matter of challenging nature itself.
Other touted lifestyle changes - increasing sleep, eating healthier - are espoused by some of the leaders in the longevity space. But to me, this is fundamentally crushing.
How can you be satisfied with this approach when people you love are currently on their march towards death? Can you know with certainty that telling your Mother to ‘sleep more’ will ensure that she is present at her grandchildren’s wedding?
If the answer is no, we’re not trying hard enough.
To obtain substantial, significant life extension, we need to be radical. We need to push the limits of tech and science and not succumb to rotating through an endless cornucopia of supplements expecting meaningful change.
2. Healthspan is not lifespan
My biggest concern is how confused the narrative is around life-extension. Which side of Babel are you on - lifespan or health-span? Ask any of the self-professed longevity enthusiasts and they’ll tell you the same thing - health-span is the answer.
To them I would like to ask - how is what you are doing concretely promoting this?
You want to live to 100 but neglect the fact that we have a very poor understanding of actual diseases of aging. No one knows how to solve dementia for example, of which age is the strongest predictor by far.
Are we here to arbitrarily push the generally reported ‘lifespan’ metric to 85, 90 - but in its wake bring forward a wave of elderly that are struggling from neurological conditions and can’t take care of themselves?
Countries like Singapore and Japan are often looked to as gold standards for aging (84.85 and 83.86 years expectancy respectively) but they are also clear omens for our future - high dependency ratios and high dementia means a population that is likely to be bogged down by aging, not enabled by it. While I believe these countries will surpass this hurdle due to differences in East Asian policies and speed to implementation, it is unlikely that much of the West will be able to deal with this crisis as nimbly.
Some believe perhaps a bit too naively that these are problems that will fall by the wayside should we find an ‘eternal pill’. But if that was the case, we would’ve made significantly more progress in the last 100 years than we already have.
If you thought simple cells were hard, try looking into the brain.
3. Do you love life or fear death?
Recently I went on a long bike ride through the jungle with a friend, and he pointed out something particularly striking. He mentioned that among the longevity ‘elites’ the main motivation for living longer was fear of death, not, as many in the past have strived for, their love of life. There is less of a desire to extend their current experiences and enable humanity to grow, more of a desire to make up for lost time.
Like polar opposites of the same philosophical coin, this disconnect in philosophy will become the undoing of the longevity space. I believe that fundamentally, a life of abstinence, total control, and restriction is the weakest solution to longevity - the local maximum. This is unfortunately where we currently stand.
As a personal anecdote, my father prior to his untimely death got caught into the trend of intermittent fasting. Besides the fact that in his case it did nothing to delay his passing, he quickly realised something - his breakfast skipping meant that he was purposely missing out time with his family. On holidays, at home, on the weekends. He was singlehandedly restricting himself from time with us - time that I am certain he would’ve wanted had he not been worrying about an eventuality that he didn’t realise was looming around the corner.
What is the point of living a life that is totally restricted? The almost schizophrenic fear of death - the idea that anything around the corner could kill you - is this any way to live?
Is being afraid of death worth it?
The true domain of longevity will be driven by those who love life so much that they want to experience more of it.
4. We know much less than you think.
The sheer number of longevity startups and clinics belies a simple fact - we presently know nothing about how to extend human lifespan significantly. Those of us who have spent enough time grappling with biology will remember the concept of telomeres, and how we believed these were the single answer to preventing death. As time went on we realised that there has only been one recurring theme - biology is always much more complex than it originally seems.
If you go to a longevity clinic today, you will pay thousands of dollars for tests, scans, consultations. This is fine - as long as you know that you are part of the data. Your dollars are being used to learn about humanity, to train models to understand what makes us live longer. Perhaps this data will be used to uncover scientific breakthroughs that make you specifically live longer, however there is an equal or if not stronger chance that it won’t.
If the world's leading scientists haven’t cracked longevity with the wealth of science at their fingertips, what makes you think a 2-year old clinic will?
The reports of “AI enabled” analysis is nice - but we don’t even know the endpoints yet. What does ‘not-dying’ look like?
You are the endpoint.
5. Aging is not a disease.
The truth is - aging is not a disease, in the same way dementia is not a disease. As much as we’d like to address aging as a point solution with a very clear global maxima, longevity will not have that. There is unlikely to be a cure for longevity, just like there is no philosopher's stone or fountain of youth.
The solution will consist of several radical developments in the way we detect, target and recover from actual diseases. While the cure for a longevity pill is exciting, it serves to pump expectations rather than address key scientific concerns.
A longevity manifesto?
As advancements in longevity continue, questions will continue to arise. How do we ensure eternal life is democratically distributed across mankind? When do we start pushing the needle further on what we expect from the cutting-edge?
As Deutsch highlighted - "science continues to make progress even, or especially, after making great discoveries because the discoveries themselves reveal further problems".
The whole point of longevity may be that we will never truly solve it, merely advancing ourselves to the next threshold of what was previously impossible. We need to keep this in mind as we develop the next frontier of treatments - living longer is not a new goal, but we need to be clear as to what this means and what ‘smaller’ more immediate steps we need to address before this.
In order to do so, it is important that we address the 5 points above head on - so as not to be dispersed across the annals of scientific history.
Personally, I propose a 4 point manifesto for the advancement of longevity research:
Radical not incremental change: we are at a juncture in history where anything is possible. Why are we forcing ourselves to solve for mediocrity?
Healthspan not lifespan: We need to be living longer and better. This is not a discussion we can delay until we have figured one part out - both have to be conducted in tandem.
Diseases of aging, not aging as a disease: if we ignore the most difficult problems early on, we are drawing the short end of the stick. Solve the most complicated diseases of aging, come for general longevity next.
For all mankind: Once we cross all of the above concerns, we will have to start addressing the bigger questions around access & distribution. For if we are to believe that longevity is a noble pursuit, it should benefit all of humanity, not just those that have the privilege of being at the right place at the right time.
We cannot guarantee that our pursuit for the modern fountain of youth will not end in failure like the previous attempts in history. It is almost certain that we will be grappling with this problem long after this funding cycle, and decade.
However, what we can control, is our mission alignment - to achieve a supernatural objective, we need to ensure that we are united and aligned wirth our aims from day one, so as not to be dispersed like a modern Babel.
Ars longa, vita brevis./ Craft is long, life is short.
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