Thread by @balajis

Longevity has the potential to be to traditional medicine what crypto is to traditional finance. It changes the terms of the debate.

Starting with Bitcoin's rejection of central banking & endless inflation, the cryptoeconomy has challenged virtually every premise of the state-controlled, paper-based financial system that we've inherited.

So far? Plenty of risks, plenty of loss — and undeniable progress.

The conventional macroeconomic wisdom is that high inflation is bad, but that deflation is also bad, so a little inflation is good.

But there's bad deflation, often due to contraction of money supply. And then there's good deflation, due to genuine productivity increases.

Similarly, the conventional medical wisdom is that untimely death is bad, but that life extension is unrealistic or undesirable. So a "little death" is good.

But there's bad life extension, being physically old forever. And there's good life extension, which is reversing aging.

It was hard to watch the financial crisis and imagine that DC & Wall Street had figured it all out, even if they papered it over with printed money.
It was hard to watch COVID and imagine that DC & legacy medicine had figured it all out, even if it was also papered over with $$$.

Because crypto rejected fundamental premises of the legacy system — that a little inflation was good, that holding your funds was too risky, that short-term volatility was unacceptable, and so on — it was able to stake out a new, opt-in environment very different from the old.

Similarly, longevity rejects the most fundamental premise of the legacy medical system — namely that death is inevitable, and arguably desirable — and thus branches the entire biomedical tech stack in a new direction.

What does v1 of the longevity stack look like? Maybe:

- Aging biomarkers as primary metrics
- Constant monitoring of multiple analytes > tests only upon symptoms
- Telemedicine & self-care > infrequent checkups
- Fasting & keto > 3 high-carb meals a day
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Anyway, I'm proud to be putting a bit of money where my mouth is. I'm an investor in @beondeck, where @realNathanCheng + team have launched a new longevity fellowship.

Could well be a seminal program in terms of getting more people into the field...

https://twitter.com/beondeck/status/1409874345133019143

Nathan is an execution machine and cited my post from last year (balajis.com/the-purpose-of…) as part of the inspiration for his work on longevitymarketcap.com.

Very proud of what he's done so far, and looking forward to speaking in the program.

https://twitter.com/realNathanCheng/status/1409877458548150273

Also, sign up to his free newsletter. Helps me keep abreast of the longevity space.

Which, if my thesis is correct, will go from niche to everything just as crypto became all of finance. Because all of medicine is implicated in longevity...

https://twitter.com/realNathanCheng/status/1298799541811118081

I'm gradually ramping up longevity investing. Part of the thesis is that this takes over all of biomedicine eventually.

Two more interesting things in the space: loyalfordogs.com (where I'm an investor) and vitadao.com (where I'm not, but watching closely).