August 4, 2026 • 27 mins
Philosopher John Fischer thinks you should want to live forever…but not so you can see the stars or run your start-up forever. He thinks you should choose life because living can bring so much joy. And that made his argument for living forever the one Mangesh found most compelling…compelling enough that he wanted to share their conversation in this mini-episode with you, our favorite longevinauts.
John Martin Fischer is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Riverside.
- You can read his extended (and much more high-minded) debate with our favorite longevity curmudgeon, Stephen Cave, in their book: Should You Choose to Live Forever: A Debatefrom Routledge Press.
- Read about near-death experiences and other touches with immortality in John’s study for the Templeton Foundation: The Science of Immortality.
- Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray
Special thanks to Botany for the score.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
How much juice for you, sort of squeezing out of life.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In those young years, I was kind of a repressed guy.
I thought of myself as a loner, and like many
good Jewish boys, I threw myself into my studies and
so I didn't live a while the crazy life, but
I think I did internalize the lesson that one needs
(00:41):
to make the most of life, and that it can
be cut off because of political horrors and war or
natural disasters illness. So we have to, you know, in
the Latin phrase carpa dm momente maury, I have a
hold of life, see us live and remember death.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I'm mongas shittigular. This is Skyline Drive how to Live Forever.
(01:30):
In making this show, I talked to so many people
who were certain you could live forever, and people who
wanted to live forever. But there was really only one
person who thought you should want to live forever, but
didn't feel the need to bring up the singularity or
cyborgs or wanting to see Mars. Someone who thought living
was its own reason. Someone who started with joy, which
(01:53):
definitely appeals to me. John Fisher is Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at the University of California Riverside. In fact, he's
the first philosopher to hold the title of university professor
within the UC system. In all those schools from Berkeley
to San Diego, there are literally thousands of professors, but
(02:14):
only eight university professors. So John's pretty special. And you
might think someone with that post might be pretentious or
full of themselves, but John is anything but. He spent
the past five decades pondering free will, ethics, and the
metaphysics of death. In twenty twelve, he led the Templeton
Foundation's Immortality Project, exploring the science, philosophy, and theology of death,
(02:39):
immortality and near death experiences, and he went head to
head with Cambridge philosopher Stephen Cave in a book where
they each took opposite positions on whether you should live forever.
You might remember Cave's nickname, People do call me a
mortality curmudgeon. By contrast, John Fisher is a longevity booster,
which makes me curious why, Like, what is in it
(03:02):
for him? So many people in longevity have an angle,
so I was sure he had one too, And I
thought the best way to figure it out was to
start at the very beginning. So I'd love to hear
how you got so interested in ethics and what led
you to philosophy.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I grew up in a Jewish family and my father's
father had died in the Holocaust. My father had come
from Europe during the Holocaust, and unfortunately his father was
not able to leave Austro Hungary at that time. At
(03:40):
first they hoped that he would come home. Eventually it
was clear that he wouldn't and I saw my grandmother
waiting for letters from the German government and the tremendous
sadness that that involved. It got me started thinking about
both ethics and death, premature death. Then my father was
(04:02):
a physician, a cardiologist, and that was back when physicians
would make house calls and he would leave the house
at two am sometimes and come home the next morning,
and he would let us know what happened to the patient,
and sometimes they would die.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
When your dad would make these house calls and he
would come back from these visits where a patient just
wouldn't make it, what was the mood in the house.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It became almost normal, or you almost get used to
death in a way. And my father used to say
life is for the living, and so all of This
got me started thinking about death? Can it be avoided?
(04:59):
My first tea job was at Yale University and I
was asked to teach an introduction to philosophy. And I
said to my chair what should I talk about? He said,
talk about anything you want? And so I thought that
these topics are of perennial human interest, and I've got
to be able to reach the students talking about these topics.
(05:21):
And so that got me started professionally.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So how do you sort of take a path forward?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right? I was familiar with mainly contemporary Anglo American discussions
of death and the meaning of life, and there was
a classic work by the New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel,
who's now retired but still active. It was called Death
a Paper, and he discussed the attempts by philosophers going
(05:54):
back to the Greeks and specifically Epicurus, to convince us
the death being nothing to us, can't be a bad
thing for the individual who dies. It could be a
bad thing for their loved ones. But according to Epicurus
and his followers, death itself, as opposed to die, can't
(06:17):
be bad for the individual who has died because they're
no more suffering, no unpleasant experiences on the secular assumption
that there's no afterlift. So I delved into that material,
and then I talked about the opposite immortality. Can we
actually escape death entirely? I was fascinated by all this.
(06:39):
I read a famous paper by another contemporary then contemporary philosopher,
Bernard Williams. He wrote a famous paper in which he
argued that living forever would not be something that any
human being should choose, And so that's where I started.
(07:00):
I taught that article, and I thought, this has to
be wrong. This is such an extreme view. I can
see why you wouldn't want to live forever if you
had terrible chronic illness, or you were unable to feed
yourself where you didn't have adequate medical attention, or if
the environment was polluted and dirty, but under favorable circumstances,
(07:24):
I thought it was just a no brainer that you'd
want to live much, much, much longer than we actually live.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I was pretty fascinated by this. When I us first
told this cal professor wanted to live forever, I was
thinking he'd be some Ein Rand type, a total individualist,
someone who believes that there are no limits on what
a person should be able to do, but starting where
he started, with his grandmother impertly waiting for news that
never came of her husband's survival. Knowing how cruelly and
(08:05):
tragically that life had been cut short, and from his
father's experience of coming home defeated by death, I couldn't
help but think differently about his stance. I wondered, how
did his pro longevity positions show up in his life?
Was he eating ashraganda and his overnight oats or taking
creatine before hitting the gym? So I asked him one
(08:28):
question I've been asking everyone is what do you do
for your own health? Are there any things you've done
to expand your health span?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I believe in health span and what I call joy span,
which some people who want to live forever devote so
much time to energy to their health that I'm not
sure that they enjoy life. But I think the capacity
for joy is important. You know, Over the course of
my life, unfortunately, I did a lot to worsen my health,
(09:00):
or at least to make my long term prognosis not great.
I used to be really overweight and sedentary, and I
drank regularly and seven years ago, I had a stroke
and that was a real wake up cough. I'm really
now devoted to doing whatever I can to avoid a
second stroke and to live as long as I can
(09:24):
with a high quality life.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
In the midst of our conversation, I heard a sudden,
yowing sound. John's daughter Zoe was visiting, and one of
her cats had knocked into the room where John was recording,
so he started calling for help to remove the intruder,
at which point one of his casts decided to join
the fun and well feline chaos.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And Zoe, Okay, I'm doing something where I need total quiet. Okay,
so Vinny can't be in there. They heard that. Oh okay,
now another cat has come in. Zoe, all right, I'll
just be right back. We have six six cats. No no, no,
(10:08):
oh no.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I love the idea of thinking about these high philosophical
questions and a cat wandering through. I feel like cats
and kids love.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah. Well, I can tell you I've been asked to
give a keynote lecture to a conference on the Meaning
of life at the University of Oklahoma at the end
of March. And I'm working on my lecture and at
the same time I'm reading a book by John Gray,
an Oxford philosopher, called Cats and the Meaning of Life.
(10:40):
So I've been thinking about that a lot in between
thinking of cats and the Meaning of Life and cleaning
their litter boxes.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And then I ask a question, you know, just asking
for a friend. If you were talking to an individual
and they're not interested in a radically extended or an
immortal life, what would you tell them or ask them
to consider.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
As we get older, we in fact suffer from the
afflictions of older age. Even if we're in good shape.
Our memories are less reliable, and we're less able to
move around without pain. And I think people tend to
extrapolate and say, gosh, if I'm suffering this much now,
(11:32):
it's just going to get worse and worse. And perhaps
we've seen elderly parents who we might use the word
gone downhill in terms of their health and then their
psychological well being, and we just don't want that, And
I totally understand, But I would ask the individual to
imagine reasonably comfortable external surroundings and good health, good help,
(11:57):
maybe not perfect health. Ask them whether that would change
the equation, and remind them that there are still even
if life is different now, and even in my seventies
I realized life is different, there's still wonderful, wonderful, rewarding
activities that give our life meaning. And the more time
(12:20):
we have, the more opportunities we have to pursue those
things that give our lives meaning.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
As we think about these lives that may extend to
one hundred and fifty, how would you envision that life
and the way that we sort of reinterpret those chapters
we might not be expecting.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, that's hard, but it would be the same as
our current finite or you could say mortal lives. In
a lot of ways, you'd want to pursue things you love, activities, athletic, intellectual,
artistic friendshipsationships, love those things that give us meaning. You
(13:04):
would still want to avoid pain and suffering and loneliness
and depression. So in many ways life would be the same.
It would be different though in that we would have
much more time. Part of that would then change expectations
and friendships and perhaps marriages. If you just think of
(13:28):
contracts and legal arrangements we make now in terms of life,
insurance and pensions and other arrangements, we'd probably have to
rethink all those things. Could a marriage last one hundred
and sixty years? Could a marriage last six thousand years?
(13:51):
Interesting questions. Even in our mortal lives as we lead
them now, marriage can be challenging. I mean, the statistics
are what about fifty percent of marriages and in divorce,
and even the ones that are incredibly successful have they
evolve over time and they have to be spiced up,
as we say, from time to time. So bottom line,
(14:15):
we'd have to ask the question, would there be enough
that's the same and that's good to make it really
worthy of choice to live for one hundred and sixty years.
I think it could be, but I agree it would
be very different.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Then. Just as doctor will Maher had brought up the
two worm problem, that we humans might divide into two species,
one that'll live forever and one that'll live out are
short and mortal lives in tough environments, John Fisher took
me to a place I'd never considered when thinking about
the possibility of living forever.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In terms of the social issues, I think we could
imagine a world in which many people are immortal in
the sense of radical life extension, and we do not
allow them to have children that would be a requirement,
(15:17):
because otherwise, if there are a significant number of people
who are immortal and they can have children and their
children can be immortal, there will be increasing pressure on
the environment and that will cause deterioration of the environment
and social catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
We have to take a quick break, but when we
come back, John explains how the fear of death is
similar to a fear of boredom and why do you
find certain longevity influencers so off putting. Stay tuned, Welcome
(16:19):
back to this mini bonus episode of Skyline Drive How
to Live Forever. I'm speaking with the distinguished philosopher John Fisher,
and just as a heads up, the conversation you're about
to hear includes talk of suicide and also Brian Johnson's genitals.
I'm so sorry for the last part. I want to
ask a question about suicide because there is some suicide
(16:40):
in my family and I was curious, do you think
if radical life extension, or this idea of being immortal happens, like,
will we change our perceptions about this idea of tapping out.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Some people have suggested that you'd be losing so much
more if you have the prospects of living forever, and
you realize there are prospects for cure and improvement of
whatever is bothering you, maybe it would just be a
tremendous deterrent to choosing that you would be losing so
(17:13):
much against that is the idea that if you're really
suffering often you don't think there'll be any chance for improvement,
then there's much more to lose by choosing immortality. So
I think that they might kind of cancel out. We
shouldn't accept a double standard when we're evaluating mortal lives
(17:34):
and immortal lives, and in our mortal lives, I think
it's important that we develop mechanisms for a physician assisted suicide.
I have seen too many individuals in the end states
of Alzheimer's, including my mother and other loved ones with
advanced cancer, in which I just think it's a crime,
(17:57):
frankly to not give them the opportunit unity to select
their own way of dying. And so I think it
should be the same. In an immortal life.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
The end of life is an ultimate deadline and it
forces certain actions and things, and so like in an
extended life, can you or how do you get that propulsion?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I guess they're different reasons why we want to get
off the couch and be active in our lives athletically
or in terms of our careers, or meeting people for
romantic or close friendships or collegial relationships. Death is not
the only reason we care about these things. The limitations
(18:41):
of time are not the only propulsive or motivating factors.
As matter of fact, many people think the fear of
boredom is just as bad as the fear of death,
or many people think it's very similar, because when you're bored,
you just are an interesting than anything. Nothing grabs your
(19:02):
attention in a way that makes you want to get
actively involved. Now death is like that too, although it's
a more extreme version of it. So I think what
gives us energy is not just the sense of finity,
but it's wanting to do what we love and wanting
to avoid what we hate.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I have that feeling when I go for a swim
in the ocean. I think I've just been comfortably floating
and swimming a bit, and then I look back at
the shore and see I've drifted much farther out than
I'd realized. And so it makes me wonder should we
all be doing everything we can swapping blood and taking
hundreds of supplements.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I'm in the big tent of pro launche people radical
life extension. But interestingly, the people who turn me off
or for whom I have most of days, are in
this camp. I think the people who are quite conservative
about life extension and want to focus our resources and
(20:17):
energy on the problems we have. I can deal with that.
I think it's too conservative because often it's just an
apology for the status quo, and we get a lot
by reaching farther than maybe we have a right to
hope to achieve. But I can deal with that. But
the people like Brian Johnson who go to these extremes
(20:38):
in terms of the use of resources. Frankly, I believe
he measures his penis and maybe his erection every morning
or every day.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Through the night. The number of erections he has a
night is like account.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh, well, maybe I'm just jealous, but I just think
that that's totally off putting. It's just taking it to
an extreme. Also, the cryogenics stuff, to me, I mean,
if you have that much money, why not devote resources
(21:13):
to solving the problems we have now or helping the
people who don't even have enough food to eat or
adequate medical care. Now, of course you might say, well,
if you're a billionaire, you can afford to do both.
But what I would say is, we have pressing problems now,
and by doing interesting innovative research that seeks to solve
(21:41):
the problems that cause us to die early, that's great,
that's great. But to reach for possibility of uploading and
cryogenic preservation and the kind of extreme body hacking that
you see put me off. I think I'm somewhat in between.
(22:03):
Ray Kurtzweil apparently he takes one hundred or two hundred
prescription pills and supplements envitamins every day in an attempt
to live long enough that will achieve what he calls
the singularity, or a situation in which will be superrational
and be able to upload ourselves. And Aubrey de Gray,
(22:26):
another longevity guy, thinks that within thirty to fifty years
we will have solved the problems that the seven major
reasons why we die early, cancer, Alzheimer's, art disease. These
people are radically out of touch with reality. We will
not achieve those goals in thirty or fifty years, or
(22:48):
in any of our lifetimes. The adolescent quality of it
bothers me.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
You know, I read this quote about you that says
fish equips that the vampire as populating American movies and
television series show quote that achieving immortality by a certain
means having to suck someone else's blood can be unjust
or problematic. So talk to me a little bit about
the ethics of if you could live forever or for
(23:18):
a long time, but have to do it by some
means of either hurting or draining someone else.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, excellent, man, that's what I think the vampire literature.
One thing it brings out. I started thinking about these
issues when I was teaching Bernard Williams famous article, and
I saw so many really brilliant philosophers agreed with him.
It was almost like a knee jerk reaction, because Bernard
Williams is very smart, excellent, insightful philosopher. It resonated with people,
(23:46):
but it didn't with me so much. And his view
was there's something intrinsic or inside us, something that's part
of human nature, which is such that we would inevitably
integrate and unravel if we had a radically extended life.
Reminded me of my stepdaughter who would begin to unravel
(24:09):
after eight hours in the station wagon, and then certainly
by twenty three hours across country, she would have totally
unraveled and disintegrated. I just didn't believe that the social
(24:29):
problems are the most important for human beings. The intellectual
issues aren't deeply, profoundly interesting to me and to many people,
But in terms of human importance, we have to first
solve the problems of global climate change and increasingly problematic
(24:52):
deterioration of our environment before we can really seriously consider
the possibilities of radically extended lives. They won't be feasible
practical options unless we can first address environmental concerns and
(25:14):
also the social inequities and injustices that currently exist all
over the world and certainly in the United States. We
have to address those, or the resources for achieving greater
and greater longevity and maybe even a kind of immortality
(25:38):
would only be available to the wealthy and the privilege,
and this would just make worse the deep social inequities
that we have now.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I don't know what I was expected from John Fisher,
but I love that he wants us to think about
the climate before thinking about radical life. Extension that he
sees deep social inequities and injustices and hopes that we
can address those two. And it tickles me that in
a conversation with our heads in the clouds about immortality,
(26:19):
it can all come to a halt. Thanks to a
couple of cats. A big thank you to John Fisher
for making time to chat with me, to Zoe for
her animal wrangling. Thank you to Lizzie Jacobs, our showrunner,
Mary Philip Sandy, our brilliant producer and researcher, and the
endlessly connected Mark Steven Allen for producing this interview and
(26:40):
mini episode. And thank you as always to our editor
Mark Lotto who finally relented. And a big big thank
you to Dylan Fagan for mixing this. Dylan, you are
the best. If you haven't checked out Skyline Drive How
to Live Forever, please please give it a listen. All
the episodes are out now so you can binge it
(27:01):
at your convenience. Thank you so much for tuning in.
How much juice for you, sort of squeezing out of life.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In those young years, I was kind of a repressed guy.
I thought of myself as a loner, and like many
good Jewish boys, I threw myself into my studies and
so I didn't live a while the crazy life, but
I think I did internalize the lesson that one needs
(00:41):
to make the most of life, and that it can
be cut off because of political horrors and war or
natural disasters illness. So we have to, you know, in
the Latin phrase carpa dm momente maury, I have a
hold of life, see us live and remember death.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I'm mongas shittigular. This is Skyline Drive how to Live Forever.
(01:30):
In making this show, I talked to so many people
who were certain you could live forever, and people who
wanted to live forever. But there was really only one
person who thought you should want to live forever, but
didn't feel the need to bring up the singularity or
cyborgs or wanting to see Mars. Someone who thought living
was its own reason. Someone who started with joy, which
(01:53):
definitely appeals to me. John Fisher is Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy at the University of California Riverside. In fact, he's
the first philosopher to hold the title of university professor
within the UC system. In all those schools from Berkeley
to San Diego, there are literally thousands of professors, but
(02:14):
only eight university professors. So John's pretty special. And you
might think someone with that post might be pretentious or
full of themselves, but John is anything but. He spent
the past five decades pondering free will, ethics, and the
metaphysics of death. In twenty twelve, he led the Templeton
Foundation's Immortality Project, exploring the science, philosophy, and theology of death,
(02:39):
immortality and near death experiences, and he went head to
head with Cambridge philosopher Stephen Cave in a book where
they each took opposite positions on whether you should live forever.
You might remember Cave's nickname, People do call me a
mortality curmudgeon. By contrast, John Fisher is a longevity booster,
which makes me curious why, Like, what is in it
(03:02):
for him? So many people in longevity have an angle,
so I was sure he had one too, And I
thought the best way to figure it out was to
start at the very beginning. So I'd love to hear
how you got so interested in ethics and what led
you to philosophy.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I grew up in a Jewish family and my father's
father had died in the Holocaust. My father had come
from Europe during the Holocaust, and unfortunately his father was
not able to leave Austro Hungary at that time. At
(03:40):
first they hoped that he would come home. Eventually it
was clear that he wouldn't and I saw my grandmother
waiting for letters from the German government and the tremendous
sadness that that involved. It got me started thinking about
both ethics and death, premature death. Then my father was
(04:02):
a physician, a cardiologist, and that was back when physicians
would make house calls and he would leave the house
at two am sometimes and come home the next morning,
and he would let us know what happened to the patient,
and sometimes they would die.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
When your dad would make these house calls and he
would come back from these visits where a patient just
wouldn't make it, what was the mood in the house.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It became almost normal, or you almost get used to
death in a way. And my father used to say
life is for the living, and so all of This
got me started thinking about death? Can it be avoided?
(04:59):
My first tea job was at Yale University and I
was asked to teach an introduction to philosophy. And I
said to my chair what should I talk about? He said,
talk about anything you want? And so I thought that
these topics are of perennial human interest, and I've got
to be able to reach the students talking about these topics.
(05:21):
And so that got me started professionally.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So how do you sort of take a path forward?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right? I was familiar with mainly contemporary Anglo American discussions
of death and the meaning of life, and there was
a classic work by the New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel,
who's now retired but still active. It was called Death
a Paper, and he discussed the attempts by philosophers going
(05:54):
back to the Greeks and specifically Epicurus, to convince us
the death being nothing to us, can't be a bad
thing for the individual who dies. It could be a
bad thing for their loved ones. But according to Epicurus
and his followers, death itself, as opposed to die, can't
(06:17):
be bad for the individual who has died because they're
no more suffering, no unpleasant experiences on the secular assumption
that there's no afterlift. So I delved into that material,
and then I talked about the opposite immortality. Can we
actually escape death entirely? I was fascinated by all this.
(06:39):
I read a famous paper by another contemporary then contemporary philosopher,
Bernard Williams. He wrote a famous paper in which he
argued that living forever would not be something that any
human being should choose, And so that's where I started.
(07:00):
I taught that article, and I thought, this has to
be wrong. This is such an extreme view. I can
see why you wouldn't want to live forever if you
had terrible chronic illness, or you were unable to feed
yourself where you didn't have adequate medical attention, or if
the environment was polluted and dirty, but under favorable circumstances,
(07:24):
I thought it was just a no brainer that you'd
want to live much, much, much longer than we actually live.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I was pretty fascinated by this. When I us first
told this cal professor wanted to live forever, I was
thinking he'd be some Ein Rand type, a total individualist,
someone who believes that there are no limits on what
a person should be able to do, but starting where
he started, with his grandmother impertly waiting for news that
never came of her husband's survival. Knowing how cruelly and
(08:05):
tragically that life had been cut short, and from his
father's experience of coming home defeated by death, I couldn't
help but think differently about his stance. I wondered, how
did his pro longevity positions show up in his life?
Was he eating ashraganda and his overnight oats or taking
creatine before hitting the gym? So I asked him one
(08:28):
question I've been asking everyone is what do you do
for your own health? Are there any things you've done
to expand your health span?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I believe in health span and what I call joy span,
which some people who want to live forever devote so
much time to energy to their health that I'm not
sure that they enjoy life. But I think the capacity
for joy is important. You know, Over the course of
my life, unfortunately, I did a lot to worsen my health,
(09:00):
or at least to make my long term prognosis not great.
I used to be really overweight and sedentary, and I
drank regularly and seven years ago, I had a stroke
and that was a real wake up cough. I'm really
now devoted to doing whatever I can to avoid a
second stroke and to live as long as I can
(09:24):
with a high quality life.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
In the midst of our conversation, I heard a sudden,
yowing sound. John's daughter Zoe was visiting, and one of
her cats had knocked into the room where John was recording,
so he started calling for help to remove the intruder,
at which point one of his casts decided to join
the fun and well feline chaos.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And Zoe, Okay, I'm doing something where I need total quiet. Okay,
so Vinny can't be in there. They heard that. Oh okay,
now another cat has come in. Zoe, all right, I'll
just be right back. We have six six cats. No no, no,
(10:08):
oh no.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I love the idea of thinking about these high philosophical
questions and a cat wandering through. I feel like cats
and kids love.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah. Well, I can tell you I've been asked to
give a keynote lecture to a conference on the Meaning
of life at the University of Oklahoma at the end
of March. And I'm working on my lecture and at
the same time I'm reading a book by John Gray,
an Oxford philosopher, called Cats and the Meaning of Life.
(10:40):
So I've been thinking about that a lot in between
thinking of cats and the Meaning of Life and cleaning
their litter boxes.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And then I ask a question, you know, just asking
for a friend. If you were talking to an individual
and they're not interested in a radically extended or an
immortal life, what would you tell them or ask them
to consider.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
As we get older, we in fact suffer from the
afflictions of older age. Even if we're in good shape.
Our memories are less reliable, and we're less able to
move around without pain. And I think people tend to
extrapolate and say, gosh, if I'm suffering this much now,
(11:32):
it's just going to get worse and worse. And perhaps
we've seen elderly parents who we might use the word
gone downhill in terms of their health and then their
psychological well being, and we just don't want that, And
I totally understand, But I would ask the individual to
imagine reasonably comfortable external surroundings and good health, good help,
(11:57):
maybe not perfect health. Ask them whether that would change
the equation, and remind them that there are still even
if life is different now, and even in my seventies
I realized life is different, there's still wonderful, wonderful, rewarding
activities that give our life meaning. And the more time
(12:20):
we have, the more opportunities we have to pursue those
things that give our lives meaning.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
As we think about these lives that may extend to
one hundred and fifty, how would you envision that life
and the way that we sort of reinterpret those chapters
we might not be expecting.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, that's hard, but it would be the same as
our current finite or you could say mortal lives. In
a lot of ways, you'd want to pursue things you love, activities, athletic, intellectual,
artistic friendshipsationships, love those things that give us meaning. You
(13:04):
would still want to avoid pain and suffering and loneliness
and depression. So in many ways life would be the same.
It would be different though in that we would have
much more time. Part of that would then change expectations
and friendships and perhaps marriages. If you just think of
(13:28):
contracts and legal arrangements we make now in terms of life,
insurance and pensions and other arrangements, we'd probably have to
rethink all those things. Could a marriage last one hundred
and sixty years? Could a marriage last six thousand years?
(13:51):
Interesting questions. Even in our mortal lives as we lead
them now, marriage can be challenging. I mean, the statistics
are what about fifty percent of marriages and in divorce,
and even the ones that are incredibly successful have they
evolve over time and they have to be spiced up,
as we say, from time to time. So bottom line,
(14:15):
we'd have to ask the question, would there be enough
that's the same and that's good to make it really
worthy of choice to live for one hundred and sixty years.
I think it could be, but I agree it would
be very different.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Then. Just as doctor will Maher had brought up the
two worm problem, that we humans might divide into two species,
one that'll live forever and one that'll live out are
short and mortal lives in tough environments, John Fisher took
me to a place I'd never considered when thinking about
the possibility of living forever.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In terms of the social issues, I think we could
imagine a world in which many people are immortal in
the sense of radical life extension, and we do not
allow them to have children that would be a requirement,
(15:17):
because otherwise, if there are a significant number of people
who are immortal and they can have children and their
children can be immortal, there will be increasing pressure on
the environment and that will cause deterioration of the environment
and social catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
We have to take a quick break, but when we
come back, John explains how the fear of death is
similar to a fear of boredom and why do you
find certain longevity influencers so off putting. Stay tuned, Welcome
(16:19):
back to this mini bonus episode of Skyline Drive How
to Live Forever. I'm speaking with the distinguished philosopher John Fisher,
and just as a heads up, the conversation you're about
to hear includes talk of suicide and also Brian Johnson's genitals.
I'm so sorry for the last part. I want to
ask a question about suicide because there is some suicide
(16:40):
in my family and I was curious, do you think
if radical life extension, or this idea of being immortal happens, like,
will we change our perceptions about this idea of tapping out.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Some people have suggested that you'd be losing so much
more if you have the prospects of living forever, and
you realize there are prospects for cure and improvement of
whatever is bothering you, maybe it would just be a
tremendous deterrent to choosing that you would be losing so
(17:13):
much against that is the idea that if you're really
suffering often you don't think there'll be any chance for improvement,
then there's much more to lose by choosing immortality. So
I think that they might kind of cancel out. We
shouldn't accept a double standard when we're evaluating mortal lives
(17:34):
and immortal lives, and in our mortal lives, I think
it's important that we develop mechanisms for a physician assisted suicide.
I have seen too many individuals in the end states
of Alzheimer's, including my mother and other loved ones with
advanced cancer, in which I just think it's a crime,
(17:57):
frankly to not give them the opportunit unity to select
their own way of dying. And so I think it
should be the same. In an immortal life.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
The end of life is an ultimate deadline and it
forces certain actions and things, and so like in an
extended life, can you or how do you get that propulsion?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I guess they're different reasons why we want to get
off the couch and be active in our lives athletically
or in terms of our careers, or meeting people for
romantic or close friendships or collegial relationships. Death is not
the only reason we care about these things. The limitations
(18:41):
of time are not the only propulsive or motivating factors.
As matter of fact, many people think the fear of
boredom is just as bad as the fear of death,
or many people think it's very similar, because when you're bored,
you just are an interesting than anything. Nothing grabs your
(19:02):
attention in a way that makes you want to get
actively involved. Now death is like that too, although it's
a more extreme version of it. So I think what
gives us energy is not just the sense of finity,
but it's wanting to do what we love and wanting
to avoid what we hate.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I have that feeling when I go for a swim
in the ocean. I think I've just been comfortably floating
and swimming a bit, and then I look back at
the shore and see I've drifted much farther out than
I'd realized. And so it makes me wonder should we
all be doing everything we can swapping blood and taking
hundreds of supplements.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I'm in the big tent of pro launche people radical
life extension. But interestingly, the people who turn me off
or for whom I have most of days, are in
this camp. I think the people who are quite conservative
about life extension and want to focus our resources and
(20:17):
energy on the problems we have. I can deal with that.
I think it's too conservative because often it's just an
apology for the status quo, and we get a lot
by reaching farther than maybe we have a right to
hope to achieve. But I can deal with that. But
the people like Brian Johnson who go to these extremes
(20:38):
in terms of the use of resources. Frankly, I believe
he measures his penis and maybe his erection every morning
or every day.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Through the night. The number of erections he has a
night is like account.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh, well, maybe I'm just jealous, but I just think
that that's totally off putting. It's just taking it to
an extreme. Also, the cryogenics stuff, to me, I mean,
if you have that much money, why not devote resources
(21:13):
to solving the problems we have now or helping the
people who don't even have enough food to eat or
adequate medical care. Now, of course you might say, well,
if you're a billionaire, you can afford to do both.
But what I would say is, we have pressing problems now,
and by doing interesting innovative research that seeks to solve
(21:41):
the problems that cause us to die early, that's great,
that's great. But to reach for possibility of uploading and
cryogenic preservation and the kind of extreme body hacking that
you see put me off. I think I'm somewhat in between.
(22:03):
Ray Kurtzweil apparently he takes one hundred or two hundred
prescription pills and supplements envitamins every day in an attempt
to live long enough that will achieve what he calls
the singularity, or a situation in which will be superrational
and be able to upload ourselves. And Aubrey de Gray,
(22:26):
another longevity guy, thinks that within thirty to fifty years
we will have solved the problems that the seven major
reasons why we die early, cancer, Alzheimer's, art disease. These
people are radically out of touch with reality. We will
not achieve those goals in thirty or fifty years, or
(22:48):
in any of our lifetimes. The adolescent quality of it
bothers me.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
You know, I read this quote about you that says
fish equips that the vampire as populating American movies and
television series show quote that achieving immortality by a certain
means having to suck someone else's blood can be unjust
or problematic. So talk to me a little bit about
the ethics of if you could live forever or for
(23:18):
a long time, but have to do it by some
means of either hurting or draining someone else.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, excellent, man, that's what I think the vampire literature.
One thing it brings out. I started thinking about these
issues when I was teaching Bernard Williams famous article, and
I saw so many really brilliant philosophers agreed with him.
It was almost like a knee jerk reaction, because Bernard
Williams is very smart, excellent, insightful philosopher. It resonated with people,
(23:46):
but it didn't with me so much. And his view
was there's something intrinsic or inside us, something that's part
of human nature, which is such that we would inevitably
integrate and unravel if we had a radically extended life.
Reminded me of my stepdaughter who would begin to unravel
(24:09):
after eight hours in the station wagon, and then certainly
by twenty three hours across country, she would have totally
unraveled and disintegrated. I just didn't believe that the social
(24:29):
problems are the most important for human beings. The intellectual
issues aren't deeply, profoundly interesting to me and to many people,
But in terms of human importance, we have to first
solve the problems of global climate change and increasingly problematic
(24:52):
deterioration of our environment before we can really seriously consider
the possibilities of radically extended lives. They won't be feasible
practical options unless we can first address environmental concerns and
(25:14):
also the social inequities and injustices that currently exist all
over the world and certainly in the United States. We
have to address those, or the resources for achieving greater
and greater longevity and maybe even a kind of immortality
(25:38):
would only be available to the wealthy and the privilege,
and this would just make worse the deep social inequities
that we have now.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I don't know what I was expected from John Fisher,
but I love that he wants us to think about
the climate before thinking about radical life. Extension that he
sees deep social inequities and injustices and hopes that we
can address those two. And it tickles me that in
a conversation with our heads in the clouds about immortality,
(26:19):
it can all come to a halt. Thanks to a
couple of cats. A big thank you to John Fisher
for making time to chat with me, to Zoe for
her animal wrangling. Thank you to Lizzie Jacobs, our showrunner,
Mary Philip Sandy, our brilliant producer and researcher, and the
endlessly connected Mark Steven Allen for producing this interview and
(26:40):
mini episode. And thank you as always to our editor
Mark Lotto who finally relented. And a big big thank
you to Dylan Fagan for mixing this. Dylan, you are
the best. If you haven't checked out Skyline Drive How
to Live Forever, please please give it a listen. All
the episodes are out now so you can binge it
(27:01):
at your convenience. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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