It often seems like people are both too optimistic and too pessimistic about the longevity field... There's wishful thinking that makes laypeople like me assume that better and better solutions will emerge as a result of current efforts or unpredictable advances in AI. There are also scientists who are convinced that a specific approach or combination will eventually solve aging—or at least buy us time to do so, even though there are still critical problems they don’t know how to go about solving. Then there are scientists who reject the belief that we can beat aging. They speak of Healthspan, recognizing that the problem of aging is too complex to solve in its entirety. They believe the best we can do (and that’s already a lot!) is to compress morbidity and spend more of our lifespan in generally good health (maybe live a tad longer, too).
Jean Hebert is unique in that scene because he agrees with the pessimists that there are no roadmaps to solving aging that justify optimism. However, his pessimism led him to develop an approach that bypasses the critical unsolved obstacles to beating aging. I really enjoyed our chat. I see him as a true pioneer, and I’m excited to see him receiving the attention and trust he deserves, now joining ARPA-H with an extremely ambitious project.
A few years ago, Jean told me we need a Moonshot project for aging. It looks like we’re getting there (more about that in part II).