James and Matteo discuss deathism — the idea that death is good, inevitable, and something we should embrace. We make the technoprogressive case for treating aging as a solvable, technoscientific problem rather than a metaphysical inevitability. The conversation covers Bryan Johnson and the billionaire life-extension backlash, the concept of health span vs. lifespan, the “compression of morbidity,” ageism in bioethics (Daniel Callahan’s Setting Limits), the clinical trial regime vs. right-to-try/biohacking, gerontocracy, the old-age dependency ratio, and how to build a political coalition around longevity.
Topics Discussed
Deathism and preference falsification around death anxiety
Bryan Johnson and the “billionaire quest for immortality”
James Steinhoff’s argument on “natural oppression” vs. social oppression on the left
QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) and the economic case for longevity research
Intergenerational equity and the uncompensated care labor (mostly done by women) created by an aging population
Building a political coalition for a “longevity new deal”
Resources & Books
The Case Against Death — Ingmar Patrick Linden (referenced throughout as the main text surveying arguments for and against death/deathism)
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant — Nick Bostrom
“Transhumanism and Marxism” and “The Oppression of Nature and the Latent Transhumanism of Marxism” – James Steinhoff
The Abolition of Aging David Wood
The Immortalist — Alan Harrington
“Articulating the Case for The Longevity Dividend” – Jay Olshansky
“Towards integration of healthspan strategies into the Italian
National Health Service” – Nicola Marino, et, al.
Upcoming Events
Technoprogressive Opportunity Conference — London, September 19–20
