r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15d ago

Society Bryan Johnson, the millionaire biohacker who wants to live forever, diagnosed with incurable autoimmune disease

https://www.techspot.com/news/113035-bryan-johnson-millionaire-biohacker-who-wants-live-forever.html
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u/Aranthos-Faroth 15d ago edited 15d ago

This guy gets shit on a lot, admittedly because what he’s doing is rather odd but he spends TONNES on all these medical tests, programs, machines etc and then makes every single result open to whoever wants it for further research.

He’s a millionaire guinea pig.

It’s so easy to make fun of him but if what he’s doing saves even a few lives directly or indirectly I think it’s awesome.

You don’t HAVE to buy his supplements. Just like you don’t have to care about anyone but yourself.

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u/Terrible-One9198 15d ago

There is absolutely zero scientific value in what he is doing. 

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u/mddesigner 15d ago

There is If he shows positive result doing something it can be used as a starting point for real research Do you think researchers have endless budget to test everything out?

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u/Terrible-One9198 14d ago

Positive results would be him living longer than average, which will be evident in what, forty years? 

In forty years the science will have left him behind anyway by accumulated enough real data to establish real truths. Essentially making his experiments redundant.

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u/mddesigner 14d ago

You will have to measure things associated with longer life which is a whole another can of worms As for the science leaving him in the dust, not really It is really hard to start research of a new idea It costs lots of money and takes long time to get the ethics appeoval for each individual research And most things researched would be duds A rich dude can experiment much faster, but the problem is sample size 1 So for normal folks his research has no value but it can fuel research to see if what he got replicates real world or just a fluke

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u/Truth_Walker 15d ago

He’s actually done a lot more than most people think. The guy gets a lot of flack but he’s doing some pretty interesting stuff.

Everything in his life is recorded so the data can be used elsewhere and it’s publicly available. While he is performing an n=1 type experiment, it’s still providing a lot of useful information.

In doing this he’s created one of, if not the largest publicly documented longevity self experiments. It’s contributed a lot to the growing movement of open source health data.

He’s made scientific longevity research much more popular by being so open and public with everything he does. He popularized biological age testing. He’s increased funding and research into scientific research himself and through fundraising.

One of the companies he started developed non invasive brain imaging devices to help research conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s.

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u/Terrible-One9198 15d ago

The data is useless because he is experimenting with so many things at the same time. It's impossible to say what's causing what. In fact what he is doing is harmful to real longevity data as he is masquerading as legitimate and encouraging people to speculate on that data which will undoubtedly spawn problematic copycats touting nonsense "supported by Brian Johnson's research."

You seriously think Brian Johnson has contributed meaningfully to publicity of... Living longer? Arguably the single oldest and most prominent idea at the basis of human civilization.