Musk's ultimate need is to live to 100 years of quality. However, fate repeatedly joked with him.
Recently, the news that elon Musk, the world's richest man and Tesla boss, was infected with the Virus of Theseus (the hero of Greek mythology) once again swept the world. In fact, before that, Musk had already "collided with the former". According to Reuters, in November 2020, after receiving four virus tests, Musk announced through social networking sites that he was confirmed to be infected with the new crown.
Within a year and a half, the 51-year-old Musk was tripped by "Theseus" twice, which is almost a cliché for him who says that "if humans survive too long, it will suffocate society." Careful netizens found that Musk himself is actually "duplicitous", when he named the virus Theseus, he has buried the grass snake line to the "ultimate dream".
Perhaps many people know little about the Greek hero, Theseus, but the "Ship of Theseus" has long been a household name in the Western world: Theseus gradually replaced the decaying wood on the ship until all the wood was not the original wood, and the ship was still a ship. But in the eyes of biologists, it has another metaphor, "Can human beings, like the ship of Theseus, constantly replace the broken organs, so as to achieve a breakthrough in the limit of lifespan?" ”
In fact, in recent years, scientists have long been eager to try to land the "Ship of Theseus" on the ground, and there are many shocking moves.
In January 2016, after 18 hours of surgery, The team of Ren Xiaoping of Harbin Medical University successfully changed the head of a monkey and realized the blood supply of the new combination. However, the monkeys survived only 20 hours before they were declared dead, and it is reported that the operation cost no less than 70 million.
In January 2022, 57-year-old American billionaire David Bennett underwent the world's first swine heart transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Despite Bennett's own bad deeds, he managed to survive for 2 months by spending millions of dollars to "exchange pig hearts". Before that, the "oil king" Rockefeller had already tasted the sweetness of changing the heart, and after spending $200 million to change the heart 6 times, the old man finally lived to the age of 101 and stood at the top of the human life chain.
However, in reality, there are also some rich people who have found another way to try to make the "ship of Theseus" old and strong. At the beginning of 2019, Pan Shiyi, a real estate tycoon who has not yet stood on the opposite side of the Chinese people, excitedly "show off his health" on Weibo, and got a similar "Yuanzhijin" life substance donated by MIT friends, which not only has a good mental state, but also grows faster (metabolism accelerates). As a result, many fans called and called "rejuvenation".
In the same year, realizing that the "singularity moment" was approaching, Musk also had a new idea, and he pushed the brain-computer interface into the public eye. According to Musk's vision, in the future, people can host those unique things, such as personality and memory, in machines, so as to achieve a different way of immortality. To this end, the technology maniac has conducted experiments on piglets, monkeys, and even last year monkeys can skillfully play video games with the help of brain-computer interfaces.
Under the influence of Musk's immortal dream, Musk's mother, the well-known supermodel Meyer Musk, has also become a member of the rich "dream chasing group". According to foreign media reports, Meyer has always been scornful of dietary supplements, but is only interested in life substances similar to Pan Shiyi's favorite "YuanZhijin". To this end, she has already started a journey of experimentation, and led the "daughter-in-law" Grimes to taste the early adopters. It is reported that this substance has been repeatedly verified by top medical laboratories such as Harvard, Tokyo, and the University of Washington, and has obvious potential for delaying aging and aging in mammals, and even promoting the significant expansion of the life cycle of the latter. After a period of baptism, Meyer, who is now in her 70s, is no less energetic than a 40-year-old young man and is still active on the catwalk.
In fact, the rich are well versed in the principle of "no rabbits and no eagles", Rockefeller, Pan Shiyi, Meyer are not vulgar, and others are no exception. The beijing/east platform research data shows that in recent years, similar "yuanzhijin" technology has become a popular list of rich people, of which millionaires account for more than 90%. Perhaps this is in response to the "singularity moment" proposed by Ray Kurzweil, Google's chief futurist, to obtain more private and forward-looking information for the wealthy, and the natural spring river plumbing has been prophetic.
Never hiding his hatred for the disease, Musk can't help but lament after being infected with the new crown again: How many genes must be changed to make it no longer the new crown virus? Obviously, the tech mogul is not uninterested in physical longevity, and from the first infection in 2020, Musk has changed the tone and vaccinated 5 children. In the past hundred years, vaccines have been recognized by scientists as the biggest "killer" to improve the average life expectancy of human beings.
In an exclusive interview with Playboy magazine, futurist Kurzweil predicted that in the near future, technology will make us smarter and healthier, that humans will begin to achieve immortality in 2029, and that long-distance sex will happen. At that time, whether the "Ship of Theseus" can land in the world, the rich celebrities represented by Musk and Pan Shiyi seem to have made a choice with their feet.