Ben Best's Blog

As I mentioned before, I wrote Wikipedia entry on LIFE EXTENSION and "took ownership" of it. But I am now more conscious of how much "policing" and "argumentation" this can require. I don't want to be reverting the material of others and I don't want to be arguing with them about it. There are too many ignorant people who are ignorant of their ignorance who make silly & ignorant revisions. I don't want to bear the cost of time, energy or argumentative upset to keep the LIFE EXTENSION page to a high level of quality and a source of pride. I do want people to be well-informed about life extension, but I think it is better to use my energy and time in areas where I have more control over the product, such as my Mechanisms of Aging webpage and the writing I do for the Cryonics Institute.

Therefore, the last version of the Wikipedia entry for LIFE EXTENSION for which I can take pride and of which I regard as an excellent overview of the subject is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Life_extension&oldid=31948154

In October I engaged in a month-long debate with Aubrey de Grey on the
SAGE KE Community Bulletin Board (Bulletin Board in the Science of Aging Knowledge Environment at the SCIENCE MAGAZINE website). This news is probably not too helpful for most of the readers of blogs insofar as access to the SAGE KE website is only available to those who have full access to the SCIENCE website and have paid for access to SAGE KE.

Nonetheless, the debate was distinctive in a number of ways. The first of which is that it is the most sustained debate that has ever appeared on the SAGE KE Community Bulletin Board. (This is visually very obvious just by looking at the postings.) The second is that it was a sequence of 11 postings (6 by me, 5 by Aubrey) over a period of about a month, Aubrey and I replying to each other in turn. (No one else got involved in the debate.) Most amazing, however, is that Aubrey seems to have given-up and has allowed me to have the last word (despite the fact that some of my "last words" were questions). I didn't really expect it to go on forever, but I wasn't finished quite yet. But without further comments from Aubrey, I will let the matter drop. I am not particularly counting this as a "victory". It is actually a somewhat frustrating puzzle.

Despite all of the work I do on and for cryonics, my studies of biogerontology during 2005 have been the most extensive of any year I can remember. I have made very many additions to my Mechanisms of Aging webpage -- more than any previous year. The page is now getting over 1,600 hits per week, which gives me more satisfaction than I get from hits for any other page on my website. Calling it a "page" is somewhat of a misnomer because it is actually a book. It could easily be 2 or 3 times as long as it was when it was published in the Anti-Aging Clinical Protocols 2004-2005 of A4M.

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So far there have been 2 comments to this posting and at least one is SPAM (one promoting stock, the other promoting their own blog). -- Ben

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I have just noticed how to delete comments. Whether this is a new feature of one I had not noticed before, I am glad that I have the capability to delete the SPAM. The stock promotion SPAM is now gone. -- Ben