For those who have broken free of the pro-ageing trance and recognise ageing as a problem, there is the further challenge of imagining a world without ageing. The prominent ‘black mirror’ portrayals of immortality as tortuous and guided by greed may distort our model of what anti-ageing actually looks like.

The ‘white mirror’ of ageing is a world in which everyone’s biological age is halted at 20-30 years, and they subsequently maintain optimal health for a much longer or indefinite period of time. Although they will still age chronologically – i.e., exist over time – they will not undergo physical and cognitive decline associated with biological ageing. At chronological ages of 70s, 80s, even 200s, they will maintain the physical appearance and much lower disease risk that a 20-30 year old would have.

This may sound like science fiction but is a phenomenon exhibited by other species such as hydras, naked mole rats, tortoises, whales, and sharks – the latter of which can live up to 400 years old. While these species do eventually die, their risk of disease does not change over time – a phenomenon known as ‘negligible senescence‘ – and these species do not age. As humans, we experience an exponentially increasing risk of death over time due to ageing. This is a phenomenon known as Gompertz law, yet does not apply to other species and the goal of anti-ageing is to allow us to attain negligible senescence in humans.

There would be many benefits to an ageless population such as:

• Very low rates of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease etc.
• Increased healthy lifespans
• Increased cognitive function in older age
• Lower death rates globally
• Trillions of dollars saved on healthcare systems globally

Transitioning to an ageless population would come with several social implications that will need to be considered such as overpopulation, climate impact, immortal dictators and distributional justice. These will be addressed in future posts, but you can read responses to these objections by Aubrey de Grey, David Wood and others.