My reasoning was that in the grand game of existence, getting our societal goals right is the only thing that matters. In the long arc of time, it wouldn't matter if I built a longevity company.
I wanted to invest all of my energy into Don't Die. Maybe I'm naive, however it seems obvious to me that when your species is giving birth to superintelligence, your sole concern becomes survival.
Not because you're scared or fear what may come, but because you realize that superintelligence is big. Bigger than any of us can imagine and happening faster than our intuitions allow us to model. This is a hard concept for Homo sapiens to understand because we are not good at understanding our limitations of knowing.
In the void of not knowing, the one thing that we each know to be true is that none of us want to die right now. When tomorrow arrives, that will be true about the next day too. Don't Die is not about immortality. It's about the most basic observation of intelligent life, we want one more breath.
Just as Homo erectus, a million years ago, with an axe in their hand, was unable to articulate our modern world, we are once again Homo erectus relative to AI. We may experience a million years of relative progress in the next 10, 20 or 50 years.
Given this, Kate and I have cycled through this problem hundreds of times over the past few years. How can we get the world aligned around Don't Die? Committed to the idea that in spite of our many differences, we share a planet and a common interest in tomorrow.
Basically, how can we make existence profitable and die unprofitable.
We saw the problem as two-fold. One practical and one spiritual.
Practically, we need things to work in the world: clean water, transportation, energy, security, stable institutions, communications and health care.
Spiritually, we need purpose, existential explanations, and hope. We also need progress and adventure: solve aging, abundant AI, creative joy and expression and things to build.
We decided to build on both fronts. Blueprint would be the practical, a company aligned to Don't Die. A group of humans that labor together to help other humans thrive as their sole objective. To hold ourselves to a standard of making existence profitable and die unprofitable, for ourselves.
To never let profit corrupt this goal. Sounds simple until you take stock of how many companies make their living on making humans die. Sometimes this is done openly and other times it's hidden in a mesh of poorly aligned incentives that are invisible.
This is not an esoteric philosophical argument, death is measurable in a biological system. You can get clever and find arguments ("does this mean we shouldn't have children?") but we know death and life when we see it.
On the spiritual side, we think that 2027-28 is the breakout time for Don't Die. Maybe we're off by a year or two, but we think it's soon. We believe that AI will create several societal shocks, none of which we will predict accurately, but will leave the world feeling unmoored.
Hopefully it won't be catastrophic, but will be a cold water dunk we need to awaken us to the realization that no one really wants to die right now and that our current societal systems that profits from death are ill suited for this moment.
That in our most sober moments, when at funerals, or after a near-death experience, we see clearly, even if for a few minutes.
Above all, we care about life more than anything else. All else fades away in those moments. We see with crystal clarity that all the other stuff that had us entranced wasn't that important after all.
I write this for two reasons.
First, to invite you to build Don't Die in the practical world. Capitalism (profit and loss) is a good system that has done society well. In whatever you're building, align your and your organization's efforts with a loyalty to acting in people's best long term interests. Don't do things that cause other people to die, commit self harm, or create societal harm. This doesn't mean being paternalistic, it means using your best judgement about how you'd want someone else to treat you if the roles were reversed.
Second, to ready yourself for the new philosophy that will be arriving shortly. One that prioritizes our shared existence and vitality above all other goals.
Don’t Die is the foundation. Immortalism is what we’re going to build. Again, not for selfish reasons, but because we understand that we are warriors and caretakers of intelligent life in this part of the galaxy and we take on this responsibility with honor and nobility.
