Do you like your life? on longevity, boredom, and who exactly is doing the living

The question I start with

The conversation usually goes like this.

"Do you like your life?"

"Yes, on the whole I do."

"Would you like to extend it?"

"No. It would get boring."

If I asked head-on, "How do you feel about extending life?", I'd hear the same thing, only straight away and without the first "yes". It would get boring. Life would lose its meaning. You'd get tired of everything. That's why I start with life rather than with extending it: this way the contradiction shows. A person likes what they have, but doesn't want more of it.

I think the person isn't answering about their own life here. They're answering about the picture of life in their head. And that picture is built in such a way that there really is nothing in it worth extending.

The usual picture: eighty, maybe a hundred

Everyone knows this picture. Life lasts about eighty years, a hundred if you're lucky. The first third goes to study, the middle to work, the last to old age. Old age means the body weakens, aches and obeys you less and less.

This picture has two consequences that I didn't notice for a long time.

First, it puts pressure on you. If the term is known in advance, your whole life turns into a race. You have to get your education in time, build something in time, see things in time. I lived with this feeling myself, though I couldn't have said what exactly I had to get done. There was nothing concrete, only pressure.

The second consequence is heavier. In this picture the end of life looks like a long decline, and death becomes almost a relief, a way out of suffering. If frailty lies ahead, "living longer" sounds like "suffering longer". No wonder people say no.

I think arguing with that refusal is pointless. It's the picture itself that needs to change.

The door that opened

For me the turn came at the end of 2024 and in 2025. I learned that extending life was no longer just a topic for science fiction. Research is appearing that seriously studies whether cell aging can be slowed or partly reversed. And I realized that with the arrival of artificial intelligence, research like this would move faster.

One example I follow is connected with the Harvard biologist David Sinclair. In 2020 his lab showed that old mice, and mice with a damaged optic nerve, could partly regain their sight if three genes responsible for the cell's "young" program were temporarily switched on in retinal cells Source 1. Sinclair became one of the founders of Life Biosciences, and the company carried this approach over into a drug candidate called ER-100.

In 2026 ER-100 was given to people for the first time. This is a phase 1 clinical trial involving people with glaucoma and with one type of acute optic nerve damage Source 2. In the autumn the company reported interim data on three participants with glaucoma: over eight weeks there were no serious side effects Source 3. This is an early stage. Phase 1 tests safety above all, and no conclusions about effectiveness can be drawn from three people. And so far we're talking about the eye, not the whole body.

What matters to me isn't the news about one drug as such. What matters is that a door seemed to open in my head. The number "80–100" stopped being a wall that every thought about the future runs into. I let myself think much further ahead, and different thoughts came straight away. I write about what I'd like to see if I had more time in One Lifetime Isn't Enough. This piece is about something else: why you'd want to at all.

Who is living

Let me come back to the boredom objection. I take it seriously: boredom is real, and many people know how a day drags when nothing happens in it. But I don't think length has anything to do with it.

You can be bored at twenty, or on one particular Tuesday. Boredom isn't the number of years lived but a state: you're in the same environment, with the same thoughts, and nothing sparks your interest. Stretch that state over two hundred years and it really will be dreary. But the length of life isn't to blame.

Now imagine a different state. You change your environment when it stops giving you anything new. Around you are people it's interesting to think with. Every year you learn something that changes your idea of the world. In a state like that, curiosity, interest and enjoyment are constantly there. And the wish to extend it seems not strange but natural. Nobody wants a good conversation to end mid-sentence.

That's why the question "how long to live" is secondary for me. The first question is who is living. A person who is fused with their habitual picture of the world will be bored in any life, short or long. A person who can see that picture from the outside and change it will hardly be bored at all.

I wrote in detail about this ability, seeing your own mind from the outside, in The Mind as an Interface. In short: the thought "it will be boring" is also a thought, not a fact about the future. You can notice it and check it.

What to do now

There are no technologies yet that reverse a person's biological age. There are first trials and a lot of work ahead. So my main task today is simple: to preserve my health with the means already available. To reach the new possibilities in good shape, not in a state where nothing can be fixed any more.

The most noticeable change in how I go about this has come from artificial intelligence. Ask "is coffee good for you?" and you'll easily find a dozen articles with opposite conclusions. Now I put that kind of question to a language model and ask it to rely on research. It shows which studies exist, how many people they involved, what has been confirmed and what hasn't. In the same way I look into whether some supplement everyone is talking about actually works, or is still a hope without data.

This changed my relationship with my own body. It stopped being a black box that only doctors know about. I can understand what's going on and ask my doctor precise questions.

An honest caveat is needed here. A model can be wrong, and sometimes it confidently cites a study that doesn't exist. So I check the references, and I discuss any decisions about treatment and about what to take with a doctor. For me, AI is a conversation partner that helps me figure things out, not the one who prescribes.

Why I built imhuman.space

When you try to figure out longevity on your own, you quickly drown. Theories of aging, mechanisms, hundreds of substances, tests, reference ranges. The information is scattered across articles, videos and forums, and your own results sit in different files and labs. I built imhuman.space to bring it all together in one place.

Right now it has a knowledge base on theories of aging and on how the body's systems work. There's a reference guide to substances and supplements with links to research. There's a personal dashboard: you enter your test results and measurements and see how your markers change over time. Inside, an AI assistant takes your data into account when it answers your questions.

The project is in early access, and registration is free. It's for people who have already decided to take their health seriously and want to see trends rather than separate numbers on different lab forms. It's not a replacement for a doctor but a way to come to one with a clear picture.

Skepticism as part of the method

Longevity has a dark side. Next to honest science there are always miracle cures, "rejuvenating" practices and promises to get younger in three weeks. For someone just starting to look into it, telling one from the other is hard.

At one point I was strongly influenced by the Russian biologist and science communicator Alexander Panchin. For many years he has been taking myths apart and showing how to tell the tested from the untested: look at whether there is research, who it was done on, and whether others have replicated the results. This way of looking became a working tool for me.

I think it's skepticism that protects the idea of extending youth. Without it the idea quickly turns into obscurantism and loses trust. With it, what remains is what can be tested. That's why about ER-100 I write "phase 1, three people, safety" rather than "a cure for aging has been found".

1. 1

   Refusing to extend life often grows out of a picture where old age means frailty and death is a way out.

2. 2

   Boredom depends not on the length of life but on your state, and states can change.

3. 3

   Research into rejuvenating cells is under way, but at early stages. It's more honest to follow it than to make promises.

4. 4

   The main task today is to look after your health with the means available, relying on research and a doctor.

5. 5

   AI helps you make sense of data, but references and conclusions need checking.

In place of a conclusion

I still start with the same question: do you like your life? Only now I understand that behind it stands a second, more important one. Do you like the state you live in enough to want more of it?

I'm interested in people who answer "yes" to this, or who want to learn to answer that way. Who look after their health without fanaticism, check their sources and see the future with curiosity rather than fear. I'll keep writing about this: about longevity, about the nature of mind, and about how the two are connected. If you want to keep reading, subscribe to new pieces.