 Elon Musk has been named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2021, and he has a habit of finding success in heavily regulated, capital-intensive industries. Finance with PayPal, Automotive and Energy with Tesla, Space with SpaceX, and now with Neuralink he's adding health care to the list. Musk is always looking forward, and has big plans for the future, both for himself and for humanity. But does he plan to live long enough to realize that vision? The answer could possibly be no. Musk raced some eyebrows recently when discussing the idea of increasing human lifespan, and the media did what they typically do, but his comments require some unpacking. So let's see what he actually said, and compare it to his past comments on this subject in this episode of Lifespan News. Recent headlines have latched on to Elon Musk's words in the most sensationalized and clickbaity way possible. With futurism saying, Elon Musk says that immortality tech would be very dangerous, and business insider going even further with, Elon Musk thinks you should die. But is this actually what he said? The exchange in question took place during the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit during a virtual interview with the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern. Here are his words, direct from him. I am not aware of any secret technology to combat aging. And I mean, I don't I don't know that we should really try to live for a super long time. I think there is some it is important for us to die, because, you know, most of the times people don't change their mind. They just die. And so if they if we live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed. Now, this is not the first time that Elon Musk has publicly addressed longevity and life extension science. And it does seem like his views on the subject are slowly evolving. For example, here's what he said on the subject in 2013. The thing that would most profoundly affect people would be to be able to re-code genetics, which is obviously a dodgy situation. But that's the thing. We're close to saturation on lifespan. I mean, it's sort of pretty much leveled out. And so even if you solve, say, any one particular disease, you maybe slightly improve life expectancy, but not a lot. You know, it's like you kind of have a genetic programming, any given species for a certain lifespan. Like you cannot make a fruit fly live for 10 years, no matter what you do. I mean, no amount of healthy living vitamins or anything. It's like, you know, so. Raincoats, while fruit flies live for 20 years. That would be a truly astounding achievement. But yeah, so I mean, it's a really tricky subject. It's fraught with all sorts of moral issues. But that's the thing that would most affect people's lives. But it's certainly is double edged sword. Here, he doesn't seem to think that extreme life extension is possible through means such as diet, exercise or even curing diseases because of biological limits that he does not believe can be overcome in this way. And about that, he may be right. However, he sees a way to bypass these biological limits through gene editing technology, though he understands this is very controversial and many people will object to it. He expressed a similar sentiment during a 2015 conversation with Tim Urban of Wait But Why. The whole system is collapsing. You don't see someone who's 90 years old and it's like they can run super fast but their eyesight is bad. The whole system is shutting down. In order to change that in a serious way, you need to reprogram the genetics or replace every cell in the body. Tim Urban then puts some pressure on Musk, questioning him more about the importance of overcoming aging. Here's their exchange. Urban, but isn't this important enough to try? Is this something you'd ever turn your attention to? Elon, the thing is that all the geneticists have agreed not to reprogram human DNA so you have to fight not a technical battle but a moral battle. Urban, you're fighting a lot of battles. You could set up your own thing. The geneticists who are interested, you bring them here. You create a laboratory and you could change everything. Elon, you know I call it the Hitler problem. Hitler was all about creating the ubermensch in genetic purity and it's like, how do you avoid the Hitler problem? I don't know, Urban, I think there's a way. You've said before about Henry Ford that he always just found a way around any obstacle and you do the same thing, you always find a way. And I just think that that's as important and ambitious a mission as your other things. And I think it's worth fighting for a way somehow around moral issues, around other things. Elon, in order to fundamentally solve a lot of these issues we are going to have to reprogram our DNA. That's the only way to do it. Urban, and deep down DNA is just a physical material. Elon, it's software. So again, it's clear to this point that Elon Musk does believe that it's possible for humans to significantly increase our lifespan but that we won't achieve these effects from traditional methods. But here's the thing, research into and making use of those traditional methods of life extension, things like healthy diet, exercise and disease prevention are still very important because the additional time that someone extends their life by through those methods could buy them enough time to access those gene editing technologies or any other technological development that could remove aging as a threat to their life. This is how someone could reach longevity escape velocity. Putting this another way, the choices that you are making in your life today, even if they only result in you living a year more than you otherwise would have, could result in you reaching the point at which aging is overcome. And you could realize decades, if not more of healthy life extension through implementing the traditional less effective life extension strategies. Elon Musk would probably agree with this but just might not feel that it's of much importance to him personally. Also in 2015, during a Vanity Fair event with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Musk revealed how long he'd like to live. Do you think about genetics and longevity and trying to sort of avoid, your friend Larry Page is investing in a business hoping to end death? I'm not actually a huge proponent of longevity. And I do think that having a good life for longer is better. Like you'd want to address the things that happen to you when you're older, like dementia and so forth. Those are pretty important. But I'm not sure it's sort of actually, wanna do that, wanna get into the genetics thing, but it is something that's gonna fundamentally change humanity and along with AI. You don't wanna live forever so that you can get to Mars? I definitely don't wanna live forever. How many years do you wanna live? I don't know, a hundred good ones. A hundred good ones or a hundred more good ones? You're 44? I mean, a hundred good ones in total, I think is probably fine and maybe a bit longer. And in 2021, during the everyday astronaut tour of Starbase, Musk, who is known for his optimistic timelines, seemed to suggest that he didn't see himself living much beyond a typical human lifespan of today. I'll be long dead before Mars is self-sustaining, but hopefully the momentum is strong in that direction by the time I die. Hopefully, which probably isn't soon, but no, no. So Musk expects to live a fairly normal lifespan and perhaps hopes to die around age 100, which would be the year 2071. But what does this imply about future decisions he makes? Well, in 2020, he said this. I think there's gonna be a lot of breakthroughs on the medical front, particularly around the synthetic mRNA. You can basically do anything with the synthetic RNA, DNA. It's like a computer program. So, I mean, I think with effort, that's not too crazy. You could probably stop aging, reverse it if you want. These are, you can basically do it. You can turn someone into a freaking butterfly if you want with the right DNA sequence. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. Elon Musk appears to be saying that using gene editing, it's not going to be too difficult to stop or even reverse aging. He feels that this is technically possible and knows that there are intelligent people working on it. He must foresee some possibility that these technologies are developed while he's still alive, but he's already made clear that he doesn't want to live forever and isn't interested in longevity. So, what happens when these technologies are developed? Does Elon Musk not use them and instead age and die while those around him are rejuvenated and continue to innovate? Now, I find it very hard to believe that Elon Musk wouldn't make use of this technology, but if he truly doesn't want to extend his lifespan, that's totally fine. The answer to the question, how long should people live, is as long as they want to. Elon Musk doesn't seem to want to die anytime soon, but if he's right and as he approaches age 100, he begins to question whether or not he wants to continue living. I fully support whatever he decides. However, I think it's very likely that he'll change his mind and here's why. Let's return to the original quote we started with. Most of the times people don't change their mind, they just die. And so if we live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed. Elon Musk has a fear that people living longer could stifle innovation and stagnate our culture. But even if it is the case that a 90-year-old of today is more stuck in their ways than a 30-year-old who was to say that we're rejuvenating the body and brain of that 90-year-old back to the body and brain of a 30-year-old wouldn't also give them the neuroplasticity and mental outlook of a biologically younger person. After all, at that point, they are that biologically younger person. I think this is quite possible and I find it hard to accept that someone who believes we can turn a human into a butterfly struggles to also see that it's possible to make sure chronological age doesn't affect the human brain in the way that he's worried about. And it's even possible that the technology he's working to develop at Neuralink could be a part of the solution to that very problem. So moving beyond his fears of society-wide ossification, we can move on to the other concern he brought up, the moral questions of gene editing. And I think it's important to point out here that I don't know of Musk saying at any point that he personally has moral qualms or concerns about this technology, only that he understands that others do and that it's highly controversial. Now, Musk has stepped into his fair share of controversy in the past, but he's also human. And certainly the misrepresentations and public opinions and negative headlines have some impact as they would on anyone, but I also think he deeply cares about ushering in a positive future for humanity and he does take the concerns that people raise seriously. For these reasons, and regardless of how much I personally want him to, I don't expect Elon Musk to get deeply involved in longevity in the near future, though I also expect him not to be a barrier to it. And after all, Musk already doesn't have much bandwidth remaining. He's working on making humanity a space faring a multi-planetary species, limiting the risk of AI by making sure that humans can coexist alongside it, addressing climate change and energy through technology, limiting the impact of traffic and reimagining the monetary system through blockchain technology. He's doing a ton of work, possibly more than anyone else towards building the future that will be important to have in place once life extension technology goes mainstream. I don't expect him to personally take on longevity as well, though I'd love for him to financially support the developments of this technology. So what will the future hold for Elon Musk? I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I would think that his concerns about the moral questions and the stagnation of society will subside as time goes on. And I'd wager that as Elon Musk approaches age 100, he might be far less interested in dying than he seems to be today. I imagine this might be true for a lot of people. What do you think? Will Elon Musk eventually take longevity seriously or is he right to be concerned about this? Let us know what you think in the comments and make sure to subscribe because we have more content like this coming soon. I'm Ryan O'Shea and we'll see you next time on Lifespan News.