Glenn Reynolds's Main Problem Is He's 25 Years Older, But Not A Day Younger
Along the way there were podcasts — the late, lamented Glenn and Helen Show, which I really enjoyed, several years with PJTV, and various columns for TechCentralStation, the Washington Examiner, USA Today, nearly a decade of columns in Popular Mechanics, and now the New York Post.
But always there was the blog. Behind everything there was the blog. Most of my ideas came from the blog, even when they appeared in columns, podcasts or TV shows. Many of the ideas on the blog came from readers who emailed me, or, later, commented on posts. And it’s still here. As I said in my brief anniversary observation on Saturday, I never expected to do this for 25 years, and I can’t promise I’ll still be doing it in 25 more. But I can’t promise that I won’t be, either.
I started following Instapundit in the mid-2000s, and the version of what it was that he gives in this piece is misleading to say the least:
In the early days the blog was more focused on tech and pop culture. I remember linking to an article on who had the best abs at the Video Music Awards — I backed Alicia Keys — and similar stuff. However, some later InstaPundit themes appeared: I had a post titled “Blood and Iron” about donating blood and life expectancy, and there were numerous posts on FBI and Secret Service incompetence and wrongdoing, which are themes that persist to this day.
Oh, by the way, there was a little bit about "life expectancy". That's not the Instapundit I was reading. I asked Chrome AI mode, "When was the last time Glenn Reynolds mentioned Aubrey de Grey?" (This, by the way, is where AI really shines.) It replied,
The last major, documented instance of Glenn Reynolds directly highlighting Aubrey de Grey in his professional writing was in March 2008, when he penned an article titled "The End of Aging?" for Popular Mechanics.
March 2008: Reynolds features de Grey's life-extension theories in his Popular Mechanics column.
March 2006: Reynolds publishes his book An Army of Davids, dedicate an entire chapter ("Live Long—And Prosper!") to a comprehensive text interview with de Grey regarding biological "escape velocity".
December 2004: On his blog Instapundit, Reynolds links to a profile of de Grey, noting that he was "seeing this guy Aubrey de Grey all over the place".
Aubrey de Grey is a quack. It took Reynolds some years to recognize this, and although he's never posted anything to the effect that he was taken in at any point, he seems to have dropped the guy by 2008. As of 2008, this was de Grey's line:
To encourage people to take his ideas seriously, Aubrey de Grey, the originator of the strategies for engineered negligible senescence, has organised a competition. He is offering a prize for the development of what he calls a Methuselah mouse. There are actually two prizes to be had. One is for longevity, the other for rejuvenation. The prize for longevity can be won by a new strain of mouse - one bred or genetically engineered to live a long time. That for rejuvenation requires treatment to begin when the mice are already in middle age. ... The winner establishes a record that others have to break. At the moment the records for longevity and rejuvenation are five years and almost four in an animal that normally lives for three.
According to Chrome AI mode, this prize has been awarded many times, for example,
Dr. Andrzej Bartke (Longevity Prize): Awarded for breeding a genetically modified mouse that lived for 1,819 days (nearly 5 years), which is the equivalent of roughly 180 human years. His research involved altering a gene that controls responses to growth hormones.
Except that without any special life-extenmsion measures, genetic or otherwise, a mouse lived for nine years at the San Diego Zoo: Wikipedia's entry on de Grey suggests that almost as soon as he began to achieve a high media profile, thanks in some measure to Glenn Reynolds, he began to be debunked:
In 2005, MIT Technology Review, in cooperation with the Methuselah Foundation, announced a US$20,000 prize for any molecular biologist who could demonstrate that SENS was "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate." . . . The judges concluded that none of the challengers had disproved SENS, but the magazine opined that Preston Estep's submission was particularly eloquent and well written, and awarded the contestant US$10,000. The judges also noted "the proponents of SENS have not made a compelling case for SENS", and wrote that many of its proposals could not be verified with the current level of scientific knowledge and technology, concluding that "SENS does not compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists; but neither is it demonstrably wrong."
. . . A 2005 article about SENS published in the viewpoint section of EMBO Reports by 28 scientists concluded that none of de Grey's hypotheses "have ever been shown to extend the lifespan of any organism, let alone humans".
According to the Wikipedia entry, de Grey has a contract to have his head frozen at the time of his putative "death", on the assumption that future technology will be able to cure what ailed him and reattach it to a new body, or maybe just upload his brain data to a giant computer or something, the same thing Glenn Reynolds believes. Nor does Reynolds mention his enthusiastic support of another quack, Ray Kurzweil. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Was Glenn Reynolds a major promoter of Ray Kurzweil?" It answered,
Yes, Glenn Reynolds was a major early promoter of Ray Kurzweil and his techno-futuristic visions.
Through his highly influential blog Instapundit, as well as his mainstream media columns, Reynolds served as a crucial bridge between the niche transhumanist subculture and the broader public. He consistently amplified Kurzweil's ideas regarding exponential technological growth, nanotechnology, and the coming artificial intelligence revolution.
Key Ways Reynolds Promoted Kurzweil
High-Profile Book Reviews: When Kurzweil released his seminal book The Singularity Is Near in 2005, Reynolds wrote a prominent, glowing review for The Wall Street Journal titled "Here it Comes: Technology's progress will soon accelerate — exponentially. You have no idea how much. Ray Kurzweil does." He revisited this advocacy by promoting the 2024 sequel, The Singularity Is Nearer.
The "Instapundit" Effect: During the peak influence of Instapundit in the early-to-mid 2000s, Reynolds frequently blogged about "The Singularity," regularly pointing his massive audience toward Kurzweil's essays, interviews, and predictions.
Integrating Kurzweil into His Own Philosophy: In his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, Reynolds relied heavily on Kurzweil's projections of decentralized, democratized technology empowering individual citizens to take down massive corporate and government hierarchies.
I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is there any similarity betwqeen belief in the Singularity and belief in the Great Pumpkin?" It answered,
Yes, there are striking psychological and structural similarities between belief in the technological singularity and belief in Linus’s Great Pumpkin from Peanuts. While one stems from computer science and the other from a comic strip, both function as modern myths.
The Chosen Prophet: Ray Kurzweil acts as the singularity's chief prophet, tracking its arrival with charts. Linus van Pelt is the sole, unwavering prophet of the Great Pumpkin.
The Promised Date: Singularity believers often pinpoint a specific timeframe (like 2045) for the transformation. Linus waits every year on a specific night: Halloween.
A Benevolent Savior: The singularity is often predicted to solve all human problems, cure diseases, and grant immortality. The Great Pumpkin is expected to fly through the air and deliver toys to good children.
Reynolds is a transhumanist who still believes in the longevity tenets of both Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil, although at this point, he minimizes this. His problem is he's 25 years older and not a day closer to immortality. I won't even bother to touch on his libertarianism. I'm not sure how he differs in principle from Jason Arday; he holds an endowed chair at a major university, but he shows no sign of every having had an education himself.