With my surprise, David Sinclair beats many of the professional science writers. This science researcher writes his materials so eloquently with metaphors and his family story.

I liked every metaphor he brought up: DNA and epigenetic damage is similar to music nodes and pianists. Even if you miss out on one node, your audience may go unaware. But if you start messing out the entire page, people may come rushing on the stage worried.

I also enjoyed the little thought experiment from the alien. It tickles the science nerd side The first questions do not start with longevity directly. The aliens would start from asking how many pi decimals we have figured, followed by Einstein's equation, quantum entanglement, the age of universe, and evolution, which David frames it as an easy question. Then the questions would go on with how much resource we've extracted, and how many planets we've visited (we answer 12 to the single planet, moon). These are the words of truly educated minds.

This book shows the difference between someone who's looking to make a living by writing and one who's dedicated their life in working for a goal to make humans better. There's so much more weight and deep contemplation in his words. Many people are angry at this book because they are confusing David Sinclair with self-help guru who's overpromising with science. Those people want to protect themselves from the scam artists understandably. But this man is a Harvard professor with hefty financial access. He doesn't need to sell books to live. The goal of this book is clear. One is to help individuals make better health decisions. Two is to raise public awareness, so the government directs more healthcare funding for longevity. I think the two are noble and useful goal of a scientist. Unless you're overly cynical, it's hard to argue with this book.

Throughout the book, I gained a new appreciation for biology. He named so many giants in the fields from the past century that I had to swallow my own ignorance. It makes you feel science is truly humanity's long-term effort. For example, I didn't know the reason so many biologists today use yeast as research material because one guy dedicated so much time collecting yeast and giving it away for free. His name is Robert Mortimer. Even if you google why we use yeast, the results strip out this human element and only describes the yeast's benefit. That makes science work appear autonomous and easy. In reality, there're always people behind the curtain doing hard work over a long period of time. I can tell David Sinclair simply wanted to attribute his work to the unacknowledged nameless scientists. But I appreciated this insight into how academic researchers pass on their work.

He's spent significant chunk at the end of the book contemplating humanity common problems. He does tackle multidisciplinary issues, of which each section can be easily turned into a book of its own. Some points may include political issues such as death by will. Some people may not be convinced with each point, but I think he deserves a bit of claims after educating us laymen so much history on longevity research.

Now, I truly want to support his and other scientists' effort for the better future. I've read multiple technologist books such as Singularity. This book may easily come on the top list.

Drive Over That Mountain

I always wonder when it comes to the topic on longevity, people give such hard push back. Whether it's David Sinclair or Aubrey De Grey, it raises such push back.

I think there's no fundamental disagreement. It's not that those people want to live longer or die sooner. The reasons are much simpler. We don't want to reconstruct our life plan.

The same goes for retirement plan. No government can plug away the retirement funding today. That will infuriate their population.

People very early on decide how their lives will be constructed. They will go to schools for the 2 decades, work for 5-7 years, find a partner and get married in late 20s. In 30s, people want to have babies and start family. In their 60s, they will enter into retirement. Beyond that, let's not think about it.

When we believe we don't have control over certain thing, we don't have to think about. That makes us complacent about the issue. If we're suddenly told at age 60, you will likely live until 100 so your retirement fund starts only at 80. People hate that change even if that means good for you.

Japanese government is exactly doing that. They are increasing pension fund's starting age to 65 by 2023. The Canadian government is postponing it to 67 by 2029. People hate that. There's no rationality behind it. We simply hate to change our plan, especially that's been told by someone else. Your first reaction is to ignore as long as possible.

This process of updating our future prediction is really painful so we want to deny with every effort. That same backlash happens in longevity. But this lifespan extension will happen. In the same way we've achieved landing on the moon. So many people have died in history not knowing what lies ahead over that mountain.  Being born in your village and not knowing outside that 20km radius was default for humans. That's the size of Toronto. Imagine your life never seeing the beautiful scenery of Niagara Falls, Montreal, or New York?

Once we invent cars and trains, there was no turning back.

The question is when: will it come in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years or 1000 years. That is up to us.