Aubrey de Gray – Not the TED commandments or How to be a successful heretic [BarCamp NorthEast session notes]

Background story

He’s against aging and he’s talking a lot about the topic, and he even wrote the book about it. He also explained a lot of details about the topic as a summary of his Thinking Digital talk.

His major contribution in the field was to point out how we solve the problem for man made machines – we repair them and do regular maintenance. The idea is to identify the same elements in human body and thereby postpone the effects of aging. The question is, how hard is to do sufficiently comprehensible maintenance on the human body, and he thinks the answer is “not too hard”.

[ Interesting discussion on this topic happens here ]

The actual talk

You get a nice piece of paper with The TED Commandments. He’s showing some nice quotes from people that essentialy said the same as Gandhi,

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Mahatma Gandhi

The story behind his speech is to give out some ideas how to spread ideas and be a good heretic in the process.

Rule 1

Be right

(Diligence before oratory)

Rule 2

Be boastful

(About your topic)

Rule 3

Be a doer

(As well as a talker)

Do what you can with the resources you have, not just talk about things you could do with lots of money. So they did Methouselah Mouse prize for unprecedentedly long-lived mice.

Rule 4

Be indomitable

(If not invincible)

Rule 5

Be diplomatic

(But maybe not all the time)

Rule 6

Be everywhere

(A pint is worth 1000 years)

Rule 7

Be pithy

(Especially under pressure)

Rule 8

Be inspirational

(And have a team that’s organizational)

Rule 9

Be selfless

(Remember that control is only a means to an end)

Rule 10

Be right

(And be able to explain why, to both experts and laymen)