In the face of existential risks and the possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, the nonprofit Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, and even self-sustaining space colonies for when other prevention strategies fail. To learn more, Betterhumans Deputy Editor Parish Mozdzierz spoke with Lifeboat International Spokesperson Philippe Van Nedervelde.

Betterhumans: How did the formation of the Lifeboat Foundation come about?

Philippe Van Nedervelde: Lifeboat Foundation's founder, Eric Klien, was shaken wide awake by 9/11.  The new reality of what we call (exponentially accelerating) "Asymmetric Destructive Capability" (ADC) fully hit him: ever smaller groups of people can create ever more enormous amounts of damage. And all of this thanks to advances in technology. As a bracelet-wearing cryonicist, he knew of the potentials of nanotechnology (having attended MIT Nanotechnology Group meetings in the late 1980s), and that 9/11 was just a taste of things to come.  Accordingly, the Lifeboat Foundation was incorporated within months of 9/11.

BH: What is the "A-PRIZE," and how does it apply with your mission to prevent existential risks?

PVN: The purpose of the A-PRIZE is to put development of artificial life forms in the open where it should be. Today, many efforts at developing artificial life are not well publicized. The A-PRIZE serves as a clearinghouse for information about the race to "Break the Carbon Barrier." With mega-universities and companies racing to create nonbiological life, now is the time for such a clearinghouse.

The A-PRIZE is awarded to the person or organization responsible for creating an animat/artificial life form with an emphasis on the safety of the researchers, public, and environment or the person or organization who shows that an animat/artificial life form has been created. (The second case is to uncover unpublicized or unsafe projects.)

It applies to our mission as it both encourages the use of safety measures in this ongoing international effort to create nonbiological life and also offers rewards to uncover unsafe efforts.  Unsafe efforts could devastate our biosphere, and without the spotlight of the A-PRIZE to uncover them, humanity could be in danger.

BH: Currently, Lifeboat Foundation has 23 programs devised to fight against various existential risks, including asteroid strikes, bioweapons, nanoweapons, nuclear war, internet attacks, climate change, extinctions and collapse of plant and animal life diversity, unfriendly AI, gamma ray bursts, unexpected solar activity, etc.  Do you ever fear that working on such a large number of diverse risks, that you're losing the ability to focus your efforts on one or two of the larger or more probable dangers? Is there a priority in how your group is addressing these risks?

PVN: Baden Powell's great motto was "Be Prepared." Accordingly, we find that we want to prepare for any eventuality which may do all or most of us in. You cannot know ahead of time which x-risk will prove to be our final undoing. Both individual death as well as species-level extinction can come like a thief in the night, totally out of left of field. We are in the survival business, so our mindset and resolute determination is to leave no stone unturned to budge our survival odds in our favor. We inevitably adopt a rational and eminently pragmatic approach to this.

I have taken the initiative for a new program or project which we now have in preparation called ETO, short for Existential Threat Outlook. The goal of this is to track the evolving statistical probabilities of all the variants of existential risks ("x-risks") that we are looking at. The intention is to update our ETO chart in real-time. This ETO chart will inform and drive our prioritizations in terms of allocation of efforts and resources. We obviously want to allocate efforts according to the statistical probability and temporal proximity of x-risks.

Note that preparations for some x-risks takes more resources than others though, so there is no linear relationship between the imminence of a particular x-risk and the efforts we allocate to its prevention. Also, bear in mind that some programs deal with multiple x-risks in one fell swoop. Some of these are infrastructure type programs and obviously would require great amounts of resources.

Finally, also consider that we pick our battles taking into account what other organizations are doing. Whenever we find that another organization is doing something we agree is very necessary and is doing that faster and better than us, then we naturally do not duplicate those efforts. This is the case for instance with what SIAI is doing regarding the possibility of humanity-unfriendly AI. We also endorse what organizations such as the Foresight Nanotech Institute and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology are doing.

Unless we find that what such organizations are doing is too little too late, or ill-advised or otherwise unhelpful in our opinion, we will simply support those organizations to the very best of our ability instead of doing what they are already fully focused on. Ideally, we would love there to be at least one active and effective organization totally dedicated to dealing with each individual x-risk. In that case, our role would be blissfully reduced to being an information clearinghouse, a forum... with possibly some coordinating roles. As things stand, we are far from such a situation though.

BH: With which programs have you realized the most success so far to date?

PVN: That depends on what you consider success here. In our view, the programs that have made our current programs list are the ones that have become the most fleshed out and therefore the most successful to date. They are: AsteroidShield, BioShield, InternetShield, NanoShield, SecurityPreserver, and Space Habitats. To date, we have been working on just developing position papers for programs. This is to change shortly though.

BH: Are there some risks you feel are still not getting enough attention, despite your efforts?

PVN: We feel that people generally don't take future risks and x-risks in particular seriously enough. Unfortunately, this is probably a common failing of civilizations. Per Fermi's paradox, this is likely the cause of the fact that-as far as astronomical evidence has enabled us to determine to date-we live in a universe devoid of intelligent life except for our own. So NONE of the future risks / x-risks are getting enough attention, whether they are bioweapons, nanoweapons, or other threats.

BH: Some observers consider the Lifeboat Foundation as not being pro-governments, pro-technology, pro-privacy. Is this the case?

PVN: Not at all. On the contrary. If those observers would give our publications on our website an appropriately close reading, they would understand that we are explicitly, emphatically, enthusiastically in favor of responsibly developed technology, of effective democratic governments and transnational institutions...even of personal privacy to the extent it can be preserved without jeopardizing the security of the rest of us. Again: we are in the survival business. So we are in favor of anything which will demonstrably be of significant help towards achieving this goal. Within reason, we will try anything that helps increase our probability of long-term survival.

At the same time, it stands to reason that, when and if we are justifiably skeptical about the effectiveness of something in this regard (meaning what other people are doing), and unsure as to whether it is part of the problem more than it is part of the solution, we will simply give it the benefit of the doubt until we become more sure...and will not emphasize such in the allocation of our resources at any given time towards the realization of our goals.

BH: What role does Lifeboat have in the upcoming Transvision 2007 conference (from July 23 to July 26 in Chicago)?

PVN: The focus of the Lifeboat Foundation is the theme of this years' Transvision. Accordingly, we will be prominently present in a variety of ways. One major way is by virtue of the presence as speakers of no less than 25 members of Lifeboat Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board. Basically, it will be wall-to-wall Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board members! In a way, it will be Lifeboat Foundation's own first big conference.

To be precise, our Scientific Advisory Board members Ed Begley, Jr., José Cordeiro, Mike DeMaio, George Dvorsky, James Gardner, Giorgio Gaviraghi, Jerry Glenn, Aubrey de Grey, Barbara Marx Hubbard, James Hughes, Charlie Kam, Ray Kurzweil, Ed Lantz, Michael LaTorra, Max More, Giulio Prisco, Anders Sandberg, Tihamer "Tee" Toth-Fejel, Philippe Van Nedervelde, Natasha Vita-More, Shannon Vyff, Mark A. Walker, Michael Weiner, Kenji Williams, and Eliezer Yudkowsky will be speaking at Transvision 2007 - Transforming Humanity: Innerspace to Outerspace.

(Editor's note: the Lifeboat Foundation has obtained a promotion code for 40% off the event. To get this promotion code, send an email with the subject "Lifeboat Foundation TV07 promotion code" to tv07@lifeboat.com.) 

BH: Are you planning on filming/recording any of your speakers during the conference?

PVN: Yes, all of them... as long as they sign their release form of course.

BH: When would you plan on having the video/audio available on your website?

PVN: As shortly after the conference as technically possible.

BH: Lifeboat is also involved in the X-PRIZE CUP '07 (from October 26 to 28 at the Holloman Air & Space Expo at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico).  What are the details surrounding your EM Launch Competition?

PVN: The EM Launch Competition, as part of our Space Habitats program, will be our first program to be more than a position statement.

We will formally announce in about a week that the EM Launch Competition as described at http://lifeboat.com/ex/em will be featured at the X PRIZE CUP

If you have comments on the proposed Contestant's Contract at http://lifeboat.com/em/em.rtf, please send them to grants@lifeboat.com with the subject "Lifeboat Foundation X Prize Cup 07."

Once this program is formally announced, our next goal will be to make the NanoShield program more than a position statement, and we plan to start working towards fully funding the work of Robert Freitas Jr. and others. We have already raised some funds for his "Thermal Censorship of Ecophagy Study" as we begin to prepare to focus in this area.  You can make donations for this effort at https://lifeboat.com/ex/donations

BH: Any other near-future plans or events?

PVN:  Yes, quite a few. Sergio M.L. Tarrero, Lifeboat's International Director of Audiovisual Communications, is leading a great effort aimed at producing a 100-minute documentary describing x-risks and the various proposals by the Lifeboat Foundation to do something about preventing them completely or, should that fail, at least downgrade their destructive impact to scales of destruction which do not wipe out humanity to the last person. The intention at this moment is to have a worldwide theatrical release of this documentary...and to produce it in at least eight of the most spoken languages of this planet. We also have a series of 30 sec. multilingual TV ads in the works which we hope will similarly contribute to raising worldwide awareness of our foundation's concerns and our proposals regarding what to do about them. So...watch this space!

While the internet's full of false promises to make people taller, only one technique can deliver the goods: limb lengthening. For some, the benefits of a few extra inches are worth the expense and pain of breaking bones and slowly teasing them apart to build height. And for them, the Make Me Taller forums have become a mecca. Betterhumans Editor and limb-lengthening contemplator Simon Smith spoke with the site's anonymous founder, a wealthy Brit known as MMT who has had one procedure in China and plans another soon.

BH: When most people think about leg lengthening, they likely think about a procedure for dwarfism that's often practiced in China on those without the condition. Yet you're relatively tall-taller than 90% of the Chinese population, as I understand it-and live in the UK. How is it that you find yourself such a champion of the procedure?  

MMT: Although the techniques and the technology used in leg lengthening (LL) have been developed over many decades for treating medical conditions and dwarfism, the collapse of Communism meant skilled surgeons in places like China and Russia found themselves with a valuable commodity-the ability to make people taller.

Fortunately, this coincided with a huge increase in cosmetic surgery in the West, and many of those surgeons soon realized that they could offer "height increase" services on a purely cosmetic basis.

The clinic where was I treated in Beijing has done over 1,500 cosmetic leg lengthening procedures, and the clinics in Russia and the former Soviet Union have probably done a similar number. If these doctors and clinics were still tightly regulated under Communist regimes, I'm certain that their services wouldn't be available to us in the West.

How I became a "champion" of leg lengthening is an interesting story. I'm a pretty uncompromising person who likes to win and likes to be the best. I've had a great education, a fantastic career that has made me a millionaire, and a wonderful lifestyle, but my height was just "average" and I found that unacceptable.

I hadn't heard of anyone who had considered or undergone LL with motivations similar to mine, and so I started "Make Me Taller" as a forum for my views and my story, and quickly discovered that there are hundreds-if not thousands-of people who, like me, want to be taller, even though they aren't short.

When undergoing my treatment, I met actors and models who needed a few extra inches for their careers, and even a glamorous grandmother who just wanted to be taller and slimmer so that she could enjoy the rest of her life.

My forum was the first place where such people could come to together to discuss the doctors, the procedures, risks, their thoughts and all manner of things related to LL. We have over 1,100 members now, and get about 25,000 unique visitors per month, which gives an indication of how much interest there is in it.

My adventure started about three months after I discovered that it was even possible. I jumped on a plane to Beijing, had my operation two days later and five months later I was 180 centimeters tall instead 173.5!

BH: You've undergone one leg-lengthening procedure and are now, as I understand it, contemplating another. Some criticize the cost, pain and recovery time associated with leg-lengthening surgery. Have you found, after your first surgery, that the benefits outweigh those issues?

MMT: I think that a lot of people imagine that LL will be considerably more painful and inconvenient than it is. Don't get me wrong-some people find it quite painful, but I was one of the lucky ones who had very little pain and the end result certainly outweighs the temporary discomfort.

Even if it had been more painful, I wouldn't have had any regrets-becoming taller has had an amazing impact on my life.

It's something that only a person who has undergone LL can understand, but when I shake hands with someone that used to be taller than me, and find myself looking down at them, it makes me feel great-as shallow as that is. It's a buzz that hasn't worn off yet, even though I've been back home in England for several months.

I'm going back for a second operation for two main reasons:

1) My first one (external with the Ilizarov frame) went so well, I have very few fears about the second;

2) A lot of our forum members wanted someone they could trust to undergo internal LL with [limb-lengthening surgeon] Dr. Mitkovic so that they could decide whether or not they wanted to do it. In this respect, I'll be something of a guinea-pig, but I will also be able to give doctors and potential patients an interesting insight into how the two different methods compare.

Of course, I am also looking forward to being a couple of inches taller too-my second operation will make me just under 6'1," which I would never have dreamed possible even a year ago.

BH: The internet is now full of advertisements and websites touting mostly useless height-increasing interventions, and the Make Me Taller forums have seen an explosion in membership and media interest over the past year. To what do you credit the growing interest in height enhancement?

MMT: I think that the growth in interest in height enhancement is a sad reflection of how shallow our modern societies have become. Undoubtedly, our physical appearance is of immense importance when it comes to our careers, love lives and even friendships-and height is an important factor.

There is a wealth of research available that supports the view that taller men are more attractive to the opposite sex, and to potential employers, and my personal experiences have shown me that being even a couple of inches taller can have a profound and positive impact on the way that others perceive you.

That said-and this may seem strange coming from a "champion" for LL-I think that it is a shame that our societies place so much of an emphasis on physical appearance, particularly when it comes to important decisions. For example, it's pretty insane that Americans seem to be more likely to choose their leader based on a candidate's height than on their policies!

BH: Ethically, some might argue that height is a positional good, because if everyone got taller nobody would have an advantage. How might you counter such arguments to uphold the value of height enhancement?

MMT: I don't dispute that if everyone got taller that the value of height enhancement would be diminished. However, demand far outstrips supply and we've seen the doctors increasing their prices significantly over the last 12 months, with further increases forecast.

Some countries have even outlawed the procedure, and there are only a handful of doctors in the world who have the experience and the facilities to do it safely. As such, this will never be mainstream-it will remain for a privileged few who are wealthy enough, brave enough or just plain stupid enough to do it!

To help illustrate that, we have over 1,100 members, most of whom are pretty active. However, of that audience, less than 32 have had or are in the process of having LL.

Some doctors have told me that for every 1,000 enquiries they receive, they only end up with one patient-not everyone can afford between $25,000 and $250,000 to have it done, and then to take six months to a year off work to recover.

BH: What do you foresee for the future of height-increasing interventions? Do you anticipate that biotechnology or more advanced surgery will make current procedures obsolete? Are you aware of any research in this area?

MMT: I know that there is a lot of interest in biomedical and noninvasive solutions to height increase from people who would like to be taller, and I've even asked been to get involved in some of those initiatives myself. However, I don't believe that there is a large enough market to justify the kind of investment that would be required to make them viable, assuming that it was even possible.

I do not believe that there will ever be a biomedical solution to height increase.

For example, the Achilles tendon can withstand forces up to 64 times the weight of the average human body-some people have talked about new technologies that can grow bone, but I think it would be physically impossible to grow bone without the soft tissues (muscles, blood vessels, nerves, tendons) being grown and stretched in some way too. How this could be achieved without some mechanical involvement, I don't see. Even with three kilograms of steel wrapped around your leg and with pins inside the bone, the doctors need to monitor carefully how the bone is growing to prevent alignment problems.

Currently, there are no serious pieces of research under way, although some scientists are considering putting together research proposals. At best, I imagine that such solutions are at least 25 years off-assuming that we see them ever.

As far as the existing techniques are concerned, I expect there to be improvements in pain-management, infection prevention and scar recovery, but the technology is already nearly 50 years old and hasn't changed very much.

BH: If you had a child that was shorter than average, would you encourage or allow him or her to have height-increasing surgery?

MMT: I would never encourage anyone to consider LL. However, if I had a child who was determined to do it, then they would have my full support to ensure that they did it in the safest way possible. I know how strong the desire to be taller can be, and I wouldn't stand in the way of anyone who found themselves driven by the burning desire to be taller.

BH: If you believe in the procedure and in promoting its use, why do you request anonymity in your forums and in media interviews? 

MMT: I insist on anonymity on the basis that pretty much all of our members acknowledge know that with this, and many other forms of cosmetic surgery, there is still a considerable stigma attached!

With keynote speakers William Shatner, Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey, this year's TransVision conference promises to be the best yet. Focusing on nothing less ambitious than "saving humanity," the World Transhumanist Association's annual conference will cover everything from sustainable energy to antiaging medicine. To get the details, Betterhumans Editor Simon Smith caught up with James Hughes, Secretary of the WTA and Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Engage.

BH: So, another TransVision approaches. With how many TransVisions have you personally been involved?

I organized the first TransVision I attended. After we elected our first Board of Directors in the winter of 2002-2003 we organized the 2003 TransVision at Yale University, since Nick Bostrom was teaching there at the time and we could get some benefits through sponsorship from the Yale folks.  I was the main organizer, and it was pretty successful, turning a profit and bringing about 100 transhumanists together with about one hundred non-transhumanist folks doing or interested in bioethics.

BH: In what ways have the conferences changed in nearly a decade since they started?

The first couple of TransVisions in Europe in the 1990s were small gatherings for a couple dozen transhumanist guys to meet and bounce ideas off one another. Then TV03 at Yale kicked that up to the 100-200 attendance mark, based around an academic conference model that held through TV04 in Toronto, TV05 in Caracas and TV06 in Helsinki. I don't want to make a prediction about how many we'll have at the gala event we're going to have in Chicago, but it promises to kick us up to yet another level, with carefully selected speakers, professional conference planners working year-round, real (as opposed to transhumanist) VIPs like Shatner and Arianna Huffington. It's going to be cool.

BH: TransVision 2003 was particularly significant in being held at a major university campus, Yale, and in raising public attention of issues and developments in cutting-edge science and technology. Looking back, what would you say were that conference's big successes and failures?

The strategic focus of the 2003 TransVision was to draw in friendly bioethicists and philosophers to meet our community, and orient our community to bioethics as a contestable terrain for transhumanist ideas. Most transhumanists, I think, believed bioethicists were uniformly opposed to the H+ project, while few bioethicists had heard of transhumanism, and those that had thought we were a nutty fringe. We needed to demonstrate to the H+ that, in fact, most bioethicists were closer to us than to Leon Kass, the President's Council and bioconservativism, and to the bioethicists that transhumanists were radical but serious thinkers. I think that meeting succeeded, and we continue to see its fruits as the folks we met there have gone on to write about us, join our projects, and invite us to their meetings and projects. Transhumanism is now recognized as a popular and influential player in the bioethics/biopolitics terrain, and not just a Star Trek fan club.

BH: How have things evolved since TransVision 2003? Do you still find the topics raised there as relevant? Have newer issues supplanted those that were big issues then?

The focus of TransVision 2004 in Toronto was to raise our flag in the cultural and artistic arena, which is lot bigger and more diffuse. The meeting itself was an unquestioned success for the participants, despite being a little smaller than 2003. Stelarc and Steve Mann were amazing and complementary evening speakers, the transhumanist film festival was fun and memorable, and again we met a lot of interesting folks who have become biopolitical allies, like the body modders. Whether TV04 was as successful raising the H+ profile in the arts is harder to say, but we have certainly seen a growing use of the terms transhuman, posthuman and so on in the arts.

TransVision 2005 in Caracas was focused on futurists and the developing world, and had some memorable highlights. It was held in a theater that opened onto the hotel bar and pool, and each participant got a free bottle of rum which made the loose and frenetic organization of the event quite tolerable. Most of the attendees were Venezuelan, but the H+ activists present did get a chance to meet some prominent people in future studies, and it seems like the World Future Society meetings are increasingly infused with H+ speakers.

By comparison to Caracas, Helsinki in 2006 was a well-oiled machine. The Finnish Transhumanist Association is probably our best organized chapter worldwide, and they were able to get the meetings broadcast real-time into Second Life, and posted as video almost immediately on the web. The local chapter folks did a great job at making all the international guests feel welcome, and I got to hang out naked in a Finnish sauna. We met a lot of Europeans there who have gone on to make big waves, such as the Italian Transhumanist Association which is now an active participant in Italian politics, and the Russian Transhumanists who have briefed the Russian government on futurist issues.

BH: TransVision 2007 looks to take things up a notch, with three high-caliber and well-known keynote speakers in Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey and William Shatner. How does this conference most differ from previous? How has organizing this conference differed from organizing previous conferences?

TransVision 2007 is the first to receive significant philanthropic backing, which allowed the planners to hire a professional conference planning firm, secure top-notch speakers, like Shatner and Huffington, and exciting venues, like the Natural History Museum where the awards ceremony will be held. It's a bit of gamble since the registration fees have taken a jump, and the meeting is still a hard sell to a general audience skittish of an -ism they have never heard of. But hopefully it will all come together.

BH: Some might question the involvement of Shatner, who's known more for his association with science fiction than for any association with science and related ethical issues. What drove the organizing committee to include Shatner as a keynote speaker? How did he react to this request?

I wasn't involved with the invitation, but I understand that Shatner is an acquaintance of Kurzweil's and is generally a supporter of futurism and techno-evolution. I'm looking forward to hearing him.

BH: What can people expect at this year's conference? What aspect of the conference are you most looking forward to?

The theme of this conference is much grander than the previous ones-how can transhumanism solve humanity's problems? So I think we'll hear from both the policy wonky and the radical futurist parts of transhumanism, and perhaps less from the academic and philosophical parts. Otherwise, I'm trying to maintain Zen mind-no expectations.

BH: Given the caliber of keynote speakers, the sexiness of the subject matter, and the location, has the conference attracted more interest than previous conferences, particularly from the media? Are you expecting more media coverage than in previous years?

Absolutely. This should make a much bigger media impact than the previous meetings, and there will also be several documentary film crews there to capture the events.

BH: For people who don't know about transhumanism or TransVision conferences, how would you describe this event in a way that would entice them to attend?

All the leading lights in transhumanist thought and activism will be there. If you are new to the area, you will learn a lot and meet all the principals in the flesh. If you are an old timer, it will be one of the coolest H+ parties ever thrown. Chicago is one of the great cities of the world, and the WTA probably won't meet in the North America for another two years. Be there or be square.

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence has created a video to educate people about the challenges, opportunities and risks of creating general artificial intelligence: