LongeCity.org vs. CRSociety.org

[Dean Pomerleau]

All,

 

As promised, I've now spent a few hours trolling around LongeCity.org (also called the Immorality Institute - a name they no longer seem to use very much due to concern over the word "immortality") to get a flavor for the organization and in especially their forums.

 

In terms of the organization itself they appear to be light-years more on-the-ball than the CRS - with a official bylaws , a user agreement and a long list of Directors, "Guardians", Advisors (including Michael!) and Volunteers  They even pay some of their directors and support staff a small amount. They send out a newsletter twice a month to keep members informed of what's happening. Here is the most recent newsletter, as a sample, mostly discussing something else they have that we apparently don't - a yearly budget and a detailed plan for how to spend it. One interesting thing they do in their budget is sponsor research directly via grants ranging from $500 to $20,000. They also do a regular podcast, interviewing well-known people, like this recent one with Liz Parrish. Where do they get the money for all this? Apparently from both membership dues ($50/yr - similar to ours) and from paying sponsors, including ads on their website and forums and mention in their newsletters.

 

Regarding the LongeCity.org forums. They certainly have many more of them than we do on a much broader range of topics, ranging from a dedicated women's forum, regional forums (e.g. Asia & India, Spain, etc.), a forum on politics, a forum on spirituality and philosophy, one on nanotech, another on physics, and one on cryonics, others on biosciences, supplements, brain health and "lifestyle interventions". DIscussions of CR are included in a subforum under lifestyle.  If the stats at the bottom of the page are accurate, they have many more active people visiting and engaging in forum discussions than we do, reporting 1284 users online in the last 15 minutes as of 1pm Sunday ET. Although it appears only 19 of them were actual members (including me) - the rest were "guests" and presumably could be bots.

 

While they appear to use the same Community Forum Software by IP.Boards that we use here, they've got many extra cool features enabled. You can rate posts in all sorts of ways, giving them thumbs up/down, or flagging them for inappropriateness or simply a waste of time. You can view a person's profile to see what kind of ratings their posts have received. You can also send individuals "Thank You Points", which they can converted to real and virtual merchandise in the LongeCity Store, although I don't expect this is that big an incentive for most contributors to the forums.

 

Speaking of contributors - Sthira, is this you over on LongeCity.org!? The user named Sthira over there likes to do extended water fasts, including 10 day ones. It seems like that must be you - that would be too big a coincidence to believe otherwise. It appears from your profile that you've posted over 1250 times to the LongeCity.org forums since joining in 2008. Wow - good for you! You've garnered lots of thank you points, and 219 "Good Point!" ratings. As an active member, it seems you'd have much better insights into the difference between LongeCity.org and our forums here at the CRS. Can you share your thoughts about the comparison?

 

Michael also has an account and is a contributor (and advisor) on LongeCity.org, having posted 819 posts since joining in 2003 (vs 335 posts on the CRS forums). Michael, can you shed any light on the merits of LongeCity.org vs. these forums, or the comparison of the organizations since you're an Advisor there and a Director of the CRS?

 

While admittedly brief and somewhat superficial, my own assessment of their lifestyle subforum is somewhat less favorable than everything I said above. They aren't very active, and the topics are mostly off-topic, as far as I'm concerned. Here is a screen capture of the latest active threads in the Lifestyle forum to give you a flavor:

 

 

Some of them look interesting, but how about that last one "Aspartame cures my puffy nips for 2-4 hours". That's certainly something I want to read about... Seriously, some of the threads look pretty interesting, but look at the dates. It appears that there is only one post every few days on average to all their lifestyle forums. 

 

In contrast, their supplement forum is extremely active, with dozens of posts per day to many active threads. 

 

This is consistent with my overall impression, that LongeCity.org is focused to a large degree on supplements and pharmacological interventions to slow aging, with biohacking another focus. In contrast, lifestyle interventions like CR, healthy diet, exercise etc are far down the list of priorities for its members, at least as reflected in their discussions. While disappointing, this might also serve as an opportunity. If at some point we all decided to move our discussions over there, we'd have a pretty wide-open subforum to contribute to, and a pretty large membership to potentially engage with in conversation.

 

It's definitely worth checking out for anyone who hasn't.

 

Michael, Sthira or anyone else who is active (or who has even looked) at LongeCity.org, would you care to comment on what you think about their organization and forums in comparison with ours?

 

--Dean

[Sthira]

Ok, well, I look at this site (CR only) as sorta like a small, mostly friendly little town. Just a few people post here, so it's a little something like chilling in a coffee shop with likeminded heads.

 

Meanwhile, Longecity is more like, well, a bigger city. There's more noise, more crazy, more people doing both smarty pants stuff and silly stuff. I've learned an enormous amount from Longecity. And nearly all of my negative ratings came from posting my agnostic beliefs with a super-Christian who just straight up proselytizes. I played with him for a year or two, and seriously dented up my reputation. But who cares. You want to know what you can use from that site to help this site, and that I don't know.

 

The problem here is CR is hard to stick to; CR makes you really thin (and many of the posters on Longecity are male and seek not skinnydom because being scrawny really messes with catching the eye of that cutie sitting over there). Plus, maybe CR doesn't even work to prolong lifespan.

 

If the question is how to direct more traffic to this site, then one answer might be for you, Dean, to cross-post many of your brilliant posts to Longecity and Reddit. Your stuff is great! Truly! I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass -- post what you post here over on Longecity and Reddit, and you'll get way more audience feedback. And you can pimp this site, too, while you're at it.

[Saul]

Hi ALL!

 

One thing that stares at me from Dean's post that might be of use to us:

 

Longecity's site has ADVERTISEMENTS -- a revenue source.  Also, the site PAYS something to the people who do the equivalent of what our board members do.

 

  --  Saul

[Dr Bennett]

You know Sthira I'm just chuckling here about your encounter with the evangelical. Isn't it kinda hard being so agnostic? I happen to be an anabaptist.

[drewab]

If the question is how to direct more traffic to this site, then one answer might be for you, Dean, to cross-post many of your brilliant posts to Longecity and Reddit. Your stuff is great! Truly! I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass -- post what you post here over on Longecity and Reddit, and you'll get way more audience feedback. And you can pimp this site, too, while you're at it.

 

I've got to agree with this suggestion.  It would also give Dean the opportunity to engage a wider audience.  This will no doubt include some wild (and stupid) ideas, but most people on longecity mean well.  They have the same general goal as us - living longer and healthier, albeit with slightly different ways of getting there. There forums are very active compared to here, but the ones on nutrition and CR are lacking. 

 

I read a few posters there, Darryl in particular who is a big contributor to nutritionfacts.org. As well, misterE is an interesting fellow. 

 

I occasionally post over there as well under the tag drew_ab.

[gracezw]

All this is very interesting to know! Thanks!

[Saul]

You know Sthira I'm just chuckling here about your encounter with the evangelical. Isn't it kinda hard being so agnostic? I happen to be an anabaptist.

Hi Dr. Bennet!

 

Nice to find some more theists is our Forums.  I'm an Orthodox Jew (who compromises occasionally)

 

 

  --  Saul

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sthira wrote:

Ok, well, I look at this site (CR only) as sorta like a small, mostly friendly little town. Just a few people post here, so it's a little something like chilling in a coffee shop with likeminded heads.

Meanwhile, Longecity is more like, well, a bigger city. There's more noise, more crazy, more people doing both smarty pants stuff and silly stuff. I've learned an enormous amount from Longecity.

 

Thanks for your insights. I like that analogy. It does feel like we've build a small, but friendly and tight-knit community here - sort of like the bar in Cheers, where "everybody knows your name." I like to pull Saul's chain and chide Michael, but underneath we're all friends and respect each other a lot.

 

If the question is how to direct more traffic to this site, then one answer might be for you, Dean, to cross-post ... to Longecity and Reddit.

 

I'd be hesitant to cross-post the same thing to both sites, or to post 'teasers' to Longecity about new threads over here. I think such cross-posting might (rightfully) be interpreted as spam - like 'come look at my website!'. I don't hesitate to post 'teasers' on the CRS Facebook page about forum discussions I think people in our Facebook group would appreciate. But they are (allegedly) part of the same organization, and the forums & Facebook group are supposedly just different means of one group sharing information. Plus Facebook groups are largely about posting links to information elsewhere on the web that you think others in the group will find useful or amusing. But it's different with LongeCity, or Reddit (BTW, which subreddits do you or anyone frequent or find useful?), which are in some respects competing with us for eyeballs. I'd feel kinda resentful if someone made posts to our forums to the effect "come see the smart things I've written over here!"

 

But perhaps there is a middle ground. Rather than cross-post new material, I can do what Michael did yesterday in this post about leucine restriction, where he skillfully working in links to discussions on LongeCity forums that were relevant to a discussion we were in the midst of here. Perhaps I could do the same in reverse, i.e. monitor conversations happening on the "Lifestyle" subforums of Longecity and post links to relevant discussions back here on our forums. That way our discussions could have a wider audience, and potentially attract more people to engage on our Forums.

 

I think I may start doing that and see where it leads. Thanks for the suggestion Sthira!

 

--Dean

[Sthira]

You know Sthira I'm just chuckling here about your encounter with the evangelical. Isn't it kinda hard being so agnostic? I happen to be an anabaptist.

We've seen the human history population graphs, right?-- our ancestral populations remained stable at just a few million or less poor struggling souls for global generation after generation, living in dirt and grime for a decade or two before reproducing then dying of infections or injuries before, during, after the times of Buddha and Abraham, Christ, Mohammad -- the heavenly voices once aimed at just a few million scattered mass media-free humans.

 

Then suddenly -- boom! -- a massive sweep upward on the population graph from millions to billions of humans! Breathtaking the numbers! In insect world they say we're an infestation.

 

So my question to theists of all corporations is if God appeared to (eg) Jesus Christ in times of just a few million souls in order to open the gates and proclaim the rules of life and death, then why would God be silent to us now? Here we are, bloody and miserable from fighting over which words he uttered back then. Why not now reappear, dear God, update the message in times of not just suffering millions of humans, but suffering billions of humans? In fact, we're in full on extinction crisis across the plant and animal world.

 

If you believe God exists, pray for God to appear to us now, in this very thread, dear God: post your thoughts and comments here to the sweet genuine CR Society readers. Update us?

 

Talk about site traffic. Gee willikers! All those eyeballs reading God's word? While other websites have healthy "science"-based longevity clues -- here on the CRS we have God, and Thou art posting updates!

 

Until something, any new message from God, and we're not choosy about your media choices, clearly, God, until we hear anew from you: all shall remain agnostic, neither atheist nor theist, whether we accept that about ourselves or not: no one knows if God exists.

[Dean Pomerleau]

After my last mistake of moving a Sthira post to a new thread, I won't be doing that again, at least not without your permission. But Sthira, if anyone (else) responds to your God post would you mind if I moved the discussion to a new thread on chitchat?

 

BTW - I agree with you. It seems very odd and unlikely to me that God would have spoken freely and quite explicitly to folks prior to 2500 years ago, yet remain completely silent today - at least in the overt sense of communicating openly and unequivocally with her people.

 

Of course there is the problem of proof. Just what it would take for you to believe that Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed has returned, and chosen to make their presence known through a forum post!?

 

--Dean

[Sthira]

Oh. Simple enough, She dear God may post longevity enhancing techniques. Ain't that why any of us are bothering with semi-starvation? Proof from Her would be she'd tell us -- hey, that IGF-1 pathway is really too simplistic, here's The Way haha. Go God! C'mon Goddess! We're rootin' for ya!

 

And about moving these reactionary words to a new thread, I vote to leave reaction here, within its weird context:

 

when

God

is ready

to start Her own new thread,

let

Her

start

Her

Own

new thread based on what she only She wants to do to enlighten us, etc

 

Not our decision.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sthira,

 

Oh. Simple enough, She dear God may post longevity enhancing techniques. Ain't that why any of us are bothering with semi-starvation? Proof from Her would be she'd tell us -- hey, that IGF-1 pathway is really too simplistic, here's The Way haha. Go God! C'mon Goddess! We're rootin' for ya!

 

Oh is that all you're looking for. Easy. God has spoken - I'm just her messenger ☺. Now all we have to do is follow her Commandments for 50 or 60 years to see if she is right.

 

And about moving these reactionary words to a new thread, I vote to leave reaction here.

 

Sigh... There goes this nice thread I made - right off the rails. Oh well. I learned my lesson last time and won't cross you again...

--Dean

[Sthira]

Yes but your word, dear brother in godly spirit, is that we should not only attempt to navigate the insane struggles of the modern society on an empty stomach, but we also should make ourselves cold?

 

Exclamation point.

 

Ask her more questions for me, please. If you wanted us to be both hungry and cold in order to live longer, healthier lives, then why did you leave out pleasure? Did you want us to suffer (be hungry, be cold, be in pain, be freaky-weird skinny)? If you wanted us to suffer, then what kind of God are you? Why couldn't we get a nice, chill Rastafarian God who's just like no prob y'all just enjoy life without the hunger and cold, here's some feel-good blunt.

[Dr Bennett]

STHira thanks for sharing your feelings. I was very touched by your words and questions.  I believe you must be a really nice person.

 

Dr Bennett

[Sthira]

STHira thanks for sharing your feelings. I was very touched by your words and questions. I believe you must be a really nice person.

 

Dr Bennett

https://youtu.be/Njf01Df2nPo

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sithra,

 

Ask her more questions for me, please. If you wanted us to be both hungry and cold in order to live longer, healthier lives, then why did you leave out pleasure? Did you want us to suffer (be hungry, be cold, be in pain, be freaky-weird skinny)? If you wanted us to suffer, then what kind of God are you? Why couldn't we get a nice, chill Rastafarian God who's just like no prob y'all just enjoy life without the hunger and cold...

 

So you don't just what answers. Now you also want justification!? Who do you think you are - Job?

 

You asked for it. Here is what she says:

 

Sthira,

 

How dare you question my Creation?

 

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth,

When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

 

Despite your impudence, I will answer your earnest question.

 

Why must you suffer?

 

One word - Hormesis: It's not just a good idea, it's the Law.

Suffering builds character. I made you so that which does not kill you, makes you stronger.

Life is a struggle. Deal with it.

 

If you wanted to live in some namby-pamby, Rastafarian heaven-on-earth,

you should have chosen a different universe in which to be born.

 

Better luck next time.

 

GOD

[Sthira]

Thank you. I'm humbly taking that in, God.

[Gordo]

God may post longevity enhancing techniques. 

Been there, done that!

 

 

Sorry your thread was hijacked Dean.  But I for one am very curious to see how your cold exposure thread would "do" on longeCity, I think you should go ahead and start it as a little experiment.  I will gladly contribute to it to see what unfolds...

[Dean Pomerleau]

Gordo,

 

Sorry your thread was hijacked Dean.

 

Oh I didn't really mind the hijacking. It was really kinda fun. And after cutting my teeth channeling Michael on several occasions (e.g. here), it wasn't that big a leap to channeling God ☺.

 

I for one am very curious to see how your cold exposure thread would "do" on longeCity...

 

There are actually already a couple threads about cold exposure I could find in the Lifestyle forums of Longecity.org, including:

• This one from 2015 about Dr. Rhonda Patrick's interview with Joe Rogan about the norepinephrine-inducing effects of cold exposure - no mention of her more recent interview with Ray Cronise with more depth and expertise on the topic.
• This one from 2012 on the benefits of cold showers
• This one from 2009, again on cold showers.

I was pretty disappointed. All these threads were pretty short, superficial and mostly anecdotal. E.g. 'I feel invigorated by my daily cold shower!', ironically similar to Saul's typical contribution on the topic ☺.

 

The one post with any meat to it was this one, from 2009, which turned out to be just a cut-and-paste job from another website with a few old studies about the benefits of cold showers.

 

Do any long-time participants on LongeCity.org know of any other cold-related threads over there that my cursory search didn't turn up?

 

 I think you should go ahead and start it as a little experiment.  I will gladly contribute to it to see what unfolds...

 

I too would be game to participate in a cold exposure discussion on LongeCity.org to see if we could get something going. Although I must admit the more I look the less impressed I am with the quality of discussions on their Lifestyle forums.

 

Gordo - given your remarkable results with cold exposure, I think it might be appropriate for you to start a LongeCity thread on the topic, perhaps pointing back to our cold exposure thread. If the terrific improvements you've seen in glucose control from cold exposure don't catch anyone's attention, I don't know what will - certainly not all my sciencey posts, at least to start with.

 

If the effort is DOA, than we'll have learned that LongeCity isn't a great place right now for our kind of discussions. But even if our effort fizzles, it's worth keeping LongeCity in mind. Given their nice forum facilities, it could still be a good place to move our discussions to en masse if the CRS forums ever go belly up...

 

--Dean

[Gordo]

 

Gordo - given your remarkable results with cold exposure, I think it might be appropriate for you to start a LongeCity thread on the topic, perhaps pointing back to our cold exposure thread. If the terrific improvements you've seen in glucose control from cold exposure don't catch anyone's attention, I don't know what will - certainly not all my sciencey posts, at least to start with.

 

OK, I took your suggestion and went ahead with it.  But as you noted, I too am not impressed with the quality, content, or participation over there.  I seriously doubt anything will become of it (but if you don't try, you won't know, right?)...  I linked back to this site right from the git go, so maybe in the very least this effort will serve to attract someone here that ends up contributing in some meaningful way.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Gordo,

 

OK, I took your suggestion and went ahead with it. 

 

Wow - you sure did! Great job! Despite your modestly, that is a terrific summary of both the science and the huge glucose control improvements you've personally observed as a result of cold exposure. Would you mind posting a link to your Longecity Cold Exposure thread on the Cold Exposure thread on these forums? It will be a good place to point new folks trying to come up to speed on the benefits of CE.

 

I'm going to have to read it again carefully to see if there is anything I can contribute that you've left out - you've been so thorough already!

 

Done...

 

I went ahead and posted a reply on your LongeCity thread, amplifying one of your points (about small mammal species, brown fat and longevity), including a few more links to our cold exposure thread over here. And while I was at it I gave your posts various forms of kudos - which is a really cool feature it would be nice to have enabled over here... Speaking of features - it was so pleasant and familiar posting over there. The fact that they use the exact same forum software as we do makes it trivial to get the hang of. I was even able to directly import my same profile picture¹. 

 

Hopefully the thread will indeed pique the interest of a few smart folks over there. I see our very own Drew has already responded - thanks Drew!  Now if we can only get Michael to post to your LongeCity CE thread, and give it his (obviously heavily qualified...) stamp of approval. Everyone respects Michael, especially at LongeCity, where he's an official advisor. And he posts so infrequently, a post from him would really give the thread some credibility. Hint, hint...

 

--Dean

 

¹For your amusement, here is the uncropped version of my profile picture for anyone interested in seeing the large snake I'm holding - which I caught with my bare hands while it was slithering around my backyard. That photo was taken last year, but I already have caught and released a similar (the same?) snake this year using the same snatch-n-grab method - snake reflexes really aren't that fast. Some people call me the suburban crocodile hunter based on these two classics - The Great Snakescapade and Snakescapade 2 - my son Kyle is the squeaky-voiced cameraman in the first episode, and my daughter Kendall is narrator/cameraperson in the second...