Don’t Die

by Bryan Zero Johnson

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (link below). Consult your doctor for what’s right for you.

Medical disclaimer
This website, including any experimental results presented, is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Individuals seeking medical advice should consult with a licensed physician.

Biological age measurements and claims
Any claims regarding the measurement or reversal of biological age are preliminary and can be influenced by various biostatistical errors, including statistical variation, reference range relevancy, and clinical outcome significance. Ongoing, formal peer-reviewed studies are essential for validating these biological age tests for FDA approval (or its international equivalent) and confirming any clinically relevant changes in biological age. The data presented reflect our team's rigorous efforts to adhere to current scientific and biostatistical standards, while formal peer-reviewed validation studies are underway. Please note: These tests are experimental and intended solely for research purposes. They should not replace or supplement any clinical tests recommended by licensed medical professionals."

Context
The protocol presented on this website is based on scientific research, ranging from mouse studies to meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials and international clinical practice guidelines. These have been carefully reviewed for their unique relevance to my personal situation. The protocol encompasses a mix of on-label, off-label, and unlicensed therapies, as well as research-use-only tests. Some of these tests and therapies are still under scientific investigation and have not yet received on-label licensing for specific health conditions. All tests and therapies, regardless of their licensing status, carry risks. These risks have been assessed for my personal use by a specialized team of clinicians and scientists. This protocol represents an experimental clinical research project. Results will be periodically published in peer-reviewed journals, adhering to international quality standards relevant to various types of clinical studies, including case reports, randomised controlled trials, and systematic reviews. Case reports, case series, and systematic reviews are important components of evidence-based medicine, helping inform the design of gold-standard randomised controlled trials and guiding clinical practice.

Rx
The use of Prescription only Medicines (PoMs) such as HGH, acarbose, rapamycin, metformin, thyroxine, testosterone, statins, phenylbutyric acid, tadalafil and others discussed in this protocol should not be considered an endorsement or promotion of these products. PoMs should only be prescribed by a licensed doctor who has assessed that the benefits and risks are acceptable for the individual and acquired through licensed pharmacies in a jurisdictionally legal manner. The prescribing doctor should be made aware of all other PoMs being taken and other relevant interventions such as foods, supplements and medical history to enable accurate assessment for safe prescribing and monitoring of combination interventions.

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Health, Self Help

247 pages, ebook

Published September 28, 2023

About the author

Zero was the first individual H. sapiens to surpass five hundred years of age. He died in 2478, hit by Earth's last bus in operation, only weeks before becoming Homo Deus. During his life, Zero fathered millions of biological and digital offspring who now live in the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. Best known for inventing Zeroism and the resurrection technology undie, Zero famously raised his detractors from the dead so he could tell them that he had outlived them.
Zero's ancestor, Bryan Johnson, was born in twentieth-century USA. Johnson left his religious upbringing and built the payments company Braintree Venmo, which sold to PayPal for eight hundred million dollars in 2013. He subsequently became a pioneering entrepreneur and investor in the fields of synthetic biology, nanotechnology, brain interfaces, and longevity. Johnson became the most biologically measured person in history through his Project Blueprint and created the global movement DON'T DIE that sowed the seeds for human, planetary and Al alignment..

Johnson follows a strict dietary and lifestyle regime in pursuit of life extension.

His writing blog on Medium is extensive and has written a chapter in Martin Ford’s Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building It. His new book, Don’t Die, is accessible on his blueprint site.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book #25 this year which was my goal! I've been following Bryan Johnson for a few months and think he has some really compelling ideas, but this book was awful. I thought this was going to be non-fiction book about why and how not to die, but it was actually a fictional story where each of his personality traits is a different character and they debate each other for the entire book. The characters wander aimlessly in the debate, going on only mildly related tangents without ever really answering the questions they pose - certainly a realistic representation of conversation but not at all satisfying to read.

Using a fictional story to teach and explain real-life concepts in a meaningful way is challenging (it took Dostoevsky 1,000 pages in The Brothers Karamazov), and there's a reason why Bryan made his millions as a tech CEO and not a writer (despite having written a few quite good short articles on Medium). He falls into an uncommon category (although I presume relatively more common among tech CEOs) of great orators who are bad writers.

The best part of the book was relating the Ulysses Pact (a freely made decision designed and intended to bind oneself in the future) to health. Whether we should allow ourselves to make decisions now that force us into healthier decisions later is an interesting idea and contrary to much advice about intuitive/mindful health choices.

The worst part of the book was describing a fictional story about a mountain in Nepal where in the face of certain death they made the decision to leave someone in their party behind who was later rescued by sherpas and nursed to health over months. Which mountain was it? Everest? Annapurna? One of the other seven 8,000 meter peaks in Nepal? No, it was Mount Kilimanjaro, which is in Africa and not the type of mountain where you are forced to leave people behind. Did he not hire an editor?

[Yordi Verbeeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love thinking about future civilizations and enjoy a bit of cringe, this book is for you!

Don’t Die is a one-scene Socratic dialogue of the different thinking hats of Bryan Johnson, the alien-looking man with a high Zuckerdose. The book reads like a prelude to his 'religion,' and yes, I’m slowly converting. Upon reading this book, it gave me a the courage to think further ahead about my own life. I’m a big fan of Bryan’s work so far, and I’m excited to see where his health adventures will lead.

I would, however, not recommend it if you’ve never seen this man before. Perhaps start with a few YouTube videos instead.

[Destiny · Rating 1 out of 5]

lol no girl

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was frustrating. I am a huge fan of Bryan Johnson’s amazing life extension research (essentially, using himself as test subject zero for a full range of evidence based things, ranging from a precise diet to red light treatment to a bunch of more extreme stuff.). I was hoping for a sober and technical description of his journey, plans, methodology, motivations, and open questions. This book was…not that. It was basically a weird fake last day dinner party with different aspects of his personality debating relatively personal history of his, and very little on the protocol. It was “interesting”, but not particularly useful or informative.

[Irene Goomishian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like someone trying to start cult

Mixes truth with scary predictions (for some). I had been interested in johnsons health regimens and testing. I will scrutinize more closely after this.

[Marian Leica · Rating 4 out of 5]

To expose probable bias, I do follow and appreciate Bryan Johnson for his online influence over healthy living. The book, as far as I can see, is an imagined debate and conversation between customs characters with on-purpose traits (Depression, Dark Humor, Blueprint, etc.) that brings forth part philosophical part scientific arguments and counter-arguments on the topic of how we lived, live, and probably will live in not so distant future. Though the book's staging could not make me forget about how one-way the conversation is going, the point is made, and it does leave me with some worthy ideas to meditate on.

[ⵎⵓⵏⵉⵔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book's theme was a serendipitous surprise, as I expected something along the same lines as the YouTube content Bryan Johnson usually offers. Instead, we got an engaging, though at times seemingly aimlessly wandering, conversation between fictional characters, about alignment, consciousness, and the history and future of humanity, with autobiographical elements that shed some light on the author's journey to renouncing religion, and to becoming test subject zero of Blueprint.

My key takeaways from this book are the following:
- Before we tackle the problem of the alignment of AI with human values, we have to consider how to align humanity with itself, and the individual with itself. Blueprint is an attempt to solve the last problem partially, by using hard data to tell the human consciousness to align its model of reality and its behavior with the body's actual needs and interests, something which for hundreds of thousands of years was impossible, given the lack of technological tools to do so.
- The power of human civilization is measured by how much it can automate away, so it can focus on more important and more complex problems. In a way, the goal is not to become more conscious, but less conscious (at least most of the time) of what is really going on with most things, but making sure they're running on highly efficient algorithms that are doing their job. It's the same way individuals become less conscious of what they're actually doing, when they achieve high proficiency in a task (such as driving), and it's the same goal that Blueprint is aiming at (automate the food consumption and daily activities to ensure maximum health and survival). What if we could do the same to the humanity alignment problem, when it comes to global issues such as climate change?

The author tried to address some ethical concerns regarding potentially "forcing" people to automate some aspects of their behaviors and interactions, but I admit that I found his arguments confusing and unsatisfying. Is the fact that "we cannot imagine how society will look like in 500 years" sufficient to justify such a program from an ethical standpoint? In terms of philosophical depth, I think that the book only scratches the surface of the concepts that underpin the theses it advances, regarding issues such as AI and social alignment, which have been discussed with much more detail and profoundness by other authors and lecturers. As such, it may come about as "shallow" or "philosophically uninteresting" to some people.

What may additionally be lacking in this book is the issue of scalability, i.e. it does not give concrete examples of how Bryan Johnson expects to implement these "automated algorithms" on a global scale. Perhaps he plans to tackle that in a future work as he seems to be hinting at the end. Regarding actionability, I think Blueprint itself is already a great start. But I think some deeper philosophy is needed to tackle the spiritual aspects of the alignment, a deeply satisfying meaning-generating system for 21st century humans and beyond, a religion that is not a religion, as John Vervaeke put it.

[Jule · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dropped after the introduction

[Matthew Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book condenses the points Bryan “Zero” Johnson has been articulating in Instagram videos, tweets, and interviews into a general narrative structure.

It’s a classic Socratic Dialogue where different characters take on key themes and argue against a key protagonist. Each refutation is taken by the protagonist to expand upon theory, or to shoot down arguments.
Naming the interlocutors after their character traits helped a lot more than if they had been named “Alan”, “Bob”, “Charles” etc.

I enjoyed the book and it’s definitely the distillation of FAQs and ELI5s that the author has answered over the years about his projects.

5 stars

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is as bonkers as it is quirky; extremely wealthy entrepreneur Johnson strongly believes that by hacking every biological process available to modern science he can prolong his (indeed very mortal) life indefinitely; he lays out his musings on physical immortality by employing a sort of socratic dialogue like discussion amongst the different voices in his conscience experience, each voice/actor highlighting the various pros en cons of his ludicrous enterprise; freely available on amazon in the kindle format, read at your own peril.

[Tash · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know why but throughout reading this book it was giving me Alchemist vibes.

This book was one giant question......... about life .......and all its hurdles ......I think?

Some great quotes within...

Is humanity in its infancy?

"What if we are merely at the fetal stage of humanity’s long and windy course through the known universe? What if we’re still just single cells on a great road map of human progress"?

"But Depression was like a linguistic savant. The poet laureate of purgatory confining each of us in his chains with words alone. We all felt it at times, and we all hated his words at times, even if we accepted it some of the time."

[Tahlia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This felt like I was reading a round table of rich white men discovering philosophy for the first time. The ideas were basic, the writing was insufferable and I couldn’t wait for it to end.

His morals seem to be in the right place, arguing for health and longevity and acknowledging the disaster that the world is. But it was just so basic, like a long version of a conversation you have with your stoner friends at 17.

I don’t know anything about the author, but he did pop up on a news segment this morning randomly!? Which made me realise that this really is just some billionaires Sunday thoughts poised as ground breaking philosophy.

I think the writing just really threw me off. The mountain they climbed is not even one you’d be sacrificing a friend for!?

[Melissa De Cunto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bryan Johnson's “Don't Die” is a riveting masterpiece that grips you from the first page and doesn't let go. The book's compelling narrative and deep character development make it an unforgettable read. Johnson's writing is nothing like I read before. What sets its apart is its exploration of practical questions about the future of being human. It delves into the complexities of our existence and the challenges we face in a rapidly changing world. Following the author on YouTube, I was thrilled to discover that he made the online version free for all. Reading the book alongside the free audiobook on his channel added a whole new dimension to the experience.

“Don't Die” is more than just a novel; it’s an experience that stays with you long after you've turned the last page. A must-read for anyone seeking a powerful and thought-provoking story. Five stars.

[Perham Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

I commend Bryan Johnson for trying to get something going, but I wish he was a little more clear about what it is that he is trying to get going. Not particularly well written and wouldn't recommend it.

[Eryk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author tried too hard to write his own bible and failed. The ideas could’ve be shared much easier without the boring story and complex dialogs. But if you endure it, this book presents pretty interesting philosophy.

[Jared Stivala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely thought provoking and gives a new perspective on the future in a creative way

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dont bother

It’s written in a way for morons. The core is a simple and good message but my god is the writing dense and condescending.

[Oleg Gavryliuk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mind wandering placed in word on paper

For me it was hard to understand what the idea was to write this book. Looks like some shizofrenik's mind wandering placed in word on paper with well known philosophers quotes.

[Selma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Other reviewers describe well enough what the book is about. I found the ideas thought provoking, but the socratic dialogue was so tedious to me that I did not finish the book. I will rather watch his Youtube videos in future to follow his progress and findings.

[Manuel Gómez-Ortigoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

worth reading and discussing

The metaphor is a good one to set the table for an open discusión on biological programming as the defining technology of the 21 century.
Antibiotics, antidepressants, bipolar medicine, and all sorts of pills have created a humanity of over the counter junkies. It is about time someone starts measuring effects and outcomes of medicines and supplements in an attempt to create an optimized human being that gives medicine tools to optimize patients health

[Mariuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very interesting ideas but I was missinga little bit of structure and polishing. It helps knowing Bryan's story otherwise It lacks a little bit of context. It would be great to hear a debate between Bryan and Jaron Lanier.

[Julie]

(Kindle)

[Corentin Xa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's lengthy to read. The book really starts at page 143 where concrete ideas are exchanged, in that instance about programmable biology. The pages before that are a debate that the author must have had with himself/others and I didn't find it very interesting, possibly because I'm already familiar with some of these ideas. Another trick to speed up the reading is to skip all the characters except Blueprint, Zero, and Scribe (and maybe Model Builder, Game Play, Relentless, and Dark Humor).

[Daposto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not a simple biography and the same blueprint ideas all over, but it talks about fascinating questions about us humans and the future of our species engagingly by having archetypical characters engaged in deep discussion. Thanks for the ride!

[Colin Keeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Bryan and his pursuit here. I hate the format of this book. The ideas are good, but the style is just brutal to read. I hope he rewrites it as a more conventional book.

[Bookworm-hev · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a intresting read wow

[João · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Reread

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bryan Johnson seems like a well intentioned and decently well-read guy who is trying to make a name for himself as an intrepid explorer of human biology, amongst other disciplines.

Through this book, you find a surprising number of well-argued counterarguments to his positions on transhumanism and AI, which are done better than the type of derisive dismissals easily made about the man on social media.

That said, I'm not convinced that what he's doing will yield quite as many good results as he hopes for. And, knowing how highly subjective the human experience is, I don't think it can be "gamed" to any particular "advantage" as if homeostasis is some sort of free market economy (which is not a best-case economic circumstance anyways.)

Not to mention a handful of easily picked up errors that make me uneasy about handing over control of any of my willpower to him or anyone else real OR synthetic. Johnson mentions with elation twice that a brand new organ was found on the intestines in the last decade, supposedly hiding in plain sight. That I can find, the "mesentery" was always known about but simply reclassified as an organ upon recent reevaluation of its functions. It's like saying we miraculously discovered a dwarf planet called Pluto in 2006 without ever having spotted it before, when instead its classification was simply changed. And you cannot cut any worm into any number of pieces and grow a whole bunch of worms. I know this because of the existence of worms and blenders, and the non-existence of a global worm-based fascist state. (And a simple Google, of course.)

He might discuss depression, climate change, algorithms, utilitarianism and the end of death—but I didn't find a single mention of the term that most concerns me when it comes to Johnson: eating disorder.

Like Johnson, I too am excited for the rapid proliferation of efficiency-increasing applications for AI—but not quite as optimistic about its uses overall. AI is not at all perfect, not yet and not ever. There will always be human errors because humans make it, no matter how well intentioned.

It comes back to philosophy in the end. Are you willing to forgo the pleasures of spontaneity, of wild food combinations and those occasional habits that are "bad" for you for the sake of extra life? The years in your life over the life in your years?

No philosophy I want to subscribe to is bereft of pleasure or so strictly about optimising existence over the many other motivations we have in life--like "making the most of our time here." I learned years ago, for example, that I would never go to the gym. That exercise had to be some sort of means to an end—a walk around the shops or a cycle to work. Not an exercise for its own sake.

Having said that, I do like thought exercises for their own sake! So I'm appreciative for this one, however flawed, and wish Johnson well on his expeditions :)

[Mario Gudec · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bryan Johnson's Don't Die is a unique blend of science fiction and philosophical exploration, reflecting his real-life endeavors in longevity and health optimization. The narrative unfolds through a cast of characters representing different facets of Johnson's psyche, engaging in dialogues that delve into themes of mortality, technology, and human evolution.

The book's imaginative approach offers an intriguing glimpse into Johnson's vision for humanity's future, particularly his advocacy for life extension and the integration of technology in enhancing human capabilities. However, the unconventional storytelling and abstract concepts may not resonate with all readers, potentially leading to confusion or disengagement.

For those interested in the intersection of technology, philosophy, and human potential, Don't Die provides a thought-provoking, albeit unconventional, read. Approach with an open mind and a willingness to navigate the abstract.

[Justin Norman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know this guy gets made fun of a lot — some of it is justified, but generally it seems like he doesn't deserve it. His goal to extend human life seems really laudable, and the practical advice he gives — eat well and exercise regularly — is pretty standard stuff. Sometimes the language he uses can sound a bit cult-ish, but at least so far it appears to be a cult of... health? Not sure what's so detestable here.

I thought this book was extremely interesting, even if it was flawed. Bryan splits the different facets of himself into characters and has them interact in an extended conversation about death. I thought there were a lot of interesting moments where familiar ideas were presented in a new way, and for someone like me who struggles to keep an exercise routine, these helped motivate me.

For those who don't find philosophical arguments like these necessary or helpful for motivating positive habits, you might not find much of interest here. From an entertainment perspective, the book is fairly dry. All of the characters stay in one location, and several of the characters aren't differentiated enough to make them feel real. This makes sense because they're all facets of the same person, but it often makes for reading that isn't very compelling.

After reading this, I read Bryan's more cultishly titled "Zeroism", and thought that it was a much better distillation of the same ideas. To enjoy Don't Die, you're going to have to look past the sometimes boring framework of a guy talking to himself.