💉Immortality sounds fun and all, but I have a midterm tomorrow. (a.k.a. The Art of Living Fast and Slow)

M.D. Singer — February, 2025

There’s a famous book by Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman titled Thinking Fast and Slow. I haven’t read it.

But I do know that Kahneman classifies thinking into two types: fast and slow. Fast thinking is instinctive and automatic, while slow thinking is deliberate and analytical. While the way we think matters, I’ve been contemplating something else—a bimodal system of living: fast and slow.

Living Fast

At Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die afterparty, he shared a story about his upbringing. At 19, he was sent to Ecuador as a Mormon missionary. There, he witnessed abject poverty and felt compelled to do something meaningful with his life. But like many of us, he didn’t know what meaningful meant. So he decided to amass as much wealth as possible to fuel his meaningful life whenever he figured out what that actually was.

Fourteen years later, Bryan sold his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800 million.

Money ✅

He then asked himself: In the year 2500, what will they say about the 21st century? Time compresses history. We only remember a handful of defining moments from every century.

0 - Jesus

1492 - Christopher Columbus

1776 - American Independence

2025 - ____?

Through this lens, Bryan realized the 21st century would be defined by two things:

1. The rise of artificial superintelligence.
2. Humanity’s newfound agency over life and death—through genome editing, curing untreatable diseases, and controlling our biological destinies.

Bryan thinks in decades and centuries, shaping the future as though time is malleable.

Living Slow

Immortality sounds fun and all, but I have a midterm tomorrow.

History is compressed. But life? Life is dilated. A 5-minute plank, 20-minute meditation, or unscheduled afternoon can slow time down to a snail’s pace. How does one manage both the fast and slow simultaneously?

How do you, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds run”? How do you keep your eyes on the destination while enjoying the ride?

We read about Benjamin Franklin flying the kite, drafting the Declaration of Independence, and schmoozing in France. But you don’t see his to-do list or how he spent his Thursday night on February 27th (probably not writing a newsletter).

Quite honestly, I struggle to project myself 400 years in the future, travel back 400 years to the present, and proceed to study for my Operations exam.

In the midst of this existential tension, two thoughts bring me comfort.

1. This too shall pass.
2. “I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough.” - Albert Einstein

Thinking isn’t fast or slow. Neither is living.

It just is.

“A journey of one thousand leagues begins beneath one’s own feet.” - Confucius

Word Count: 463