A biography for Bryan Johnsonhasn’t been written yet.
“To me, future success depends upon our ability to not confront our future biases but to actively embrace uncertainty.”
“Intelligence is what allows us to create forms of governance, cure disease, create art and music, discover, dream and love. Intelligence is also what decides that these things, rather than other things, are worth doing, by translating discoveries into meanings, experiences into values and values into decisions.”
“When I started Kernel in 2016, my objective was to make the most revolutionary advance in the field of neuroscience around reading and writing neural code. I wanted to bring the brain 'online.' The problem: many people had ideas, but no one actually knew what to do.”
“The evolution of human tools, from rocks to AI, can be seen as a trajectory of increasingly powerful effort arbitrage, where we exploit our comparative advantage relative to our tools to do things better, and do more new things. Along this trajectory, tools that embody significant levels of intelligence are our most powerful yet.”
“I started Kernel, a neuroenhancement company, personally investing $100M, to help ensure that humans and AI evolve together.”
“I have a relationship with the 25th century more than I have a relationship with the 21st century. I don't really care what people in our time and place think of me. I really care about what the 25th century thinks.”
“I started Braintree when I was 27 years old, I bootstrapped the company for the first four years. And we were profitable every month.”
“In 2013 I sold my payments company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800 million, reaching a goal I set when 21.”
“Whenever I get in my car, I say to myself: 'This is the most dangerous thing I'll do today.'”
“When people say, 'From first principles... ' to start their argument, what they mean is that they wish to assume as few things as possible from within a given frame.”
“When I was building my payments company, Braintree, the online payments experience was awful. So you'd get a cab, and the wifi connectivity wouldn't work, and it was just awful. And we said: 'OK, let's make this a beautiful experience.'”
“We plan everything else in life: when we wake up, when we start work, meetings, social events, marriage, kids, career progression, financial goals, vacations, purchases, war, retirement, death - everything. Why don't we have a plan for our collective survival?”
“I suffered from chronic depression for a decade. I wanted with the greatest amount of intensity I could explain to just cease to exist.”
“Biologists are the engineers of the future.”
“I burn inside with an ambition that feels out of place in the early 21st century.”
“As much as I admire the greats of industry and technology, as a founder-CEO who built a company on the three pillars of culture, technology, and sales, my biggest source of inspiration has always been the founding fathers.”
“For years, sadly, I accepted the grind narrative associated with being an entrepreneur while building Braintree Venmo. Days without sleeping was legend. Ragged state of being a badge of honor.”
“First-principles thinking sets goals in known terms and then pursues them, inventing and learning new things as necessary, but it rarely uncovers brand new conceptual primitives of the kind which the world needs.”
“If we could really measure our brain's activity, it would be a historical turning point for Homo sapiens, making radical human cognitive evolution possible.”
“The discovery that we can program our existence and author our own lives has radically altered my life - transforming my identity, aspirations, and reason for existence.”