Oxford's Renegade Philosophers of Science: Michael P. Gibson, Prof Terence Kealey, A. Sandberg, J. Anomaly, J Scannell, & more
Held at Oxford University. Location to be shared with confirmed attendees via email due to high demand and limited capacity.
Hosted by 1517 Fund, Healthspan Capital, and Oxford Venture Capital Network (OXVC).
Special thanks to EnSpire Oxford: The University of Oxford's Entrepreneurship Hub.
We will host several prominent thinkers in a salon-style event in Oxford.
Governments cause more problems than they solve.
Whether you're an anarchist, minarchist, monarchist, or ardent statist — you will agree that excessive government action does, at least on occasion, lead to perverse outcomes (e.g., Soviet Union).
And elite academic institutions such as Oxford often provide the State with legitimacy and political cover. This has been the role of 'court intellectuals' for millennia.
But radical thinkers have also overturned unjustified state power and yielded fantastic results (e.g., American revolution, Magna Carta, Protestant Reformation).
Discussion topics:
- Should we separate State from Science? As many countries divorced Church from State. Does government interference in the funding and execution of science lead to bias, dogma, and crowding out of talent from industry and privately-funded institutions?
- Longevity Biotech and other academically neglected yet revolutionary fields of research. ["Defining a Longevity Biotech Company"]. [Bloomberg video "The $7 Trillion Quest for a Longer Life"] [Video Overview of Longevity Biotech, for the Longevity Biotech Fellowship — do join!] Also Psychedelics — research was stalled for nearly a century due to government control of R&D.
- Private Cities & Network State movements: New free private charter cities offer hope to advance science, technology, and 'cancelable' heterodox thought. Enabled by crypto, the Decentralized Science movement (DeSci), and global mobility — these new forms of governance promise to treat residents as valued customers instead of tax slaves and conscripts. https://thenetworkstate.com/ and The Network State Conference videos.
- Intersection of libertarian and anarchist thought with science, technology, entrepreneurship and venture capital.
Schedule:
3:30 PM: VIP Meet & Greet for tea
5:00 PM: Talk by Michael Patrick Gibson & Q&A
5:30 PM: Fireside chat between Michael and Sebastian Brunemeier, discussing topics from Paper Belt on Fire
5:50 PM: 10 minute break & meet your neighbors
6:00 PM: Talk by Prof Terence Kealey, PhD
6:30 PM: Talk by Jonathan Anomaly, PhD on embryo selection
6:45 PM: Panel Discussion with Michael, Terence, Anders, Jonathan
7:30 PM: Dinner (Invite-Only / VIP ticketholders)
1. Michael Patrick Gibson
Co-Founder & Partner at 1517 Fund: backing dropouts, students, and Sci-Fi science
Co-founder of the Thiel Fellowship
Author of the must-read book "Paper Belt On Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University."
See his recent presentation at The Network State Conference (hosted by Balaji Srinivasan). ***
Michael is a dropout of Oxford's DPhil in Philosophy, immediately after which he worked for VC Peter Thiel at Thiel Capital.
2. Professor Terence Kealey PhD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Kealey
Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry.
Former biochemistry Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. PhD at University of Oxford.
He has made the libertarian case against government funding of science — due to the 'crowding out' effect and inherent inefficiencies and dogmatism of bureaucratic centralization.
He published around 45 original peer‐reviewed papers and around 35 scientific reviews. Kealey learned how distorting government money could be to the scientific enterprise. In 1996, he published his first book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, in which he argued that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, governments need not fund science.
His second book, Sex, Science and Profits (2008) argues that science is not a public good but, rather, is organized in invisible colleges, thereby making government funding irrelevant. He was an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute.
Anders Sandberg, PhD is senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford. His research at the FHI centres on management of low-probability high-impact risks, societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement, estimating the capabilities of future technologies, and very long-range futures. He is a fellow for Ethics and Values at Reuben College, Oxford. He is research associate of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, the Center for the Study of Bioethics (Belgrade), and the Institute of Future Studies (Stockholm).
Prof. Jonathan Anomaly PhD, Professor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Academic Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in Quito, Ecuador. Anomaly works with a startup that offers polygenic embryo screening for health (longevity) and other physical and mental traits. Former professor at Duke and Penn. Author of "Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement," (Second Edition PDF available) and leading thinker on embryo selection and genetic enhancement. Podcast link.
Jack Scannell, PhD: CEO of Etheros Pharmaceuticals which is developing fullerene-based chemistry in a range of neuroprotective and longevity applications. He coined the term “Eroom’s Law” to contrast the exponential decline in biopharmaceutical R&D productivity between 1950 and 2010 with the more familiar Moore’s Law, which described the exponential increase in computing power over a similar period. (Presentation)
Jack was Co-Head of European Pharmaceuticals and Biotech at UBS Investment Research and Head of European Healthcare at Sanford Bernstein. He led Discovery Biology at E-Therapeutics PLC, an Oxford-based biotech firm. He started his commercial career at the Boston Consulting Group. Before that, he was an academic neuroscientist. He has a D.Phil. in Physiology (Neuroscience) from Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Sciences from Cambridge.
Moderator & Organizer:
Sebastian Brunemeier, Biotech VC and company builder focused on longevity & regenerative medicine. Founder & CEO of ImmuneAGE Bio, General Partner at Healthspan Capital, co-founder and CIO of Cambrian Biopharma, Founder & COO of Samsara Therapeutics, Principal at Apollo Health Ventures.
Geroscientist by training (Oxford/Scripps PhD dropout as Clarendon Scholar and Skaggs-Oxford scholar, MSc in Molecular Neuroscience & Biotech Business Management from University of Amsterdam), Fulbright Fellow on Telomere Biology at the Gulbenkian Institute. Advisor to VitaDAO, Longevity Biotech Fellowship, and more. Link to selected presentations and podcasts.
See Sebastian's talk on Free Cities and Medical Freedom at The Liberty In Our Lifetime Conference.
Sebastian was at Lincoln College, Oxford and continues to support entrepreneurs within the Lincoln ecosystem.
Note: event capacity is limited, apply to attend ASAP.
Thank you to:
Julija Rabchuka, President at OXVC and our logistics czar. Your efforts to secure an excellent venue make this event possible!
Dr Jack Kreidler of the London clinic Well Founded Health, focusing on high performance and longevity medicine — for his kind donation to Longevity Biotech Fellowship, a partner organization of this event.
Affiliated Organizations:
1517 Fund
Oxford Venture Capital Network (OXVC)