Immortality

[wolfram]

Rezwan wrote: The cost…”Kurzweil ingests “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry.[45] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.[46]” I want PIE! Do or die! The red wine sounds OK.

yeah, kurzweil’s method is expensive [em]and it doesn’t work.[/em] Should we say that all nuclear fusion is going to be exhorbitantly priced based on how expensive ITER is, or heaven forbid, NIF?

Longevity is so under developed at the moment that predicting some of it’s inherent properties and then assuming your predictions have to be true is intellectually dishonest. Consider the various possibilities, Will it work equally well on all specimens? few treatments work universally as it is now. What kind of cost will it be? will those costs be amenable to economies of scale? what parts of our biological system does it interact with? There are so many parameters wiggling about that we could fill books with speculation and collect no data.

I mean I could postulate a particular brand of immortality (gain an increase to your life span proportional to the amount of life span of the person you murder) which is totally ethically reprehensible, and I could equally well postulate one that is much more acceptable (vaccine against natural death that, as an unavoidable side effect from gene repair mechanisms, renders you sterile). Both are completely fictional, both have completely different arguments about whether or not they are good.

For an interesting collection of thoughts people have already had on immortality, consider http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Immortality

We can see that some effort has already been put into characterizing the various types of fictitious states of human longevity, obviously types 1 and 0 are physically impossible due to A.) entropy and B.) a lack of authorial intent in the universe, type 6 would kind of suck, type 3 or 2 is probably the goal of the transhumanists, types 9 and 10 are ethically dubious. I could go on and on.

[Henning]

Cool! Sounds like my favourite sitcom. 🙂
Especially those 72 virgins saying NO.

[Brian H]

I wonder about the progress of science in a world of immortals. The observation has been made that science advances its paradigms one funeral at a time. Entrenched memes and all that. Whether having a “long view”, plus a vigourous and reasonably youthful body, would make “elder scientists” more amenable to new concepts, is hard to say.

In any case, the advent of unlimited cheap energy will alter so many considerations and circumstances and priorities that it’s almost a fool’s errand to try and anticipate the full (or maybe even most significant) consequences. Immortality research is probably something that would benefit, as the inspiration of removal of previously intractable limits will be very inspiring and enticing to many who have dark views of the world. (If you want a fine UK example, check out John Brignell’s site, “http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm” The Number Watch)
Note: copy/paste the link; It contains an embedded space after ‘number’, which seems to confuse the forum software no matter how I format it.

[JimmyT]

Rezwan wrote: Experimental arborealists are a powerful voting bloc. I wouldn’t stand in their way. Like the trees, we’ll have to walk carefully around them.

The cost…”Kurzweil ingests “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry.[45] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.[46]” I want PIE! Do or die! The red wine sounds OK.

You guys keep working on that immortality thing – I’m going to shop around the movie idea, get a three picture deal, crank it out. The “Singularity Resurrection” film project.

The clock is ticking.

No hopes for immortality here. But a few extra years would be welcome. I did plant 3 giant sequoia trees in my back yard a couple of years ago. (That is to say the species is “Giant”, my trees were around 6 inches tall.) Alas, they fell a bit short of my hoped for lifespan for them of 5,000 years or so. They only made it to 6 months. A deer ate them.

Does that make me an experimental arborealist?

[wolfram]

At the hobbyist level, at least. but many wonderful things have come from hobbyists, so don’t let that stop you.

[Brian H]

JimmyT wrote:
…

No hopes for immortality here. But a few extra years would be welcome.
…

Are you familiar with the “actuarial immortality” concept? The idea is that lifespan expectations are climbing faster as time goes on, and when it reaches the point that it climbs one year or more per year, the expected span becomes “indefinite”. So you/I/we just have to make it to that point! 😉

BTW, anyone else having smiley trouble again? All my browser(s) display is the text from the link page.

[Brian H]

It could be that considerable “anti-senescence” / immortality research is urgently needed! Here’s a demographics report indicating that the vast majority of the world is falling below replacement birthrates, much faster than expected (even Iran! 😉 ):
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0505.200407.eberstadt.demography.html

Highlights:
Depopulation by birth shortage in all the world — except Africa and the US; huge male child imbalances throughout Asia; falling lifespan in Russia.

So we elderly are going to have to be hale enough to support ourselves …

[JimmyT]

Back in the early to mid 20th century a hot topic of discussion was “How are we going to provide care and sustenance to the hundreds of thousands of polio victims from the current and anticipated epidemics?”.

A difficult or seemingly impossible task then, or now for that matter. But instead medical research developed a relatively inexpensive vaccine which completely changed the dynamic. It all but eradicated the disease saving untold billions of dollars and untold human suffering. I think the cost for each dose of vaccine was around 10 cents.

How are we going to provide care and sustenance to the growing population of aging people in this country?

Maybe by curing the disease?

As to my illustration of seeking medical attention for illnesses: It’s just an illustration. It illustrates the inarguable fact that those who are now living wish to continue to do so. At least for a while. I could just as easily have said “Do you eat?” or “Do you breathe?”. Do you take care not to walk out in front of speeding buses? You don’t have to do any of these things. We all make thousands of choices every day to continue our lives. At least a bit longer.

To make a conscious choice not to extend one’s life significantly is a freedom which everyone has. And I respect and defend that freedom to the utmost. But I don’t understand why anyone would maintain that they have the right to limit the right of anyone else to extend their life significantly if they so choose.

I’m all about improving lives. Making people well, or keeping them well. Maximizing people’s choices. Making people more prosperous. I am not so arrogant as to claim to have such a superior vision of the future that I should be able to foist my vision of the future on everyone else by limiting their choices.

After all, the future I envision may be all wrong. It may not turn out anything like I envision. And with some of my more pessimistic predictions I hope it doesn’t!

Oh well, I just had to vent. This post has been worth every penny you paid for it.

[JimmyT]

Brian H wrote:

…

No hopes for immortality here. But a few extra years would be welcome.
…

Are you familiar with the “actuarial immortality” concept? The idea is that lifespan expectations are climbing faster as time goes on, and when it reaches the point that it climbs one year or more per year, the expected span becomes “indefinite”. So you/I/we just have to make it to that point! 😉

BTW, anyone else having smiley trouble again? All my browser(s) display is the text from the link page.

Yes, I am familiar with the idea of actuarial immortality from Aubrey de Grey’s lectures. Here’s a link to a couple of them, although neither of these is the exact one I was hoping to link to. In the one I was hoping to find he goes into a bit more detail about methods of repairing cell damage. Possible methods of repair. I can’t seem to find that one.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5TMpIgUDLw

Ahh… Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTMNfU7zftQ

[Brian H]

JimmyT wrote:

To make a conscious choice not to extend one’s life significantly is a freedom which everyone has. And I respect and defend that freedom to the utmost. But I don’t understand why anyone would maintain that they have the right to limit the right of anyone else to extend their life significantly if they so choose.

After all, the future I envision may be all wrong. It may not turn out anything like I envision. And with some of my more pessimistic predictions I hope it doesn’t!

Oh well, I just had to vent. This post has been worth every penny you paid for it.

Speaking of pessimistic predictions, the HC Bill contains provisions for denying treatment on a sliding age scale, if not ‘cost-effective’.

There’s a certain actuarial rationale, there; “retirement” age equaled life expectancy (65) when it was first established. So the “wealth explosion” I predict/hope for from FF’s implementation is an economic matter of life and death. Literally.

[Brian H]

I wonder about the progress of science in a world of immortals. The observation has been made that science advances its paradigms one funeral at a time. Entrenched memes and all that. Whether having a “long view”, plus a vigourous and reasonably youthful body, would make “elder scientists” more amenable to new concepts, is hard to say.

In any case, the advent of unlimited cheap energy will alter so many considerations and circumstances and priorities that it’s almost a fool’s errand to try and anticipate the full (or maybe even most significant) consequences. Immortality research is probably something that would benefit, as the inspiration of removal of previously intractable limits will be very inspiring and enticing to many who have dark views of the world. (If you want a fine UK example, check out John Brignell’s site, “http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm” The Number Watch)
Note: copy/paste the link; It contains an embedded space after ‘number’, which seems to confuse the forum software no matter how I format it.

[Rezwan]

OK, I fixed the smileys, but can’t see why it stopped automatically hyperlinking. https://focusfusion.org

:ahhh:

[Rezwan]

Oh, wait. That worked. It’s just you, Brian.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote: Oh, wait. That worked. It’s just you, Brian.

Smileys work for me, now. Something got fiksed on your end.

🙂 :coolsmirk:

Let’s try the hyperlinking:
The Number Watch

Nope, it’s the specific link in this system. Apparently the BB code doesn’t permit that embedded space in the URL.

[zapkitty]

Only solution I know of is to enclose the offending link (spaces in urls are bad style) in url tags.

Just the tags. As you’ve found out, inline linking doesn’t work either.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm

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