Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029 • Hacker News Board

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#31

Post by tim333 » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #15

weeksie wrote: post #6

Religion for techies. Apocolyptic millenarian beliefs (Singularity)? Check. Transcendence and life after death? Check. Belief in purity and rituals (Vitamins and workout routines)? Check. Hold a service at the TED Talk, etc. . . . It might not be the same literal thing as a religion but transhumanist culture sure seems to be serving the same basic human needs.

Yep. Kurzweil has been banging this drum for a long time. I read Spiritual Machines a long time ago and found it to be a simple rehash of 90s-Extropian tropes - utility fog, uploads, all the goodies needed to glue science-fiction nerdbait to a thin rehash of Christian rebirth millenarianism. The book went away in one of my periodic purges, or I'd check to see if he changed his dates.

You can check most of the predictions / dates on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwe...

2009 "Artificial voices sound fully human" seems a bit optimistic.

as does 2019 "Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable."

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#32

Post by OneWordSoln » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

just_steve_h wrote: post #8

Ray has been thinking about this stuff for thirty years. He has a knack for getting positive press, which goes back to his time in high school. His ideas reveal the narrowness of his experience in the world: it appears that he has only the vaguest notions of what the lives of most humans currently on the planet are actually like. If he understood humanity beyond the confines of Silicon Valley / Route 128 / Davos, he…

Isn't it just simpler to say he's a moron?

Because that's what I'd say.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#33

Post by OneWordSoln » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

iamonkara wrote: post #19

That's a pursuit in the wrong direction..... Hidden underneath the quest for immortality is the eternal quest of freedom from all known and unknown bounds. Unfortunately enough, this quest, when expressed from the confines of the apparatus called "mind" shows up as ego which is limiting, self serving and divisive. To experience the real singularity and immortality one needs an instrument which at its very core is lim…

"The way goes in." -- Rumi

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#34

Post by cko » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

I’m highly skeptical. It’s 2017, and we still debate if carbs are bad for us, we can’t effectively suppress a cough without highly addictive opiates, we don't have the cure for the common cold, and any drug treatment for any disease state involves a ligand binding to a specific site triggering a counterbalancing cascade of effects. Costly biotech drugs produced by recombinant DNA to treat autoimmune diseases? Increased risk of infection. Inhibit cholesterol synthesis with statins? Increased risk of diabetes, and recently, reports of cognitive decline. The then-heralded proton pump inhibitors used to treat acid reflux? Increased risk of osteoporosis, C diff infection, etc.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding medicinal advances but every new treatment that hits the market makes me think “more of the same.”

I’m just a pharmacist, not a microbiologist, but I doubt lengthening some telomeres and repairing mitochondria are going to be side-effect free.

I don’t know much about gene therapy.

My impression is that our current understanding of human biology is still much in its infancy.

Edit: Spelling

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#35

Post by r3bl » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

Asdfbla wrote: post #9

I imagine if it ever comes to that, society is likely to stagnate intellectually. People grow more conservative and reactionary as they grow older (I don't just mean that in the political sense), what would happen if all there is are infinitely old people? I think young generations are necessary, but if everyone lives forever, there's hardly space in the world for them. Maybe it's the fate of humanity and a singulari…

Imagine not having to dedicate your entire career to this one path you've picked, but having enough time to explore whatever you want and as much as you want.

Imagine being able to postpone your career because you and your husband/wife decided to bring someone new to this world. You could still achieve anything you wanted, and not be tied by time in this case.

In this scenario, you get to choose when you die. Would you live a hundred years? Probably. Two hundreds? Most likely. 500? Highly unlikely.

I don't think that the world population might be as big of a problem as we currently think it is going to be. A woman no longer needs to give birth to eight babies to have three of them reach their adultery (as was the case 200 years ago). And, right now, a Western couple is usually able to support one or two children and still pursue their individual career paths. 200 years from now, I cannot realistically say that I don't expect as big of an improvement in human evolution as it happened between 200 years ago and now.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#36

Post by naasking » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

cko wrote: post #34

I’m highly skeptical. It’s 2017, and we still debate if carbs are bad for us, we can’t effectively suppress a cough without highly addictive opiates, we don't have the cure for the common cold, and any drug treatment for any disease state involves a ligand binding to a specific site triggering a counterbalancing cascade of effects. Costly biotech drugs produced by recombinant DNA to treat autoimmune diseases? Increas…

> I’m highly skeptical. It’s 2017, and we still debate if carbs are bad for us, we can’t effectively suppress a cough without highly addictive opiates, we domt have the cure for the common cold, and any drug treatment for any disease state involves a ligand binding to a specific site triggering a counterbalancing cascade of effects.

What seems intuitively simple isn't necessarily simple. As unintuitive as it seems, it could very well be that curing the common cold will be harder than curing aging.

That said, Kurzweil isn't saying that we will have invented the immortality treatment by 2029, merely that we will have some life extension treatments available. These treatments will simply get you to the next treatment, and that to the next one, and so on ad infinitum.

It's not so implausible when framed like that. We've already had quite a few promising results in aging research in the past 10 years, and the interest in this field is growing, and so the pace of advancement will also increase.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#37

Post by norswap » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #21

norswap wrote: post #4

While I'm totally on board with the idea of making humans live longer or even forever, wishing hard won't make it so.

I'm curious, what's the plan for food supply, housing, waste/pollution, etc. in a world that accumulates non-dying human beings?

Future work :)

But probably what you already expect: very strict birth control. People would still die from accidents, etc.

For sure, a thorny issue, although not one can make us dismiss the idea of extending human lifes out of hand.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#38

Post by tim333 » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

iamonkara wrote: post #19

That's a pursuit in the wrong direction..... Hidden underneath the quest for immortality is the eternal quest of freedom from all known and unknown bounds. Unfortunately enough, this quest, when expressed from the confines of the apparatus called "mind" shows up as ego which is limiting, self serving and divisive. To experience the real singularity and immortality one needs an instrument which at its very core is lim…

Though you can do both. Funerals are a bit depressing even if the deceased was a meditator.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#39

Post by hungerstrike » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

The ability to live forever won't be available to the common man for a long, long time if ever. You aren't even allowed to put what you want into your own body. Do you think the powers that be will allow you to live forever? They thrive on fear, war, death and control.

A more likely future is that the ongoing World War 3 heats up really fast, kills a ton of people and China's technological despotism forms the basis for a new world government that will rule in perpetuity. Why do I think that? It's pretty obvious to me that China, a country that was conquered by the British only a century ago, is being setup for this. You know Mao Zedong came out of the Yale school of Divinity right? Every ambassador to China since then has come from Skull and Bones and major players leak nuclear secrets and other high technology to them on purpose (see Israel, Bill Clinton and many, many others). "Made in China" is an Illuminati curse for the entire world - everybody bought into this and you're gonna pay before long.

I'm sure that most of you think I'm crazy. That's fine with me. I am used to being part of a small minority. The clueless far, far outnumber the clueful.

Re: Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

#40

Post by klibertp » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

iamonkara wrote: post #19

That's a pursuit in the wrong direction..... Hidden underneath the quest for immortality is the eternal quest of freedom from all known and unknown bounds. Unfortunately enough, this quest, when expressed from the confines of the apparatus called "mind" shows up as ego which is limiting, self serving and divisive. To experience the real singularity and immortality one needs an instrument which at its very core is lim…

Going for purely imaginary, completely devoid of any connection with material reality solution is not a cure for too optimistic predictions and lacks in our current knowledge.