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Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living forever by 2029

businessinsider.com

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

#41

Post by r3bl »

tim333 wrote: post #31
_jal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Well, sure, but...

2009 "Though desktop PCs are still common for data storage, individuals primarily use portable devices for their computer-related tasks." sounds pretty realistic now.

So does 2019 "People experience 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas (retinal display). Coupled with an auditory source (headphones), users can remotely communicate with other people and access the Internet." with the current progress of AR and VR (although it might be a few years late).

My point is, you've nitpicked this in a series of predictions which may or may not be true. Kurzweil's betting a lot on 2045 and AGI, and hoping that 2029 will help him reach that age. The rest is a mix of possibly true predictions that seem absurd, like the two I've pointed out.

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

#42

Post by vorotato »

OneWordSoln wrote: post #27
tim333 wrote: post #12

While I agree with Kurzweil's stuff on computing per dollar increasing exponentially, in that it has for a long time now, I'm skeptical of the lifespan thing. There doesn't seem particularly good experimental evidence - our life span is longer because of less childhood death but it seems old people have always maxed out in the 70-100yrs old range.

Didn't an article just come up (Nature, I believe) that just proved that the way our cellular division works, mortality is an important feature of how we work? Of course it is.

I mean if people start living forever we would have to start killing them. So it's kinda moot anyway.

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

#43

Post by jknoepfler »

As someone with a reasonable foundation in both the state of AI and the state of neuroscience research, I honestly have no idea why people give Kurzweil any attention. Just about nothing I have ever read from him is even remotely plausible, yet I've met intelligent people (usually mathematically oriented people) who think the detail-sparse garbage is gospel. It's a little infuriating, honestly. The details, which are always manifestly absent from his work, are literally the only things that do matter when evaluating their credibility.

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

#44

Post by gbersac »

tim333 wrote: post #12

While I agree with Kurzweil's stuff on computing per dollar increasing exponentially, in that it has for a long time now, I'm skeptical of the lifespan thing. There doesn't seem particularly good experimental evidence - our life span is longer because of less childhood death but it seems old people have always maxed out in the 70-100yrs old range.

There is promising evidence about effective aging treatments : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU

Still experimental though.

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

#45

Post by melling »

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…

He’s predicting that by 2029, we’ll start to add years to our lives. We will be at the beginning of extending life.

I think the idea is that if we can delay death long enough, the “exponential“ technology curve will eventually allow us to make ourselves “younger”. In the short-term, people will reach 75, for example, and we can address some of the rapid that occurs in your 80’s. You’ll be a healthier 85 year old, ready to get your next tuneup a decade later with more advanced technology.

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

#47

Post by iamonkara »

tim333 wrote: post #38
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.

The deceased is not depressed. But mourners are mostly depressed because of

a) attachment (constant association of our attention to anything) to impermanence of life, b) regrets and guilt.

If the mourner itself was truly liberated while living then they wouldn't be depressed because they would know from experience that death is nothing but a switch to a different dimension for consciousness to operate in. That dimension is far less limiting than this physical dimension. And the way to that dimension (and higher ones) is only through Meditation and natural death, the latter comes as a shock to the unrealized one and then its too late for any preparedness.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] »

msamwald wrote: post #17
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.

Which is not a bad thing. Religion developed to cope with the unavoidable misery of human existence through a coordinated belief in an imaginary afterlife free of that misery. Enlightenment, science and technology showed us that most of this misery could be alleviated by advancing our technologies and social structures, while also revealing the imaginary nature of ideas of an afterlife. The tragic thing is that we mi…

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by wu-ikkyu »

forthefuture wrote: post #16
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.

I'd only add that it's another way to manufacture hope for people who have been left behind by how unbelievable most religions are. I've been trying for years (and will continue trying) to switch my parents hope for an afterlife with a hope that cryo will work. There is definitely no afterlife, but cryo might eventually work. That's how I see most of these "living forever" positions. It's just a more intellectual hop…

>There is definitely no afterlife

For the sake of argument, how do you definitely know this?

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

#50

Post by ben_w »

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…

What if the intellectual conservatism is a symptom of old age, and the “living forever”* is done with fountain-of-youth-style treatments?

* except for disease, accidents, war, homicide, suicide, and the heat death of the universe

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