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If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

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Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#191

Post by paulddraper »

habitue wrote: post #182
paulddraper wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the difference.

I'm not the commenter you're replying to, but maybe they meant that we've only reduced early causes of death like disease etc, but not done anything to affect our internal biological processes that cause aging. As an example, reducing skin cancer by staying out of the sun keeps you from prematurely aging, but it doesn't stop your hair from turning white and your wrinkles from forming.

Heart disease, obesity, and arthritis are sometimes reversible, partially thanks to better medical care.

Oh, and cancer.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#192

Post by coldtea »

iMark wrote: post #187
coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of when, not if. The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery in vivo. And who told you it's a given that we'll manage to have such an understanding?

Who's "we"? Humanity, or whatever we create to succeed us?

Who said we'll create anything to succeed us? (I mean besides Kurzweil and his ilk)?

I find much more probable that we'll wipe ourselves out in one way or another. We had some means to do so since the 40s, but since we added a lot more sick ways to our arsenal...

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#193

Post by dahart »

jbdigriz wrote: post #177
dahart wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death. To be clear, I'm not saying it can't ever happen, I'm saying that DeGrey's and Kurzweils claims that it is happening and will come to pass…

>Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death. This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkab…

> There have been some truly remarkable advancements that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for human trials.

BTW, I think you've mis-interpreted the discussion. The two examples you gave above don't affect the rate of aging. They affect the symptoms of aging, and they delay death. I think most people agree we don't know exactly where the limit of longevity is once we remove all types of early mortality. But, as is true with life expectancy, we will uncover a limit that is slightly higher than where it is right now. Barring scientific advances that change the rate of aging, both metrics will asymptotically flat-line somewhere.

It'd be awesome to see such scientific advances. I hope it happens, and I support the activity. But the truth is that none of the evidence we've gathered so far has unlimited potential for longevity, all of it is removing obstacles that cause early death, not pushing the real boundary of longer life than was previously attainable.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#194

Post by zardo »

mfoy_ wrote: post #108
ant6n wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you can stay at 150 for 850 years, if you want kids, you might want to start somewhere in the first century.

And then after a millenium your great grandchildren will be relatively as old as you are (Say 900 to 1000, at that point how does aging affect someone?) Also, how would your memory hold up? Would you even be able to really remember anything that happened over a century or two ago?

Probably not without some sort of memory enhancement. I'm not sure if that would even be preferable, maybe it would be better to let the past fade out.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#195

Post by jbdigriz »

dahart wrote: post #185
jbdigriz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death. This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkab…

You don't have to believe me. I'm only relaying what is the currently accepted scientific understanding, that so far we've only treated the symptoms of aging, not increased the potential for longevity. "The U.S. Census Bureau view on the future of longevity is that life expectancy in the United States will be in the mid-80s by 2050 (up from 77.85 in 2006) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scie…

Again, The Census Bureau is hardly an authority on this matter - they're concerned with the challenge of just logistically counting Americans every few years via surveys (the lowest order of the scientific method) and it's questionable how precisely they even do that considering I can attest to having missed one such survey myself years ago. I treat their predictions on longevity with the same skepticism I view their census stats, which is optimistic given the massive gap in expertise. This, by the way, is in no way an attempt to diminish the very real and difficult challenges this task presents - only to place their expertise accurately.

Experts very much DO NOT agree on this and the fact that literally billions of dollars in R&D are expended on this area of science in just the US is testament to that. Sure it doesn't mean any groundbreaking discovery is guaranteed to happen - but it does show that belief in the possibility is alive and well. And why not? Those immortal jellyfish share 97% of the same DNA, including long stretches of matching sequences and compatible genes that have been experimentally transferred between them and other life forms numerous times. Even Right Whales, which are conscious mammals sharing immense biological relation to people can live 200 years or more, and that's in the absence of anything remotely resembling science and the presence of numerous impediments, including us, their generic brethren. Tardigrades may end up being miniature space suits for the most advanced intergalactic life forms known - who knows? What we do know is they throw most of what we believed to be true about life and morality right out the window - and that's a good thing. All this is to say that the possibility of longetivity increases driven by scientific exploration is much greater than the likelihood of that not being the case.

Kurzweil is who he is, for better or worse. But he has made outlandish predictions over the years, many of which have come about despite the skepticism. He's a successful entrepreneur and employed in a very senior position at one of the most valuable and forward looking companies in the world. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't completely dismiss him as a crank. I disagree with some of the time lines he has, though cautiously because it doesn't take many compounding discoveries to get there on his schedule. But fundamentally, I agree with much of what he says - even though I think what they mean for us as humans and the universe as a whole is much less certain, and likely as scary as they are promising.

EDIT: here are some links you might want to read to confirm that whole "experts agree" conclusion:

Henrietta Lacks - the woman whose specific cancer mutation provided the vast majority of cells used to study cancer and numerous other cellular process, to this day. Cells which are effectively immortal: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was-on...

Immortal Jellyfish, from that disreputable rag, The New York Times..: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-u...

Just search HN for immortal and see what you find, then let me know if your assessment remains the same

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#196

Post by kamaal »

coldtea wrote: post #192
iMark wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's "we"? Humanity, or whatever we create to succeed us?

Who said we'll create anything to succeed us? (I mean besides Kurzweil and his ilk)? I find much more probable that we'll wipe ourselves out in one way or another. We had some means to do so since the 40s, but since we added a lot more sick ways to our arsenal...

>>Who said we'll create anything to succeed us?

No body wakes up everyday to write unit test cases for Skynet 1.0

But people are working towards building robots that will replace a lot of human activity. It won't be sudden, it will be gradual, it will be so slow you won't have a way of stopping it. Opposition to any such thing will get you labelled as a luddite.

At some point in time trains will run autonomously, followed by courier vans then may be cars, Amazon will decide buying a fleet of robots from boston dynamics yields better returns than hiring people to word at their warehouses. As algorithms get intelligent and sensors get better, march towards singularity is a question of when, not if.

Your enemy is automation. Not Kurzweil.

The slow march towards singularity didn't start two decades back. It started when the wheel was built and rudimentary stone tools were invented by hunter gatherers.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#197

Post by kamaal »

onion2k wrote: post #74
dghf wrote: post #36

> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and then there's simply no limit to how long you can live. Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder). In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population d…

Getting to 150 and then stopping ageing means you'll live the next 850 years of your life in the body of a 150 year old. That doesn't sound fun.

Not to worry, they will soon figure out how to put you(your brain or its contents) in a new body(which might not even be biological).

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#198

Post by jbdigriz »

dahart wrote: post #193
jbdigriz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death. This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkab…

> There have been some truly remarkable advancements that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for huma…

Yes, there's certainly a definite limit to how long any living cell will last in absence of opposing stressors (though hormosis has some VERY interesting thoughts on this matter - highly recommend reading up on this theory as it's gaining a lot of traction and makes some logical sense). But life and even our discrete selves are not comprised of one set of cells that last our lifetimes (some yes, but most not). Instead our cells divide and create (mostly) identical clones throughout our lives without many perceived effects in the short term, even if obvious over long term.

The true question is why doesn't this happen perpetually? If we believe that DNA is effectively the blueprint for life, then beyond the minute minority of escaping and persistent errors and external effectors to this process, then why doesn't it continue indefinitely? There's no really strong hypothesis here but some theories about the mechanics of why this occurs have been ventured. Specifically, a lot of research has been centered on the DNA telomere, which is sort of like the opposite of a rattlesnake's rattler that grows with each shedding except that it seems to be slowly lost over successive generations of cells and it's not clear why. However, there are some exciting discoveries in this area, including an enzyme which is the FDA trial I previously alluded to - as well as a supplement company already producing a version at very high cost right now. However, it's still very early and does nothing without numerous trials - and ironically will only yield insight when the subjects expire, which one would hope occurs only after receiving some of the benefits though all but guaranteed to be the opposite as par for the course of scientific pursuit. That's soon going to be the new dilemma - is the significant lengthening of one's lifespan worth the early adopter risk that it not only fails to work at great expense, but actually exacerbated and expedited that which it sought to prevent. Then again, that perspective is very much shaped if you're on the way in our the way out I guess

EDIT: grammar and typo edits

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#199

Post by kamaal »

totony wrote: post #35
adrianN wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want to stop people from dying?

You wouldn't want population growth to outgrow your capacity. Also, usually, the longer someone lives, the more their ideology defines them. Could be a problem too

>>You wouldn't want population growth to outgrow your capacity.

Last time I checked space is pretty huge, we could move there.

And if you live long enough, you might not need a biological body to survive.

Re: If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too

#200

Post by zardo »

btbuildem wrote: post #85
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the reduced risk of death from injury, you also have to account for a change in behavior. I posit that we would all act very differently if we knew our life expectancy to be a few thousand years. I'd venture a guess that we would be a lot more risk-averse. Society would look drastically different.

Not really. Only the wealthy would have access to this technology, the poor would still have normal life expectancy. Society would look the way it does now (stratified), just more so.

I don't see why that would be the case, extreme longevity has arrisen in some organisms by natural selection, so it would appear to be a software problem. You need the tools to change a genome to be affordable (they already are to some extent) and you need the software to be written (it isn't).
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