51–60 of 90 posts
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?
And, (a bit) more seriously, I don't think we'll get to non-dying before getting massively more energy-efficient and developing much more efficient ways of manipulating matter.
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…
I can’t tell if you’re trolling. If you’re not, I suggest trying to go sober for a few days and re-read what you have written in your nirvana moments.
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…
Maybe. Gobekli Tepe is turning out to be very surprising, and it's only 10% uncovered. There may be even more paradigm shifting things in that rubble. I'd treat your thesis as theory for now and wait to see what we'll dig up. Not saying you are wrong at all, but big things are afoot in religo-paleontology
That word is cancer.
The deep question we have, as humans, is which body it is we are interested in maintaining and prolonging. I think it's possible that you could maintain and prolong the individual human - at the expense of the larger body of humankind.
You have to choose - you can't optimize for both.
For what it's worth, I think the book _Anathem_ by N. Stephenson offers a decent compromise - there are, in fact, long lived "elders" but they are kept away from society and tasked with deep, long tasks ... and they are in suspension for years at a time.
The childish and ill-informed notion that one could "just be ones self, but for thousands of years" ignores the twin catastrophes of descent into a sclerotic, hyper-hyper-conservative society or the massacre on sight of any "vampires" that anyone under the age of 40 comes across.
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 they do because they are going to die? Without that limitation, society would be a lot less conservative.
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?
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…
Within what, exactly? If there's a within, what and where is the barrier or boundary that separates it from without? How does one reconcile that separation with a cosmic/unity consciousness?
What is forever? Surely there must be some limit to life, whether that be the sun exploding or the eventual heat death of the universe. Almost every species on Earth has gone extinct, and almost every great civilization has faded. Every solar system is doomed to collapse eventually. Why should humans be able to defy nature when there is so much evidence that death is inevitable? What if we start living 10000 years in…
10E(10E76) if protons do not decay and virtual black-holes do not exist.
At about 10E(10E(10E56)) the universe should spontaneously create a new universe, so that that is the most upper limit of time in our universe. Fairly small actually, compared to things like Graham's number and Tree(3). Turns out, infinity is really big.
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…
Aren't (most) carbs bad for us (chains of sugar)? A low carb diet isn't pushed. It's quite the opposite. Keto/Mediterranean are seen as too extreme.
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, rea…