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I disagree with a lot of this. "Almost everybody that is past the age of 50 has had one or more life-extending operations" Is this an American thing? In Austr

I disagree with a lot of this. "Almost everybody that is past the age of 50 has had one or more life-extending operations" Is this an American thing? In Australia it is pretty rare to have had any operation, yet alone a life-extending one, by the age of 50. "But, let's assume that somehow - unlikely, but maybe it's possible - we manage to tweak these mechanism enough that we manage to survive and keep our bodies in the state of say a healthy 30 year old, forever. What are you going to do ? Sit indoors all day long ?" The options open to someone who only faces accidental mortality are beyond our imagining. Imagine what a Jefferson or an Edison would achieve in 500 years. Imagine if Einstein had a 100 more to work on unified theories. Besides, with all that time to master knowledge I'm sure some bright spark could come up with a way to heal stab victims. "The human brain has limited storage capacity, and even though we're fairly sure that we do not use all of it we also can't fill it up forever" I'm not sure this is proven. Even if that's the case, I have a lot of useless knowledge about the maps of Quake 3 levels or the characters in obscure TV shows that could be jettisoned without great loss. "That seems to be the problem with most of these far fetched ideas. 'Uploading' your mind, means measuring in great detail the state of your mind. And we do not even know what 'mind' is" We have preliminary technology that can read thoughts and imperatives. Doesn't seem that far-fetched to map the brain given time. Besides, you seem to rule out human/brain interfaces - why can't I have a constant link between brain and computer and in a worse case death scenario I simply lose the experiences since my last link time. However, you do raise some interesting societal issues. Nevertheless, "how will people deal with it" hardly seems a valid reason to prevent research that could let people live healthily to 500+. The alternative is we are saying people deserve to die because they are old.

jacquesm 17y ago
> I disagree with a lot of this. That's ok, PG disagrees with me too, so you're in good company :) > Is this an American thing? No, just statistics. Most people have one operation in their lifetime, sometimes more than one, usually those are to treat conditions that would otherwise cause a substantial decrease in lifespan. Appendicitis, gal bladder removal, heart stents and so on. I'm Dutch by the way, not American. > The options open to someone who only faces accidental mortality are beyond our imagining. Imagine what a Jefferson or an Edison would achieve in 500 years. Imagine if Einstein had a 100 more to work on unified theories. Besides, with all that time to master knowledge I'm sure some bright spark could come up with a way to heal stab victims. That would have been great, but it presumes that you can keep the brain functioning for that long as well, and in 'top shape'. As it is most 'brilliant' work has been done by scientists when they are relatively young, late bloomers are the exception. And Einstein was pretty much stuck in a rut at the end of his days, no disrespect there, it's fairly well documented, he was such a formidable force to oppose that he managed to hold back black hole research until 10 years after his death. > I'm not sure this is proven. Even if that's the case, I have a lot of useless knowledge about the maps of Quake 3 levels or the characters in obscure TV shows that could be jettisoned without great loss. But how to tell those apart from the ones that make up your identity ? A 'garbage collection' algorithm would have to be pretty precise! Do you want to compress your memory Yes / No is probably best answered with 'No'. > We have preliminary technology that can read thoughts and imperatives. True > Doesn't seem that far-fetched to map the brain given time. Also true, but how much time. There are plenty of people that seem to believe this will happen in our lifetime and I think that's not even close. > Besides, you seem to rule out human/brain interfaces - why can't I have a constant link between brain and computer and in a worse case death scenario I simply lose the experiences since my last link time. Interesting possibility, but it combines all of the problems associated with AI, recording and programming through a 'link' the structure of some new brain. And where does that come from ? (that new brain, not the link) > However, you do raise some interesting societal issues. Nevertheless, "how will people deal with it" hardly seems a valid reason to prevent research that could let people live healthily to 500+. No, I'm all for the research. I just have an issue with the belief that this is just around the corner. > The alternative is we are saying people deserve to die because they are old. For the time being, that's the way it will be. Research is to be encouraged, taking in to account the social consequences in parallel. But this - if it ever comes to pass - will upset our society like nothing else ever has. But it won't be our worry. I think :)
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I think if we focused we could reach enough stop gaps within our lifetime such that some people alive today lived to ~250 years but I think without focus this is beyond our reach, particularly when Christians would rather see people die of disease than benefit from the use of discarded cells.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    A 'manhattan' like project with this as a focus would be an amazing thing, just something like that targeted at creating an AI would be quite something. But with everybody turning over their dimes and no 'enemy' to justify the expense against I doubt that will happen.

jacquesm 17y ago

> I disagree with a lot of this. That's ok, PG disagrees with me too, so you're in good company :) > Is this an American thing? No, just statistics. Most people have one operation in their lifetime, sometimes more than one, usually those are to treat conditions that would otherwise cause a substantial decrease in lifespan. Appendicitis, gal bladder removal, heart stents and so on. I'm Dutch by the way, not American. > The options open to someone who only faces accidental mortality are beyond our imagining. Imagine what a Jefferson or an Edison would achieve in 500 years. Imagine if Einstein had a 100 more to work on unified theories. Besides, with all that time to master knowledge I'm sure some bright spark could come up with a way to heal stab victims. That would have been great, but it presumes that you can keep the brain functioning for that long as well, and in 'top shape'. As it is most 'brilliant' work has been done by scientists when they are relatively young, late bloomers are the exception. And Einstein was pretty much stuck in a rut at the end of his days, no disrespect there, it's fairly well documented, he was such a formidable force to oppose that he managed to hold back black hole research until 10 years after his death. > I'm not sure this is proven. Even if that's the case, I have a lot of useless knowledge about the maps of Quake 3 levels or the characters in obscure TV shows that could be jettisoned without great loss. But how to tell those apart from the ones that make up your identity ? A 'garbage collection' algorithm would have to be pretty precise! Do you want to compress your memory Yes / No is probably best answered with 'No'. > We have preliminary technology that can read thoughts and imperatives. True > Doesn't seem that far-fetched to map the brain given time. Also true, but how much time. There are plenty of people that seem to believe this will happen in our lifetime and I think that's not even close. > Besides, you seem to rule out human/brain interfaces - why can't I have a constant link between brain and computer and in a worse case death scenario I simply lose the experiences since my last link time. Interesting possibility, but it combines all of the problems associated with AI, recording and programming through a 'link' the structure of some new brain. And where does that come from ? (that new brain, not the link) > However, you do raise some interesting societal issues. Nevertheless, "how will people deal with it" hardly seems a valid reason to prevent research that could let people live healthily to 500+. No, I'm all for the research. I just have an issue with the belief that this is just around the corner. > The alternative is we are saying people deserve to die because they are old. For the time being, that's the way it will be. Research is to be encouraged, taking in to account the social consequences in parallel. But this - if it ever comes to pass - will upset our society like nothing else ever has. But it won't be our worry. I think :)

nopassrecover 17y ago
Thanks for the reply. I think if we focused we could reach enough stop gaps within our lifetime such that some people alive today lived to ~250 years but I think without focus this is beyond our reach, particularly when Christians would rather see people die of disease than benefit from the use of discarded cells.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  A 'manhattan' like project with this as a focus would be an amazing thing, just something like that targeted at creating an AI would be quite something. But with everybody turning over their dimes and no 'enemy' to justify the expense against I doubt that will happen.