Ray Kurzweil, America’s most visible futurist, has been in the news a lot lately. He’s the subject of a new documentary film, “Transcendent Man“, and he’s recently launched Singularity University, dedicated to combining and furthering the fields he believes will be key to our exponential trajectory toward becoming one with our computers, an event commonly referred to as the technological singularity.
Kurzweil is generally respected for his inventions (you’ve seen the synthesizers) and for his keen prognostication (fall of the Soviet Union, victory of Deep Blue), but his views on aging make many scientists uneasy. Specifically, he believes that immortality will be possible in our lifetime via the following roadmap:
1. Live to 2045 however you can. Kurzweil, who would be in his late 90s at that point, takes 150 supplements each day to “reprogram his biochemistry”, slowing the aging process as much as possible.
2. Within a few decades, nanotechnology will be advanced enough to halt or reverse aging and treat most of the afflictions that have death as a side effect.
3. Around 2045, computers will be completely integrated with and within us, making us immortal. Having access to their binary innards, they will be able to improve on their own designs, causing technological progress to explode.
What do you think: underestimated visionary or kook living out a very public midlife crisis?
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You make the false assumption that the tech required to do it will be insanely expensive. That might be true, possibly even likely to be, but it’s very possible that once the knowledge is obtained that it’ll be impossible to prevent everyone from having because it could be simple.
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I don’t think a lot of people should be doing a lot of shit they do but I’m not self-righteous.
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Work on getting rid of NASA if you ever want to colonize anything off the planet.
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I think personal freedoms should be championed also, but there’s a point where a personal freedom will detract from someone else’s personal freedom and therefore, should be limited. For instance I think you should have the freedom to hunt, but there should be regulations so some yahoo doesn’t go out and get more than his fair share, which in turn decreases my freedom to hunt. In the developed world we currently don’t have to worry about population because procreation by choice isn’t even matching death rate in most counties. But in the distant future if letting everyone have kids and live long lives means that we are overpopulated, the environment is over burdened and living conditions are worsened, I would support limiting kids (unless we can send some off planet). This is very hypothetical, but one day these problems will need to be addressed, especially if we are "immortal". So which personal freedom will prevail in your mind, the right to live forever or the right to have children?
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That’s what I thought too, at first. Then I realized that in an overpopulated society, when you form babby you aren’t just doing something to yourself, you’re fucking over everybody.
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God damn, I’m only 18 and I’m already old. That doesn’t bode well for my life expectancy.
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“I’m not the same consciousness I was years ago”
Actually, you are. Your brain matter is some of the only matter in your body that does not regenerate itself over time.
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Except it will be someone else.
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What if we just make immigration really hard? If people are going to take steps towards further reductions to the replacement rate, don’t they deserve any positive consequences of this action? Of course, smaller increases will compound even more with increased lifespan. Increases in life expectancy that outpace the passage of time won’t rule out mischance and disease naturally. Few people currently die of cell multiplication failure. System failure can be expected to occur at a higher rate than tissue failure.
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And how exactly will this person be different from you?
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Different matter arranged in an identical fashion. It’s like having two toasters of the same model. They’re identical, but they’re not the same toaster.
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With that explanation, no two things would ever be identical, even the smallest of atoms. However, let me ask you this, what makes a GE toaster a GE toaster. Similarly then, what makes you you?
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*As dethbunny snorts his raucous laugh and sloshes down his grog, the shine of a katana appears in the shadows.*
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The matter that makes up both of us is very old, as you can rearrange the particles, but you can’t destroy them, or create new ones. There’s nothing new in this universe, everything created is just built of something that has been there since the beginning of the universe. What makes up me, specifically my neural matter, which is not renewed like most of the rest of the cells in my body, is a chance arrangement of these ancient particles arranged whilst I was in the womb, and expanded during my earliest years of life. If you were to make an exact copy of my current arrangement of neural matter with other matter, you would have a copy comprised of a different set of particles. Identical in design, but lacking the original particles that define the original. So you would have someone who thought like me, talked like me, had all the life experience I did, but was someone entirely different. They would be a copy, completely separate from the original.
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Check out — http://bit.ly/10Niz4
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In a given area there are finite resources, supporting a finite number of people.
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Not that I’ve done it, but from what I’ve heard having children is anything but selfish! You are living for your children at your own expense. Call me old-fashioned, but I like that old people die and new generations replace them. It means we keep some things the same, through learning & culture, but we can respond to change because young people do things differently.
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They may be the same matter, but they aren’t doing the same thing. As you learn, neurons change how they are talking to each other, changing who you are. I think it makes more sense to say we are the result of our brain cells communicating with each other more than the braincells themselves.
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There is no top in space. On a pyramid in space, there will most likely be four tips, I suppose you could be one of those. (Assuming the pyramid will be a tetrahedon, other forms of pyamids woudn’t be fair. They would have a distinct tip, but in space that would still not be the top.)
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Consider a number so large, that while not infinite, is incalculable. This is the number of resources and space available in the universe to potentially support people.
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Sorry but that’s bullshit.
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It’s the "fair share" part that fucks up the world we live in. That’s a bullshit term if I ever heard one. It’s the idea that if I have collected three of something I should have to give two to the mob. Fuck the mob.
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All I was trying to get at is that you are a champion of freedom. In the far distant future these two rights will conflict. Either I won’t fuck with your ability to live a ridiculously long life by seeking regenerative medicine, or I won’t fuck with your right to have kids. Something has to give in this unlikely scenario. The earth has finite resources and an exponential growth of people (if death was eliminated) would quickly exhaust them. Again this is purely theoretical regarding the distant future.
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oh totally, I was talking about earth. but yeh, let’s populate the universe now! come to think of it, it’s mostly old dudes holding us back with that.
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isn’t that what death does for us ?
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Well, I was pointing out that the argument is flawed because it assumes children are better than adults when there’s no reason to assume that and a few simple ones (more so when it comes to immortality) saying the opposite. But, you’ve just fallen for the same bullshit that parents (who happen to be the vast majority) spout off. Do you really expect people that have committed themselves (usually accidentally) to raising a kid for the next 18 years to say "nah, piece of cake. kinda wish I hadn’t though"? Or think of it this way, throughout history completely average people have repeatedly and successfully raised kids. Not that hard, not an accomplishment. It may be the pinnacle of _their_ life but that’s an inevitable outcome of it. Personally, I can’t fathom why someone would want a kid. And no one’s been able to explain it other than "you just can’t understand the kind of love I feel for my child", yet I can make the same claim about the love I feel for my wife. Judging on their actions, no way they feel the same way about their spouse.
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If the smart people lived forever, they’d do all kinds of cool things with the perpetual continuation of their work.
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It’s the same person, but they become individuals as soon as their experiences diverge.
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Do you remember those old cartoons that predicted that we’d have flying cars by 2000? Where are my flying cars? How can we possibly expect to master life and death when we can’t master physics?
Thanks for expounding.
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[...] will somehow slow down or reverse the aging process, and then integrate with computers so much so, we’ll become immortal. It’s simple, easy and missing about a few hundred steps that will be needed to overcome all [...]