People to live to 1000...

[crystalmethod]

Ok, so I'm gonna start by posting the link to this website which I found on howstuffworks....looks like its from the BBC news website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4003063.stm

Sooo, what do you guys think of the moral implications of this, which of course speak for themselves. But what about socially? Imagining marryng somone for 900 years!!! Wat about overpopulation and the earths already limited resources? Will we have to stop having children? Is that fair or will it shoot nature out of whack? How about death? How many people would just want to die for religious or other purposes?

Personally I think a thousand years is a great amount of time to do what I want and acheive everything I want to. Aside from the moral asdpects I"d rather live here then die and step into the unknown.

 

[ExCyber]

Eric Drexler, inspired by the principles - now called "nanotechnology" - that Richard Feynman expressed in There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and informed by subsequent advances in technology and science, has been exploring this stuff for over 20 years in a more general sense. There are still huge advances that are likely to be made within our lifetimes that do not involve overturning the laws of physics as we know them - we know that a lot of this stuff is possible because we can observe it happening in nature, especially in biology. On their face the claims seem outlandish - indefinite lifespan; materials stronger than steel and lighter than wood made of common elements like carbon and silicon; mechanical supercomputers that can fit inside a human cell and run on glucose. But none of this really requires anything we haven't seen; we just haven't figured out how to put all the pieces together yet to actually make it happen. Polymerase chain reaction was only the beginning...

In 1986, Drexler wrote a fairly accessible book about the impact of nanotechnology; it is available online here.

 

[Raijin Z]

Essentially eternal youth? Hahaha.... By the time you got to be about 250, you'd be a nothing but a giant bleeding tumor. Remember that carcinogens build up, and the longer you live, the more shit goes wrong.

 

[ExCyber]

Remember that carcinogens build up, and the longer you live, the more shit goes wrong.

This guy isn't talking about living The Jack LaLanne Way, he's talking about radical advances in medical technology. As much as medical technology has advanced in the last hundred years, it's still relatively primitive compared to our natural healing and defense mechanisms. The technology needed to begin to properly study these mechanisms and their shortcomings in detail did not exist 50 years ago. We didn't have polymerase chain reaction until 1993. We didn't know about telomeres and telomerases until 1998. These things on their own won't magically make us live longer, but they indicate that medical technology has a long way to go beyond our current level of component-swapping and dousing cells in various interesting chemicals.

 

[M3d10n]

Well, it's obvious that medical advances will gradually push our lifespan up, but I doubt it'll happen in our lifespan.

We're talking about the combined results of several different kinds of treatments and technologies, many of which barely started to be tested on mices. Many are just still theories.

After all that stuff pass on mices, it'll take a while to being applied to humans, and we'll only know if they really work properly after a buncha decades of testing. In nowaday medicine there is no magical elixir that gets to stores as soon as its suspect to work (except for shady diet/penis enlargement pills with suspicious composition that are far from being scientifically tested and approved.)

 

[it290]

I agree with what Raijin is saying. Unless we can find some way to 'fix' the method of human DNA replication, lifespans aren't going to be increased to such a radical extent. Yes, medical technology will allow people to live longer; perhaps more importantly, people will be able to enjoy their old age more. However, our DNA is encoded in a linear fashion. Every time it is duplicated, there are errors and omissions, especially on the end of the chain. There is simply no way for cell production to continue indefinitely, and I don't see that changing without massive alteration of the human body. Additionally, all the toxins and carcinogens floating around in the environment make the problem even more difficult, and I don't see those going away any time soon.

 

[ExCyber]

I agree with what Raijin is saying. Unless we can find some way to 'fix' the method of human DNA replication, lifespans aren't going to be increased to such a radical extent.

What I'm trying to say is that such a fix is not some kind of distant fantasy, but a relatively straightforward extrapolation of discoveries made in the past 3 decades or so. The fundamental technology and knowledge necessary for studying the root causes of these problems is still young - it's easy to take a lot of it for granted and feel like we aren't making any real progress. But progress is being made. Whether or not we'll see radical life extension technologies developed in our lifetime is an open question, but all indications I've seen are that it will lead to radical advances of one kind or another.

Well, it's obvious that medical advances will gradually push our lifespan up

I don't think that's obvious at all. Life expectancy has gradually gone up, but that is strongly influenced by causes of death other than aging.

 

[it290]

Perhaps you could clarify that a bit? Because as far as I understand it, such a breakthrough would require either fundamentally altering human DNA structure, or somehow replenishing cells externally. The latter seems more likely, but still rather far off. It might be done more easily with a 90% machine cyborg body, but I don't see that happening soon, either. I think breakthroughs might come through studying various animals and their metabolisms, but as far as that's concerned, scientists have been trying to give humans the abilities that hibernating bears have for quite some time without success, so enhacing lifespan through that route obviously isn't that easy.

 

[ExCyber]

Perhaps you could clarify that a bit? Because as far as I understand it, such a breakthrough would require either fundamentally altering human DNA structure, or somehow replenishing cells externally.

I'm thinking of something closer to the latter, although in some ways it may resemble a mix of the two (e.g. not altering the fundamental structure of DNA itself, but modifying or supplementing the cellular mechanisms that protect, repair and transcribe it). I'm not making an argument for radical transhumanism here. Chapter 7 of Engines of Creation gives a somewhat far-flung but IMO plausible (if we were able to wait long enough) overview of "cell repair machines", although I think in this particular analysis Drexler is glossing over some substantial logistical problems (I haven't read Nanosystems, his technical examination of nanoscale machines, and likely lack the grounding in chemistry and physics necessary to evaluate it competently).

It might be done more easily with a 90% machine cyborg body, but I don't see that happening soon, either.

A big part of the advances I think are likely (though unlike some who follow nanotech I think this is quite likely beyond our lifespan) is that the nature of machines will shift into things you don't imagine today when you think of the word "machine", in much the same way that "computers" have changed from being rooms full of vacuum tubes and wires at a few large companies and universities to tiny chips that lurk everywhere, running your phone, your microwave, your furnace, your car, your TV, and so on. It's common knowledge that computers have shrunk over time, but what enabled the initial jump from room-sized to refrigerator-sized and the subsequent shrinking was not some vague "march of progress", but the particular developments of the semiconductor transistor and integrated circuit. I suspect that relatively recent developments (PCR and the mapping of the human genome in particular) will have a similarly startling effect on medicine, and will likely lay the groundwork for broader advances in nanoscale manipulation that affect other industries.

 

[it290]

Heh, good points there. I'm getting evil visions of people's bodies malfunctioning horribly when supplemented with cheap nanotech and the like - with only the very rich being able to afford the 'reliable' stuff.

 

[schi0249]

I will believe it when I see it. The average age expectancy hasn't gone up much over the past 50 years. And thats with some serious advances in medicine.

 

[ExCyber]

I'm getting evil visions of people's bodies malfunctioning horribly when supplemented with cheap nanotech and the like - with only the very rich being able to afford the 'reliable' stuff.

It's odd, at first I thought about that, but it occurred to me that with the way copyrights and patents are going, it may just end up being that there are "pirate" manufacturers producing stuff just as good as the "real thing" and people get fined/jailed for not having a license unless they point out their dealer...

 

[Curtis]

Originally posted by it290@Thu, 2004-12-09 @ 03:39 PM

Heh, good points there. I'm getting evil visions of people's bodies malfunctioning horribly...

Future advances could certainly add a sense of finality to the old Blue Screen of Death.

:devil

 

[Raijin Z]

Put very stupidly, the easiest way to attain eternal youth is to haxxor a trainer to keep the replication counter from ticking down. You know, that little chain that gets shorter as cells divide over and over and over until the chain runs out of links and everything starts falling apart?

Oh, and that won't do any good for anybody who's already alive.

 

[ExCyber]

Put very stupidly, the easiest way to attain eternal youth is to haxxor a trainer to keep the replication counter from ticking down. You know, that little chain that gets shorter as cells divide over and over and over until the chain runs out of links and everything starts falling apart?

Oh, and that won't do any good for anybody who's already alive.

Yeah, the telomerase problem. AFAIK it could potentially be fixed in existing cells, but other problems need to be solved to stop you from becoming:

Originally posted by Raijin Z

nothing but a giant bleeding tumor

Of course, I don't think the other problems are insurmountable, just that a lot more work needs to be done. And at some point I'm sure we will discover unforeseen failure modes that simply can't manifest in a ~100-year lifespan, but those will have to be dealt with as they're uncovered.

 

[crystalmethod]

ExCyber, I can't help but notice the leverl of knowledge you posess on the subject. Makes me wonder how much you've looked into it....are you one of those that doesn't like to be reminded of te finite nature of life? That is, after all, what makes the article so interesting to me...such technology will allow us to gain control over the unknown and beat life....so to speak.

 

[ExCyber]

are you one of those that doesn't like to be reminded of te finite nature of life

At the risk of igniting a religious flamewar (please don't), I will say that I'm one who considers death of sentient beings to generally be a bad thing (as opposed to believing in death as the door to reincarnation or an ideal afterlife or astral existence or some other philosophy that says that death is basically an illusion, several of which enjoy considerable popularity), and who thinks that it's a rather insidious form of defeatism to assume that a condition can't be improved simply because "that's the way it's always been". We aren't where we are today because our predecessors decided to settle for what had always been. That said, I don't sit around worrying about death all day, but I do think it would be nicer if people could live without inevitably being crippled and killed by what we euphemize as "natural causes", even if I don't personally get to be saved (assuming it's for practical reasons and not BS sociopolitical reasons; the latter would indeed get me plenty pissed, but mostly on principle).

That is, after all, what makes the article so interesting to me...such technology will allow us to gain control over the unknown and beat life....so to speak.

I'm not sure what you mean by "beat life", and I don't see how this involves the ability to "gain control over the unknown". In a more practical sense, it's interesting to note the basis for the 1000-year figure: it is derived not from limitations in the technology, but from the odds of being killed by the causes of death that we tend to think of as "unnatural" - accidents, murder, and so on. The numbers are probably questionable, but the underlying principle is sound enough - beating aging doesn't mean abolishing death. And I don't think anyone can be sure exactly how the governments and cultures of the world might react to this kind of development - things may well get worse before they get better.

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by it290@Wed, 2004-12-08 @ 11:39 PM

Heh, good points there. I'm getting evil visions of people's bodies malfunctioning horribly when supplemented with cheap nanotech and the like - with only the very rich being able to afford the 'reliable' stuff.

Damn, now I've got Shadowrun music in my head...

 

[crystalmethod]

Well sir, after much thought (throughtout my life, not over your post) I do agree with your points. Human bengs are not one to stand idly by and watch as "nature takes its course". It is my belief that it is in nature that humans evolve and use what was given to them (i.e. logic, reasoning, understanding) to control things around them. Death should not be something that is accepted. I am genuinely fightened by the thougt of never being able to feel a warm, summer breeze on my face again. Perhaps this is why I give such things such thought.

Perhaps religions occupation with death and the mysicism associated with it is due to the fact that up until now, humans have been unable to explain death on any other level. Now that their are alternative explanations and hte ability to extend life to the point where death is no longer a huge obstacle, problems arise as there are "moral" and religious conflict.

Anyways, I've rambled enough, back to you guys.

 

[it290]

There are also practical issues, if you want to put it that way. Overpopulation is the obvious one, of course, but you also have to consider that such a development would slow down the course of evolution considerably. Of course, many would argue (myself included) that human beings evolve primarily through their own devices.