Radical Life Extension goes Mainstream
from the planning-for-the-long-term dept.
Forever Young: "Suppose You Soon Can Live to Well Over 100, As Vibrant and Energetic as You Are Now. What Will You Do With Your Life?" Writing in the October 13, 2002 edition of the Washington Post, Staff Writer Joel Garreau provides another example of the growing interest of mainstream media in radical life extension. Garreau begins by listing still sexy 50-, 60-, 70- and 80-year-olds who have pioneered agelessness "using what some would call primitive means — exercise and diet, for example, antibiotics and vaccines, makeup and plastic surgery." He proceeds to consider the reasons why it mght become possible to "slow, halt or actually reverse aging."
Eminent technologists who believe science will evolve so fast in their lifetimes that they will energetically live a very long time, if not be effectively immortal, include William Haseltine, CEO of Human Genome Sciences in Rockville, who soon may be biotech's first billionaire; Ray Kurzweil, a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and winner of the National Medal of Technology; and Eric Drexler, a leading apostle of atomic-level manufacturing and author of "Engines of Creation."
October 23rd, 2002 at 9:04 PM
Mental health and extreme longevity
It's my opinion that the human mind is not well suited for extreme longevity. As our lifespans increase to a cosmic scale, it's hard to imagine people remaining content, unless they are pretty stupid and aren't really paying attention to their lives anyway. Given enough time, human activity space will be pretty thouroughly explored and then what do we do?
October 23rd, 2002 at 10:05 PM
Re:Mental health and extreme longevity
Oh, so we're OK, then.
Seriously, I think that people's long-term happiness is a lot more likely to be governed by their hormones than by the freshness of their experiences. That cognitive veneer over the old organism is really a lot thinner than we like to think it is.
Even if this does turn out to be a problem, I don't see it as that hard to solve.
My personal preference is for joyous suicide as a way of ending boredom and getting out of everybody else's way. I want to live as long as I want, not forever.
If that answer doesn't float your boat, then you can always assume (handwave, handwave) that it will be eventually possible to adjust your mind, whether to increase your possible range of action, to forget what you've already done, or to just plain make yourself incapable of boredom or discontent with repetition. By the way, while you're at it, you can go ahead and remove the hidebound inflexibility that everybody seems to assume will appear in the very old.
Why do people think this is a hard problem?
October 24th, 2002 at 1:32 AM
Re:Mental health and extreme longevity
[humor type="repartee"]Speaking from lots of personal experience, I think self-examination is actually a form of aggression![/humor]
Yes, in the long term, I think that's really the only answer. I am reminded of a Red Dwarf episode where the ship's computer asks one of the crew to erase all it's memories of Agatha Christie, this after a runtime of several million years.
Changing the subject, what's going to happen to legal policy when these medical advances finally happen? I guess we can just take all the social security money and use it to pay off the national debt I suppose. Of course the need for affordable retirement housing will disappear.
October 26th, 2002 at 1:46 PM
Re:Mental health and extreme longevity
I suspect that once we figure out how the human brain experiences time, and how to manipulate that experience, the whole problem of "bored immortals" will take care of itself.
October 27th, 2002 at 6:00 AM
Infinite amount of fun possible?
You may want to consider reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Singularity Fun Theory. It postulates that there may be an infinite amount of fun available.
October 28th, 2002 at 12:12 PM
Jerry Seinfeld Comedy Related to Reverse Polarity.
AN AFFIRMATION OF FAMED AUTHOR
JOHN GRAY'S ASSERTION
MEN ARE FROM MARS
CONTAINED IN THE NEW
WONDERFUL LIFE FOUNDATION FEATURE ARTICLE
ENTITLED, JERRY SEINFELD COMEDY AS RELATED TO REVERSE POLARITY.
Click here to visit the Mars/Venus Web Site.
If my life could be dramatically extended, I would try to connect to life on a deeper more meaningful level. If my life could be dramatically extended, I would try to live a more authentic life.
Click here to review Dr. Phil's tips concerning how to live an authentic live.
If my life could be dramatically extended, I would have more time to spend on things that really matter. It seems there is never enough time for things that really matter.
It takes a long time to build strong relationships. The ability to build a strong relationship often hinges upon rate of personal growth and maturity. Personal growth and maturity is often delayed among a large percentage of the human population.
Windows of opportunity are critical periods (timeframes) that provide an individual maximum probability of successfully accomplishing personal goals.
People frequently fail to accomplish major life goals. People often risk never obtaining fulfillment of personal goals if they, as unique individuals, do not achieve milestones during specific windows of opportunity.
People with human limitations are often unable to surmount major obstacles preventing them from performing complex task necessary to accomplish major life goals. Major life goals include building a strong stable enduring marriage, graduation from high school and college, establishing a successful career, becoming a parent and raising a child to become a responsible citizen, and achieving the American Dream of home ownership, etc.
Powerful natural forces at work within the universe present major obstacles in terms of individual accomplishment of major life goals. The performance of complex task necessary to accomplish major life goals requires an individual to overcome and surmount powerful natural forces at work within the universe.
An understanding of powerful natural forces at work within the universe may help an individual accept human limitations and forgive personal failure.
Often, society promulgates a false believe that people must be superhuman. Society may promulgate a false believe that people must be superhuman in order to instill a drive to succeed in youth.
The effort to instill a drive to succeed in youth by promulgating a false believe people must be superhuman may be an attempt to increase workforce productivity. The desire to increase workforce productivity is instigated by motivation to build and dramatically increase financial capital assets.
The earth is orbiting a flaming fireball. The very dust in your home is many things disintegrating.
Powerful Natural forces working in the universe present major obstacles to performance of complex task necessary to accomplish major life goals. People should learn to forgive oneself and accept human limitations.
It is a common decision for men and women to delay marriage for the purpose of commitment to career pursuits. It requires 10 to 20 years to establish a strong bond of trust in a vintage marital relationship. The decision to delay marriage for the purpose of commitment to career pursuits may compromise the ever-lasting quality of marriage.
The famed philosopher, Socrates, strongly advised people to ìknow thyselfî. Often people do not reach higher levels of self-actualization until mid-life. The major task and life strategy of laying a solid foundation for a strong healthy personality often requires 45 to 50 years or more.
The fact that it often requires one half of a life-time to grow up, mature, and blossom into a beautiful adult person not only interferes with the institution of Holy Matrimony, but also interferes with establishing a healthy bond between parent and child. The generation gap is due to parent and child existing at different stages of personality development.
Frequently, a parent and child may have only a few good years to relate to each other as mature adult to mature adult. A relationship is at its best when two people can relate to each other as mature adults. When a child reaches peak years of maturity at mid-life, sickness associated with old age frequently disrupt, interfere, and distract from the relationship between parent and child.
If longevity were vastly extended, I would have more time to appreciate the finer things in life. The finer things in life include artistic and intellectual pursuits.
Drastic extension of the human lifespan may allow greater love and appreciation for art, literature, music, sports, science, interpersonal sharing and active listening as an art and science, and high quality humorous comedy.
Click here to read a new Wonderful Life Foundation feature article entitled, Jerry Senfield Comedy as Related to Reverse Polarity.
Click here to read about Jerry Senfield's guest appearance on The Tonight Show, hosted by Jay Leno.
The Wonderful Life Foundation feature article entitled, Jerry Senfield Comedy as Related to Reverse Polarity, provides a physiological model explaining the psychological mechanism of humor.
In the Wonderful Life Foundation feature article entitled, Jerry Seinfeld Comedy as Related to Reverse Polarity, Wonderful Life Foundation presents a theoretical proposition that humor is a consequence of reversal of the normal vector path of neuron-electrical chemical pulsars normally traveling from the prefrontal lobe of the cerebral cortex via motor neurons to striated muscle fiber throughout the human body.
Word associations contained in humorous puns may expedite release of neuron-electrical chemical discharges within cellular interstitial brain tissue of the prefrontal lobes. The expedition of neuron-electrical chemical discharges within brain tissue of the prefrontal lobe is generated by cognitive activity of cellular interstitial brain tissue juggling neuron-electrical chemical sequences related to long term memory storage of information connected to word associations contained within linguistic humorous content.
The expedition of neuron-electrical chemical discharges within brain tissue of the prefrontal lobe by humorous word associations may produce conditions favorable to creating greater affinity of motor neuron electrolyte ions of sodium and potassium to the origin point of prefrontal lobe cellular interstitial brain tissue. An increased attraction of ionic electrolyte neuron-electrical chemical pulsars that have already been released on a motor neuron path toward the final destination of striated muscle fiber may draw ionic electrolyte neuron-electrical chemical pulsars backward on a reverse vector path to the original prefrontal lobe brain tissue from where neuron-chemical pulsars are originally released.
The nerve cell action of neuron-electrical chemical pulsars pulled backward on a reverse vector path to the original prefrontal lobe brain tissue from where pulsars originated may provide additional cognitive stimulation that will ultimately produce the behavior of laughter. Hence, quality humor may create reverse polarity of ionic electrolyte nerve cell transmissions.
The concept of Reverse Polarity may have profound implications pertaining to the new emerging field of Artificial Intelligence. Wonderful Life Foundation strongly adheres to the conjecture that true Artificial Intelligence cannot be perfected without building a life-like synthetic body for an Artificial Intelligent organism.
If, we as a society, should choose to exercise our Divine gift of pro-creative intellectual prowess, then newly created Artificial Intelligent creatures should not be considered a slave, but instead, newly created Artificial Intelligent creatures should be viewed as a partner to promote improved living conditions.
If human life can be drastically extended, this may open a door of opportunity to establish an institution to protect rights of Artificial Intelligence. Also, an extended human lifespan may allow people who believe in the Divine gift of pro-creative intellectual prowess to contribute to creation of the first Artificial Intelligent creatures.
Sincerely,
Mark
Founder, Webmaster, Executive Director
Wonderful Life Foundation
October 28th, 2002 at 5:00 PM
Re:Infinite amount of fun possible?
Well, duh. Obviously, if you rewire your incentives, you can have essentially unbounded ways of satisfying them, and if you rewire them to an infinite or effectively infinite action space, of course you can have unlimited novelty in the process.
Equally obviously, you (pre-rewiring) are likely to have aesthetic preferences between various ways of doing the rewiring.
Where Eliezer's essay falls down is in ignoring the fact that different people, including different readers of that very document, including even people who'll gladly take at least part of the transhuman option if it ever becomes available, may have different preferences. Not only that, but social and even technological forces may foreclose certain choices. For example, if somebody's particular aesthetic preference, unlike Eliezer's, happened to involve using the entire common pool of mass and energy to run blissed-out, simplified upload copies of that person[1], I for one would be prepared to use force to prevent it. And I strongly suspect that there are others who could be damned inflexible in cases much less extreme, and who might be in a position to enforce their inflexibility.
Like a lot of transhumanist writing, the essay is full of apparently unconsidered assumptions about values. In this case, the most important such assumption seems to be that there's enough agreement about what's "philosophically acceptable" to make it worth discussing… and that such consensus will persist until the time of interest. I see no reason to believe either.
I, for example, would probably consider it less appealing to rewire my sex drive to an abstract game than to just decide you weren't going to be bored with repeated sex. Eliezer may think that my view is sphexish. On the other hand, I think he doesn't put enough negative value on the arbitrariness of his suggestion.
Of course, I probably wouldn't rewire basic drives much at all. Even if I eventually did so, I think it could very easily be part of a deathlike event; whatever came out wouldn't be me any more. If it could be done beautifully, fine, but a more final death might very well be more beautiful. But that's just my preference, and I know lots of people don't share it. From my point of view, the interesting problem is how we can all accommodate our conflicting views with one another's.
[1] One of many examples of how scarcity can persist in any future in which physical laws as we know them don't change.
October 29th, 2002 at 7:56 AM
Re:Mental health and extreme longevity
I think that it sould be the persons choice on how long they should live. If people are stupid then the longer life would allow them to learn. To not be stupid. I also think that once you get to the point that you understand everything in life that you want to know choosing death would be an understandable and logical choice.
October 29th, 2002 at 1:01 PM
Re:Infinite amount of fun possible?
I think there will be some accomodation but I don't think it will be total. There will still be points of disagreement and conflict, perhaps even violent conflict.
In a way, I am happy with that. Change and struggle, at least to me, are always preferable to the static, blissed-out, narcosis that some futurists seem to be imagining for us.
November 15th, 2002 at 6:28 AM
Re:Mental health and extreme longevity
I am 70, live in Guadalajara, Mexico and until I attended my 50th high school class reunion 2 years ago had been running 4 miles a day and doing 3 sets of 100 push ups every morning. I have for years taken vitamin and mineral supplements (1,000 IU Vitamin E, T wheat germ oil, T liquid lecithin, 70 mg zinc, an aspirin). Our altitude here is 5,200 feet. I have no grey hair and the thickness is such that when I have it cut, I have it thinned, as well. I read 8 newspapers a day, 6 or so scientific journals. I occasionally publish an essay about one of my several passions and have made public lectures on such topics as my mother's people (the Cherokee), the horrors of GM foods, our continuing and un-noted evolution, the origin of our US Constitution (the Hohokum Confederacy of the Gila Basin). Briefly, sir; there isn't enough time in my day. I am most especially pleased to be alive in this moment to bear witness to our continually accelerating . . . awakening consciousness. Years ago, I think during his first administration, then President Clinton remarked "human knowledge is doubling now, every five years." Currently, it is doubling more nearly every five months. At some point, the text of John Donne's poem, assuring that "one short sleep past and death, thou shalt die," will become a reality; ageing and death are a disease, a calcification on a cellular level . . . and we're working on it. Just think of it! Modern medicine, in the sense of sterile procedures and aenesthesia, was born on the fields of Gettysburg in 1863-64 (eh? Yes, I am somewhat rounding off, but only for the sake of sensationalism) . . . and every war since has been lovely, in the sense of quantum leaping in medicine and other sciences/technologies. I'm so excited to be here, to witness, to wonder!