Ray Kurzweil: Immortality within 15 years.

In article ,
Jon Schild said:

And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or 30 the
idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they
should. Then you can understand the full meaning of a button I
have seen at several worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

That presumes that immortality == being stuck in the same worn-out
meat forever.

--
William December Starr

On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 10:07:43 -0800 (PST), Robert Clark
wrote:

Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?
Answering hard questions at the World Transhumanist conference.
Ronald Bailey | July 27, 2007
"...The final speaker was inventor and self-acknowledged transhumanist
Ray Kurzweil, who argues that "The Singularity is Near." The
singularity is a metaphorical social event horizon in which
accelerating technological trends so change society that it is
impossible to forecast what the world will really be like. Kurzweill
believes that humanity will accelerate itself to utopia (immortality,
ubiquitous AI, nanotech abundance) in the next 20 to 30 years. For
example, he noted that average life expectancy increases by about 3
months every year. Kurzweil then claimed that longevity trends are
accelerating so fast that the life expectancy will increase more than
one year for each year that passes in about 15 years. In other words,
if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy could be
indefinitely long. He projects that by 2030, AI will be ubiquitous,
and most humans will be physically melded to information and other
technologies. Kurzweil argued that we must reject the fundamentalist
desire to define humanity by its limitations. 'We are the species that
goes beyond our limitations,' he declared."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121638.html

Indefinite lifespan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_lifespan

If so, that might alleviate the problem of the very long times for
(sublight) travel between the stars: indefinitely long lifetimes.

Kurzweil is one of those crazed optimists who will reliably see the
future fail to live up to their claims.

Matthias Warkus wrote:

Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy schrieb:
Gene Ward Smith wrote in

om:
On Dec 24, 10:07 am, Robert Clark
wrote:
Kurzweil then claimed that longevity trends are
accelerating so fast that the life expectancy will increase
more than one year for each year that passes in about 15 years.
Back in the sixties, I read an article in Analog where the
author claimed speeds attained by humans were increasing so fast
that before the end of the century we would be able to travel
faster than light. It came equipped with a graph, which
extrapolated these speeds into an asymptotic blowup. Finding the
fallacies in this class of argument is left as an exercise for
the reader.
And practical fusion is only 20 years away.

Don't forget about flying cars, PRT and the paperless office.

And the simplified Federal tax code (in the US, but presumably there
are parallels elsewhere).

--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Futures http://dangoodman.livejournal.com
mirror 1: http://dsgood.insanejournal.com
mirror 2: http://dsgood.wordpress.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood

Jon Schild wrote:
Maybe when you are 20 or 30 the idea of living forever seems
attractive, but wait until you get older and assorted body parts
no longer work like they should.

The wearing out of those body parts *is* aging. If we can prevent all
deaths by old age, it will be by preventing or perfectly repairing
such deterioration. There's no chance that death will be conquered
by allowing people to live more and more decrepitly, like Swift's
Struldbrugs.

Then you can understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at
several worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

I interpret that as meaning that there may be a finite number of
things to learn and do, thus people may become severely bored after
a few trillion trillion trillion eons.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

In rec.arts.sf.science Keith F. Lynch wrote:
Jon Schild wrote:
Maybe when you are 20 or 30 the idea of living forever seems
attractive, but wait until you get older and assorted body parts
no longer work like they should.

The wearing out of those body parts *is* aging. If we can prevent all
deaths by old age, it will be by preventing or perfectly repairing
such deterioration. There's no chance that death will be conquered
by allowing people to live more and more decrepitly, like Swift's
Struldbrugs.

I don't see why not. Immortality merely implies that the deterioration is
not allowed to progress far enough to be fatal. It could still progress
asymptotically toward the point of death. From what I've seen, these
people who think that medical science will bring us immortality think that
the first stages will happen simply by slowing the rate of decline, thus
giving the individual more time so that medical science can advance still
further. There's no reason this *has* to eventually reverse; the rate of
decline could just get slower and slower as techniques get better and
better.

A scarier thought: of all the major organs necessary to sustain life, the
brain has probably the greatest excess capacity. It would be entirely
possible for medicine to advance to the point where physical deterioration
could be stopped and even reversed, but mental decline would come about
inevitably.

Maybe those of you who are older than I will think this is naive, but I'd
rather be a sharp mind stuck in and enlessly decaying body than a decaying
mind stuck in an endlessly great body. Seems like the chances for eventual
recovery would be much better that way as well.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

"Gene Ward Smith" wrote in message
...
On Dec 24, 10:07 am, Robert Clark wrote:

Kurzweil then claimed that longevity trends are
accelerating so fast that the life expectancy will increase more than
one year for each year that passes in about 15 years.

Back in the sixties, I read an article in Analog where the author
claimed speeds attained by humans were increasing so fast that before
the end of the century we would be able to travel faster than light.
It came equipped with a graph, which extrapolated these speeds into an
asymptotic blowup. Finding the fallacies in this class of argument is
left as an exercise for the reader.

Life EXPECTANCY and life LONGEVITY are two different things. The former is
increased by lowering EARLY deaths, from war, malnutrition, famine, crime,
disease, accidents, etc., the latter has pretty much stayed around 120
years--for millennia. The recent oldest person who died was around 116 years
old.

-- Ken from Chicago

"Jon Schild" wrote in message
...

Robert Clark wrote:
Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?

Absolutely. And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or 30
the idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get older
and assorted body parts no longer work like they should. Then you can
understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at several worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

That's assuming you continue to decay--as opposed to stabilizing around 30
years physically. And that pain medication loses effectiveness. One of the
biggest fears of age is pain.

-- Ken from Chicago

"William December Starr" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jon Schild said:

And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or 30 the
idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they
should. Then you can understand the full meaning of a button I
have seen at several worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

That presumes that immortality == being stuck in the same worn-out
meat forever.

--
William December Starr


Or worse, being stuck in a WORSENING, decaying worn-out "meatbag".

-- Ken from Chicago

"John Schilling" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:02:39 -0800, Jon Schild wrote:


Robert Clark wrote:
Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a
posthuman world?

Absolutely. And it isn't that hard a question. Maybe when you are 20 or
30 the idea of living forever seems attractive, but wait until you get
older and assorted body parts no longer work like they should. Then you
can understand the full meaning of a button I have seen at several
worldcons:

"Immortality -- A Fate Worse than Death"

Which mostly only means that the English language doesn't yet have the
right terminology for discussing "immortality".

"Eternal youth".

Any technology capable of vastly extending the human lifespan, would
almost certainly be capable of ensuring that all the assorted body
parts work the way they should. After all, it is the increasing
dysfunction of many of those body parts that causes mortality in the
first place; it seems highly unlikely that we'd be able to perfectly
repair only those parts relating to the duration of life but not the
ones relating to the quality of life.

Nanotech and adult stem cells seem the less controversial choices scientists
are working on.

So, "immortality" in the body you had at twenty-five? Because I think
that, barring a short transitional period, that's the only sort that's
really in the cards.

And I don't think we'll actually see it in fifteen years, but possibly
within fifty years.

-- Ken from Chicago

"Gene Ward Smith" wrote in message
...
On Dec 24, 11:57 am, John Schilling wrote:

So, "immortality" in the body you had at twenty-five? Because I think
that, barring a short transitional period, that's the only sort that's
really in the cards.

And I don't think we'll actually see it in fifteen years, but possibly
within fifty years.

What's your definition of "immortality"?

"Eternal youth" (with "youth" being around 20-30 years physically).

Of course some would add an INability to die--period.

-- Ken from Chicago