Ray Kurzweil: Immortality within 15 years.

Dear Odysseus:

"Odysseus" wrote in message
news
In article
,
dlzc wrote:

snip

As to your question about which language treats
unmodified things as male, it is Indian, as spoken
in India.

There is no language called "Indian". Some four
hundred languages (belonging to several different
linguistic families) are spoken in India, at least a
couple of dozen of them having speakers
numbered in the millions.

The references I glanced at had the male-female dichotomy
extending back to a couple of thousand years BC. Would that be
Hindi then?

David A. Smith

In article ,
"N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)" wrote:

snip

The references I glanced at had the male-female dichotomy
extending back to a couple of thousand years BC. Would that be
Hindi then?

I don't think Hindi is anywhere near that old, but they could have been
referring to one of its ancestors, perhaps Sanskrit. Then again, it
might be a completely unrelated Dravidian or Sino-Tibetan language.

According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi,

"In Hindi, there are only two genders for nouns. All male human beings
and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be
"masculine") are masculine. All female human beings and female animals
(or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are
feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either
masculine or feminine according to convention, [...]"

Nothing there about an unmodified _vs_ modified distinction manifesting
in gender, but of course it's only a concise introduction.

--
Odysseus

Dear Odysseus:

"Odysseus" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)" wrote:

snip

The references I glanced at had the male-female
dichotomy extending back to a couple of thousand
years BC. Would that be Hindi then?

I don't think Hindi is anywhere near that old, but they
could have been referring to one of its ancestors,
perhaps Sanskrit. Then again, it might be a completely
unrelated Dravidian or Sino-Tibetan language.

According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi,

"In Hindi, there are only two genders for nouns. All
male human beings and male animals (or those
animals and plants which are perceived to be
"masculine") are masculine. All female human
beings and female animals (or those animals and
plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are
feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract
nouns are also either masculine or feminine
according to convention, [...]"

Nothing there about an unmodified _vs_ modified
distinction manifesting in gender, but of course
it's only a concise introduction.

Possibly covered in "convention".

As part of my penance for being ignorant on the topic:
http://www.languageinindia.com/sep20...erandlang.html
.... tamil

http://orissagov.nic.in/e-magazine/O...y_approach.pdf
.... sanskrit

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summ...99-1563488_ITM
.... Setswana (Botswana)

http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocumen...3-C8B8702B12D5
.... lithuanian "every table is he, every chair is she"

http://www.jewishmosaic.org/torah/show_torah/20
.... interesting variants on male/female in the torah

http://www.thoughtware.com.au/philos...e/sexlang.html
.... maybe bias does not arise from langauge forms



http://accurapid.com/journal/40gender.htm
... gender bias in language is not required to yield gender bias
in fact.

http://www.yoism.org/?q=node/25
.... yoism


I'll do a little more on language in matriarchal societies, to
see what rears its head there.

Personally, I wonder if language limits / guides what we do, or
whether langauge is only a descriptor of where we have been (even
if that includes future planning). I don't recall having been
guided by what I can describe. But as far as peer involvement,
being convinced to do something comes via language.

I wonder what all this hijack had to do with Ray Kurzweil?

David A. Smith

On Jan 6, 9:20 pm, Gene Ward Smith wrote:
Matt Browne SFW wrote in news:2dc6b885-68ca-
:

This gives a good overview:

Both you links suggest nothing much has been done as yet, which I do not
think counts as astonishing progress.

Astonishing progress is a subjective view, granted. Yet in my opinion
we should not underestimate the potential of neuroscience and related
fields (regardless of the singularity debate). Teach someone how to
play the piano the very first time and watch the changes is his or
brain. Live. And on a level of detail that I subjectively find
astonishing indeed. And it's marvelous stuff for science fiction,
isn't it? Many aspects have been predicted in the past. Some remain
wishful thinking. Still going to school? Why, brains got USB
interfaces now. Buy "Quantum Mechanics 101" for $19.99, get second
memory updater for free. Astonishing?

--
Matt Browne
My webpage is at http://www.meet-matt-browne.com

"As a race, we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent."
Bill McGuire

Matt Browne wrote in
:

On Jan 6, 9:20 pm, Gene Ward Smith wrote:
Matt Browne SFW wrote in
news:2dc6b885-68ca-
:

This gives a good overview:

Both you links suggest nothing much has been done as yet, which I do
not think counts as astonishing progress.

Astonishing progress is a subjective view, granted. Yet in my opinion
we should not underestimate the potential of neuroscience and related
fields (regardless of the singularity debate). Teach someone how to
play the piano the very first time and watch the changes is his or
brain. Live. And on a level of detail that I subjectively find
astonishing indeed. And it's marvelous stuff for science fiction,
isn't it? Many aspects have been predicted in the past. Some remain
wishful thinking. Still going to school? Why, brains got USB
interfaces now. Buy "Quantum Mechanics 101" for $19.99, get second
memory updater for free. Astonishing?

Heh. Most universities charge more than $19.99 for pencils with their log
on them. Aside from that, though, yeah.

--
Terry Austin
"Dude, we're all your bitch, but only Ken's wearing the juice."
- tussock

On Dec 26 2007, 8:14 pm, Robert Clark wrote:
On Dec 25, 7:57 am, "Ken from Chicago"
wrote:



"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 adultstemcellsseem 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

Even experienced molecular biologists were stunned by the news that
normal adult cells were able to be turned into stem cells:

2007 stem cell breakthrough is like turning lead into gold.
"CHICAGO (AFP) -- It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had
dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to
be fast on the way to being realized.
"Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock
back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable
building blocks of organs and tissues.
"Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured
sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse
skin.
"This is truly the Holy Grail: To be able to take a few cells from a
patient -- say a cheek swab or few skin cells -- and turn them into
stem cells in the laboratory," said Robert Lanza, a stem cell pioneer
at Advanced Cell Technology.
"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone - the
biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane," he told
AFP.
"It's bit like learning how to turn lead into gold."http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ihgK73syj-opouQYjUO2hFPjXFuA

This was a MAJORLY big advance. Previously the research with stem
cells was held up by the moral problems of taking stems cells from
embryos. With this impediment gone there will now be loads of money
pored into solving the problem of turning the stem cells into the
desired cells of the body parts that need to be replaced. It is not
unreasonable to think this could be solved within 20 years. The pace
of the advances in molecular biology is analogous to the speed of the
advances in basic and applied physics.
With this solved then you can imagine that aged or damaged body parts
could be replaced with new ones derived from stem cells. Then this
alone would certainly result in increased *maximum* human life spans.
Probably though another advance would be required, being able to grow
the replacement body parts at accelerated rates so they could be
available when needed. This might be achieved by understanding how,
for example, cancer cells are able to undergo unchecked growth. This
might even work for brain cells undergoing senescence since they would
presumably also be producible from programmed stem cells.
This though would create thorny ethical issues as explored in such
films as "Parts - The Clonus Horror" and the more recent film "The
Island". If it is possible to grow these body parts at accelerated
rates then you would imagine it would be desirable to grow an entire
replacement body including the brain since you wouldn't know which
part would need to be replaced. But this would then be an independent
living human and you would have the moral question of destroying it to
save the life of another person.
These moral problems though might be eliminated if the speed for an
adult size body part could be reduced to only days or months. Then you
could imagine there would be put legal restrictions put in place
against growing an entire replacement body all at once.

Bob Clark

The quest to use stem cells to replace damaged organs is progressing
even faster than I thought:

Scientists grow rat heart in the lab.
Experiment could lead to new treatments for cardiovascular disease.
Video.
updated 2:46 p.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 14, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22635550/

Team Creates Rat Heart Using Cells of Baby Rats.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: January 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/he...rt.html?ref=us

The New York Times article says the method would be expected in
humans to create a beating heart within months, though it doesn't say
if this would be adult sized or not.

Also, not mentioned in these articles is whether the researchers
technique was successful in their experiments on pig hearts, of
similar size to human hearts. But in a TV interview, one of the
scientists involved said it was.


Bob Clark

In article
s.com, Robert Clark writes
(trimmed)

The quest to use stem cells to replace damaged organs is progressing
even faster than I thought:

Scientists grow rat heart in the lab.
Experiment could lead to new treatments for cardiovascular disease.
Video.
updated 2:46 p.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 14, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22635550/

Team Creates Rat Heart Using Cells of Baby Rats.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: January 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/he...rt.html?ref=us

The New York Times article says the method would be expected in
humans to create a beating heart within months, though it doesn't say
if this would be adult sized or not.

Also, not mentioned in these articles is whether the researchers
technique was successful in their experiments on pig hearts, of
similar size to human hearts. But in a TV interview, one of the
scientists involved said it was.


Bob Clark
Anybody planning to live a mere 100 years or so more should be putting
as much effort into tracking the environment as they are into following
the progress of medicine. A complete rejuvenation isn't all you need if
it turns out that there is enough ecosystem left to support N power
blocs and there are N+1 seriously nuclear-capable power blocs in
existence - and no matter how smart the post-singularity blocs are, they
still might have trouble making N = N + 1 for finite values of N.

I used to think that a truly advanced civilisation would find the
bargaining and resource allocation techniques that would make conflict
unnecessary. Now (e.g. after seeing limits proved in mechanism design) I
wonder if a truly advanced civilisation would have just the same
character failings that H. Sapiens seems to have evolved with, plus the
knowledge that, in some sense, that's the best that can be done.
--
A.G.McDowell

On Jan 14, 6:16 pm, Robert Clark wrote:

The quest to use stem cells to replace damaged organs is progressing
even faster than I thought:

Scientists grow rat heart in the lab.
Experiment could lead to new treatments for cardiovascular disease.
Video.
updated 2:46 p.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 14, 2008http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22635550/

Team Creates Rat Heart Using Cells of Baby Rats.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: January 14, 2008http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/health/14heart.html?ref=us

The New York Times article says the method would be expected in
humans to create a beating heart within months, though it doesn't say
if this would be adult sized or not.

Also, not mentioned in these articles is whether the researchers
technique was successful in their experiments on pig hearts, of
similar size to human hearts. But in a TV interview, one of the
scientists involved said it was.



Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells.
By Sami Torma 56 minutes ago
HELSINKI (Reuters) - "Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a
65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from
stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his
abdomen."
....
"Using a patient's own stem cells provides a tailor-made transplant
that the body should not reject.
"Suuronen and her colleagues -- the project was run jointly with the
Helsinki University Central Hospital -- isolated stem cells from the
patient's fat and grew them for two weeks in a specially formulated
nutritious soup that included the patient's own blood serum.
"In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal
stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or
blood vessels.
"When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a
scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it
inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned
into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the
researchers said.
"The block was later transplanted into the patient's head and
connected to the skull bone using screws and microsurgery to connect
arteries and veins to the vessels of the neck."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080201/...d_stemcells_dc


Bob Clark

On Feb 1, 3:04 pm, Robert Clark wrote:
On Jan 14, 6:16 pm, Robert Clark wrote:





The quest to use stem cells to replace damaged organs is progressing
even faster than I thought:

Scientists grow rat heart in the lab.
Experiment could lead to new treatments for cardiovascular disease.
Video.
updated 2:46 p.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 14, 2008http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22635550/

Team Creates Rat Heart Using Cells of Baby Rats.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: January 14, 2008http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/health/14heart.html?ref=us

The New York Times article says the method would be expected in
humans to create a beating heart within months, though it doesn't say
if this would be adult sized or not.

Also, not mentioned in these articles is whether the researchers
technique was successful in their experiments on pig hearts, of
similar size to human hearts. But in a TV interview, one of the
scientists involved said it was.

Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells.
By Sami Torma 56 minutes ago
HELSINKI (Reuters) - "Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a
65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from
stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his
abdomen."
...
"Using a patient's own stem cells provides a tailor-made transplant
that the body should not reject.
"Suuronen and her colleagues -- the project was run jointly with the
Helsinki University Central Hospital -- isolated stem cells from the
patient's fat and grew them for two weeks in a specially formulated
nutritious soup that included the patient's own blood serum.
"In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal
stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or
blood vessels.
"When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a
scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it
inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned
into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the
researchers said.
"The block was later transplanted into the patient's head and
connected to the skull bone using screws and microsurgery to connect
arteries and veins to the vessels of the neck."http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080201/ts_nm/finland_stemcells_dc

Bob Clark

Another interesting article:

April, 2008
Regrowing Limbs: Can People Regenerate Body Parts?
Progress on the road to regenerating major body parts, salamander-
style, could transform the treatment of amputations and major wounds.
By Ken Muneoka, Manjong Han and David M. Gardiner.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...ng-human-limbs


Bob Clark