
The Expensive Art of Living Forever - manbartlett
https://www.topic.com/the-expensive-art-of-living-forever
======
monktastic1
"Advanced artificial intelligence, they hope, will allow us to make exact
copies of our minds that will live indefinitely in networked computer
systems."

I've never understood this mindset. If I asked you: "hey, here's proof that
all the data that comprise your personality, memories, etc. have been copied
to a computer, may I now give you a lethal injection?", why on earth would you
say "yes"?

It's not the particulars of what I'm experiencing (my memories, my
personality, the sensations I call "my body" etc.) that are interesting to me;
it's the sheer fact _that_ I experience.

I fear this will degenerate into an unproductive debate about what
consciousness is or is not, so maybe it's better to just nod politely.

~~~
arebop
The sensations you call your body change over time, until there's nothing but
fatigue and pain left. If someone offered to let you resume consciousness on
artificial hardware after your body had ceased to function, you might take
them up on it.

In fact, some of my eldest relatives are in high spirits but also looking
forward to death, because they have religious convictions about a wonderful,
energetic, pain-free afterlife.

~~~
vkou
If I make a perfectly identical clone of you, and then shoot you dead, will
you resume your consciousness in that clone?

Why?

Alternatively, if I shoot the clone, will the clone resume its consciousness
in you? By what process?

~~~
theothermkn
The strange places this leads arrive almost immediately. Are you the same
person after you take a nap? Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and
then reconstitute itself when "you" wake? What about from second to second,
between moments of inattention? Are we relying on the "stability" of your
constituent atoms? On some "arrangement" of them? On a particular locus of
sensation (the goo in your brain pan)?

What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone,
leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating
atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you?

This way lies madness. Possibly twice.

~~~
henrikschroder
> Are you the same person after you take a nap?

Yes.

> Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and then reconstitute itself
> when "you" wake?

Yes.

> What about from second to second, between moments of inattention?

Yes.

> Are we relying on the "stability" of your constituent atoms?

Yes.

> On some "arrangement" of them?

Yes.

> On a particular locus of sensation (the goo in your brain pan)?

Yes.

> What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone,
> leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating
> atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you?

My father replaced the handle, and I replaced the blade, but it's still my
grandfather's axe?

Neither. You ripped my brain in half, I am dead.

------
theothermkn
I think what dismays me about this article is that it contains exactly the
kind of profound vacuity that passes, inexplicably, for wisdom about the
possibility and impact of life extension and the character of those who are
interested in it. It's difficult to know where to begin.

First, and most glaringly, death is not a solution to overpopulation, in any
sense. It hasn't worked so far, for example. Additionally, there was a great
video by Numberphile,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpj0E0a0mlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpj0E0a0mlU),
where he shows that the current 1.1% global growth rate results in us
overpopulating _the Universe_ in something like 9000 years. Sooner, rather
than later, we will face a real population crisis, even in the face of 80-year
lifespans. Growth rates absolutely will come down, one way or the other, in a
way that will be functionally indistinguishable from outlawing procreation.

Second, transhumanists, and the subset of truly whacko pseudoscientific
transhumanists (however large a fraction you think that is), represents not
nearly everybody who is interested in longevity, nor do they characterize, at
all, the entirety of those populations. I wouldn't characterize Aubrey de Grey
as a transhumanist, for example. The smear doesn't stick, even if we were to
allow smear tactics as legitimate.

Third, and finally, there is absolutely no guarantee that life extension
technology will be expensive. None. Further, there is no reason to think that
its cost would not decline over time, indefinitely. How much could an
Alzheimer's vaccine actually cost, once every 50 years, lets say? How
expensive could a CRISPR therapy be? If it were routine and assembly-lined?
What about the decline in lifestyle cost after one has paid off one's mortgage
and taken care of all the other mostly one-time expenses?

As thinkers, we truly need to do much, much better than this article.

~~~
Gatsky
About your 3rd point, recent results (clonal haematopoeisis, single cell
genomics) do in fact suggest that life extension interventions will be highly
technical, ongoing and very expensive.

~~~
philipkglass
I agree with highly technical and ongoing. I'm agnostic about "very
expensive." Initially very expensive, sure. But how much of the expensive
stuff can be eventually automated and routinized? I'd guess "a lot," since
that's my general guess about the future, and in that case the cost would fall
a lot as well. If I'm wrong -- and I could be wrong; many predictions of
widespread automation have been premature -- then I agree that the costs could
remain very high.

------
reasonattlm
People who think that rejuvenation therapies are only for the rich are not
paying attention.

Look at first generation senolytic drug candidates that clear ~25% of
senescent cells in mice, varying by tissue type. These vary from $100 per
dose, for things like dasatinib plus quercetin, to a few thousand dollars per
dose where you need a biotech company to one-off synthesize it for you, such
as foxo4-dri. One dose is needed every few years - more than that won't help
further.

The story will be the same for glucosepane cross-link breakers.

The trend in this type of technology is towards engineered small molecule /
enzyme / peptide / etc that will cost next to nothing a decade after it is
introduced, and can in any case be manufactured to order in China and shipped
in if the patent holder decides to try charging monopoly rates. Alternatively,
gene and cell therapies that can be mass produced, all the complexity baked
into that manufacture, and then administered by a bored clinician. The cost
will be similar to present day biologics, which are largely in the $1-10k/dose
range. Again all of these treatments will be once-every-few-years, not any
more frequently. That is the point of damage repair as a strategy - you only
need to do it as often as the damage builds up. There is no point in doing it
any more often.

------
newswriter99
"white"

If transhumanists were almost exclusively ANY OTHER ETHNICITY would the writer
still have pointed it out?

Not trying to derail the thread into a race war, I'm just fatigued by the
double-standard that keeps showing up in modern journalism.

------
MayeulC
That may just be the way the article is written, but I find all these people
to be a bit too much self-centered and maybe too much on their bodies, in my
opinion. There is more to old age than just the body. I personally think that
if everyone could live forever (in flesh or not, maybe just in a sort of
library/archive), the biggest advantage would be that experiences are
retained.

It is just a shame to think about the amount of knowledge that is lost every
time someone dies. And the effort needed to train the next generation. On one
hand, that means we get to imagine better ways of teaching, on the other hand,
we have to spend more time studying, or just accept that we won't know
everything perfectly (and be more specialized than our ancestors were).

This specialization is only compatible with technological improvement if we
can delegate more of the low-level task/knowledge to computers/AI, or if
population keeps increasing (which isn't really sustainable, long-term). The
alternative is stagnation, or regression in some fields to progress in others.

Edit: I can get some people not agreeing to this view, but this was meant at
the starting point of a discussion, not a general truth. Could the downvoters
at least share their view of the topic?

------
wonderwonder
"In a world where a growing class of retired Americans are living in poverty
and perpetual, insecure, backbreaking labor during what should be their
retirement years, transhumanist visions of a future of “infinite abundance”
(We’ll just 3-D-print food! Everyone will move to space!) aren’t inspiring,
but perverse. Transhumanists are also almost exclusively white, as is borne
out by the older, moneyed demographic at RAADfest. "

I find this attitude tiresome. The author is attempting to shame his subjects
for daring to look beyond today's problems and for their demographic makeup.
Everything does not have to be looked at via the lens of societal privilege.
Can't we just let people dream of the future without saddling them with
current day baggage.

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other
reason but because they are not already common.” ― John Locke

~~~
dgllghr
I think there is good reason to be concerned about moving into a future where
the wealthy get to live forever (or at least for a very long time) while the
poor live short lives of labor. I don't think the author is saying that what
they want is wrong, just that we should think through the implications of such
a future when we already have such high inequality.

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." -William
Gibson

~~~
chr1
The future where only wealthy get to live forever is indeed very bleak, but
there is a future worse than that: the one where everyones life is short (like
now).

~~~
vkou
You're assuming that:

1\. A world where Ghengis Khan or Emperor Tiberius, or Joseph Stalin were
still alive today....

2\. Would be no worse from the world we have, except a few powerful people
would have not had to die.

The interests of the wealthy and powerful are not aligned with those of the
rest of us. Death is one way in which dynasties and despots lose power -
moreso if they have multiple successors.

~~~
chr1
I think the scenario of a despot like that keeping rejuvenation technology to
himself and ruling for a long time is not likely.

First of all that would assume rejuvenation is very costly, more costly than
raising a child, which is unlikely.

Second, the despot doesn't work alone, he needs to have other people who do
all the killing, and these people are going to want to not die as well. All of
the despots you mention had a large base of supporters, and it is difficult to
remain a supporter on you are going to die for no good reason.

Third, since the technology is not a magic ring to just hide, people who fight
against the despot would be able to use the it as well, and next to despots
gaining more experience, you'll have people fighting agains them living longer
and having more chances to fight.

What i think is more likely, is a softer concentration of power, where rich
people keep money and power for much longer, but poor people are still kept
content with a small chance to get rich themselves.

~~~
vkou
> I think the scenario of a despot like that keeping rejuvenation technology
> to himself and ruling for a long time is not likely.

That's not an assumption I'm making. Death resets ossification and
concentration of power every couple of decades, regardless of whether
rejuvenation therapy would be available to the top 10%, 1%, or 0.001%, or
whatever. The problem is not the therapy, or even who gets it, the problem is
what happens when it is available.

The problems that immortality causes are social, not technological. People
with wealth and power tend to accumulate more wealth and power, at the expense
of everyone else. When they die, it is distributed among their successors. A
slow, and inefficient form of trickle-down, if you will.

Ever hear the expression "Science advances one funeral at a time"?

Well, so do politics, except that they have a far more dangerous (to us)
positive-feedback cycle.

> Third, since the technology is not a magic ring to just hide, people who
> fight against the despot would be able to use the it as well, and next to
> despots gaining more experience, you'll have people fighting agains them
> living longer and having more chances to fight.

Life isn't an RPG where you punch wolves to get experience points, having a
therapy that lets you live longer doesn't help after you starve to death in a
GULAG, and most revolutionaries are young men with little to lose. You
couldn't have picked a better example of asymmetrical technology if you tried.
(Well, I suppose there's also the surveillance state, and drone armies...)

~~~
chr1
> "Science advances one funeral at a time"

This is mostly due to age related brain function degradation, most scientists
now have to relearn and try new things several times in their middle age.
Unfortunately many lose that ability with the age, but retain the power they
have gained before that.

If scientists could retain the abilities of their young brain for longer,
science would benefit greatly from improving the ratio of learning/working
time.

In general i agree that without death resetting ossification and concentration
power would take longer, but is the death of billions of people worth that? Is
the current interval the perfect one, or maybe we should intentionally create
antibiotic resistant bacteria to make it faster again.

If no why is intentionally hindering the development of life extension any
different than trying to destroy the effects of life extension we achieved so
far?

