

Time interviews Larry Page about new venture to extend human life - raldi
http://business.time.com/2013/09/18/google-extend-human-life/

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manifold
> One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you’d
> add about three years to people’s average life expectancy ... it’s not as
> big an advance as you might think.

Thinking about improving total life expectancy in this way is not so useful
because the large gains have already been made. For instance if no-one in the
UK ever died between birth and age 60 it would only add 2-5 years to life
expectancy at birth. 100 years ago the same situation would have added 20-25
years.

Perhaps more interesting would be to look at increasing the maximum life span,
reducing the variance about the age of death, increasing the median age of
death, or to consider the effect of curing cancer/other diseases on healthy
life expectancy which I think could still be meaningfully increased.

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richardjordan
Extended life is great, provided you solve the problems of over-population /
birth rate exceeding death rate, and resource depletion. The carrying capacity
of the planet is limited. Technology and ideas don't replace physics and
chemistry.

So, can we radically extend life? Probably, with sufficient research.

But without solving the other two issues it raises huge problems. Unless of
course we're talking a tiny immortal class controlling all the world's wealth
and dwindling resources, and the rest with no access to it.

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julespitt
Why are we limited to this planets resources exclusively?

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rizzom5000
I think the answer to that in the part where the parent mentions physics and
chemistry.

Until we can provably show that resources outside of Earth are available for
human consumption, and within some range of feasibility; it's not valid to use
the argument that the potential availability of said resources are a solution
to the magnification of natural resource depletion on Earth caused by
overpopulation.

~~~
julespitt
Resources outside of Earth are available for human consumption provably. Alas,
just at astronomical prices presently.

I understand that it is rather prudent to presume to act as if we are limited
solely to Earth's resources - because we are right now - but to be reflexibly
dismissive of space exploration as an avenue to be actively pursued to remedy
such issues is simply not constructive.

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richardjordan
Those prices are merely a proxy for the complexity and resources necessary to
go and mine off-world resources. We need a highly complex economic and
manufacturing system to remain in place for a long period despite increased
pressures of resource depletion and overpopulation and the commensurate rise
in instability; we need to use huge amounts of resources to create a space
program - materials and energy; energy - all of the above requires huge
petrochemical inputs which are finite and depleting rapidly. There was only 1
cubic mile of oil in the world and we're half way through it and what's left
is being sucked out faster than ever before and is harder to get to (EROEI).

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Terretta
Why isn't anyone mentioning that this is coming not long after Google hired
Ray Kurzweil?

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/monolith-when-google-hired-ray-
kur...](http://www.kurzweilai.net/monolith-when-google-hired-ray-kurzweil)

Now he can put Google's resources to work on the problem.

~~~
yolesaber
I wonder what capacity he is operating in with regards to this project. I was
actually surprised that he wasn't named as the CEO of Calico.

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pamparosendo
Life expectancy is increasing, but quality is decreasing... we've been made to
die; not live forever... but some egos just can't stand it.

