
If You Live 30 Years You'll Live 1000 Years - paulsutter
http://m.haakonsk.blogg.no/1456259429_if_youre_alive_in_30_.html
======
dalke
> According to Ray Kurzweil, as soon as something becomes an information
> technology, it starts progressing according to Moore's Law

My field of chemical information - a subfield of cheminformatics - has been an
information technology since the 1800s. It was the Big Data of the 1940s and
1950s, many of the pioneers of information retrieval worked on chemical data
(Luhn, Mooers, Taube), and the term "information retrieval" and concepts like
stop words (as part of KWIC) were presented at chemistry conferences.

The doubling period for chemical information is 15-20 years.

Citation indexing is another offshoot of 1950s information technology.
Scientific publication grows by about 5% per year (says
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/)
), so doubles every 15 years.

Either 1) those are not information technology fields, in which case, why not?
or 2) "according to Moore's Law" means generally "has exponential growth", not
the more specific doubling every two years.

With #2 firmly in mind, consider "and that's the main reason why we can expect
medical technology to advance exponentially in the future."

How do we measure "advance" in medical technology, how do we know it isn't
already an information technology field, and why should we expect the doubling
rate of under 20 years?

Finally, here's a quote from someone who "served on the advisory council of [a
longevity] organization, along with the chairmen of a number of major US
corporations":

> Why has the problem of aging been such an intractable one? Up until
> [recently], the prevalent view of scientists had been that the task of
> controlling aging was fundamentally impossible. But today, such a consensus
> no longer exists. Many researchers now believe that their predecessors
> failed, not because their goals were misguided, but because the tools and
> the level of sophistication they could bring to the task were inadequate.
> Moreover, it is argued that progress has been hampered because funding has
> been scarce, and researchers concerned with aging have been too few and far
> between. ...

> Growing public and private support for aging research reflects the
> scientific community’s own increasing commitment. Today, aging research
> occupies unprecedented numbers of highly talented individuals, not only
> specialists in gerontology, but researchers from other disciplines as well.
> These include biochemistry, endocrinology, immunology, neurobiology,
> genetics, and cell biology, to name only a few.

Before following the link, when do you think that essay was written?
[http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf](http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf)
.

~~~
tim333
One of Kurzweil's fudges is to say in Roman times life expectancy was 25 years
or so and so it's increasing exponentially but that's mostly from been from
getting rid of infant mortality and the like. I think ageing as in going grey
and doddery has always kicked in at the same sort of age.

The immortality technology that seems closest to being doable would be to have
AI 'become you' in the way that actors become a character. Not quite sure how
that would play out in reality, whether having a robo version of your gran
wandering down the street would be a good thing. I was thinking maybe you
could have some sort of architectural innovation where there is a physical
city for the simulated immortals where you can go visit robogran if you feel
like it.

------
reasonattlm
Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/)

The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess. Since we are already
so long lived, even a 30% increase in healthy life span will give the first
beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another 20 years—an eternity in
science—to benefit from second-generation therapies that would give another
30%, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, if first-generation rejuvenation therapies
were universally available and this progress in developing rejuvenation
therapy could be indefinitely maintained, these advances would put us beyond
AEV. Universal availability might be thought economically and sociopolitically
implausible (though that conclusion may be premature, as I will summarise
below), so it's worth considering the same question in terms of life-span
potential (the life span of the luckiest people). Those who get first-
generation therapies only just in time will in fact be unlikely to live more
than 20–30 years more than their parents, because they will spend many frail
years with a short remaining life expectancy (i.e., a high risk of imminent
death), whereas those only a little younger will never get that frail and will
spend rather few years even in biological middle age. Quantitatively, what
this means is that if a 10% per year decline of mortality rates at all ages is
achieved and sustained indefinitely, then the first 1000-year-old is probably
only 5–10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.

~~~
bebna
I'm currently trying to write a scifi novel about a post-mortality and post-
scarcity society. I say trying because it is hard for me to find meaningful
conflicts and disasters. (Yes, i could use war as a disaster, but that would
be lazy.)

But my problem raised an interesting concern: When I can't find meaningful
reasons to motivate my characters to leave their bed or stop watching tv all
day, how does your typically Joe do it in reality then?

In Germany we already have the problem that a significant part of my
generation doesn't see a reason to work and instead plans to live their whole
life on social welfare.

~~~
dalke
Your viewpoint was not uncommon in older SF, like the Eternals in Zardoz, the
Spacers of Asimov, or under the Instrumentality of Mankind of Cordwainer
Smith.

You might start by considering how Banks, Niven, Stross, and others have
managed to write novels about a post-scarcity future.

I have two observations. First, few novels are written about "typically Joe"s
doing typical things in typical situations. The Culture novels have minor
characters whose lives concern social standing, who is sleeping with whom, and
parties. The main characters are usually special, sometime literally as
members of 'Special Circumstances'.

Second, post-scarcity doesn't mean everything will be plentiful. Each human
will not be able to be Dictator of the Universe, for example. Plenty of things
will be rare for the foreseeable future, like travel to Mars. Plus, humans
have a way of valuing "realness". Some people are willing to pay much more for
a piece of clothing that famous person X owned than an otherwise identical
piece of clothing.

As I mentioned with Banks, social standing is not easily purchased - post-
scarcity doesn't mean you have 10,000 admirers, or get invited to all the good
parties, or even that people recognize you and wave hello when you walk down
the street. Emotional conflicts are still conflicts.

There will still be strong conflicts about aesthetics, law, religion, art,
sports, and science, and more. In a post-scarcity world, is abortion legal or
illegal? What about suicide, murder, or rape? Taking a crap on the street
corners? SWAT-ting?

There will still be religious schisms. There will be fierce rap battles and
poetry slams. There will be travel and extreme adventures. Or will no one care
about Manchester United's game against Real Madrid, and no one will play the
sports? If so, will everyone watch re-runs or will all new content be
synthetically generated?

Science is driven in part by prestige. You need only look at the recent CRISPR
stories to learn that. Being the first to do X, or think of Y, will always be
scarce.

You need only to look at rich people to see that plenty of people who have the
money and don't need to work, still work. This includes the children of the
rich, derisively termed "trust fund babies", who have no need to work but
still do so.

If people are happy and the economics are self-sustaining, then I see no
problem with 20% of the population spending their lives on social welfare. Nor
does being on social welfare mean everyone is in bed watching TV, or gossiping
on the internet. There may _also_ be a flowering of artistic expression, or a
boom in amateur athletics, or a repopulation of the rural areas, or any number
of other enjoyable, socially acceptable, but non-remunerative and non-GDP-
influencing practices.

If you had a guaranteed yearly income of 100000 EUR, would you veg in front of
the TV all day? I wouldn't.

