
If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too - StreamBright
http://haakonsk.blogg.no/1456259429_if_youre_alive_in_30_.html
======
dahart
Unfortunately, no, this is pure wishful thinking.

Using life expectancy is a misleading argument, and I believe intentionally
so. Life expectancy is a function of early mortality. Longevity is the average
age at death of people who die only of old age, and it doesn't vary much and
hasn't for thousands of years.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity)

Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fears of people
to make arguments about the fountain of youth that won't come to pass. I wish
they would, but they won't.

The part that bothers me is that Kurzweil, at least, knows his argument is
wrong, it is clear that he's intentionally misusing the data and knows it.
Take a look at the very last graph and paragraph in this piece, for example:
[http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-
returns](http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns).

Kurzweil uses data from 1850-1920 and then conveniently skips all the years
between 1920 and 2000. That is not possible to do accidentally, it is a
misleading abuse of statistics. Unfortunately for Kurzweil, if you look at the
data between 1920 and 2000, it paints a completely different picture, one of
life expectancy asymptotically flat-lining.

Kurzweil also appears to conflate life expectancy with longevity, he says "In
the eighteenth century, we added a few days every year to human longevity;".
That statement is false. We added to human life expectancy, _not_ longevity.
And the gains were due to reductions in infant mortality and violence, and
improvements in medicine and general health.

~~~
jsnathan
> Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fears of people
> to make arguments about the fountain of youth that won't come to pass. I
> wish they would, but they won't.

Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of _when_ , not if.

The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task
is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great
understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery _in
vivo_.

To say that we cannot do that is to say that Science itself is too weak a
method to overcome the level of complexity presented by advanced biological
organisms.

It is therefore to predict that scientific progress will come to an
unexpected, screeching halt, some time in the next decades.

I find this an absurd scenario, and therefore believe to the contrary. Science
will overcome the level of complexity of human biology, and continue onward
even long after that.

Because, putting anthropocentric intuitions to the side, the human body is not
the most complex phenomenon imaginable.

~~~
dahart
Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there
is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor
that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and
medicine and environment, further delaying death.

To be clear, I'm not saying it can't ever happen, I'm saying that DeGrey's and
Kurzweils claims that it is happening and will come to pass in the next
century are bogus.

~~~
jbdigriz
>Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there
is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor
that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and
medicine and environment, further delaying death.

This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about
the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkable advancements
that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake
to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have
yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these
two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals
with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for human trials.

I think you're attempting to split hairs by quantifying two necessarily
qualitative terms which really have a common understanding to be how long
people live on average. And in doing so, you commit the same error you
highlight: surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average
between 1920-2000? Even if you hold fast the true importance of lexical
disambiguation, most would disagree on straw man grounds.

Where I do somewhat agree or at least am very open to consider is that some
other force is at play that we don't yet understand. The fairly recent theory
of hormosis presents some profound philosophical arguments that cannot be
ignored. Life as we know it may have evolved to live less than its full
potential for reasons we have yet to discover - perhaps highly interdependent
relationships between co-evolved cooporative cells can only resist entropy for
so long. If this is the case, then this sort of predefined balance/order would
mean gains are offset by newly emerging losses - an example would be the
massive increase in cancer occurrence that has mirrored increases in life
expectancy, moreso when this broad category of diseases is considered by its
generic definition of "uncontrolled cellular growth".

So there's certainly room for reasonable skepticism and it should shape our
expectations accordingly. But that shouldn't mean the end of these pursuits
nor the hope for what they could yield. And prudent scientific observation
should at least suggest that greater longevity is possible. I recently read an
interesting article about jellyfish and Hydra, which go through various
developmental stages that actually come full circle and leading some to
theorize that these somewhat basic life forms may actually be immortal.
There's also tardigrades, which can live in the most extreme environments
imaginable, including volcanic vents and even celestial bodies traveling
through space! They've experimentally proven all our understanding of life
wrong and that's only in the past few decades. Kurzweil is overly optimistic
about these things because I suppose there's a degree of fear and insecurity
there - he's likely predicting accelerated time lines because that's a
narrative he can be part of and wants to believe that to be likely for obvious
reasons. But I don't think he's wrong and fully admire anyone promoting a
hopeful and tenacious outlook on life instead of the increasing opposite trend
of disillusionment and cynicism - but that's an entirely different discussion.

~~~
dahart
You don't have to believe me. I'm only relaying what is the currently accepted
scientific understanding, that so far we've only treated the symptoms of
aging, not increased the potential for longevity.

"The U.S. Census Bureau view on the future of longevity is that life
expectancy in the United States will be in the mid-80s by 2050 (up from 77.85
in 2006) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific
advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, _as opposed to merely
treating the effects of aging as is done today._ " (emphasis mine)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity)

> surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average between
> 1920-2000?

You've completely lost me here. This is a straw man argument, I didn't say a
thing about what happened to longevity this century, and the data clearly
shows it has gone up slightly. Experts agree it will reach an asymptotic peak
_unless_ some science magic happens. But no science magic has yet happened,
and while I agree we should pursue it, we have no scientific reasons to
suspect that it will aside from human curiosity, desire to live longer, and
fear of death.

> Kurzweil is overly optimistic about these things

Now that's just funny. There's a world of difference between being optimistic
and overtly lying to prove a point that doesn't exist.

~~~
jbdigriz
Again, The Census Bureau is hardly an authority on this matter - they're
concerned with the challenge of just logistically counting Americans every few
years via surveys (the lowest order of the scientific method) and it's
questionable how precisely they even do that considering I can attest to
having missed one such survey myself years ago. I treat their predictions on
longevity with the same skepticism I view their census stats, which is
optimistic given the massive gap in expertise. This, by the way, is in no way
an attempt to diminish the very real and difficult challenges this task
presents - only to place their expertise accurately.

Experts very much DO NOT agree on this and the fact that literally billions of
dollars in R&D are expended on this area of science in just the US is
testament to that. Sure it doesn't mean any groundbreaking discovery is
guaranteed to happen - but it does show that belief in the possibility is
alive and well. And why not? Those immortal jellyfish share 97% of the same
DNA, including long stretches of matching sequences and compatible genes that
have been experimentally transferred between them and other life forms
numerous times. Even Right Whales, which are conscious mammals sharing immense
biological relation to people can live 200 years or more, and that's in the
absence of anything remotely resembling science and the presence of numerous
impediments, including us, their generic brethren. Tardigrades may end up
being miniature space suits for the most advanced intergalactic life forms
known - who knows? What we do know is they throw most of what we believed to
be true about life and morality right out the window - and that's a good
thing. All this is to say that the possibility of longetivity increases driven
by scientific exploration is much greater than the likelihood of that not
being the case.

Kurzweil is who he is, for better or worse. But he has made outlandish
predictions over the years, many of which have come about despite the
skepticism. He's a successful entrepreneur and employed in a very senior
position at one of the most valuable and forward looking companies in the
world. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't completely dismiss him as a
crank. I disagree with some of the time lines he has, though cautiously
because it doesn't take many compounding discoveries to get there on his
schedule. But fundamentally, I agree with much of what he says - even though I
think what they mean for us as humans and the universe as a whole is much less
certain, and likely as scary as they are promising.

EDIT: here are some links you might want to read to confirm that whole
"experts agree" conclusion:

Henrietta Lacks - the woman whose specific cancer mutation provided the vast
majority of cells used to study cancer and numerous other cellular process, to
this day. Cells which are effectively immortal:
[http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was-
on...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was-once-a-woman-
who-had-immortal-cells/)

Immortal Jellyfish, from that disreputable rag, The New York Times..:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-
jellyfish-u...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-
unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all)

Just search HN for immortal and see what you find, then let me know if your
assessment remains the same

------
dghf
> So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and
> then there's simply no limit to how long you can live.

Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will
progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable
or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder).

In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population died from
accidental or malicious (but not self-inflicted) injury or poisoning. If we
take that as a typical annual risk of death, then over a thousand years you
have a 22% chance of dying from one of those causes. At about 3000 years, it
becomes more likely than not: at about 9000 years, overwhelmingly more likely
(~90% chance of death); at about 50000, a practical certainty (> 99.999%).

Of course, the above assumes that risk of death from injury won't drop as
medical technologies improve, which is wrong, but as long as it's non-zero,
there is still going to be a statistical limit on the length of life. No
hanging around till the heat death of the universe for you.

~~~
onion2k
Getting to 150 and then stopping ageing means you'll live the next 850 years
of your life in the body of a 150 year old. That doesn't sound fun.

~~~
cgriswald
Some of the treatments are expected to also reverse the effects of aging, so
you wouldn't live for 1000 years in the body of a 150 year old. Although I
suspect it won't be neat and clean. So if you're born into a world with aging
treatments, you might live for 1000 years in the body of a 25 year old, but if
you age and then get the treatments, even though you might have the body of a
25 year old, you might have some scarring or other effects left over (like an
obese person who loses weight very quickly and has extra skin).

~~~
crusso
Why would you think that you'd have to tolerate scarring in a world that could
fix DNA and implant it as easily as we run shell scripts to change our UNIX
environments?

~~~
cgriswald
Why would you think that the effects of aging would all automatically
disappear? Eventually, sure, you might be indistinguishable from someone born
a hundred years after aging treatments, but that may take a specialized (or
more advanced) treatment.

Just as one example, I think it is far more likely that an anti-age treatment
would prevent the formation of wrinkles than that it would remove existing
wrinkles.

~~~
crusso
Because your comment was regarding our having the technology needed to allow
someone to live 1000+ years. In order to allow that, we'll need to have
mastered manipulation of literally every cell in the body.

By the time we can go in and reinvigorate teeth, bones, all the internal
organs, all the cells in the brain... restoring patches of skin will likely be
trivial.

Solving the problem of aging generally means solving an avalanche of specific
problems - one of which is the rejuvenation of skin.

~~~
cgriswald
> Because your comment was regarding our having the technology needed to allow
> someone to live 1000+ years. In order to allow that, we'll need to have
> mastered manipulation of literally every cell in the body.

This is not correct. The core concept is that we will develop individual
solutions which solve pieces of the longevity problem. Living to 150 may only
require solving one of them. Living to 1000+ may require what you propose
(although that is not clear either) but in the intervening time period between
the initial solution and the ultimate solution you cannot assume all other
physical aspects of an aged individual will simply vanish.

~~~
crusso
Earlier, you said:

 _you might live for 1000 years in the body of a 25 year old, but if you age
and then get the treatments, even though you might have the body of a 25 year
old, you might have some scarring or other effects left over_

I feel that you're moving the goalposts on me by talking about the initial
stages when some might make it to 150. My comments were regarding what you
originally said above, not what you might have meant and tried to clarify in
later comments.

I agree with you that at first we might solve some problems that extend life
some years here and there but still be left with other semi-debilitating
issues.

But once you're talking about all of the issues needed to be solved to reach
1,000 years, the technology will have to be far far far beyond the ability to
repair some scarred skin.

~~~
cgriswald
I was responding to a commenter who suggested that you'd spend 850 years in
the body of a 150-year-old. I was objecting to that idea, but conceding that
there might be _some_ unpleasantness left over. I only clarified the timeline
of that unpleasantness when you objected.

To be clear, I wasn't only talking about scarred skin, but any consequence of
aging. I was using excess skin due to rapid weight loss as an example of this
type of comorbidity, in which one problem must be dealt with separately from
another problem. It may be true that extending lifespans to 1000+ years will
require technologies which will also resolve all other age-related issues. It
may even be likely. But there is no principle that says it _must_ be so.

------
JackuB
Biologists hate him! This programmer discovered Philosopher's stone with this
one weird trick!

Anyway: Yes, we will do great advances in health care, but will we _cheat_
death? Will those advancements be available? Is this something we _should_ do
as a society? Technological determinism/solutionism (as presented in the
article) is a really shoddy idea. It ignores so many things and assumes that
progress is an arrow always flying forward…

~~~
adrianN
Why would you not want to stop people from dying?

~~~
totony
You wouldn't want population growth to outgrow your capacity. Also, usually,
the longer someone lives, the more their ideology defines them. Could be a
problem too

~~~
pc86
Your argument is "we don't want more old people because I disagree with them
ideologically." Shoddy at best.

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
If you re-read the post, that's actually _not_ his argument.

~~~
pc86
He's saying that the older someone is the more their ideology defines them,
which is itself probably inaccurate. And he says that that "could be a
problem."

~~~
talideon
He's arguing about ideological stagnation. That's bad regardless of just about
what the ideology is and whether you agree with the particular.

To quote Max Planck, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." That's as
true of anything as it is of science.

------
nck4222
I don't mean to be a pessimist but this entire article boils down to
describing Moore's law, and saying that medical research will advance quickly
because it uses computers as well.

Seems a little shoddy.

~~~
nikbackm
Not to mention that most in the know seem to agree Moore's law has come to an
end, as all exponential growth must at some point in the real world.

~~~
isseu
Yeah, Some things work with Eroom's_Law
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom's_Law?previous=yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom's_Law?previous=yes)

------
Udo
I consider myself a transhumanist, though even I can't help but notice that
these advances always seem just _close enough_ so the author might manage to
benefit from them shortly before he expects to die. Kurzweil did the same
thing.

I used to do yearly blog posts on the current state of whole brain emulation,
and we are very very far away from any breakthrough there. So far away in fact
that some prominent neuro scientists like Dennett believe this can't be done
even in principle (I disagree with them, but it shows how far we have to go
still).

In any case, I'll probably not be around in 30 years, and many HNers won't be
either.

~~~
adventured
The part where you think we're very far away, may be because a breakthrough is
most likely going to be revolutionary when it occurs. Rather than a small
increment, it'll be a substantial leap (even if it's not recognized at that
moment). On the order of the transistor.

I'd be very skeptical that it will be noticed that it's possible, around the
time that leap forward is about to occur. History indicates the exact opposite
is most common when it comes to great technological leaps forward. Instead,
what will occur is an ecosystem of supporting technology will prime the
ground. Among the very few people that recognize the time as being ready, will
be the person that actually invents said leap technology. And it may even be
by accident, the ground was primed and an inventor in a garage put the pieces
together (ala the inbound virtual reality revolution, it was all skepticism
skepticism skepticism for decades, until the ground was primed to leap
forward, while most weren't even looking at it).

~~~
Udo
_> may be because a breakthrough is most likely going to be revolutionary when
it occurs_

Not in this case, no. I realize your argument is mostly generic, too.
Everybody understands that some problems are expected to have these kinds of
revolutionary solutions or no solution at all. However, reading a mind into
the computer and then executing it is not a matter of figuring just one
missing thing out.

A workable solution requires us to be able to decipher and efficiently
digitize the fine structure of the brain. Acquiring missing pieces of
technique or technology is a necessary but not sufficient piece of this
specific puzzle's solution. There is no sudden eureka moment where it all
falls into place, it's just a near endless chain of painstaking detective work
in biochemistry.

~~~
cableshaft
That's basically what he was arguing. "Instead, what will occur is an
ecosystem of supporting technology will prime the ground."

Those problems you're talking about will be figured out bit by bit, and only
once all those things are figured out, will someone realize "Oh shit, we're at
the point where this is possible now!" while everyone around them isn't paying
attention and still thinking "It's impossible. It's impossible."

------
arethuza
As someone who turned 50 this year - immortality being available in 30 years
sounds pretty good to me!

However, I seem to remember a similar argument being made in a book I read at
high school, which obviously wasn't yesterday. _The Mighty Micro_ , published
in 1979, talked about the imminent creation of UIM's (Ultra-Intelligent
Machines) by the 1990s and that these would, naturally, lead to such rapid
advancements in healthcare as to give effective immortality.

[http://www.tof.co.uk/stories/page8.html](http://www.tof.co.uk/stories/page8.html)

[NB Mind you that book did make me rather interested in AI and I did do a CS
degree and go on to do post-grad AI research for 6 years up to 1994 where I
encountered a far better technology for enhancing intelligence. I can't really
be too critical of someone getting this excited, after all I did, eventually
somebody _is_ going to do it...].

~~~
crusso
Yeah, I'm almost your age. When I was in high school, I had naive confidence
that medical science would advance quickly enough to prevent my getting "old".
I even remember a speech from a principal when I was in middle school,
claiming that most of us in my class would live to well over 100 years. I
believed him.

Despite that optimism and my very healthy diet and exercise regimen, I deal
with increasingly deteriorating knee cartilage, loss of muscle mass, an
impinged disc in my neck, decrease in reaction times, typical age-related
memory degradation, increase in hair loss, yearly removal of pre-cancerous
skin anomalies, failing reading vision, mild hearing loss, etc... you know,
I'm getting old. This crap is building up and modern medicine offers no magic
bullets to even the most minor of my age-related symptoms.

If I do make it another 30 years and if I'm still mentally with it, I'm sure
that I'll be poo-pooing some claim that "in just another 30 years, you may
live forever".

I don't doubt that eventually humans will figure out aging and be able to stop
it -- but by that time, society will look a lot more like Star Trek with
ubiquitous ability to manipulate our biology at an atomic level. Star Trek is
at least hundreds of years away, not 30.

~~~
arethuza
"decrease in reaction times"

I seem to find that playing online games does wonders for this...

Only thing that really annoys me at the moment is my eyesight - I'm quite
shortsighted and wear contacts to do things like skiing. Trying to navigate a
new ski area (just back from the vast Portes de Soleil) with a map is now
getting quite tricky as I can't read stuff up close with my contacts in....

Also I seemed to develop the rare blue/black colour blindness which my wife
wasn't happy about.

------
rusanu
Oxygen[0] by Nick Lane makes a pretty compelling argument why this will _not_
happen. With perfect health you can at best achieve ~120 years age. I think
this paper A unifying view of ageing and disease:the double-agent theory[2]
covers some of the arguments in the book.

To give a simplified view, the big obstacles are a) a technology capable of
repairing damaged mythocondrial material in a living organism and b) a
technology capable of repairing neural cells w/o replacing them (that is if
you want to preserver 'you', not just your body). That is assuming that our
current understanding of senescence[1] is even mildly accurate.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular-
Science/...](http://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular-
Science/dp/0198607830) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence)
[2] [http://www.nick-lane.net/double-agent%20theory.pdf](http://www.nick-
lane.net/double-agent%20theory.pdf)

~~~
adrianN
I'm pretty sure that you can replace a significant number of my neurons
without changing "me".

~~~
rusanu
What makes you sure? Central nervous system neurons are incapable of
regeneration[0], so is anybody's guess what would happen if they _did_ get
replaced. And, long term, "significant" has to be "all".

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroregeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroregeneration)

~~~
adrianN
People can have rather serious strokes that kill large number of neurons
without losing their sense of self. Sometimes we remove half the brain

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy)

That gives me confidence that replacing neurons at a rate that counters
natural aging does not significantly alter me.

------
BlackBerryBruce
This article seems inherently flawed in its assumption that a. the exponential
growth of computing power will keep up, despite the numerous technical and
physical boundaries imposed upon them, b. computational power will solve many
of the unknown inner workings of the human body, and c. that being aware of,
and understanding those inner workings allows us to modify the human body in
such a way that we can 'rejuvinate' the system.

While I do feel that life expectancy of everyone below 40 is probably going to
massively higher than historical life expecancies (disregarding systemic
failures of society and outside influences), I don't foresee a future where
everyone gets to live forever.

~~~
shaurz
Moore's law has not been an exponential increase in technological capability
in general. It has only been an exponential increase in one particular
technology - more of the same. I see no evidence that the development of novel
technology in general has sped up in any way.

------
shaurz
It's funny watching techno-religious belief systems emerge in the West as
Christianity recedes. This is literally the replacement of the afterlife.
Sorry guys, this ain't gonna happen. One day you will die, get over it and
start praying.

~~~
DougN7
I've had the same thought so many other times. We blindly believe the 'clergy'
of science despite not having any evidence ourselves of what is taught (other
than for the obvious that we experience every day). String theory? Black
holes? Gravitational waves???Granted, it's probably true (I'm a believer too),
but it's blind faith -- I've never replicated any experiments myself, would
have to trust the measuring devices even if I tried to replicate the
experiments, so I believe because everyone else tells me to. And that's the
hard-core replicatable physics! It gets worse as you move to less mathematical
sciences like chemistry, biology, psychology, nutrition, etc.

~~~
sammydavis
Come on, science is not the faith part! Things that are observable and
testable are clearly science. Things that are just ideas, ideas that are not
verifiable (like string theory which don't predict anything) are not science,
it's just ideas. Just like saying god created me, prove it wrong. If I make up
some equation that I say I believe with evidence is true, that's not science.

------
sambeau
This TED talk by Aubrey de Grey puts the argument quite succinctly:

[http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Seeking-immortality-Aubrey-
de...](http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Seeking-immortality-Aubrey-de-G)

More info on Aubrey de Grey:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey)

[http://www.sens.org/about/leadership/executive-
team](http://www.sens.org/about/leadership/executive-team)

------
peteretep
There's a whole profession of people whose job it is to predict this called
actuaries. They disagree with your conclusion.

~~~
harperlee
But it's in their best interest to assume it wont happen.

If I correctly predict, as an actuary, the demise of the industry, I don't win
anything. If I can calculate a superprecise premium for my insurance product
based on this being true, I have an expensive product that underperforms the
competition, and management is not happy. Whereas if I ignore superlong
trends, I get to earn my salary, probably until I retire - you know, it
probably won't happen. I value a product competetively. And if we miss, it
won't be my only problem. So even if I can do the right thing, I will be
punished for the event.

~~~
mc808
If actuaries can collectively predict the future, then term life insurance
premiums should show a strong trend down as we approach the point where
longevity increases significantly (adjusting for income, inflation, etc). From
a few seconds of googling, they seem to be flat or increasing. It might be
good to look back in 100 years and see if they got it right.

~~~
sammydavis
Predicting the future of lifespan based on the last 100 years is reasonable.
That sensible system can't predict a black swan or revolutionary idea; suppose
wereduce the chance of heart attacks by 90% by treating your blood chemistry.
That's not impossible, also not possible today. But that would expand life
expectancy.

------
surfmike
Life expectancy has been increasing by ever smaller amounts in the past
decades. I am hopefully that a lot of new technologies could help buck that
trend, but so far the trends don't support the author's hypothesis.

~~~
ekianjo
It was mainly increasing because we almost made the death at birth close to
zero. Now the gains are much harder to get on the other side.

~~~
nkozyra
Most people - at least most people here - know that a lot of those publicized
numbers are due to infant mortality, but ...

Post-childhood life expectancy has gone up in smaller amounts as the parent
comment says. The grand numbers ("life expectancy was just 60 in 1900!")
obviously reflect infant and childhood mortality, but we've increased the
average lifespan in the United States by 2-3 years in the last few decades
alone.

Here's a graph that shows life expectancy at various ages in the UK - you can
see this is not all due to childhood mortality:

[http://www.maxroser.com/gains-for-all-life-expectancy-by-
age...](http://www.maxroser.com/gains-for-all-life-expectancy-by-age/)

~~~
3pt14159
This is quite compelling. At first I was going to mention the absence of war,
but that shouldn't impact people in their 70s.

------
cushychicken
One of the better societal aspects of Richard Morgan's _Altered Carbon_ was
the concept of "Meths" \- super rich people who could effectively afford to
live forever by inserting their consciousness into new bodies (or "sleeves" to
use Morgan's terminology). One of the downsides of this was that, since the
rich lived effectively forever, they only accumulated more and more wealth in
greater and greater quantities, and limited the trickle down to other people.

~~~
koralatov
The Meths differ from the modern-day superrich only in that _they_ live on to
continue concentrating wealth, rather than passing it on to their offspring to
continue as has been the case throughout human history.

I quite enjoyed the book, and the idea of sleeving was pretty interesting and
well-explored. It was kind of sad to see that most people worked their whole
lives to save enough to re-sleeve simply so that they could live another life
doing, effectively, the same. On the flip-side, it was quite well-observed
that the eternally young Meths actually suffered from extreme cynicism and
boredom.

~~~
cushychicken
It's been a few years since I read it - probably about time I gave it another
go.

On a side note, I just found out today that Netflix is apparently making it
into a series. Neat!

------
r721
"The latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the
lifetime of the person making it is defined as The Maes-Garreau Point. The
period equals to n-1 of the person’s life expectancy.

This suggests a law:

Maes-Garreau Law: Most favorable predictions about future technology will fall
within the Maes-Garreau Point."

[http://kk.org/thetechnium/the-maesgarreau/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/the-
maesgarreau/)

~~~
reasonattlm
"Trust but verify" is a good way to lead one's life. Ideally, we'd never take
anyone's word for anything, and have the time and means to dig up supporting
evidence for any position or statement that we encounter. But who has the time
for that? We have to organize our busy lives around blocks of selective
ignorance, portions of human knowledge and culture wherein we choose to take
statements at face value, or follow the consensus viewpoint without doing the
necessary groundwork to validate it. Books can and have been written on how to
best go about this: acquiring and processing information costs time, and time
is the most valuable resource most us of possess.

There exist a growing number of people propagating various forms of the
viewpoint that we middle-aged folk in developed countries may (or might, or
certainly will) live to see the development and widespread availability of
radical life extension therapies. Which is to say medical technologies capable
of greatly extending healthy human life span, probably introduced in stages,
each stage effective enough to grant additional healthy years in which to
await the next breakthrough. You might think of Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de
Grey, both of whom have written good books to encapsulate their messages, and
so forth.

Some people take the view of radical life extension within our lifetimes at
face value, whilst others dismiss it out of hand. Both of these are rational
approaches to selective ignorance in the face of all science-based
predictions. It usually doesn't much matter what your opinion is on one
article of science or another, and taking the time to validate science-based
statements usually adds no economic value to your immediate future. It
required several years of following research and investigating the background
for me to feel comfortable reaching my own conclusions on the matter of
engineered longevity, for example. Clearly some science-based predictions are
enormously valuable and transformative, but you would lose a lifetime wading
through the swamp of uselessness and irrelevance to find the few gemstones
hidden therein.

As a further incentive to avoid swamp-wading, it is generally well known that
futurist predictions of any sort have a horrible track record. Ignoring all
futurism isn't a bad attention management strategy for someone who is largely
removed from any activity (such as issuing insurance) that depends on being
right in predicting trends and events. You might be familiar with the Maes-
Garreau Law, which notes one of the incentives operating on futurists: 'The
Maes-Garreau Law is the statement that "most favorable predictions about
future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point", defined as "the
latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the
lifetime of the person making it".'

If you want to be a popular futurist, telling people what they want to hear is
a good start. "You're not going to be alive to see this, but..." isn't a
compelling opening line in any pitch. You'll also be more convincing if your
yourself have good reason to believe in your message. Needless to say, these
two items have no necessary relationship to a good prediction, accuracy in
materials used to support the prediction, or whether what is predicted
actually comes to pass. These incentives do not make cranks of all futurists -
but they are something one has to be aware of. Equally, we have to be aware of
our own desire to hear what we want to hear. That is especially true in the
case of predictions for future biotechnology and enhanced human longevity;
we'd all like to find out that the mighty white-coated scientists will in fact
rescue us from aging to death. But the laws of physics, the progression of
human societies, and advance of technological prowess don't care about what we
want to hear, nor what the futurists say.

I put value on what Kurzweil and de Grey have to say about the potential
future of increased human longevity - the future we'll have to work to bring
into being - because I have performed the due diligence, the background
reading, the digging into the science. I'll criticize the pieces of the
message I don't like so much (the timescale and supplements in the case of
Kurzweil, WILT in the case of de Grey), but generally I'm on board with their
vision of the future because the science and other evidence looks solid.

But few people in the world feel strongly enough about this topic to do what I
have done. I certainly don't feel strongly enough about many other allegedly
important topics in life to have done a tenth as much work to validate what I
choose to believe in those cases. How should one best organize selective
ignorance in fields one does care about, or that are generally acknowledged to
be important? What if you feel - correctly, in my humble opinion - that
engineered longevity is very important, but you cannot devote the time to
validate the visions of Kurzweil, de Grey, or other advocates of longevity
science?

The short answer is trust networks: find and listen to people like me who have
taken the time to dig into the background and form our own opinions. Figuring
out whether ten or twenty people who discuss de Grey's view of engineered
human longevity are collectively on the level is not too challenging, and
doesn't require a great deal of time. We humans are good at forming accurate
opinions as to whether specific individuals are idiots or trustworthy, full of
it or talking sense. Fundamentally, this establishment of a trust network is
one of the primary purposes of advocacy in any field of endeavor. The greater
the number and diversity of advocates to have taken the time to go digging and
come back to say "this is the real deal," the more likely it is that that they
are right. It's easy, and probably good sense, to write off any one person's
views. If twenty very different people are saying much the same thing, having
independently come to the same viewpoint - well, that is worth spending more
time on.

One of the things I think we need to see happen before the next decade is out
is the establishment of more high-profile longevity advocates who discuss
advancing science in the Kurzweil or de Grey vein: nanotechnology, repairing
the molecular damage of aging, and so on. Two, or three, or five such people
is too few.

~~~
beeboop
You say you've spent a ton of time reading about this, but don't actually say
what your conclusions are. I know it's sort of counter to your point, but I
would be interested in hearing your opinions on how soon we will start seeing
significant increases in longevity.

~~~
r721
That was their old post copypasted:

[https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/the-
maesgarreau-...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/the-maesgarreau-
tendency.php)

You can ask there, or search through that blog.

------
chrisdotcode
> Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on an area doubles
> every two years ... [and] will probably also hold true after it is no longer
> possible to increase the number of transistors per area. At that point
> another technology with significantly greater potential will take over for
> transistors.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we already "maxed out" Moore's Law?
Aren't hardware manufactures already running into problems at the quantum
level because of how small and packed transistors are already? That would be
why we've "maxed" CPU speed at around ~3-4GHz.

~~~
jcranmer
The confusion here is that people refer to several distinct exponential
growths as Moore's Law, and some of them have already faltered.

The CPU frequency growth has halted primarily due to the fact that going any
higher means we can no longer cool the chips. Power usage (and, consequently,
the heat you need to dispose of) is proportional to the square of the
frequency (higher-frequency gates also usually require higher voltage to get
the switching times down, which means it's really the cube).

Another aspect is the size of the transistor. Some features are already
getting down to the point where it's more useful to talk about them in terms
of monolayers--i.e., the exact number of atoms. Some elements of a 14nm
transistor are already two or three monolayers in size, and the distance
between two transistors is already about 100 monolayers, which puts a hard cap
on the maximum possible minimization, since you can't make transistors smaller
than a single atom. In terms of the smallest transistors that can be feasibly
made, the general consensus is that there is at most around 3 shrinks
remaining.

There's another dimension, too: whether or not it's cost-effective to keep
doing these shrinks. The 14nm node itself has given Intel lots of trouble, and
the 10nm node doesn't look like it's much better. Intel has already been
forced to give up its Tick-Tock cycle, and the semiconductor industry as a
whole may explicitly give up maintaining Moore's Law as a collective research
goal shortly.

In short, then, Moore's Law either ended a decade ago, is just now ending, or
will end in a decade, depending on what you want it to mean.

------
melling
Probably off by a factor of 10. Very few people work in science doing
research. The economy doesn't support enough people doing research to think
we're going to make that kind of breakthrough within 30 years.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-
pu...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-
more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.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.

I'll give the link to where that quote comes from, but before following the
link, when do you think it was written?
[http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf](http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf)
.

~~~
macintux
Probably should have obfuscated the link.

~~~
dalke
D'oh! Didn't see that.

------
megalodon
There is a huge difference between life expectancy and life span and this
article [1] covers it pretty well.

Life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality rates:

> Our conclusion is that there is a characteristic life span for our species,
> in which mortality decreases sharply from infancy through childhood,
> followed by a period in which mortality rates remain essentially constant to
> about age 40 years, after which mortality rises steadily in Gompertz
> fashion. The modal age of adult death is about seven decades, before which
> time humans remain vigorous producers, and after which senescence rapidly
> occurs and people die.

[1] [https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-
expec...](https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-
in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/)

PDF:
[http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...](http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf)

~~~
pc86
Infant mortality for births beyond 24 weeks gestation in the developed world
is well below one half of one percent[0], some below one quarter of one
percent. It's not that big of an effect anymore.

[0]
[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_05.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_05.pdf)
page 3

------
crusso
We are way too far from really understanding our own biology to be able to
predict such an over-the-horizon end result.

I don't even know if we'll be able to reliably cure toenail fungus in the next
20 years - much less be able to solve a significant number of problems with
aging in 30 years.

------
nxzero
I'd be curious to know how old the author is, since the selection of 30 years
to me points to biased analysis. As one likely knows that's spent any time
researching the topic, and as others have committed, there's no evidence to
support the author's claims. Historically speaking most people have been able
to live as long as they do now on average. To my knowledge infant mortality
was the big outliner historical speaking when it came to average life
expectancy and points to why average life expectancy is a pour measure. Truth
is that if there was a major leap, there's zero reason the general public
would ever get wind of it; basic economic both in terms of it as a product and
the impact it'd have on populations.

------
Kequc
I'm of the opinion that I was born anywhere between 2 months and a year too
soon to ride the wave of immortality.

------
PhilWright
His life expectancy graph is a bit naughty. Why doesn't the y axis start at 0?
How about showing something more realistic...

[http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/...](http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/03/17/le02.gif)

Doesn't look quite so good now, does it.

------
fsloth
As I see it Kurzweil's predictions were mostly based on his understanding of
computational complexity and extrapolating the development trend in
semiconductor technlogy - and figuring out which things are practical. But
still, extrapolation based on more or less theoretically well understood
concrete principles.

I'm not sure if there is yet _anything_ well understood in the human body.
Just mapping the genome will give us very little hints of the consequences in
the physical body. Even figuring out how a protein folds is still considered a
computational achievement (I think?).

Chess is a concrete computational system. Even most tasks that we have can be
considered to be constrainable to a well defined system (hence the AI will
replace a lot of manual workforce).

But until such a well defined "theory of human body" exists, computers are
quite helpless to create it for us. Just adding computers will not magically
make us understand everything better.

Thus, just quoting "exponential development" will certainly provide nice food
for thought but will not offer any practical footholds for concrete progress.

------
staticelf
What can you say? I really hope this will be the case. I want to live 1000
years and preferably even longer.

------
cipriancaba
You might want to check this rather well documented article about AI

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-
revolu...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-
revolution-1.html)

------
reasonattlm
The original paper in which the idea of actuarial escape velocity was proposed
by Aubrey de Grey is open access, and worth reading for a full treatment of
the concept.

The thing to take away here is that this is inevitable, but not necessarily
for us, unless we dig in and get the job done right now. The development of
the necessary technologies is very thinly funded, meaning that timelines are
very uncertain. Senescent cell clearance may be under development in two US
startups right now, a part of allotopic expression of mitochondrial DNA in
clinical trials in France, clearance of one type of amyloid has had a
successful trial in the UK, and clearance of glucosepane cross-links a couple
of years away from a drug candidate, but other areas of biological repair
needed for SENS-style rejuvenation of the old are still years away from
getting to even this nascent stage. It is a miserable state of affairs given
that the cost of progress towards prototypes in mice is a few hundred million,
less than a single drug's development funding. Funding and advocacy make a
huge difference at this point in the bootstrapping of rejuvenation therapies.

\----

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.

------
meric
I have a feeling we'll have to go through a period of global catastrophe
before humanity resumes making progress at a quick pace. The momentum of the
previous age of intellect[1] is coming to an end, and we're well into the age
of decadence. The strong pillars of duty in Western society have gradually, in
the past two hundred years, been swapped out piece by piece with some kind of
weak inflammable material of decadence. These days single terrorist groups
conquer entire nations before being slowed down, and our inefficient & corrupt
governments whose hands and feet act independently are hardly able to stop
them even with funding of billions. Millions of migrants from wars encouraged
by the West's governments threaten the unity of the EU. The enormous sovereign
debt burden carried by the likes of Japan and U.S. creates economic
instability which threatens the social fabric, leading to a situation where
the choice of leaders is between an egomaniac (Trump) and a megalomaniac
(Clinton). The supposed saviour of the world economy and driver of global
growth, China, suffers from enormous mal-investments and is burdened with even
more debt than the U.S.

My own pessimism is not helping.

[1]
[http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf](http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf)

    
    
        (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
        The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
        The Age of Conquests
        The Age of Commerce
        The Age of Affluence
        The Age of Intellect
        The Age of Decadence.
        (e) Decadence is marked by:
        Defensiveness
        Pessimism
        Materialism
        Frivolity
        An influx of foreigners
        The Welfare State
        A weakening of religion.
        (f) Decadence is due to:
        Too long a period of wealth and power Selfishness
        Love of money
        The loss of a sense of duty.
    

The very decadence that corrodes an empire's institutions, rendering its
governments unable to effectively thwart the rise of bandits who conquer vast
swarths of territory, creates the conditions necessary for a new cycle with a
new empire. Even if they can deal with one, or two, or three, each new group
of bandits will become harder and harder for a decadent declining empire to
deal with. Taliban, Shia militias, ISIS....

------
vruiz
I'd like to believe you, but what kills people is not their age, today it's
mostly cancer and heart disease. While I'd hope we'll make progress, I doubt
those 2 will be just gone in 30 years.

~~~
rorykoehler
What makes you think we won't cure them? Cancer I think will definitely be
cured in 30 years. I haven't been following heart disease so much but chances
are we will have huge health breakthroughs by 30 years. I would put my money
on there being new/different diseases that kill us in 30 years.

~~~
soylentcola
In theory, couldn't a lot of heart disease (if not more general cardiovascular
diseases) be addressed by figuring out how to affordably grow new hearts from
tissue? I understand that's not something we're capable of doing right now but
from my (largely ignorant) perspective, it seems like the issue is "hearts
break down over time". The heart is essentially a mechanical part, and unlike
neurological systems, there's no qualitative difference between one heart and
another aside from how well it pumps blood. When you have a mechanical part
that wears out, you replace it. Artificial hearts have issues stemming from
the fact that they aren't 1:1 replacements for human hearts but if you could
grow a new heart from a person's cells and get to a point where doing so is
relatively affordable, could you not swap out an old heart the way you'd swap
out a fuel pump that's wearing out?

Compared to stuff like cancer, I feel like replacing hearts is more an issue
of cost and engineering rather than developing entire new forms of treatment.

~~~
kayoone
Well, today hearts are replaced by perfectly healthy hearts of other people
and yet life expectancy after such a procedure is not great and patients have
to take meds for as long as they live. Also cardiovascular performance is much
reduced. So as long as this is not working really well, i guess growing hearts
and replacing them is still a long way off. Also there are other kinds of
common cardiovascular disease like coronary heart disease which can't be fixed
by replacing the heart.

------
anexprogrammer
However appealing this might be for some, I hope we "solve" global population
growth first.

Of course that means we need an ethical, voluntary, way of keeping population
in check.

Which infers true sexual equality, or you get one child policies as successful
as China's.

Or we have an exponential increase in lifespan and ever more people chasing
those finite resources.

So, it's going to be a world very different from ours, or it's going to be a
bloody mess.

May you live in interesting times?

~~~
paulddraper
Population growth has been declining since the 60s.

UN estimates are that we'll peak at 10 billion.

Besides that it's already happening, reducing population growth isn't
necessarily a good thing, in econimic terms of aggregate "utility." Is there a
difference between preventing birth and causing death?

~~~
cgriswald
That estimated peak is based on existing and projected death rates. Even
Japan's population would grow if death from old age and age-related disease
ceased.

~~~
paulddraper
Correct. The projection is a projection. If the projection is wrong, the
projection will be wrong.

I just give slightly more credence to the UN's projection than Aldring's.

------
hoechst
If a scientist working in the field writes about this, backing his assumption
with research papers and actual work that's being done in the field: I'm
listening.

If a futurist writes about this, mostly backing his assumption by repeating
alterations of the phrase "because of technological progress": I'm expressing
my skepticism on hn.

------
legulere
The growth of life expectancy looks quite linear to me:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Lebenserwartung_Deutschl...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Lebenserwartung_Deutschland-
Welt_1960-2009.svg)

I don't really see a miracle technology coming around the corner that will
help us reduce deaths faster than now.

------
andrewfromx
this reads to me like "better die soon or you'll miss your chance and be
forced to live as a human slave forever."

~~~
adrianN
You can always jump from a bridge...

~~~
andrewfromx
you would think, but it's really hard to do. I cannot self terminate.

------
talles
What an optimistic roller coaster that reading was.

If you are interested in (anti) aging science Aubrey de Grey work seem like a
good start.

------
thatcherclay
My issue is that while medical technology may progress at an exponential rate,
so too might the challenges of repairing our biology. So yea, we may be
getting way smarter, but the problems may keep getting way harder, and then it
is not as self evident as this particular article makes out that we are all
going to be immortals.

------
ComteDeLaFere
I feel like these types of articles always miss a key point, which can easily
be corrected by adding the phrase "If You're Filthy Rich" to the end of any
headline.

"Cure for Cancer Around the Corner, If You're Filthy Rich"

And...

If You're Alive in 30 Years You Might be in 1000 Years Too, If You're Filthy
Rich"

See? Clarity is king.

------
tomcam
They were saying that 30 years ago

------
izzydata
You can't fool me internet. I'm not going to get my hopes up on such a long
shot.

------
jobigoud
If I recall correctly China has reached the escape velocity at some point in
the sixties, gaining more than one year of life expectancy every passing year.
The even harder part is to sustain this for long period of times.

------
madaxe_again
Big damned if. Personally, I expect us to all starve or burn within the next
30 years. We have repeatedly shown that we are not responsible guardians of
our own technology, and our disasters just get bigger.

Additionally, immortality is not a good thing. It would lead to domination of
the world from now until eternity by the powers that be at the point at which
the tech becomes available, stagnation of development (if you have 1000 years
to do something, you'll take your time), and ultimately the depletion of what
it is to be human.

The only way immortality could work would be with a complete moratorium on new
births, and perhaps a Logan's Run style annual carrousel that randomly
eliminates a percentage of the population.

None of that sounds better than what we have now.

------
richerlariviere
How can you regulate population with people living half a millennium? The
earth won't be able to deal with that unless we apply population control which
is... pretty unethical.

------
elorant
The important question to answer is whether those advancements will be
available to everyone or just the rich. In the case of the latter economic
inequality will go ballistic.

~~~
sammydavis
They will likely cost billions for the first person, 100s of millions for the
next, and keep getting cheaper. Think cell phones, now so cheap your pencil
could have one inside for almost nothing in a few years.

------
blubb-fish
... with your head attached to tubes and wires floating in a jar. Oh yeah ...
but thanks to VR it will feel like being on vacation.

------
pc86
Something tells me the author's definitely of "quite likely" is very different
from the statistical definition.

------
yetihehe
So you think wage slaves have it bad now? Just imagine what "low income" will
mean in future. Credits for rejuvenation plus wage low enough so that your
expected life earnings are just enough to pay for next life extension...
Indentured servitude can be eternal problem now.

------
kingkawn
There is not a more horrible future to imagine than the one described here.

------
EGreg
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

==================

This is talking about biological immortality - obviously an external event can
still kill a person. In fact, a catastrophic species-ending event like a
meteor would still be devastating.

And we still have to worry about runaway viruses (the Black Plague), political
mind viruses (Nazism, Communism, Islamism), bacteria (Malaria etc.)

The biggest danger would be, as it already is, overpopulation. I think people
would have to make a trade-off: have children or live forever. You won't be
able to have both. At first, only the rich would be able to afford children
and live forever, but given a long enough time period, social mobility will
rotate enough people into being rich enough to afford it.

Now think about it realistically and philosophically. If computers are going
to take over most of the tasks we do today - driving, cooking, research etc.
as well as have a worldwide network of knowledge (eg Watson, Google) then what
does any individual person become? Like an animal in a zoo, who exists mostly
for pleasure and socializing but whose services to others aren't required. We
can already see this as people get internet-connected cellphones... why ask
your parents anything if you can google it? Both parties actually prefer that
we google it.

Now imagine if it moves to even less latency, via heads up displays or into a
computer-brain interface. What is each individual person really doing if the
hive mind already has all the answers? Why do other people need this person?
Just for pleasure and interaction.

And now think about your life when you were 1/3 the age you are now. Do you
remember doing a lot of particular things? How does it feel to realize that
most of the things that you did, it's almost as the same as if you didn't do
them? Had sex that one random time with that person - how much would it matter
to your current self if you did or didn't? Outside formational life events,
most routine things you do today might matter to your future self almost as
much as to some stranger!

So what is this continuity between your current self and future self? If you
lived until 5 million years old, how much of your life could you really
meaningfully remember, unless you are accessing an external memory? If you
lived 5 trillion years but only remembered around 50 years total of your
personal life, how is that much different than a person living 300 years and
remembering 50? Only that you continue to live and your self preservation
instinct always wins.

The older I get, the more I have questions about the meaning of my future self
living 1000 years from now, with dim memories of my current self, versus
someone else living 1000 years from now. Does anyone have similar questions
and what answers have you come up with?

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pjdemers
... I need to increase the amount I'm putting in my 401k.

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Shivetya
Not unless they find a way to deal with boredom.

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cgtyoder
This is very bad writing, with very bad logic. Not worthy of HN.

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alpineidyll3
Total garbage...

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aecorredor
overpopulation anyone?

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rogersmith
tl;dr: "i engage in wishful thinking because i didnt get the memo that moore's
law is close to reaching its limits"

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dschiptsov
Bullshit

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J_Darnley
That sounds like utter torture. Hell I probably won't make it to 59 so what do
I have to worry about?

