

Sixty Years Old - is my future short and messy, or long and glorious? - janedidi
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120410

======
digitalsushi
If I live another 50 years, I'll make it to 83. At the rate I am going, by 83,
I'll have watched the sun rise about 6 times by then, maybe taken 12 walks on
the beach and star gazed a few more; but I'll have eaten another 6500
cheeseburgers, drank 4 swimming pools of soda and beer, and watched a gigahour
of netflix. I think we get very unrealistic when we consider the future. I'm
not an extraordinary person, though.

As a cynic, I say it's just a complete fear of not existing that's the draw to
living forever. But if you can experience something new only once, it seems
very greedy to keep this little body going while using up some kid-to-be's
spot.

~~~
lbo
If you become an unproductive drain on society, yes that would be bad.
Otherwise there's no such thing as 'spots'. The whole point of extending human
life is to maintain youth-like or better functionality. If you can't think of
a way to enjoy an unlimited lifetime filled with exponential technological
innovation and scientific progress, I suggest spurring your imagination a
little.

~~~
digitalsushi
Or maybe I spurred it, and thought that something unlimited might become
boring and akin to some form of hell.

~~~
kstenerud
If you don't like it, you could always choose to die. The point is that these
technologies will give you the luxury of the choice to live as long as you
want.

Personally, I've tallied up a number of things I want to do in my life, and
after having done 2 big ones (well, one finished and one still in progress
with a moving goalpost), I've realized just how long it takes to accomplish
big goals. Even my incomplete list far exceeds 200 years already. I'll take
the life extension, thanks.

~~~
digitalsushi
I just feel like turning when I die into a luxury option somehow trivializes
my entire existence. I know this is just a personal hangup of mine, but I feel
like I am nothing but a summation of activities if I know it's time to die
when I get bored with this now-plentiful lifetime. It's like, if you could
just keep disney world open as long as you wanted, you could get to ride
everything until you were sick of it, and then you'd finally be happy and
ready to go home. _shrug_ Maybe I am just uncomfortable that that level of
control. It's definitely pressing a lobe in my brain I don't have a name for.
I'm sorry I can't be more articulate than that but I know it's based in some
rat-brain non-rational fear. It's interesting.

~~~
CompiledCode
According to various philosophies and religions, defining life in terms of
"doing" is one of the fundamental errors, and it does have various negative
implications if you think it through to its logical conclusion.

So, no, I don't think this is just "a personal hangup" of yours...

~~~
kstenerud
Any thing you define life in terms of is a fundamental error. There is no
meaning except that which you make for yourself. You can define it in terms of
what to be, or what to do. If you define it in terms of what to do, life loses
meaning once you run out of things to do. If you define it in terms of what to
be, you end up in an ego contest with anyone else who wants to be the same
thing, and life loses meaning once you become "common".

Religion dodges the issue by presenting goals that cannot be reached, which I
think is a fair compromise for most people.

------
nsxwolf
In the age of immortality, everyone eventually dies in a car crash or
something similar. There is no escaping death.

The common objections don't change this. "Uploading your brain" is an unsolved
philosophical conundrum that may or may not continue the existence of "you".

The universe eventually dies, too. 10 billion years is not immortality.
Escaping to a newer younger universe is a pure speculation.

Everyone will die.

~~~
lbo
The notion of so-called uploading is an interesting one. From a philosophical
and practical point of view, I think it's actually pretty simple. If you
uploaded my brain into a robot and we both woke up, he'd say he was the real
me and I'd say I was the real me. An outside observer could not tell the
difference--it would be theoretically impossible to. If you killed one of us,
one of use would feel like he died, the other wouldn't. Both of us would feel
like we'd lived an entire lifetime before this moment because we'd share the
same memories. This is the farthest one can ever dig into this problem. An ego
is a side-effect of a functioning mind, it's not something with a unique
physical location or material continuity. I think it's highly unsatisfying
from our ego's perspective to think of uploading like this, but our ego also
wasn't designed to think of itself in these terms any more than it was
designed to visualize 4+ physical dimensions.

~~~
batista
> _This is the farthest one can ever dig into this problem._

No, I think the whole problem can be bypassed, check my answer above.

~~~
lbo
Amazing the lengths we'll go to just to satisfy our simple evolutionary
incentive to live, no matter how ludicrous from an outside perspective :)

~~~
batista
_> Amazing the lengths we'll go to just to satisfy our simple evolutionary
incentive to live, no matter how ludicrous from an outside perspective :)_

"Lengths" like, err, making a thought experiment like the above in a HN
thread? I've went further than that just to get a bag of Pringles.

And it's not like it's a "simple evolutionary incentive" anymore. That might
hold true for a lizard or a deer, but a human has more complex rational to
want to live. It might be evolutionary still, but it's far from "simple" when
you can think about it.

~~~
lbo
I don't mean discussing it, I mean that doing it would be. In particular, it
seems like a dramatic length to me because an outside entity would never be
able to tell the difference between your theoretical swap and a 'standard'
upload/copy in terms of the resulting individual. The only difference would be
that the person would go into it perhaps more confident that his ego wouldn't
'die'.

But no, I don't agree with you that humans' desire to live is any more real or
special than a lizard's, or a tree's, or a rock's desire not to break apart
for that matter. It's a natural extension of physical laws combined with the
circumstances of our evolution as a system--in this case linked directly to
our basest subconscious instincts. To say that your desire to live is
fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer reeks of
geocentrism of the ancient world to me.

~~~
batista
_> But no, I don't agree with you that humans' desire to live is any more real
or special than a lizard's, or a tree's, or a rock's desire not to break apart
for that matter. It's a natural extension of physical laws combined with the
circumstances of our evolution as a system--in this case linked directly to
our basest subconscious instincts. To say that your desire to live is
fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer reeks of
geocentrism of the ancient world to me._

You say "more real or special" here, though, whereas you said "simpler" in
your previous comment.

You get back to the same argument at the end though: "To say that your desire
to live is fundamentally stronger or more complicated than that of a deer
reeks of geocentrism of the ancient world to me."

It might not be more "real or special" or "stronger" (I never argued that it
was anyway), but it SURE is more complicated.

And to deny that reeks of obsessive reductionism to me. The desire to live as
expressed and felt by some billion (trillion?) neurons of a human, is more
complex than the desire to live as expressed by the primitive brain of a
lizard, or even a "rock's desire not to break apart" (!). I don't even think
we can call the latter "desire".

We can feel everything a deer can feel about the desire to live (horror,
survival instinct, etc --we're animals after all), but ON TOP OF THIS we can
write poems, sing songs, make movies and have deep conversations about it.
Including massive institutions on the matter, such as religion.

I'd call that more complex --calling it anything else would be delusional.

------
Gupie
Sorry short and messy, ask an actuary. The probability of a breakthrough is
IMO much the same as for an afterlife, not very high. There are lots of quacks
about.

However the following about fasting once a week is interesting:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9091794/Fasting...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9091794/Fasting-
once-a-week-could-help-you-live-longer.html)

~~~
reasonattlm
Breakthroughs in science are a myth - what does happen in reality is that
steady research that you and most of the rest of the world weren't paying
attention to starts to achieve results.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/there-is-no-
such-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/there-is-no-such-thing-
as-a-scientific-breakthrough.php)

"The point I want to make with all of this is that longevity science, work
that will lead to biotechnologies capable of human rejuvenation, is no
different. It is a process of incremental advances, requiring a large research
community for any sort of reliable progress, and in which the nature of
forthcoming discoveries are telegraphed by the nature of the work today. If
you think that scientific breakthroughs are the way in which the world works,
then you might be sitting there expecting significant advances in engineered
human longevity to arrive no matter what the state of the present research
community. Because some people are working on it, right? And it's just a few
scientists and a eureka moment, right? Sadly not. One of the biggest
challenges facing us today is that there is no large rejuvenation research
community, and if we want to see real progress, that community must come into
being - large enough and vigorous enough to match the stem cell research
community pace for pace."

The seed of the rejuvenation research community of tomorrow is the SENS
Foundation and its allies, advisors, and supporters in the life science
community. Much of their work today is not just in producing research
progress, but laying the groundwork for the next twenty years of work: the
people who build the applied technologies of mitochondrial repair, biomedical
remediation of amyloid and AGEs, rejuvenation of the lysosome, and so forth,
are in college today. That is why programs like the SENS Foundation Academic
Initiative are so important:

<http://sens.org/academic-initiative>

Check out their student research projects:

<http://sens.org/academic-initiative/research-projects>

------
lbo
I highly recommend anyone who is interested in this subject read Aubrey de
Grey's book on the current state of the science of biogerontology:
[http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-
Breakthrough...](http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-
Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367066)

It's interesting, thorough, and optimistic. I also recommend donating money to
SENS, as this cause is dramatically underfunded relative to its realistic
potential to save and enhance human life for everyone. <http://sens.org/>

~~~
reasonattlm
Also strongly recommended: read the SENS Foundation 2011 annual and research
reports, which outline for the layperson (while giving details for the
scientist) exactly what biotechnologies the Foundation and its allies are
working on, where present progress stands, and how mature versions of these
technologies can be used to reverse aging.

[http://sens.org/files/pdf/SENS_Foundation_Annual_Report_2011...](http://sens.org/files/pdf/SENS_Foundation_Annual_Report_2011.pdf)

"We are delighted that SENS Foundation was able to make expenditures of
$1,518,000 in 2011. This was an increase of over $400,000 from 2010,
overwhelmingly in support of direct research and conference projects. ... We
greatly appreciate the support of the many individuals who contributed to our
mission. We would like to thank Peter Thiel, Jason Hope, the Methuselah
Foundation, and all of our contributors and volunteers for their on-going
generosity. We expect a significant increase in both revenues and expenses for
2012, as we begin to see distributions from a de Grey family trust, under a
grant from SENSF-UK. This support will be in addition to the contributions we
receive from other sources."

<http://sens.org/files/pdf/2011_Research_Report.pdf>

"The elasticity of the artery wall, the flexibility of the lens of the eye,
and the high tensile strength of the ligaments are examples of tissues that
rely on maintaining their proper structure. But chemical reactions with other
molecules in the extracellular space occasionally result in a chemical bond (a
so-called crosslink) between two nearby proteins that were previously free-
moving, impairing their ability to slide across or along each other and
thereby impairing function. It is the goal of this project to identify
chemicals that can react with these crosslinks and break them without reacting
with anything that we don't want to break.

"In 2011, we established a Center of Excellence for GlycoSENS and other
rejuvenation research at Cambridge University and hired postdoctoral student
Rhian Grainger to design and perform experiments to develop reagents that can
detect proteins bearing glucosepane crosslinks, facilitating further studies
on its structure, abundance, and cleavage by small molecules. We also
established a collaboration with researchers at Yale University, who will lend
their expertise in generating advanced glycation end-products and lead efforts
in developing agents which may be able to cleave glucosepane."

------
ck2
First rule of living a long time, have good genetics. Second rule, see the
first rule.

Diet and exercise can probably affect it a few percentage points either way
but for all the advice, tips and tricks, people who do absolutely nothing
special but have good genetic heritage will easily outlive you with better
quality of life.

~~~
reasonattlm
Not true until very late in life - post-80s or post-90s - at which point it
looks like genetics has a larger impact on survival. See:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/historical-
inheri...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/10/historical-inheritance-
of-life-span.php)

But whether or not your reach early old age and what shape you are in when you
get there is largely determined by lifestyle rather than genes for the vast
majority of people. Basically don't get fat, and keep exercising, and that's
the 80/20:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/08/can-you-
optimize-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/08/can-you-optimize-
exercise-for-longevity.php)

------
ssdsa
Maybe an artificial intelligence may yield the results necessary to enable
some of us to "live forever" - in whatever form that may be. However,
artificial intelligence may go bad and turn against us even if that honestly
wasn't our intention when creating the AI. The folks at LessWrong have some
pretty good thoughts on that topic:
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intellige...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence)

------
yelongren
If indefinite life extension ever becomes possible it would create an
uberclass of people, those who could afford this new technology in the first
place. A true god-like class defined by power and immortality. If you think
social and economic inequality is bad, what about existential inequality?

------
marshallp
The quickest way to immortality is to create an artificial intelligence that
will conduct the necessary experiments to discover cures for aging or invent
brain uploading.

The second quickest (and the first step towards AI) is to create computer
vision algorithms, specifically human level object recognition. These will
dramatically increase the wealth in the world (seeing robots that can do all
manual labor tasks) so that conducting biomedical experiments becomes
dramatically cheaper.

Therefore, anyone really serious about curing diseases should be devoting most
of their time to objection recognition technology.

