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Origin >
Will Machines Become Conscious? >
Our Bodies, Our Technologies
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0649.html
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Our Bodies, Our Technologies
Ray Kurzweil's Cambridge Forum Lecture (Abridged)
In the 2020s, we'll see nanobots, blood-cell-sized devices that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions. But what happens when we have billions of nanobots inside the capillaries of our brains, non-invasively, widely distributed, expanding human intelligence, or providing full-immersion virtual reality?
Originally transcribed from the Cambridge Forum Lecture on May
4, 2005, and reprinted in Science
& Theology News. Reprinted on KurzweilAI.net March 16,
2006.
It turns out that information technology is increasingly encompassing
everything of value. It's not just computers, it's not just electronic
gadgets. It now includes the field of biology. We're beginning to
understand how life processes, disease, aging, are manifested as
information processes and gaining the tools to actually manipulate
those processes. It's true of all of our creations of intellectual
and cultural endeavors, our music, movies are all facilitated by
information technology, and are distributed, and represented as
information.
Evolutionary processes work through indirection. Evolution creates
a capability, and then it uses that capability to evolve the next
stage. That's why the next stage goes more quickly, and that's why
the fruits of an evolutionary process grow exponentially.
The first paradigm shift in biological evolution, the evolution
of cells, and in particular DNA (actually, RNA came first)—the
evolution of essentially a computer system or an information processing
backbone that would allow evolution to record the results of its
experiments—took billions of years. Once DNA and RNA were in
place, the next stage, the Cambrian explosion, when all the body
plans of the animals were evolved, went a hundred times faster.
Then those body plans were used by evolution to concentrate on higher
cognitive functions. Biological evolution kept accelerating in this
manner. Homo sapiens, our species, evolved in only a few hundred
thousand years, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
Then again working through indirection, biological evolution used
one of its creations, the first technology-creating species to usher
in the next stage of evolution, which was technology. The enabling
factors for technology were a higher cognitive function with an
opposable appendage, so we could manipulate and change the environment
to reflect our models of what could be. The first stages of technology
evolution—fire, the wheel, stone tools—only took a few
tens of thousands of years.
Technological evolution also accelerated. Half a millennium ago
the printing press took a century to be adopted, half a century
ago the first computers were designed pen on paper. Now computers
are designed in only a few weeks' time by computer designers sitting
at computers, using advanced computer assisted design software.
When I was at MIT [in the mid-1960s] a computer that took about
the size of this room cost millions of dollars yet was less powerful
than the computer in your cell phone today.
One of the profound implications is that we are understanding our
biology as information processes. We have 23,000 little software
programs inside us called genes. These evolved in a different era.
One of those programs, called the fat insulin receptor gene, says,
basically, hold onto every calorie because the next hunting season
might not work out so well. We'd like to change that program now.
We have a new technology that has just emerged in the last couple
years called RNA interference, in which we put fragments of RNA
inside the cell, as a drug, to inhibit selected genes. It can actually
turn genes off by blocking the messenger RNA expressing that gene.
When the fat insulin receptor was turned off in mice, the mice ate
ravenously and remained slim. They didn't get diabetes, didn't get
heart disease, lived 20% longer: they got the benefit of caloric
restriction without the restriction.
Every major disease, and every major aging process has different
genes that are used in the expression of these disease and aging
processes. Being able to actually select when we turn them off is
one powerful methodology. We also have the ability to turn enzymes
off. Torcetrapib, a drug that's now in FDA Phase 3 trials, turns
off a key enzyme that destroys the good cholesterol, HDL, in the
blood. If you inhibit that enzyme, HDL levels soar and atherosclerosis
slows down or stops.
There are thousands of these developments in the pipeline. The
new paradigm of rational drug design involves actually understanding
the information processes underlying biology, the exact sequence
of steps that leads up to a process like atherosclerosis, which
causes heart attacks, or cancer, or insulin resistance, and providing
very precise tools to intervene. Our ability to do this is also
growing at an escalating rate.
Another exponential process is miniaturization. We're showing the
feasibility of actually constructing things at the molecular level
that can perform useful functions. One of the biggest applications
of this, again, will be in biology, where we will be able to go
inside the human body and go beyond the limitations of biology.
Rob Freitas has designed a nanorobotic red blood cell, which is
a relatively simple device, it just stores oxygen and lets it out.
A conservative analysis of these robotic respirocytes shows that
if you were to replace ten percent of your red blood cells with
these robotic versions you could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes
without taking a breath, or sit at the bottom of your pool for four
hours. It will be interesting to see what we do with these in our
Olympic contests. Presumably we'll ban them, but then we'll have
the specter of high school students routinely outperforming the
Olympic athletes.
A robotic white blood cell is also being designed. A little more
complicated, it downloads software from the Internet to combat specific
pathogens. If it sounds very futuristic to download information
to a device inside your body to perform a health function, I'll
point out that we're already doing that. There are about a dozen
neural implants either FDA-approved or approved for human testing.
One implant that is FDA-approved for actual clinical use replaces
the biological neurons destroyed by Parkinson's disease. The neurons
in the vicinity of this implant then receive signals from the computer
that's inside the patient's brain. This hybrid of biological and
non-biological intelligence works perfectly well. The latest version
of this device allows the patient to download new software to the
neural implant in his brain from outside his body.
These are devices that today require surgery to be implanted, but
when we get to the 2020s, we will ultimately have the "killer app"
of nanotechnology, nanobots, which are blood cell-sized devices
that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions,
as well as advance the capabilities of our bodies and brains.
If that sounds futuristic, I'll point out that we already
have blood cell-size devices that are nano-engineered, working to
perform therapeutic functions in animals. For example, one scientist
cured type I diabetes in rats with this type of nanoengineered device.
And some of these are now approaching human trials. The 2020s really
will be the "golden era" of nanotechnology.
It is a mainstream view now among informed observers that by the
2020s we will have sufficient computer processing to emulate the
human brain. The current controversy, or I would say, the more interesting
question is, will we have the software or methods of human intelligence?
To achieve the methods, the algorithms of human intelligence, there
is underway a grand project to reverse-engineer the brain. And there,
not surprisingly, we are also making exponential progress. If you
follow the trends in reverse brain engineering it's a reasonable
conclusion that we will have reverse-engineered the several hundred
regions of the brain by the 2020s.
By early in the next decade, computers won't look like today's
notebooks and PDAs, they will disappear, integrated into our clothing
and environment. Images will be written to our retinas for our eyeglasses
and contact lenses, we'll have full-immersion virtual reality. We'll
be interacting with virtual personalities; we can see early harbingers
of this already. We'll have effective language translation.
If we go out to 2029, there will be many turns of the screw in
terms of this exponential progression of information technology.
There will be about thirty doublings in the next 25 years. That's
a factor of a billion in capacity and price performance over today's
technology, which is already quite formidable.
By 2029, we will have completed reverse engineering of the brain,
we will understand how human intelligence works, and that will give
us new insight into ourselves. Non-biological intelligence will
combine the suppleness and subtlety of our pattern-recognition capabilities
with ways computers have already demonstrated their superiority.
Every time you use Google you can see the power of non-biological
intelligence. Machines can remember things very accurately. They
can share their knowledge instantly. We can share our knowledge,
too, but at the slow bandwidth of language.
This will not be an alien invasion of intelligent machines coming
from over the horizon to compete with us, it's emerging from within
our civilization, it's extending the power of our civilization.
Even today we routinely do intellectual feats that would be impossible
without our technology. In fact our whole economic infrastructure
couldn't manage without the intelligent software that's underlying
it.
The most interesting application of computerized nanobots will
be to interact with our biological neurons. We've already shown
the feasibility of using electronics and biological neurons to interact
non-invasively. We could have billions of nanobots inside the capillaries
of our brains, non-invasively, widely distributed, expanding human
intelligence, or providing full immersion virtual reality encompassing
all of the senses from within the nervous system. Right now we have
a hundred trillion connections. Although there's a certain amount
of plasticity, biological intelligence is essentially fixed. Non-biological
intelligence is growing exponentially; the crossover point will
be in the 2020s. When we get to the 2030s and 2040s, it will be
the non-biological portion of our civilization that will be predominant.
But it will still be an expression of human civilization.
Every time we have technological gains we make gains in life expectancy.
Sanitation was a big one, antibiotics was another. We're now in
the beginning phases of this biotechnology revolution. We're exploring,
understanding and graining the tools to reprogram the information
processes underlying biology; and that will result in another big
gain in life expectancy. So, if you watch your health today, the
old-fashioned way, you can actually live to see the remarkable 21st century.
© 2006 Ray Kurzweil. Reprinted with permission.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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Hi Henry. Legislation preventing life extension will never come to pass in my opinion.
To begin with, let's ignore the leverage that lobbyists will wield over politicians. As an aside, I think the technology/pharmaceutical firms and companies will be much, much more powerful than whatever group(s) there are that are working against life extension. The former will have a lot more financial resources at their disposal.
I've tried to find or come up with an argument against life extension that is particularly persuading, especially to the "common man" (ie., emotionally persuasive). I'm curious if you have one. Obviously an argument for the prohibition of life extension based on moral considerations is pretty much impossible.
It is going to be exceedingly difficult to actively campaign for the enforcement of death (much more difficult than abortion). One would essentially have to make an argument that calls for the prohibition of life saving technologies/medicines applications.
Also, there is the possibility that a lot of these technologies/medicines will be considered as curative, and applied as so. Life extension opposition groups will have to argue against cures for many diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, alzheimer's, etc. Age preventative applications might easily be considered as curative measures, further muddling the distinction between life extension and the curing of a disease. Basically, one more hurdle that life extension opposition groups will have to overcome. |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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Firstly, to the question of opposing radical life extension, I am wholly unconvinced that there will be a huge uprising against it.
We have to remember that the kinds of breakthroughs like radical life extension do not happen at once, as if someone somewhere is gonna invent a pill that we swallow and live as long as Methusula. Rather, this will be the end result of many thousands of tiny steps, each of which is perfectly reasonable and not at all controversial. Indeed, they are desperately needed.
I am talking about steps to cure or prevent cancer, mind degenerative diseases, arthritis, brittle bone disease, loss of hearing..the list goes on. There is a massive demand to continue research into a detailed understanding of the human body and the way it wears out at the molecular level. Although this research has nothing to do with dramatically extending the life-span of a human being, it is obvious that the pursuit of molecular technologies designed to repair our bodies from the molecular level upwards cannot fail to have a dramatic impact on the timescale we can expect to live.
I do find it rather strange that, while one is fit and healthy, society looks on the attempt to remain so for as long as possible as irresponsible vanity, but as soon as your body and mind is broken by accident, disease or the ravages of time, they have you hooked up to a machine so that you continue to linger (I would hesitate to call it living) for as long as possible!
From our perspective the kind of nanotechnological power required for indefinite lifespans must seem like magic, just as the computer I am using right now would seem impossibly powerful to the pioneers like Charles Babbage. Of course, to me it is just a small upgrade from my last computer, nothing to gawp at. It is one more evolutionary step that links my machine to a slightly less capable machine in the past and so on to the clunky behemoths like ENIAC. By the time those thousands (millions?) of tiny steps get us from here to the point where full robotic molecular medicine is one step away, we will have been similarly conditioned to view it as just another sensible and uncontroversial improvement.
Just look at IVF treatment. Once it was viewed with as much concern as stem cell therapy or cloning. Scare stories abounded of how babies grown outside of the womb would become monsters, deprived of a mother's love and psychotic as a result. And today? Today IVF is considered the God-given right of any couple who fail to conceive in the first attempt!
In considering reasons to oppose radical life extension, the first objection raised is that the Earth cannot sustain an ever-growing population of immortals.
I have a few objections to this argument. The first is that it is somehow implied that, by having us die of old age within a few decades of birth, the planet's resources are left for the next generation. They are not. Whatever finite resources our civilization uses remain finite whether we live to be 100 or 1000. The only difference is that people with a short life-span are more likely to adopt a non-zero sum short term gain trumps long term problem approach to environmental management, figuring that they will neither live to see the fruits of sustainable living nor the consequences of the short-term fix. Why worry about climate change in the year 2050 when you'll be pushing up the daisies by then?
So, with short lifespans we have a double whammey: one generation that is too close to death to really care if the planet goes to hell a decade or so after their death, and a generation that has yet to learn what effect actions have on the planet we live on. And each generation has less time between understanding the problems and promises inherent in technological evolution and the time in which they can hope to act as catalysts for a favourable outcome.
Surely, it would be BETTER for the planet if the only creatures intelligent enough to understand the many interacting factors that change our planet could live indefinitely, thereby continually refining their understanding rather than re-learning the basics via a new generation?
Another problem with this Malthusian outlook is that it assumes our ability to understand and work with the human body at the molecular level will not have any impacts on other areas and that radical life extension is the final goal of technological evolution. As if all progress will stop once we achieve the goal of indefinite life-spans.
A much more realistic outlook is that mastery of molecular manufacturing and machine inteligence/ organic symbiosis will lead to vast improvements in our ability to efficiently manage the resources of our planet and our lives. Our current industry has pumped enough carbon in the atmosphere to give every individual at least 31,000 kilos of carbon. What to us is a worrying pollutant will be a valuable resource for the Molecular Age.
Technological evolution will not restrict itself with merely re-working the human form into its optimal capability. No, technological lifeforms will venture into space in order to re-work dumb matter into forms that can support far more intelligences than it currently can.
For instance, converting the matter and energy resources of our solar system into a Matrioska Brain would provide enough computing capacity to equal the thought processes of a world of ten billion inhabitants, orbiting every star in our galaxy... |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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Extropia,
I guess I really have no objections to the hail. "Bring on the immortals!", as long as we LIMIT the number of them. Certainly a super-intelligent breed would understand this and provide for this.
Reproduction might become obsolete. Sex-for-procreation 99% replaced by sex-for- recreation.
But as I begin my carbon nanotube muscle replacement, I certainly will require more room than a small appartment to FULFILL my new design. I'll need an Everest to climb in my own back yard, and a Grand Canyon to leap across for fun. So, I will require being even LESS CROWDED by my immortal cohorts.
Don't get in my way, when I reach sixty mph during my morning jog. Oooops!, who put that damn fuel-efficient car in my way! Better call Macco! - that's a really big dent that I put in the side of this superdude's car with my knee.
Why does he even need a car now, anyway?
Well, gotta go see my sex muffin now with killer AI abs and a libido to match. Man, ... I'm tired just thinking about it!
Robert K.
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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It is not realistic to consider the sole purpose of technological evolution to simply take Robert K and make him live forever, with no other change to himself, how he is connected to the world, or indeed, the world he is connected to.
Robert Frietas has shown that the same technology that will be used to continually repair the human body can also be used for full immersion virtual reality. Do not be fooled by the word 'virtual', for it will be as real as the world you were born into. If you want space, if you want to live as a hermit amongst a rocky wilderness or on a tropical island paradise, there will be no end of virtual environments for your uplifted mind to enjoy.
Already, in online world's like Second Life, people own entire islands where they can engage in any number of social or business engagements. It is simply a product of bad hollywood sci-fi to consider VR as isolating and anti-social. It is a massively powerful communication tool that unites us like never before, yet enables us to escape from the madding crowd if that is what we wish to do.
And considering the fact that these VR worlds will have artificial intelligences that are VERY convincing as people...well if you want kids, just have the VR world map your genes, and use that data to model a child, or two, or two thousand in-world.
A long time ago, our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have been terrfied by the thought of 'tribes' numbering 1 million. How could you provide food for that number of people? The transition to an agricultural way of life solved that problem.
Today, our global industrial 'tribe' again worries about scarcity but this only serves as evolutionary pressure to adopt a more efficient use of the Earth's (and, eventually, the Universe's) resources. AI and nano/bio robotics will enable us to do just that. |
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Re: Phenotype of the meme.
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Reproduction will become obsolete?
No, it will merely have a different meaning to our Mind Children, just as our way of reproducing is different to simple organisms who reproduce asexually.
While it is folly to predict how the mind children will lead their lives, perhaps we can speculate that they will spawn copies of themselves to explore different aspects of the same problem? You know, as if Subtillion split in two and Subtillion A spent a subjective lifetime studying inflationary cosmology and Subtilion B did likewise for plasma cosmology.
It is not too hard to imagine ways in which these creatures' society of mind will not be restricted to the few inches of space inside a skull, but rather extending outwards via telepresence to robots and sensors, and inwards to AIs and ALs living in a vast panalopy of virtual environments. A feedback loop of thoughts manifested by the Primary, venturing forth on their own in outer or inner space and feeding their experiences back to the Primary like a massively expanded web of consciousness.
In other words, whereas we humans spread our genes, mind children might prefer to replicate their memes. And if the physical manifestation for differences in genes (the phenotype) is the body, what then would represent the phenotype of the meme?
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Re: A DEEP UNITY IN THE UNIVERSE
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There is no known agent that "selects". Selected objects are simply those remaining after the poorly adapted ones have been removed .Selection works alongside the flow of energy into and out of all open systems, including life forms, often providing an important step in the production of order. Ordered systems are "selected" partly by their ability to command energy resources: not so much energy as to be destructive and not so little as to be ineffective. Sometimes, when the energy flow exceeds a critical threshold, thereby driving a system well beyond equilibrium, selection helps the emergence of newly ordered forms - a process underlying self-assembly. Selection operates in inanimate, non-biological systems, even if not as robustly as for living systems. Physical and chemical selection obeys well understood, if statistical, laws of physics, while biological selection is richer and more multifaceted, drawing on genetic exchange and vast information storage. Even so, these mechanisms, including accelerated cultural selection throughout our technological society, help build order and complexity in basically the same way: they mix a random initiator with a deterministic response in the presence of energy, a theme that looks integral to the onset of structure throughout nature. So, provided we keep thinking and researching broadly enough, we should be able to prove that there is indeed a deep unity in the universe - a cosmic evolution that binds the universe together. |
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LIMITING won't be our choice to make... And we'd better get away from sloppy thinking like that...
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If brains are more important to the "immortals" than brawn, they'll have so much brawn as a side-effect that LIMITING the number of them certainly won't be "our" choice.
It is assinine to believe that the system of thuggery we now call "government" will survive in a post-human world. A few of us are smart enough already to see that it's hopelessly brutal, outmoded, and barbaric.
As soon as even two or three other people jump a few hundred IQ points, they'll have no reason to put up with it. That means the end of the gravy train for criminals like our president and his bobble-head rubber-stamp congress. In theory, of course --I suppose that the superintellects could just use the system to defraud us all, if they were malevolent.
Hey, for all we really know, they're the ones collecting interest on the federal resere notes, right now. Rather than buck the system they just directed it to buck the rest of us... Ha ha ha. Our overseers!
I mean, you do realize that the income tax only goes to pay interest on the Federal debt, right? Just interest "due them" for granting us the favor of creating all that paper money... And expending all the hard effort of replacing our silver and gold with it... Ha ha ha.
-Jake |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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Hi David & Shalom 2 U "2"...I agree Ray Kurzweil is doing great stuff expanding our consciousness and immagination. I saw a posting where a contributer used the term Googal & Googalplexes, in order to emphasise how "BIG" things can get. a Googal is one followed by one hundred zeros. a Googalplex is a Googal to the exponential power of a Googal. It is an extremely perplexing concept. For instance, we know that the universe as it stands contains about 10 exp 70 odd atoms.roughly. let's just say we are mistaken and the Universe contains a Googal subatomic and atomic particals. A googal squared would imply a distinct and complete universe within each and every subatomic partical. That would account for just two hundred of the googal+ zeros.....a googal cubed...let's not go there...
More perplexing is the supposition that order, is a suset of a large chaotic set. if we picked a hundred random digits, no surprise to find several pairs consecutively. or pick a similar but thousand random digits. we expect triplets of digits, let's just say three zeros in a row. Ten thousand random digits, four zeros in a row or four fours, or sevens, whatever. Following this pattern a googleplex would contain a google of any pattern you liked to mention, just by complete random chance. never mind the complete works of Shakespeare neatly typed out by Monkeys throwing bananas out of the trees and accidentally hitting the keys. In this Googalplex universe the books are accidentally bound in morroco leather.with the pages nicely stiched in, because a cactus happened by chance to grow nearby.
The sobering thought is that a Googalplex is not even remotely close to "Infinity" and Cantor says it don't end there at infinity. the Transfinite series starts where infinity leaves off. ?"BIG"?... we hardly know the meaning of the word. Shalom. |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extension
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Very true. In my time as a ballot access petitioner, I talked with thousands of people who assumed it was everyone else who was the problem, and they voted force to suppress everyone every election. They were comfortable, but not one in ten thousand of them had any basic grasp of simple economics, or free trade as a beneifical, voluntary force.
Then they'd complain about inflation -the inflation they voted for- with no comprehensin of the fact that they devalued their own currency by choosing Demopublican for the last 30 years.
But yet, somehow, all that government force needs to be used against everybody else. The FDA and DEA to keep us all safe -take medical and recreational choice away. Social Security to look after us as we get older -and fleece us all a hundred times over before we get there. Laws to preevent people from doing what they want...
Until they're fighting a thousand dollar fine from city council themselves, because they put an awning over their front door.
Then, suddenly, they're all property rights advocates.
-Jake
(The best ones were the "drug warriors" who were horrified at the Supreme Court's "Kelo Vs. New London" decision --there's a special place in hell for those hypocrites! How sad that they comprise 98% of the US electorate...) |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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Hi Henry, perhaps we have distant relatives, my maternal Grandfather was one Francis H.Farmer. He advised me when Walt Disney got himself frozen, that cremation was a much better policy. With cremation Grandad said, a more advanced civilization, one that had perfected time travel, would be able to reproduce one's body. Whereas if one was frozen, there was a distinct danger that a less advanced civilization might attempt to do a botch-job, leading to a sort of frankinstein existence.
Perhaps a half way decision would be to have your DNA frozen for posterity. If you look up on the net, you can hear many descriptions of near death experiences. One of the most moving for me, was a description of a conversation by the mother of a very pretty girl, who was making a last telephone conversation from one of the 9:11 hijack planes. She repeatedly told her mum, that she was experiencing amazing out of body sensations. She was already half-way out of this world. I have experienced similar things when Doctors gave me up for dead, way back in 1980, but that is another storey. |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extenion
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The experience you describe is almost universal, I think that folk that go into a fit of hysteria at times of extreme danger, may be unwittingly trying to call for parental assistance. Much as a child screaming does. It could be that the brain excretes a massive dose of dopamines, or adrenaline. Staying calm in a crisis certainly improves your chances of survival. This would be a perfect model for Darwinnian Evolutionary Theory. Those that "Stayed calm in a crisis" are far more likely to be your ancestors, than those that panicked....Which leads on to the folk that panic, scream and flap their arms around. Maybe we have the selfish gene at work here. The sacrificial lamb, as in eat me, I am expendible.
Anyways we are all glad you survived to tell the tale. As an aside, vehicles that roll over tend to have high centers of gravity, a C of G below the axel line, and it's generally a racing car! |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extension -and life extension anyway, public-be-damned!
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Similar thing happened to me, both times I drove to Alaska. I kept calm too. I think it was because I was waiting for a chance to see if I could activley try to save my life, and alo just to see the last few beautiful pieces of my life before my guts went all over the door.
But I was lucky, lucky, lucky. Hit some black ice. fishtailed. Did a 360 spin into a snowbank, other traffic lane was crystal clear (maybe part of the reason I was so careless --just my own life, that's all!).
Calmly dug my way out with a handscraper, in the middle of the Yukon, and continued on to Anchorage.
The second time was just 4 months ago when I got back from AZ. This time, I was actually able to steer myself out of the fishtail and hop back onto the road, last second before the deep, deep embankment.
Perhaps keeping it cool the first time, prepared me for the repeat.
And maybe I just didn't want to die screaming like a little bitch!
One way or the other, losing your cool in an accident is not good. I also noticed myself attempting to fold my legs in, because I've read that reflexes straighten your legs, and then they break when the car gets pushed in. I also thought I might have a last chance to avoid the broken glass if I try really hard to see what's out the window, as it approaches.
Of course, either way, I would have been screwed, out in the middle of the Yukon, with nary a friend in sight, possbily bleeding to death.
I thought all of this in about 30 seconds, and then hopped back on the road at the last second, and continued on my merry way. Didn't even pull over and take a rest for 3 more hours.
Ha ha.
All that, just to try to put a choice on the ballot that nobody wants! And then I got back up to AK, and realized it takes more money than we have to sell freedom to sheep.
I would have spent my last few months telling the Jews to leave before the sheep finally elect themselves a Hitler, but you see, when Hitler was killing the Jews in 1940, Alaska's legislators were turning them away because "their religion would have been a problem". (And as America is learning, politicians have a lot of final solutions for their problems...) So, Israel was created by Christian bigotry, and now we bomb Israel's barbarian borders trying to solve one more problem that was already solved if we wouldn't have been so damned bigoted ourselves, in 1940.
So there was noone to warn (Who wasn't already in prison for private property possession), and I made my way back down to the lower 48 to sell loan products. And now this is my voice of freedom ...so much smaller than the previous one. Smaller and smaller, and more and more aware of just how big the problem is...
I guess what I'm trying to say is...
Rock on Henry!
Cheers to the carcrash survivers and libertarian long long-lifers!
-Jake |
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Re: Social acceptance of life extension... and individual life extension anyway, public be damned...
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We also have the ability to turn enzymes off. Torcetrapib, a drug that's now in FDA Phase 3 trials, turns off a key enzyme that destroys the good cholesterol, HDL, in the blood. If you inhibit that enzyme, HDL levels soar and atherosclerosis slows down or stops
The quote above shows that you're absolutely right Mr. Farmer! Joe sixpack is the enemy. He's already taken years off your life with his FDA, making you beg for approval to use the products of the innovators' labor. But it ain't me too, because I'm a DIE-HARD LIBERTARIAN.
I "get it".
The best thing you can do is become an outspoken libertarian, even if the libertarians in your area have their heads totally ensconced in their asses (as far as realistic plans towards getting elected). Let people know that you only vote for people who've been libertarians for more than 20 years (before whatever point things decay to the point to where it's cool not to steal from your neighbors, and send government goons after them).
Also, I strongly, strongly, strongly, recommend 2 books. The first is about breaking the science down into bite-sized chunks for Joe.
"The First Immortal" -by James Halperin --buy and distribute this book to as many people as you can... If they're thinkers, they'll get it...
"Unintended Consequences" by John Ross. http://www.john-ross.net ... published by Accurate Press. You can order a copy of this from any Barnes and Noble, but don't order it with your real name, or phone number, or pay with credit, because that would mean you'd be "randomly" selected for an anal search if you wanted to get on a plane in the geographical area formerly known as the US of America.
These books are good MEME-destroyers.
I hope you benefit from them.
-Jake Witmer |
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Re: Our Bodies, Our Technologies
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My principal aim in pursuing technological tools and capabilities is that they often let me do more with less. It's kind of an odd tendency, but whenever I find I can get what I want from a tool that's compact and convenient, I not only make greater use of that item but use fewer other tools. My flashdrive is among my most closely guarded possessions for that very reason. I guess I am one to focus on necessities, and cut out the extraneous, and that might soon be possible in the extreme; we may soon be able to live very rich lives with very little in material terms. I have always been an advocate of voluntary frugality, and voluntary frugality might allow us to accommodate a larger population while the technological explosion runs its course, leaving us all vastly enriched, empowered and enabled. So if Robert wants to sprint to the top of Everest regularly, maybe he will be able to live comfortably at the base camp level. In a world bursting with resources, the question "why?" might mostly be replaced with "why not?"
Personally, I'd settle for being able inhabit a very small body and climb better than a spider monkey. But that's just me. |
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Re: Our Bodies, Our Technologies
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I realize I am posting to an old topic, but I feel compelled to address this from a perspective that I did not see in the thread.
What reasons to oppose radical life extension? Henry Farmer suggests a vage yet palpable suspicion about the idea of people living longer through "unnatural" means.
He is correct.
More correct than many here would credit.
I will relate one brief story which I actually lived and saw unfold that reveals more than necessary to drive the point home.
A family member of mine is a devout born again christian. That is, perhaps, the only thing many need to read, but I will press on.
She does not agree with many of my wife's (and mine) views on life, religion, technology, and nearly everything else.
At one particularly sticky point, she demanded an audience with my wife, over lunch, to straighten out other disagreements about general philosophies.
She looked at my wife and siad. "You know how you can fix the real problem?"
Wife: "How?"
Cousin: "Why can't you be. . . well, more like. . . ME?"
Wife: "Why can't YOU be more like ME?"
Therein is a serious and possibly fatal assumption on the part of tose who would like to see the singularity come to be.
Islam's radicals rose against te face of what they perceived as an assault by christianity. They were and are driven by the belief that they could (not only could, but MUST) tip the balance back toward the favor of their deeply ingrained beliefs.
So, too, I think, will christianity go. And in one country at least--the united stated-they are powerful indeed.
I believe we have gotten this far, and should have gotten further, only because they simply do not understand the threat this poses to their religious views.
Hell, even Alcor now has reams of well-constructed reasons to allow christians to accept cryonics, all posted on their website.
The same woman referenced above once looked us square in the eye and said:
"I can't wait to die. Then I get to go home to be with my lord Jesus."
And she meant it. But what she really meant was this: "It is my DUTY to go home to god. It is also my duty to bring you home to god. For, if I see you pass by me and don't try to share my understanding, then I will be as damned as you, who don't accept."
She has been manipulated to believe that she must get to heaven, as quickly as possible, and bring as many as she can with her. Failing that, we, the others, were damned anyway, and should be tossed into the fiery pits of hell.
These people are as dangerous as the ultra-radicals Islam has thrown toward the west in the past few years. Or the likes of Tim McVeigh who was spawned in the west.
The most terrifying aspect, though, is that these people have always been here. They know how to organize politically and have been doing so for hundreds of years. They DO swing elections and wield enormous power,
I pray to God they don't wake up and realize what is already hanging over their heads.
If they only understood, the torches they could burn would make Sept. 11 2001 look like a campfire at a fun beach outing.
I hope I am wrong, but don't really believe that.
hasten the singularity. |
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