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On September 30 2009 09:19 A3iL3r0n wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2009 09:17 StRyKeR wrote:
The world is full enough as it is. If people didn't die, the world would suffer from overpopulation. We would have laws limiting the number of babies (just like in China) and we might restrict having babies altogether all because of some 200-year olds who don't want to die. but... won't people start to die off due to over-population?
Which is all the more reason to hope that death-from-age never goes away. Sure, you might extend the life of everyone to 200, 300, or even 500, but you encounter a barrage of problems due to overpopulation. Malnutrition, epidemics spreading faster, etc. etc. It's almost guaranteed to bring in worse health problems than death from age.
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i sure hope we get the tools to colonize space before this happens.
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dude, I'm still waiting for my flying car to get here. Immortality? they'll probably figure it out right after all of us are dead. Wouldn't that be ironic?
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On September 30 2009 09:48 uiCk wrote:
i sure hope we get the tools to colonize space before this happens.
exactly what I was thinking
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the problem is in the in-betweens, like everything else in our fucking lives.
This!
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United States43729 Posts
On September 30 2009 08:24 Sadistx wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2009 07:14 Chill wrote:
I remember a claim ten years ago that diabetes would be cured in two years and hiv in five. What the fuck science? Get on it. Too much money in treating the symptoms rather than disease.
HIV is a virus and they're really difficult to cure. And the symptom of HIV is a fucked immune system which in turn is v difficult to treat because you could get all sorts of shit to finish you off.
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Immortality? And where would the newborn be sent when Earth is over populated? Korhal? Aiur? Thats why mankinds evolution needs to go hand-in-hand with all the sciences.
And the HIV virus and its treatment lies only in genetic engineering. Nothing else, as i have spoken with lead graduating students @ biochemistry/medicine and people who have undergone various HIV scientific conventions.
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On September 30 2009 04:07 D10 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2009 03:53 Atk wrote:
I do not want this happen, mostly because of the political problems that would arise from it, scary, scary thought. From that analogy, you could say you dont want nothing to be done.
What?
I'll give you an example:
Dictators, with enough constraints could possess power indefinitely, and I would imagine, in a very likely scenario, people will do all sorts of things to prevent lower classes/groups from having this capacity to live forever.
And think of all the desperate people who would do anything for immortality, the religious meltdowns (could be good in the long run admittedly), competition, the causal relationships are endless.
And why do you expound that I want "nothing to be done?" how does that infer it? Cause I don't want immortality, means I don't have the motivation to strive for betterment?
I hate the idea of living forever, all things come to an end, the temporal state builds value to me. But that's just me. And I'm tired, PM me later, your view strikes me curious. (Or anyone who replies to this, I cannot cater enough a good enough response in my fatigue.)
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I'd rather die now than live forever, even if i chose when i would die, when I was in the 100-150 range I'd definitely give up.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
There is nothing wrong in being parasite on something that don't feel anything, or to use computer like it were your slave. I am also parasite on vegetables, and I don't see a reason on why that is bad (they even try to poison me with they own defenses, it is becouse those had survived I don't take it personally either).
No no, I never said you should feel bad about that. There's a lot other things to feel bad over, this is not really a concern. What I'm saying that there can be different mindsets for a person making genetical research and in this science the humanitarian "cogito ergo sum"-like mindset is not exactly fruitful.
Funny that you talked about about emotion. Since your emotion is mostly regulated by the DNA expressing different kinds of proteins it's somewhat unclear whether it's you feeling emotion or your DNA.
But nevertheless, no animal dreams about immortality. They fear immediate death as a part of the survival instinct, but they don't exactly think immortality. Immortality is stricltly reserved for us with out highly-developed conscience because it's an example of conscience and genes coming into conflict - while you might want to live forever, your DNA wants you to die. The reproductive period must be short, otherwise it will trigger inbreeding (a dominant male should not stay dominant long enough for it to be able to breed with it's own progeny) and hinder genetical progress (you should not compete with your own children otherwise it makes the supposedly better combined DNA of you and a good female stall, because no matter how good the genes you will always triumph due to experience). Long life is not of the best factors in natural selection, since the longer the life, the more selection is being affected by learned knowledge which doesn't pass to the next generations. There's another effect for ages - when there's an established reproductive age for a population of animals, genes that prolong life after that won't be inherited. You've made and raised children, nature doesn't care what you do after that. Seeing how females have a physiological reproductive age cap, there's no point for nature to increase their lifespan further. The DNA, in fact, wants you to die so badly that it even introduced a death mechanism into itself - the telomere tails. With every division a DNA loses a telomere on both of it's ends. If there's no more, the resulting DNA is broken. Therefore, there's a limit on the number of divisions a cell containing this DNA will make. The thing is, while this mechanism is common in nearly all organisms on Earth, there's an easy solution - the telomerase expressing gene which we even have. It repairs and restores the telomeres so that a cell can divide infinitely. This gene is functioning in the human organism when it's an embryo. Later in development this gene is turned off and you start your journey towards death. Our genome has free access to this fix but it doesn't use it. It was evolutionary better for us to have limited lifespans.
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On September 30 2009 08:10 Motiva wrote:
eh, I haven't read the thread, but I've read just about everything one can find on The Singularity... I think it's really interesting...
Anyway, the basic premise here isn't "immortality" it's an indefinite life expectancy... This is due to the fact that the increases that occur in our Life Expectancy are accelerating, and according to Kurzweil in about 20 years our life expectancy will be increasing faster than the rate at which we age.
Edit after reading 1/2 the thread: The majority of the posts in this thread don't seem to have knowledge of Kurzweil's work... While, I think the OP makes this thread perhaps not the best place to start if you were interested. Kurzweil's entire basis for that comment is based off of his futirist work on the Technological Singularity. Of Course if the Technological Singularity were to occur, Indefinite Lifespan would be one of the first things we'd "receive". I think that the Technological Singularity deserves it's own thread, as it's a much greater scope than this OP would allow. This premise by Kurzweil does tightly fall under his "Law of Accelerating Change" and I believe it and the Singlularity are entirely possible -on a long enough time line-... Whether or not we want these changes, or if Kurzweil's time predictions are accurate (he has an amazing track record) is a whole different matter.
However, I'd just recommend checking out the wiki's of Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey (a researcher who believes aging can be reverse engineered) if you were interested in this sort of thing...
I agree with everything you say. We already had two threads about the technological singularity though... even if that was two and three years ago 
By me: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=61860
By travis: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=44529
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Inspired by Professor Frinkles? jee jee
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I would like to see him develop this in time to make himself immortal in the first place =p
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this is stupid beyond imagination
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Yeah, immortality and no one gets to inherit anything. GG
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On September 30 2009 09:49 strongwind wrote:
dude, I'm still waiting for my flying car to get here.
That's more impractical than it is impossible. Consider the number of car crashes that happen in a year. Now can you imagine if people had flying cars, and got drunk all the time, and then had crashes up in the sky?
It would definitely cut down on the Earth's population quite rapidly. There're just too many safety issues to deal with, when it comes to flying cars.
Before this is made possible, it has to be made relatively safe for people, such that not every single crash will end up in death (as would happen with most plane collisions I would imagine).
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I can't believe you talk seriously about some statement like this. I mean, it's just a statement!! Nothing more. When I saw the thread title I thought about some scientific method discovered that could lead to something, but it turns out it's just - well. This thread should be closed.
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who'd want to live for that long anyway??
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On September 30 2009 22:57 arbiter_md wrote:
I can't believe you talk seriously about some statement like this. I mean, it's just a statement!! Nothing more. When I saw the thread title I thought about some scientific method discovered that could lead to something, but it turns out it's just - well. This thread should be closed.
I agree this is just stupid.
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EPT
