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On August 17 2016 01:31 Plansix wrote:
Then we have the constant march of innovation making labor less valuable, which is the foundation of our economy. On a long enough time line, labor alone may not be sufficient to sustain someone in an economy. At that point we would need to rethink the way goverment relates to citizens who attempt to survive on labor alone.
Personally, I feel like this is much more likely to be a pressing issue than the social implications of immortality. The day when unskilled labor is essentially worthless is fast approaching, and that's going to raise a lot of awkward questions that need to be answered.
On August 17 2016 02:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:
That has in no way stopped us before. The last 200 years of progress in the medical field alone i absolutely astounding and dwarfs the progress from the previous 10,000 years.
I mean, in theory there is some potential upper limit to the capacity of a single human brain to understand complex systems. But the ability for a large group of people to *collectively* understand a complex system is limited only by the size of that group and it's ability to communicate effectively within itself. And the number of people working on a problem is effectively unbounded, and other forms of technology will make the ability to communicate effectively unbounded.
You don't need one person to be able to understand the entire system for progress to be made. Science isn't the work of single individuals anymore.
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On August 17 2016 02:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 01:53 Doodsmack wrote:On August 17 2016 01:50 Mohdoo wrote:On August 17 2016 01:48 Doodsmack wrote:
Personally I think there are things that are too complex for humans to ever understand. The human brain being one. And just because we looked at an MRI of the frontal lobe doesn't mean we know how it works. This is absurdly short sighted. If you were born 1000 years ago, think about what things you would have said are unknowable. Now imagine a nuclear reactor. Now imagine wireless communication. Both of these ideas weren't even conceivable within the frameworks 1000 years ago. You are really seeing our current place in technological advancement as somehow distinct from 1000 years ago. If anything, we have MORE to do now than we did back then. But some things are more complex than others. The human brain is much more complex than nuclear reactors and wireless communication. It's probably short sighted to think our little evolved brain can understand everything. This is a pretty arbitrary claim. You are making the claim that we will never understand certain things because they're complicated and we don't currently understand them. That has in no way stopped us before. The last 200 years of progress in the medical field alone i absolutely astounding and dwarfs the progress from the previous 10,000 years.
Yes but the things we don't yet understand are the most complex. So it is possible there are things we will never conquer. Economics being another one. Why are there so many disagreements on economic policy? It's a very unsettled matter. Human society is too complex.
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Economics results in disagreements in policy because it's too mired in partisan politics, which impedes large groups of people actually collaborating to solve problems.
Given a large enough number of intelligent people all solving small parts of the problem and working together, collective understanding can be reached through collective effort. But that doesn't work when they all segregate to opposite sides of the fence and waste their effort arguing about which side is right instead of actually solving problems.
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On August 17 2016 02:31 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 01:31 Plansix wrote:
Then we have the constant march of innovation making labor less valuable, which is the foundation of our economy. On a long enough time line, labor alone may not be sufficient to sustain someone in an economy. At that point we would need to rethink the way goverment relates to citizens who attempt to survive on labor alone. Personally, I feel like this is much more likely to be a pressing issue than the social implications of immortality. The day when unskilled labor is essentially worthless is fast approaching, and that's going to raise a lot of awkward questions that need to be answered. Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 02:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:
That has in no way stopped us before. The last 200 years of progress in the medical field alone i absolutely astounding and dwarfs the progress from the previous 10,000 years. I mean, in theory there is some potential upper limit to the capacity of a single human brain to understand complex systems. But the ability for a large group of people to *collectively* understand a complex system is limited only by the size of that group and it's ability to communicate effectively within itself. And the number of people working on a problem is effectively unbounded, and other forms of technology will the ability to communicate effectively unbounded. You don't need one person to be able to understand the entire system for progress to be made. Science isn't the work of single individuals anymore.
I would say it's still possible there are things that are too complex for a group of humans to understand.
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On August 17 2016 02:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 02:04 Dan HH wrote:On August 17 2016 01:39 Mohdoo wrote:
And my point is that people should not have the right to simply want kids in an age where humans don't need to die. Children are a gross inefficiency in every society they occupy. We tend to them because we need them. People want kids because we are genetically supposed to. We're socially supposed to as well. My point is that once we can just stick with all the humans we've got, we massively accelerate human progress by being able to stop re-teaching things over and over. Progress and efficiency are not some kind of ojective goals of life, they're just as inherently meaningless as emotional needs. The entire concept of progress is a construct anyways. That it is some linear path humanity is on that moves forward as a given speed.
I completely disagree. Increasing our net knowledge has intrinsic value, in my eyes. A more complete understanding of the realities of the universe should always be pursued.
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On August 17 2016 02:34 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 02:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On August 17 2016 01:53 Doodsmack wrote:On August 17 2016 01:50 Mohdoo wrote:On August 17 2016 01:48 Doodsmack wrote:
Personally I think there are things that are too complex for humans to ever understand. The human brain being one. And just because we looked at an MRI of the frontal lobe doesn't mean we know how it works. This is absurdly short sighted. If you were born 1000 years ago, think about what things you would have said are unknowable. Now imagine a nuclear reactor. Now imagine wireless communication. Both of these ideas weren't even conceivable within the frameworks 1000 years ago. You are really seeing our current place in technological advancement as somehow distinct from 1000 years ago. If anything, we have MORE to do now than we did back then. But some things are more complex than others. The human brain is much more complex than nuclear reactors and wireless communication. It's probably short sighted to think our little evolved brain can understand everything. This is a pretty arbitrary claim. You are making the claim that we will never understand certain things because they're complicated and we don't currently understand them. That has in no way stopped us before. The last 200 years of progress in the medical field alone i absolutely astounding and dwarfs the progress from the previous 10,000 years. Yes but the things we don't yet understand are the most complex. So it is possible there are things we will never conquer. Economics being another one. Why are there so many disagreements on economic policy? It's a very unsettled matter. Human society is too complex.
Economics suffers from testing problems. You can't just implement an economic theory and iterate on it to test assumptions and expectations.
If we could test economic theory the same way we can test physics we would have a much better picture.
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Election is pretty much over at this point, I don't see anyway for the Donald to come back. Unless wiki leaks drops something catastrophic enough to change her supporter's stance which is unlikely. If he stayed on message after the RNC it might have been close, but he beat himself.
4 more years of Obama, oh well I hope HRC keeps the 10 year student debt forgiveness program going for a bit longer.
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On August 17 2016 02:42 biology]major wrote:
Election is pretty much over at this point, I don't see anyway for the Donald to come back. Unless wiki leaks drops something catastrophic enough to change her supporter's stance which is unlikely. If he stayed on message after the RNC it might have been close, but he beat himself.
4 more years of Obama, oh well I hope HRC keeps the 10 year student debt forgiveness program going for a bit longer.
Even if Wikileaks drops an atomic bomb on hillary I still doubt trump would win. Do you really think people who dislike trump right now would ever vote for him? I bet they would go to johnson. Anything to make sure the D doesnt win.
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On August 17 2016 02:37 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 02:09 Plansix wrote:On August 17 2016 02:04 Dan HH wrote:On August 17 2016 01:39 Mohdoo wrote:
And my point is that people should not have the right to simply want kids in an age where humans don't need to die. Children are a gross inefficiency in every society they occupy. We tend to them because we need them. People want kids because we are genetically supposed to. We're socially supposed to as well. My point is that once we can just stick with all the humans we've got, we massively accelerate human progress by being able to stop re-teaching things over and over. Progress and efficiency are not some kind of ojective goals of life, they're just as inherently meaningless as emotional needs. The entire concept of progress is a construct anyways. That it is some linear path humanity is on that moves forward as a given speed. I completely disagree. Increasing our net knowledge has intrinsic value, in my eyes. A more complete understanding of the realities of the universe should always be pursued.
You can believe that human progress is real and measurable, but it is a construct. The concept of “humanities progress” is a construct created by humanity and not something that always existed. It is like The Economy or Human Rights. It is an idea that can be challenged, disproven or affirmed.
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Turns out when the tea party got its presidential primary win, that person was not likely to be electable. Can't say it required a psychic to foresee.
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To be honest I'd rather have Obama himself for another four year as he less Neoliberal that Clinton.
The administration issued new rules today requiring trucks and buses to sharply improve their fuel economy, the last in a series of climate change regulations for vehicles pushed by President Barack Obama to reduce fuel consumption and curb greenhouse gas pollution.
But the new rules won't take effect immediately, making it possible for Donald Trump to roll them back if he wins the presidency. Truck makers have been split on the measures, but least some portions of the rules are likely to face legal challenges.
The new regulation represents the second wave of tighter fuel economy rules for trucks from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the White House estimates show when combined with earlier measures will save U.S. businesses and drivers more than $1.9 trillion in energy costs and cut oil consumption by 8.1 billion barrels over the vehicles' lifetimes.
The rules apply freight-hauling tractor-trailers, along with workhorse vehicles like garbage trucks and buses and the biggest classes of pickup trucks. Today’s rules apply to vehicles for the model years 2019 through 2027.
Along with the previously enacted standards for passenger cars and smaller trucks, the new vehicle standards represent a major portion of Obama’s efforts to combat climate change. According to EPA, the combined efficiencies from the Obama vehicle rules would eliminate carbon dioxide equal the amount emitted by cars traveling 17.7 trillion miles, or running 2,145 coal plants for one year.
“The shift during this past administration has been enormous in terms of the benefits to reducing climate emissions and reducing oil consumption,” said Don Anair, the research and deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' clean vehicles program.
Source
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On August 17 2016 03:00 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
To be honest I'd rather have Obama himself for another four year as he less Neoliberal that Clinton.
I'm pretty sure Obama is more conservative than Clinton with the exception of foreign policy?
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On August 17 2016 03:09 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 03:00 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
To be honest I'd rather have Obama himself for another four year as he less Neoliberal that Clinton.
I'm pretty sure Obama is more conservative than Clinton with the exception of foreign policy?
Yup.
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On August 17 2016 02:42 biology]major wrote:
Election is pretty much over at this point, I don't see anyway for the Donald to come back. Unless wiki leaks drops something catastrophic enough to change her supporter's stance which is unlikely. If he stayed on message after the RNC it might have been close, but he beat himself.
Honestly if he had just not said anything and let the DNC leak wounds fester, he would be in a much better spot. Hillary's already done a good job of hurting her own chances at multiple points this campaign season.
Like I said before, this campaign is just a contest over who can keep their own mouth shut and avoid damaging their own campaign, and Trump seems to be incapable of keeping his mouth shut.
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Just wanted to say on why people want to have kids, a lot of people don't but have them anyway.
Teen moms have a rate of ~75% unintended pregnancies, 20-24 about 50% and over that about 25% of people are reproducing on accident.
That's several million people that weren't even intended to be in this generation. Also I'd agree with Drone's point on bad ideas dying with the people who clung to them. As for immortality, isn't it just a matter of getting our telomere's to not wear out? If we fix that the rest of keeping the body alive happens on it's own iirc. Of course I don't think we know how long an organ or whatever will last given consistent DNA replication.
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On August 17 2016 02:34 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 02:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On August 17 2016 01:53 Doodsmack wrote:On August 17 2016 01:50 Mohdoo wrote:On August 17 2016 01:48 Doodsmack wrote:
Personally I think there are things that are too complex for humans to ever understand. The human brain being one. And just because we looked at an MRI of the frontal lobe doesn't mean we know how it works. This is absurdly short sighted. If you were born 1000 years ago, think about what things you would have said are unknowable. Now imagine a nuclear reactor. Now imagine wireless communication. Both of these ideas weren't even conceivable within the frameworks 1000 years ago. You are really seeing our current place in technological advancement as somehow distinct from 1000 years ago. If anything, we have MORE to do now than we did back then. But some things are more complex than others. The human brain is much more complex than nuclear reactors and wireless communication. It's probably short sighted to think our little evolved brain can understand everything. This is a pretty arbitrary claim. You are making the claim that we will never understand certain things because they're complicated and we don't currently understand them. That has in no way stopped us before. The last 200 years of progress in the medical field alone i absolutely astounding and dwarfs the progress from the previous 10,000 years. Yes but the things we don't yet understand are the most complex. So it is possible there are things we will never conquer. Economics being another one. Why are there so many disagreements on economic policy? It's a very unsettled matter. Human society is too complex.
Again, you don't really have an argument here.
"We won't understand it because we don't understand it" doesn't rest on any real logical assumptions. It's just a fear of the unknown.
Theoretically, there may be some things that we will never understand, but it's also just as likely that we will understand those things eventually. There's no evidence that anything out there (that is capable of being empirically observed and tested) is too complicated for society to ever understand.
Just wanted to say on why people want to have kids, a lot of people don't but have them anyway.
Teen moms have a rate of ~75% unintended pregnancies, 20-24 about 50% and over that about 25% of people are reproducing on accident.
That's several million people that weren't even intended to be in this generation. Also I'd agree with Drone's point on bad ideas dying with the people who clung to them. As for immortality, isn't it just a matter of getting our telomere's to not wear out? If we fix that the rest of keeping the body alive happens on it's own iirc. Of course I don't think we know how long an organ or whatever will last given consistent DNA replication.
Immortality is a lot more complex than just keeping telomerase going, but yes, that's the basis of it. It shows us that the science of aging (or not aging) is definitely something that is measurable and that we can probably manipulate within the next 100 years.
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On August 17 2016 03:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
Just wanted to say on why people want to have kids, a lot of people don't but have them anyway.
Teen moms have a rate of ~75% unintended pregnancies, 20-24 about 50% and over that about 25% of people are reproducing on accident.
That's several million people that weren't even intended to be in this generation. Also I'd agree with Drone's point on bad ideas dying with the people who clung to them. As for immortality, isn't it just a matter of getting our telomere's to not wear out? If we fix that the rest of keeping the body alive happens on it's own iirc. Of course I don't think we know how long an organ or whatever will last given consistent DNA replication.
Cell division rates differ by cell type and I do believe the brain itself doesn't do it at all. so just fixing telomere wouldn't help us.
Our body would last perhaps forever but the brain will still decay.
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On August 17 2016 03:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
Just wanted to say on why people want to have kids, a lot of people don't but have them anyway.
Teen moms have a rate of ~75% unintended pregnancies, 20-24 about 50% and over that about 25% of people are reproducing on accident.
That's several million people that weren't even intended to be in this generation. Also I'd agree with Drone's point on bad ideas dying with the people who clung to them. As for immortality, isn't it just a matter of getting our telomere's to not wear out? If we fix that the rest of keeping the body alive happens on it's own iirc. Of course I don't think we know how long an organ or whatever will last given consistent DNA replication.
there's more to it than that; telomeres decay for a reason, and there may be other things involved in the aging process. If you go full immortal cells, cancer may become a lot more common (as not dying off properly is one of the common marks of cancers). There's probably lots of tradeoffs involved in everything biological such that getting slower/no aging probably comes with other substantial and hard to fix risks.
IIRC there were calculations about how long people would live if they had clinical immortality and it was ~2000 years; as accidents and murders still cause loss over time.
It's more likely immortality will first come as a result of organ replacement through artifical organ growth, and cybernetic implants. Though brain issues are gonna be very hard to fix still.
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On August 17 2016 03:58 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 03:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
Just wanted to say on why people want to have kids, a lot of people don't but have them anyway.
Teen moms have a rate of ~75% unintended pregnancies, 20-24 about 50% and over that about 25% of people are reproducing on accident.
That's several million people that weren't even intended to be in this generation. Also I'd agree with Drone's point on bad ideas dying with the people who clung to them. As for immortality, isn't it just a matter of getting our telomere's to not wear out? If we fix that the rest of keeping the body alive happens on it's own iirc. Of course I don't think we know how long an organ or whatever will last given consistent DNA replication. Cell division rates differ by cell type and I do believe the brain itself doesn't do it at all. so just fixing telomere wouldn't help us. Our body would last perhaps forever but the brain will still decay.
I feel like the brain thing was one of those old "facts" that has changed since we've improved in medical science.
Researchers at Cornell University have demonstrated that cells from an area of the brain essential for learning and memory can regenerate in a laboratory dish.
Source (it's Web MD but the research is from Cornell)
You're right though that telemeres alone won't fix the mental side but there are promising possibilities on the horizon. That said, I think people live long enough, and I'd rather the US figure out how to make sure innocent kids aren't going to bed hungry in our own (wealthiest in the world) country first.
As for "progressives who get things done":
Hooray for more fracking!
On August 17 2016 04:14 JumboJohnson wrote:
It fed my family when I was growing up.
Congratulations?
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It fed my family when I was growing up.
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EPT
