Google vs. Death
techland.time.com
techland.time.com
Perhaps it is just to avoid scaring investors, going by Larry's concern assuaging in the second paragraph of his post.
One of the Google founders was also behind funding the first purely lab-grown burger eaten in London a few months ago. That also had an obviously professional PR campaign attached to it, although little of this was explicit in the press. A professionally edited HD recording of the event appeared on the BBC web site only a few minutes after publication, so obviously some PR mechanism was at play.
But that event wasn't to promote Google or anything else, it was absent of any commercial labels attached to the copy or the video itself, and no mention was made of who organized or funded it. I have no idea what the message, or the point of that campaign was either.
What are these campaigns trying to tell us?
But unless Google already transferred $x billions to Calico's bank account, I have to laugh at the 20-30+ year investment agenda and that somehow Google will be in for the long run--unlike other companies. This will be shut down the minute Adwords growth slows down...and they're running out of places to put them due to over-saturation and "free" traffic to sites is disappearing at an alarming rate already.
Google, Page, Brin should've put $500 mil each and then pledged regular contributions.
Or maybe this is Brin's divorce package: Calico will buy 123andMe for a lot of money ;-)
All you do is speculate and inform us about your aversion towards Google.
And the enlightening insight that Google would probably drop this project if their profits started going down isn't really informative unless you think that we all here have problems with understanding fundamental logic.
I never said I had the info. The people that know this chose not to say it. I speculated, which is all we can do.
>>"And the enlightening insight that Google would probably drop this project if their profits started going down isn't really informative unless you think that we all here have problems with understanding fundamental logic."
It's not that informative, I give you that; it's Wall Street 101 and most know by now.
>>"about your aversion towards Google."
Not sure blind love and gullibility is any better, assuming that I have an aversion to everything Google.
Who doesn't, at that level?
I would assume this is because a lot of Google engineers read Hacker News and they want to defend their work, rather than because of an orchestrated PR campaign.
(Though I should concede that they are not anything like a majority)
However, I no longer think that is the case, and I think if Calico takes the same tack they will mostly avoid it as well.
Here's why: a gross simplification of de Grey's entire research program is "aging and death happen because things start breaking faster than we can fix them, and because things start breaking that we have no idea how to fix." One of the greatest things about tackling the fountain of youth from this perspective is that it will continue to look like normal medicine and cosmetic procedures.
I predict that effective "eternal youth and immortality" will be achieved, but by the time the mass population notices enough to care, the majority of the population will be composed of people who grew up with the idea of accelerating progress on human health (in the same way that today's kids simply do not know an era without exponential advances in information technology). Thus, they will probably experience this threshold as completely normal, if they experience it at all.
In other words, there won't be a "magic moment". That moment will only appear retroactively, similar to today's magazine articles that say "hey look, here we are in the future with our video phones and what not! Isn't that nice?"
Let's say in the next 20 years the following things happen:
1. A therapeutic AIDS vaccine performs the equivalent of Polio eradication
2. Highly targeted and effective cancer therapies are developed at an increasingly alarming rate
3. An actual cure for baldness is found
4. A preventative therapeutic regimen for treating obesity at a genetic level is discovered
5. A "nano-cream" that restores collagen in the skin becomes available first by prescription, then over the counter
6. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's can be detected and prevented early and completely managed in those that are in advanced stages
Each one of those 6 things will likely face some opposition, but the opposition's voices will most probably not reach any kind of "critical mass"; people will (for example with the AIDS vaccine) simply regard as cruel the idea that people should die of AIDS because you don't want them having sex (a silly protest that I can still predict happening).
Each of these advances will happen individually, and to the average person they won't look anything alike.
But if you stack enough of these together long enough, you eventually get your fountain of youth. It's just that by the time it arrives there won't be riots in the streets, just 90% of the population saying "oh cool" and the other 10% viewed as harmless luddites with an interesting perspective on life.
Why?
(Speaking in advance: I understand this is in fact about life extension)
Feel free to pass on it then, assuming you'd actually make that decision if you really had the choice. That problem will naturally solve itself: the set of people still alive will trend towards 100% rejection of having a limited lifespan.
"Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra on that subject just, you know, _died_, a generation before. [...] didn't need to convert its detractors, just outlive them." -- Cory Doctorow, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom".
Or are you just full-on into the Google-executive mindset where you use life extension to live long enough to deliberately invoke every other Singularity/transhuman/futurist douchebag trope in the damn book and go sailing off to space to find more resources for your exponentially-expanding population to consume?
Then, ok, fair enough. The question is, how do you make that fully general so that our ecosystem doesn't collapse and kill the lot of us?
And then, how do you make the economics work out? Immortal transhumans need to eat, too, but once they get some kind of capital base going that expands faster than inflation, as long as they've got even the barest livable income, they'll eventually live long enough for their wealth to grow into "OWN EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE" levels.
And we thought today's asset bubbles were large!
Meanwhile, the young of the future will be even more screwed than we young are today, for precisely the same reasons but more so.
It's similar to an argument people sometimes give me when I tell them I'm vegan, which goes along the lines of "If everyone suddenly became vegan, imagine what that would do to the world economy! How would we feed all of these people when our food producing infrastructure is animal based?"
And the reason I don't worry about that is that I know that scenario isn't going to happen. When people stop using animal products, which I think will happen - not for ethical reasons, but for economic reasons as cheaper, more authentic substitutes arise, and the sustainability of animal farming dwindles - it will not be an overnight process, and the world will have plenty of time to adjust.
It's basically the same with extreme longevity. We don't have to solve these problems with the tools we have today, because we don't even know when they will be problems that need solving. And we have no idea what tools will be available to us once we actually do have to solve those problems.
But if you flip the scenario around, and imagine that everyone already lives forever, and these problems start to show up, do you really think that anyone would even think to suggest "Let's have everyone die after around 70 years or so"? That idea would be grimly hilarious in a very Modest Proposal sort of way.
Also, we are nowhere near being immortal and in many developed countries people already have stopped reproducing (Germany, Japan, Spain, etc)
A world without kids and young people is a really, really sad state of affairs. I don't know and I don't care about what others would do, but I think I will just choose to end my own life rather than continue to live in such a dystopian future.
1. There wouldn't be zero kids and young people. Just not very many. The death rate will always be non-zero, and our ability to support new people will grow over time.
2. I get that no more children is a bummer, but I'm not really understanding how it is so awful that it could be described as "dystopian", much less something to kill yourself over. The world is vast and interesting, and children are just one neat facet of it.
In any case, I can see how it might work to give people a choice. If you'd rather die sooner and also have children, you could opt out of both the sterilization and the immortality.
And so neither are they worth permitting age to kill 100,000 random humans per day with no regard to innocence or value.
More seriously, we could scan backups. Or we could live in the Matrix, not as meatbags plugged through the neck, but as programs –which could be backed up as well. (Don't ask me who gets to be root.)
All engineering. It's not good against infinite time, but it ought to make traffic fatalities rare and remarkable.
So, yes, the ultimate battle is with entropy, but we have a long way to go before that's the actual limiting factor.
Otherwise, make an ethical argument that covering every inch of the planet in people is a good idea.
Otherwise, explain how you'll get the proper sterilization procedures working to control population growth and get resource consumption down to sustainable levels.
Well, I'll grant you one thing: not quite sure what it is you're computing, but assuming your plan works, that was a surprisingly short path to conserving the universe's resources until your computational substrate suffers proton decay.
I still have only hunches of what computation has to do with actual lives. Please, explain your Evil Plan out loud.
As they die, some will take solace in a religious belief that numbers in the machine represent everything they were and ever will be. Others will just die.
A digital tombstone to a dead race.
If it does, why assume brain-meat is better, as opposed to worse?
I bet many people here would not doubt the moral value of the emulation of a human (feelings and such are simulated to the point of being real), but would highly doubt that it would be, well, the "same" person as the original.
The one thing nobody ever specifies about these crazy schemes, which would otherwise be a great way for humanity to get the hell off of Earth and leave the natural ecosystem to itself in our absence, is who will be root, and how he's going to forcibly round up everyone who doesn't like your crazy futurist take-over-everyone's-minds scheme. Hell, what's going to stop him from rampaging across the real Earth and universe, destroying everything in sight, while everyone else fucks around having fun in VR?
I'm really wondering why this nasty, insane idea has been cropping up more frequently lately in geek circles.
And that's not even starting into the sheer ludicrousness of claiming people's consciousness is pure software when we know that all kinds of enzymes and hormones affect our personalities!
That's a bug to fix in implementation accuracy. I'd obviously prefer more accuracy, but if it comes down to a choice between less-than-perfect available implementation accuracy or dying of old age, I'll happily take a less accurate implementation, especially one that preserves enough information to fix that issue later.
The much more serious bug I am concerned about is the continuity flaw: a copy of me does not make the original me immortal. I'd like the original me to keep thinking forever. Many proposals exist for how to ensure that. The scary problem that needs careful evaluation before implementing any solution: if you do it wrong, the copy will never know the difference, but the original will die.
The route to unfriendly AI is revenue-positive right up until it kills us.
> In 1944, 29 reindeer were introduced to the island by the United States Coast Guard to provide an emergency food source. The coast guard abandoned the island a few years later, leaving the reindeer. Subsequently, the reindeer population rose to about 6,000 by 1963[5] and then died off in the next two years to 42 animals.[6] A scientific study attributed the population crash to the limited food supply in interaction with climatic factors (the winter of 1963–64 was exceptionally severe in the region).[1] By the 1980s, the reindeer population had completely died out.[2] Environmentalists see this as an issue of overpopulation.
(from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island)
Why not have thousands of them? What are you?
And yes, "immortality" is a figure of speech. Much like "the infinite space" - we don't know if it's really infinite.
If I can't call it immortality, well, it'll have to do.
So "immortality" is really a couple thousand years.
Don't get me started on "brain uploading". Unless you can guarantee me that I'll still be me (which is really a religious question) I'm sticking with a couple thousand years tops.
Impressive life extension. Not immortality. Not even talking about the "heat death of the universe" here - you're getting nowhere near that.
You can live your life through robotic surrogates, and that could extend your life further, but wherever you warehouse your body becomes a single point of failure so it had better be secure.
Luckily, religions are false. The supernatural is unlikely, and immaterial souls even more so. But we have quantum mechanics.
Current quantum mechanics say that copy&paste transportation doesn't kill you. (Yep. The question was philosophical, and the answer came from physics.) The reason is, you're not a heap of atom, you're an arrangement of atoms. Mind uploading goes a bit further, but should work just as well. Imagine a "temporary" uploading, where your memories from the Matrix are downloaded back into your brain (by rewiring your neurons accordingly). It's still you, only older. Anyway, a deeper understanding of our brains' inner workings may resolve the question of mind uploading more definitely. We'll see then.
Assuming that the preceding is wrong, and that it's only the relative arrangement of atoms inside the brain that matters, a computer representation of the arrangement of atoms is represented by a totally different arrangement of atoms that is the computer, and therefore cannot be you.
Uploading only works if we can say that you are just an abstract mathematical pattern that can be represented in any medium. Quantum physics does not address this question. It is a question of philosophy.
Agreed.
What do you mean when you say "I".
Sure you can point the the brain. But when we look at the brain, we see the following "physical" attributes:
1. Atoms and their more complex configurations (molecules) 2. Electricity 3. Chemicals 4. Causal connections between the above 3.
So I ask again, where exactly is "I"? The easy answer is to say "I" is the conjunction of this system.
So that would mean that if we can take that system, and recreate it somewhere else, then that system would represent "I" as well.
This is problematic. Take the above as true and then think what it would mean to not CUT and paste, but just COPY and paste.
There are now two "I"'s walking around. Would you, looking at the copy and paste version of yourself then say that you are still "I"? Or are both of you "I"? Well, you are certainly not the "I" that your other self is saying is "I". Because you are looking at it. It can't be "I". So what the f#$k is powering that thing?
By that logic, what you are is more than just the physical. There are things like Qualia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia), meaning, memories and the associations between completely unrelated things that, as far as I am aware, we cannot map to the physical manifestation of the brain.
None of this is to say that brain uploading is impossible, because we just simply don't have enough information to refute or defend its possibility.
But I believe that the brain is more complex then the pure physical.
[citation needed]
As far as i'm aware, there's no evidence that the mind is anything more than a physical construct. As such, the idea of 'uploading' it makes no sense. You can create a copy, sure, and perhaps even a running simulation might be self-aware and identify as you, but you still only last as long as does the hemisphere of jelly in your head.
I agree though that it is a question of philosophy, but a different philosophy altogether. We will have to redefine what a 'mind' is to take into account the persistent pattern of the brain in whatever form it takes as software, but that's not actually going to solve the problem of mortality any more than religion does.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/r9/quantum_mechanics_and_personal_id...
It's long, but it's worth it. I personally enjoyed reading all this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem and the uncertainty principle suggest to be that while it might be possible to create a model which appears indistinguishable from an existing person, and could be considered "similar enough" philosophically or legally, by definition it would have to be considered a 'different' object because perfect copies are impossible.
Sure. But from one nanosecond to another, we're perturbed by thermal noise, without any qualms about what that noise does to ourselves.
I think we can safely assume that a copy whose imperfections are on the same order as thermal noise is a second original. That, or we admit that room temperature is enough to change us.
It might be, at some level, I don't know.
Am I the same person I was when I was born? Am I the same person when I wake up as when I dream? Was Phineas Gage a different person after taking an iron shaft in the brain as before?
Maybe it's more accurate to describe people as processes rather than objects. Which could support your premise while not necessarily invalidating mine, since the whole concept of a singular, coherent self would itself be an illusion.
I doubt it.
If we expected to live much longer than that, we might be more cautious of accidents.
If you only have ~10-50 years to live, you might be prepared to take some small risks to save time: cross the road 100m in front of a speeding vehicle... it's a tiny risk and you might die of an acute disease tomorrow anyway.
If you have ~1000-unlimited years to live, people might generally take fewer accident-causing risks: the cost of an accident is hugely greater.
Then again, who knows? Maybe a society of immortals would need to take more risks in exchange for status.
But, you essentially decide your own level of accident-risk and I'm sure you could get it way down from 1/1656.
That said, there are a lot of questions about what the philosophical, cultural, sociological and political underpinnings and implications might be. Creating a friendly environment for discussing those could be a worthwhile exercise as well. For example, what is the interaction between individual wellbeing and longevity, and the quality of world in which you live? Perhaps it's a two-way street, a wholistic set of factors that includes social wellbeing in addition to medical health, taking for example the case of that Greek island with famously long-living people (Ikaria).
As someone said, it's not the years in your life, it's the life in your years.
It should say "Google vs. Death".
What was the original headline?
What kind of monster are you that you don't think thats a laudable goal?
Of course, the result won't actually achieve that. But it is not an unhonorable goal. Involuntary death is not a virtuous thing.
I think there are many compelling ethical and philosophical arguments one can make against wanting everyone to live forever.
We shouldn't confuse live extension with living forever. Oddly enough, David Attenborough is in the news today for suggesting population control is a huge and growing problem[1]. You could argue that research into extending human life when we are looking at significant problems with population overcrowding and competition for resources in the near future is putting the horse before the cart.
I am not sure which side of the fence I fall on. Medical research can allow people with previously incurable conditions to live full lives. This is a laudable goal. But that's not what you said - you're talking about living forever. Is that so laudable? I would certainly not call someone who thought that was a truly awful idea 'a monster'. Indeed, there's lots of speculative fiction based around how awful it would actually be to live forever (or even a very long time).
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10316271/Sir-D...
And also, at the same time, cannot be bothered to raise labor wages.
What the fuck?
Sounds perfectly consistent to me.
> And also, at the same time, cannot be bothered to raise labor wages.
As long as the immigrants keep coming, why bother raising wages?
Actually, I have no fucking clue what kind of mindset wants to live forever. Reminded of the beautiful (book) scene in Ender's Game where Wiggin ponders the death of the buggers, and the essential union of death and rebirth.
The kind of mindset capable of performing induction over the positive integers. For me, today was a good day. I want to live until tomorrow, at least, and I want tomorrow to be at least as good.
Therefore, I want to live forever, or at least as long as reasonably possible.
Just like a man-made machine, we are physical processes. We're just much better at self reference than the machines we build.
I am also not afraid of illiteracy or racism though I also consider them terrible. If your ability to not fear death requires that you trivialize it, to pretend its something wholesome, then I regard that with the same kind of mild contempt that I hold for people justify their bigotry by convincing themselves that people of other creeds are inferior and so its /natural/ to discriminate against them.
I hardly think that a fictional child's excuses for committing genocide, themselves constituting a bit of an Author Tract by a writer with well known outspoken religious views on the proper nature of human interactions, is really much of a contribution here.
The suggested vague possibility of living forever doesn't force it on anyone, I wouldn't agree with that either. I think you should be free to stop existing on your own schedule.
With involuntary death removed, I think and hope that instead people would "die" a different way— by becoming different people over time, ending a chapter in their lives and adopting a new one, being reborn without ever dying, and hopefully conserving most of the best about themselves in the process.
Frankly, I think it's awful when people die. People are so interesting and irreplaceable and wonderful; I don't necessarily think it's an improvement for them to just fall over dead one day and be gone.
Please note that this is a relatively orthodox opinion: Even the Christian church has always felt that death and oblivion were rather horrible, and it thought that humans should live forever, albeit after a bit of debugging so they'd stop being quite so awful to each other. They approved of death only because it was the price of admission to immortality.
Kind of like watching a lion, king of the jungle, fighting and clawing furiously against a roaring avalanche to reach the top of a mountain
enjoy the show
That's why I am so happy right now with this announcement: extremely rich and influential people moving beyond the same old Death Stockholm Syndrome.
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In the year 2010, scientists perfected suspended animation through the use of cryogenics for the purpose of surgery. After more than a decade of study and refinement, long term suspended animation became a reality, yet a privilege reserved for only the most wealthy and influential.
The thinking at the time was that only those who showed a global and fundamental contribution to society (while still viewed through the ridiculously tinted lenses of the global elite of the era) were worthy of entering into such state.
The process was both incredibly complex and costly. As each Transport, as they were known, required their own stand alone facility to be built around them. Significant resources were put into the development of each facility as they required complete autonomous support systems to accommodate whatever duration was selected by the Transport.
Standalone, yet fully redundant, power, security and life support systems were essential to the longevity of each facility.
Additionally, it was recognized that monetary resources would be subject to change over time, especially fiat-currency based resources. Thus there was a need to place physical holders of value that would be perceived to not deplete/dilute over time into the facilities for use by the Transport when they resuscitate.
These resources are the most sought after treasure of the new world.
After hundreds of years of human progress, civilization could no longer sustain itself in an organized self-supporting system. Through utter corruption of what some call the human soul, the world has fallen dark. There are very few outposts of safety in the current Trial of Life, as its now known.
Many Transporters have been found, resuscitated and exploited already. There are believed to be many many more, but their locations are both secret and secure. Akin to your life relying on the discovery of an undisturbed Tomb of a Pharaoh - even though every consciousness on the planet is also seeking the same tomb.
They are the last bastion of hope for they alone have the reserves of precious materials needed to sustain life for the current generation.
Metals, technology (however outdated), medicines, seeds, weapons and minerals are all a part of each Transport 'Crop'.
One find can support a group or community for years alone based on the barter and renewable resource potentials in each Crop.
One transport, found in 2465, that of a long dead nanotech pioneer - who was purportedly responsible for much of the cybernetic medical capabilities of the 21st century, which he sought to cure his genetic predisposition for a certain disease, was so vast that the still powerful city-state in the western province of North America was able to be founded.
The resources of this individual were extraordinary, but his resuscitation, as they all are, was rather gruesome and cold.
The security systems in each Transport Facility are biometric and very complex. They can only be accessed by a living, calm and (relatively) healthy Transport.
If the system, and its control mechanism AI, detect signs of duress, stress or serious injury to the Transport - they go into fail-safe. Which is to say they self detonate. Taking with them all resources, the Transport and the Seekers as well.
There have been many instances of this, such that the art of successful Resuscitation has become an extremely profitable business.
The most active and successful Resuscitation Team (RT) have been the ironically named, Live Well Group.
The most conniving, well practiced and profitable con in the history of mankind.
LWG alone has been responsible for the resuscitation of more than 370 Transports. Their group is currently the most powerful in the world. With their own city-state, established after the Brin case mentioned, they have a cast of thousands of cons all working to ensure the Transport believes they have been Awakened to a new, advanced, safe world and that they would be allowed to stake part in a significant way now that they have been Transported.
They are fooled into releasing their resources, then brutally tortured for information about any other Transports or any other knowledge they may possess, which invariably is less than nothing.
It is a hard world out there now, and the LWGs ruthless strive to locate the thousands of other Transport Facilities is both the worst aspect of our modern struggle - yet ironically will serve to be the basis of the ongoing endeavor of the species.
There is rumor of a vast facility of resources and Transports in an underground 'CITY' of the most elite Transports ever. A facility supposedly comprised of the 13 most powerful and rich bloodlines of people to have ever existed.
It is not known which continent this facility is on, but I believe it is in Antarctica - fully automated and with the ability to auto-resuscitate at a given time.
This is my mission, this is my life's work. To find and own this facility and crush any and all other groups that oppose me.
Just one quibble: cryonics (not "cryogenics") today is much less expensive than that. Okay, you don't live back (yet). But if we get working suspended animation, with resuscitation and all, it will probably be much cheaper, much more dependent on the survival of our current civilization, and much less protected.
I predicted that given his resources and being found to have a genetic predisposition to a disease with later-in-life onset, he would focus on health/longevity.
With the article that came out at the same time about cryonic (thanks) surgery, I was thinking that he would be more likely to be able to freeze himself later in life than to cure his genetic disorder.
EDIT: I wonder if the possibility of living nearly forever will make society even more risk-averse?
This is similar to iPhone. Steve Jobs didn't make the iPhone possible. What he did was recognize something that many engineers had recognized for a long time and he permitted the resources to flow to the right people. Sure, he introduced some of his own artistic flair. But the combination of radio, UNIX, with a nice API was an idea whose time had come. We just needed a CEO with the balls to let his engineers go for it.
There are many brilliant scientists and engineers that can nearly do magic, and not enough people who know how to discern what visions to fund. Every so often we get blessed with a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk who can send the resources the right way, but for the most part we get Carly Fiorina.