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Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of Kurzweil's predictions are self-serving. He wants to live forever so bad, that he has:

1. Convinced himself it's possible

2. Convinced himself it's possible in his lifetime

3. Made arrangements to cryogenically freeze himself in the event he dies before it happens

It's just silly. We're nowhere near the ability to live forever and anyone who thinks we are has delusions of grandeur. And you can't freeze yourself to escape this reality. A planet with 7 billion people that live forever and are still actively procreating is likely to quickly have overpopulation issues. Are they really going to be looking to bring people back from the dead?

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Health_and_aging

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> A planet with 7 billion people that live forever and are still actively procreating is likely to quickly have overpopulation issues.

The weird part is that it might not make us slam into the inevitable planetary population limit much faster than we otherwise would. Somebody (one of the senescence nuts, maybe - sorry, I don't have a link) did a pretty convincing study indicating the average lifetime might not even double if we get rid of sickness and cellular aging.

You can see the logic: take into account all the things that kill people and aren't related to disease and aging and model around that. Accidents, crime, and war are still going to exist.

The mathematical model isn't perfect. It's interesting to speculate as to whether we as a race would become greater or lesser risk-takers after finding out aging wasn't a problem.

Is this the Maes-Garreau 'law' in effect?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maes-Garreau_law

(i.e. the possible bias that people like to predict events will happen in their lifetime)

Also fear of death. You don't see many young scientists working on anti-aging....

The development of smarter than human AI, or Kurzweil's belief in exponential progress would change that estimate drastically. It's entirely plausible we could have immortality in our lifetimes if you consider those things (not to mention cryonics which is available today.) Accusing him of believing it only out of self-interest is a needless ad hominem.

I wouldn't worry about 7 billion people living forever. Cryogenic technology, nanobots and whatever else will probably remain a bit pricy for a while, so poor people need not apply.

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