Is humanity really 35 years away from immortality?

fuser is right. We'll never put a man on the moon or fly in space. Foolish dreamers.

TCB wrote:

You have no imagination and clearly haven't read the article. It's not just about making people immortal, but uploading people's conscience to a digital space.

On Super computers that cost millions of barrels of Oil thats running out to fabricate INGENIOUS!

Only about 1 million people worldwide could live Kurzweils dream. The other 7,999,000,000 will just have to eat poop and poisoned rice and acrid fumes and die a miserable death in reality.

Kurzweil is a loony. The fact that you posted this article is indicative of how moronic you are. There are people that literally believe Energy security isn't the biggest issue facing the world right now. Some of those people even believe they're intelligent. ha!

I think there will be a revolution in biotech on the other side of the Great Depression II. But not anything close to immortality.

So you will be stupid forever?

They'll never be able to 'upload' a person's consciousness because that is a product of the brain, reducible to the astronomical amount of neurons and chemical connections in the brain. There is no "file" or "folder" that can be transferred; we *are* the network of our brain. The best they could hope to do is make a copy of your brain, and hence, your consciousness.

long dong silver wrote:

We don't even know why people yawn. We don't understand the physiological mechanisms behind distance running (at all). We don't really even understand how the brain works.

The things that exist on planet earth (like human beings) have gotten here via literally billions of years of evolution and humans are still a few hundred years from really having a good understanding of them.

Yawning is the body's attempt to keep itself from falling asleep.

And how can you put a definite number (like a "few hundred years") on time elapsed before a sense of enlightenment sweeps mankind and its environment? Does this apply to everyone or just the intellectual elite? Trying to predict the future shows our ignorance.

I thought we are all going to die in 2012?

It can't connect to the internet if it doesn't have the capacity to. There's such a thing as hardware limitations. Hopefully the scientists who build such an intelligent AI wouldn't put it online because they would understand the possible ramifications.

I understand the skepticism.. but dang this part was fascinating:

"For example, it's well known that one cause of the physical degeneration associated with aging involves telomeres, which are segments of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and once a cell runs out of telomeres, it can't reproduce anymore and dies. But there's an enzyme called telomerase that reverses this process; it's one of the reasons cancer cells live so long. So why not treat regular non-cancerous cells with telomerase? In November, researchers at Harvard Medical School announced in Nature that they had done just that. They administered telomerase to a group of mice suffering from age-related degeneration. The damage went away. The mice didn't just get better; they got younger."

Gimme some telomerase, and I might be running an 8:50 steeple again soon...

CoachedbyMarden wrote:

I was reading a possibly different article about Kurzweil in Discover magazine. Even if automatic intelligence surpasses human intelligence, it doesn't mean it could actually do anything. My computer doesn't have legs, and I imagine most intelligent computers won't come with guns attached. There will be no computer like in Eagle Eye that has the ability to make telephone wires short wherever it wants and has cameras everywhere in the world; that just won't happen. It would be quite easy to make an AI like that offline, and as such, humans won't be taken over by computers ever. At least as long as I live.

Um . . .

maccabee wrote:

TRON

^^^^^

Understanding how the brain works or producing enough energy to power the machines will not be our job. If we can build a computer that is capable of building a better computer, then Moores law shrinks from 18 months to 18 minutes. Computers will be many magnitudes smarter than humanity and will be able to completely understand exactly how your brain works and how to upload it onto its network (nanotechnology will probably also play a major role). It will also be able to build a fusion power plant (or maybe an anti-matter power plant) to run itself (what a gaping hole that was in the Matrix). The whole trick is to create AI and then everything else will follow almost immediately. If it's impossible to build a computer that can think for itself (which I've seen no evidence of) then the life expectancy for people born today will probably be a lot shorter (maybe they'll only live to be 200 years old).

Who wants to live forever?? Life is exhausting enough and I've only been here 30 years. I'm fine with having my time end.

Maybe we can bring PRE back!!

Guess what. You upload your conscience onto a computer and maybe that will live on but you will not. Yes, believe it or not we still have a spirit. Sorry folks, you're all going to pass into the unknown.

The only people who believe you'll be able to upload your consciousness into a computer in 35 years are the ones who don't have the slightest idea how a computer works.

And in keeping with a trend, these are also the same people who zealously comment on other topics they know nothing about. So count 'em up right here folks!

I can only hope they will be able to upload my consciousness into a computer sometime in the near future. My only successes with the ladies thus far have been via computer! They always seem to dump me after we meet for real in person.

I see a greater possibility of life extension by finding a way to support the brain without having to rely on the rest of the body for sustenance. In this scenario, you become "a brain in a bottle".

Electrical stimulation of your pleasure centers will keep you happily bottled for centuries...

old schoolio wrote:

I understand the skepticism.. but dang this part was fascinating:

"For example, it's well known that one cause of the physical degeneration associated with aging involves telomeres, which are segments of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and once a cell runs out of telomeres, it can't reproduce anymore and dies. But there's an enzyme called telomerase that reverses this process; it's one of the reasons cancer cells live so long. So why not treat regular non-cancerous cells with telomerase? In November, researchers at Harvard Medical School announced in Nature that they had done just that. They administered telomerase to a group of mice suffering from age-related degeneration. The damage went away. The mice didn't just get better; they got younger."

Gimme some telomerase, and I might be running an 8:50 steeple again soon...

Aerobic exercise helps protect your telomeres and keep your cells young; go for a run!