> Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fears of people to make arguments about the fountain of youth that won't come to pass. I wish they would, but they won't.
Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of when, not if.
The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery in vivo.
To say that we cannot do that is to say that Science itself is too weak a method to overcome the level of complexity presented by advanced biological organisms.
It is therefore to predict that scientific progress will come to an unexpected, screeching halt, some time in the next decades.
I find this an absurd scenario, and therefore believe to the contrary. Science will overcome the level of complexity of human biology, and continue onward even long after that.
Because, putting anthropocentric intuitions to the side, the human body is not the most complex phenomenon imaginable.
Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death.
To be clear, I'm not saying it can't ever happen, I'm saying that DeGrey's and Kurzweils claims that it is happening and will come to pass in the next century are bogus.
De Grey is most certainly not arguing that it is happening, he is arguing that it can happen with sufficient investment in the right lines of research. A digest of his position is that the science is way ahead of the will and interest to develop that science into therapies. What he is doing, via advocacy, fundraising, and personally funding research with most of his net worth, is to move the needle on getting therapies towards the clinic.
So things like the senescent cell clearance approaches presently under development at Oisin Biotechnologies and UNITY Biotechnology could have been built (with greater cost and slightly different components) ten or fifteen years ago, to pick one example. It was known that senescent cells were an issue, with a great deal of evidence to support that position.
The same goes for glucosepane cross-link clearance. That could have been picked up by any part of Big Pharama a decade ago, had anyone bothered to follow the lines of research that pointed in that direction.
>Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death.
This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkable advancements that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for human trials.
I think you're attempting to split hairs by quantifying two necessarily qualitative terms which really have a common understanding to be how long people live on average. And in doing so, you commit the same error you highlight: surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average between 1920-2000? Even if you hold fast the true importance of lexical disambiguation, most would disagree on straw man grounds.
Where I do somewhat agree or at least am very open to consider is that some other force is at play that we don't yet understand. The fairly recent theory of hormosis presents some profound philosophical arguments that cannot be ignored. Life as we know it may have evolved to live less than its full potential for reasons we have yet to discover - perhaps highly interdependent relationships between co-evolved cooporative cells can only resist entropy for so long. If this is the case, then this sort of predefined balance/order would mean gains are offset by newly emerging losses - an example would be the massive increase in cancer occurrence that has mirrored increases in life expectancy, moreso when this broad category of diseases is considered by its generic definition of "uncontrolled cellular growth".
So there's certainly room for reasonable skepticism and it should shape our expectations accordingly. But that shouldn't mean the end of these pursuits nor the hope for what they could yield. And prudent scientific observation should at least suggest that greater longevity is possible. I recently read an interesting article about jellyfish and Hydra, which go through various developmental stages that actually come full circle and leading some to theorize that these somewhat basic life forms may actually be immortal. There's also tardigrades, which can live in the most extreme environments imaginable, including volcanic vents and even celestial bodies traveling through space! They've experimentally proven all our understanding of life wrong and that's only in the past few decades. Kurzweil is overly optimistic about these things because I suppose there's a degree of fear and insecurity there - he's likely predicting accelerated time lines because that's a narrative he can be part of and wants to believe that to be likely for obvious reasons. But I don't think he's wrong and fully admire anyone promoting a hopeful and tenacious outlook on life instead of the increasing opposite trend of disillusionment and cynicism - but that's an entirely different discussion.
You don't have to believe me. I'm only relaying what is the currently accepted scientific understanding, that so far we've only treated the symptoms of aging, not increased the potential for longevity.
"The U.S. Census Bureau view on the future of longevity is that life expectancy in the United States will be in the mid-80s by 2050 (up from 77.85 in 2006) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, as opposed to merely treating the effects of aging as is done today." (emphasis mine)
> surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average between 1920-2000?
You've completely lost me here. This is a straw man argument, I didn't say a thing about what happened to longevity this century, and the data clearly shows it has gone up slightly. Experts agree it will reach an asymptotic peak unless some science magic happens. But no science magic has yet happened, and while I agree we should pursue it, we have no scientific reasons to suspect that it will aside from human curiosity, desire to live longer, and fear of death.
> Kurzweil is overly optimistic about these things
Now that's just funny. There's a world of difference between being optimistic and overtly lying to prove a point that doesn't exist.
Again, The Census Bureau is hardly an authority on this matter - they're concerned with the challenge of just logistically counting Americans every few years via surveys (the lowest order of the scientific method) and it's questionable how precisely they even do that considering I can attest to having missed one such survey myself years ago. I treat their predictions on longevity with the same skepticism I view their census stats, which is optimistic given the massive gap in expertise. This, by the way, is in no way an attempt to diminish the very real and difficult challenges this task presents - only to place their expertise accurately.
Experts very much DO NOT agree on this and the fact that literally billions of dollars in R&D are expended on this area of science in just the US is testament to that. Sure it doesn't mean any groundbreaking discovery is guaranteed to happen - but it does show that belief in the possibility is alive and well. And why not? Those immortal jellyfish share 97% of the same DNA, including long stretches of matching sequences and compatible genes that have been experimentally transferred between them and other life forms numerous times. Even Right Whales, which are conscious mammals sharing immense biological relation to people can live 200 years or more, and that's in the absence of anything remotely resembling science and the presence of numerous impediments, including us, their generic brethren. Tardigrades may end up being miniature space suits for the most advanced intergalactic life forms known - who knows? What we do know is they throw most of what we believed to be true about life and morality right out the window - and that's a good thing. All this is to say that the possibility of longetivity increases driven by scientific exploration is much greater than the likelihood of that not being the case.
Kurzweil is who he is, for better or worse. But he has made outlandish predictions over the years, many of which have come about despite the skepticism. He's a successful entrepreneur and employed in a very senior position at one of the most valuable and forward looking companies in the world. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't completely dismiss him as a crank. I disagree with some of the time lines he has, though cautiously because it doesn't take many compounding discoveries to get there on his schedule. But fundamentally, I agree with much of what he says - even though I think what they mean for us as humans and the universe as a whole is much less certain, and likely as scary as they are promising.
EDIT: here are some links you might want to read to confirm that whole "experts agree" conclusion:
Henrietta Lacks - the woman whose specific cancer mutation provided the vast majority of cells used to study cancer and numerous other cellular process, to this day. Cells which are effectively immortal: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was-on...
> There have been some truly remarkable advancements that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for human trials.
BTW, I think you've mis-interpreted the discussion. The two examples you gave above don't affect the rate of aging. They affect the symptoms of aging, and they delay death. I think most people agree we don't know exactly where the limit of longevity is once we remove all types of early mortality. But, as is true with life expectancy, we will uncover a limit that is slightly higher than where it is right now. Barring scientific advances that change the rate of aging, both metrics will asymptotically flat-line somewhere.
It'd be awesome to see such scientific advances. I hope it happens, and I support the activity. But the truth is that none of the evidence we've gathered so far has unlimited potential for longevity, all of it is removing obstacles that cause early death, not pushing the real boundary of longer life than was previously attainable.
Yes, there's certainly a definite limit to how long any living cell will last in absence of opposing stressors (though hormosis has some VERY interesting thoughts on this matter - highly recommend reading up on this theory as it's gaining a lot of traction and makes some logical sense). But life and even our discrete selves are not comprised of one set of cells that last our lifetimes (some yes, but most not). Instead our cells divide and create (mostly) identical clones throughout our lives without many perceived effects in the short term, even if obvious over long term.
The true question is why doesn't this happen perpetually? If we believe that DNA is effectively the blueprint for life, then beyond the minute minority of escaping and persistent errors and external effectors to this process, then why doesn't it continue indefinitely? There's no really strong hypothesis here but some theories about the mechanics of why this occurs have been ventured. Specifically, a lot of research has been centered on the DNA telomere, which is sort of like the opposite of a rattlesnake's rattler that grows with each shedding except that it seems to be slowly lost over successive generations of cells and it's not clear why. However, there are some exciting discoveries in this area, including an enzyme which is the FDA trial I previously alluded to - as well as a supplement company already producing a version at very high cost right now. However, it's still very early and does nothing without numerous trials - and ironically will only yield insight when the subjects expire, which one would hope occurs only after receiving some of the benefits though all but guaranteed to be the opposite as par for the course of scientific pursuit. That's soon going to be the new dilemma - is the significant lengthening of one's lifespan worth the early adopter risk that it not only fails to work at great expense, but actually exacerbated and expedited that which it sought to prevent. Then again, that perspective is very much shaped if you're on the way in our the way out I guess
> To say that we cannot do that is to say that Science itself is too weak a method to overcome the level of complexity presented by advanced biological organisms.
That's not what science does. Science is the process by which we learn about natural processes. It doesn't overcome anything.
To invoke "Science" in this way is to treat it like a religion, like an all-powerful god. I mean, you even capitalized it.
Kurzweil, De Gray, and many others do this too. Either they don't actually know what science is, or they are cynically feeding a misperception of what science is. Either way, it's bad.
The process of using scientific knowledge to achieve human goals is generally known as engineering. And the heart of engineering is dealing with constraints. We have no idea, today, what constrains human life spans. Therefore we have no scientific reason to believe that we can ever use engineering to extend them significantly beyond what they are today.
We do know that all lifeforms have a limited lifespan, and most animals' are shorter than humans. That's a big clue that the constraint might be something fundamental and not easily overcome.
Good point. A related point, which occurred to me a while ago after reading various reports of scientific discoveries vs. other reports of how some things have not been figured out yet, is that there seemed to be a tendency to mention scientists by name for individual discoveries, but for the non-discoveries, people tended to write something like: "[Ss]cience has not yet discovered $THING or explained $PHENOMENON".
>Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of when, not if. The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery in vivo.
And who told you it's a given that we'll manage to have such an understanding?
Who said we'll create anything to succeed us? (I mean besides Kurzweil and his ilk)?
I find much more probable that we'll wipe ourselves out in one way or another. We had some means to do so since the 40s, but since we added a lot more sick ways to our arsenal...
No body wakes up everyday to write unit test cases for Skynet 1.0
But people are working towards building robots that will replace a lot of human activity. It won't be sudden, it will be gradual, it will be so slow you won't have a way of stopping it. Opposition to any such thing will get you labelled as a luddite.
At some point in time trains will run autonomously, followed by courier vans then may be cars, Amazon will decide buying a fleet of robots from boston dynamics yields better returns than hiring people to word at their warehouses. As algorithms get intelligent and sensors get better, march towards singularity is a question of when, not if.
Your enemy is automation. Not Kurzweil.
The slow march towards singularity didn't start two decades back. It started when the wheel was built and rudimentary stone tools were invented by hunter gatherers.
Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of when, not if.
The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery in vivo.
To say that we cannot do that is to say that Science itself is too weak a method to overcome the level of complexity presented by advanced biological organisms.
It is therefore to predict that scientific progress will come to an unexpected, screeching halt, some time in the next decades.
I find this an absurd scenario, and therefore believe to the contrary. Science will overcome the level of complexity of human biology, and continue onward even long after that.
Because, putting anthropocentric intuitions to the side, the human body is not the most complex phenomenon imaginable.