Immortality only 20 years away ?

[UM-Bot]

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/newsitems/dna.jpg

Scientist Ray Kurzweil has claimed that immortality will be a possibility within as little as 20 years due to advancements in nanotechnology that could lead to us being able to reprogramme our bodies as we see fit.

"Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time through nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works. "

View: Full Article | Source: Telegraph

[jbondo]

I've heard this 20 year thing before from cancer cures to free energy. While I don't doubt progress in these areas ( I work in nanotechnology myself), I just don't see world governments allowing such things. At least not for us poor schmo's.

[Ashyne]

I own 2 of Ray Kurzweil's most popular books- "Age Of Spiritual Machines" and "The Singularity Is Near".

They are very interesting books and while I don't doubt that almost everything he described would become reality one day, I am very skeptical of the time frame that he proposes for these inventions- they are too unreasonable.

Ray Kurzweil also appears to be too enthusiastic for his own good. It seems that he is trying too hard to live long enough to achieve his dream of perfection and immortality, if you look at his other published books on eating healthy and living healthy and his sometimes grand "visions" of a Utopia within his lifetime.

I believe that he is a very talented futurist with a lot of foresight, but he is just too eager for his dreams to come true that he can exaggerate too much sometimes.

[Sundew]

Don't forget it wasn't too long ago when scientists also predicted that by the year 2000 we would have lunar and martian bases, commercial passenger space planes, flying automobiles, no more disease, etc. While we see the beginnings of such technology emerging, it is hardly common place reality, the practicality and expense of these and other "miracles of the future" limit their availability. Also it is not too hard to envision, that if this one day becomes reality, those with power will use such longevity to bad ends: think Fidel Castro living for several hundred years. Immoral evil overlords, not a pleasant thought.

[Pinx]

Wow, I just stumbled this exact article earlier this morning. Anyway, it all seems a little too science fiction-y to me. 50 years? Maybe. 20? No way.

[Startraveler]

I don't understand his obsession with immortality. Who wants to live forever?

[JackoftheFools]

Will we likely have the technology to do these things in 20 years?

Will the big pharmaceutical companys allow such a technology to take place costing them a whole lot of money?

Knowing this is how it will turn out, how do I feel about it? :angry2:

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

Even if science does eventually manage to keep our bodies young, it's hardly immortality. Imagine the very first customer paying millions for this kind of procedure only to walk out of the building and get hit and killed by a bus.

Besides, death is one of nature's function in population control. We're overcrowded as it is.

[SRCivic98]

"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs." - from the article.

sounds more like the story line to surrogate. but also, to live forever with nano cells would have to come at a price for sure. not to mention, an EMP blast would kill you in seconds because of the electrical pulses. so it's just a thought but I wouldn't want to live forever unless I could survive through that and be able to use my abilities to how I want to, not how anyone else wants me to.

[Raptor]

Wow, I just stumbled this exact article earlier this morning. Anyway, it all seems a little too science fiction-y to me. 50 years? Maybe. 20? No way.

No one's saying that in twenty years there will be a pill that you can take that will repair all the damage in your body and you'll live forever, it will be incremental. It's actually quite fascinating.

Imagine that you're forty years old today. In twenty years you'll be turning sixty, even by today's standards you're likely to have many years ahead of you, but in the future, even more so. It's quite likely that you'll live to be seventy. By then another ten years has past, and so medicine has advanced another ten years meaning it's even more likely that you'll live to eighty, by which time medicine has advanced another ten years and now you'll probably live to ninety; and this process repeats forever.

There are lots of interesting talks about it, one idea that I've heard a few times is that the first person to reach 1000 years old will only be born 10 years after the birth of first person to reach 150, due to the nature of the rate at which medicine advances and the 1000 year old being caught in the 'cusp', where they just manage to survive until to the point that medicine is able to suspend their age almost indefinitely.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Raptor

[behaviour???]

Let us wait and see the results because that is the only thing we can do

Thanks

B???

[J.B.]

Immortality's not a worthy goal in the first place. Not unless we reach space first, that's where we need to head with this. You have to do things in order, yet we keep wasting our energy making all of our advancements simultaneously, injuring Gosh knows how many people.

[javelin]

Kurzweil doesn't know what he's saying.

Not that he's wrong or right.

But can you imagine how many Saddam's, Hitlers, Stalin's and Mao's could arise that the world could never quite get rid of?

Immortality is the dream of ages.

We were meant to live forever.

But replacing your body with interchangeable mechanical parts?

Can you imagine a world of nanobot killers?

Or a world of nanobots meant to perform heart surgery that bug and cut your heart out?

Or a world where George Bush or Hillary Clinton live on and on, re-running for president every couple of decades?

A world where assassins could drop a few nanos into your coffee and 'rearrange your liver through the solid mental grace'?

A world full of somethings that are partly flesh and blood partly machine - like the 1999 movie Virus :

Or are WE to become the Borg?!

This sounds uncannily like a certain text in the book of Revelation: 9:6

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

Could our mad scientists actually now be inventing the context for that? Will these genetic and nanotech experiments go terribly wrong?

I think so.

Could this prediction of 'immortality' actually be the harbinger of the arrival of that verse?

Scary.

Edited September 23, 2009 by javelin

[MissingAChance]

well they better make everyone sterile too... and i think they should find a different word than immortal... im purdy sure u will still be able to die.

[Pinx]

No one's saying that in twenty years there will be a pill that you can take that will repair all the damage in your body and you'll live forever, it will be incremental. It's actually quite fascinating.

Actually, that's exactly what the article said (minus the pill thing):

Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.

I just think he's being a little too optimistic with his time frame.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Pinx

[Alienated Being]

If this is available when I am 40, I will definitely do this. I will program my body to look 40 for EVER. I never want to die.

[joshy]

I don't understand his obsession with immortality. Who wants to live forever?

me

[WoIverine]

I don't understand his obsession with immortality. Who wants to live forever?

I do. There's so much to learn and do, a whole universe to explore, everything to learn and experience.

[WoIverine]

If this is available when I am 40, I will definitely do this. I will program my body to look 40 for EVER. I never want to die.

Screw that, with nanotech you could literally be like Batman, etc. Physical and mental perfection in nearly every way would eventually be possible.

[Cookes453]

I don't understand his obsession with immortality. Who wants to live forever?

In my opinion, the accumulation of knowledge, learning, and the exploration of the universe and it's wonders is what life's all about. Some people feel the purpose of life is to get married, start a family, find true love, etc. I feel that the purpose is to learn everything there is to know; the accumulation of knowledge. I would be perfectly content exploring the universe by myself in a starship for thousands of years. I would love to be able to see the human race go through many transformations, it would be very interesting. That's the jist of why I'd want to live for a very long time. Forever for me, would be thousands of years.

[Der]

Immortality's not a worthy goal in the first place. Not unless we reach space first, that's where we need to head with this. You have to do things in order, yet we keep wasting our energy making all of our advancements simultaneously, injuring Gosh knows how many people.

Huh?

[Alienated Being]

Screw that, with nanotech you could literally be like Batman, etc. Physical and mental perfection in nearly every way would eventually be possible.

What's wrong with that? If that kind of technology were available to make me like Batman or Spiderman, then I would jump at it the moment it came up. I'd do it because I like helping people.

[Shuriken]

don't forget that this guy has predicted many things, and most of them (actually I'm not aware of any that haven't) have come true. He has an amazing track record in foreseeing stuff like this...

[RamboIII]

I don't understand his obsession with immortality. Who wants to live forever?

Not people who live in Cleveland

[RamboIII]

Just read the full article.... that isn't immortality, it is becoming a machine. A machine man with a machine mind and a machine heart. I don't want to be a machine. Writing books in a few minutes? Not a chance. I'd pick Shakespeare any day.