Life Extension Research

[grarpamp]

On 8/7/19, John Newman <jnn at synfin.org> wrote:>
> You think we'll be able to map the relevant structure of a
> human brain and convert and run it on a different
> substrate (e.g. a computer) BEFORE or AFTER we have
> biological solutions that let us live forever

Ignoring law, ethics, religion, risk, government, etc...

Depends on the extent of what needs modeled,
tooled, and solved, and in what domains, to reach
one or the other first.

Biological Forever...
1.1) Seems perhaps a matter of hacking in a patch to
general aging symptom, or reengineering the root cause.
It seems doable, especially on massively parallelizable
early stage test platform such as at sperm meets egg...
twiddling bits testing theories until something works.
Together, 5 male and 5 female researchers could privately
finance and quietly do it in a communal workspace if need be.
1.2) Rewiring any animal that has already hatched
may be a harder task... viral, prion, etc. However the tooling
and knowledge in 1.1 is likely to have general applicability.


Digital Forever...
1.0) Even if you had a brain computer (whether digital or analog),
which few are even suggesting any ideas yet how to do
(even with digital being easy to test on emulator, FPGA, ASIC)
2.0) You need to upload the brain consciousness and memory
to it, which no one has any idea yet how to do,
certainly not while alive in nondestructive fashion.


Answer: AFTER currently seems much more likely,
and much sooner.


> copies ... solar system
> heat death
> [external] disease (where not an as yet undiscovered cause of aging)
> threats
> accident (irrecoverable physical splattering)

These all the same... off topic external to the problem
of solving aging itself. And today other than disease, all
are negligible causes of death before aging. At least until
you get to 1000+ year spans, wherein accident rates
start registering as taking their toll.

> The Earth is being ravaged

Solving life extension probably doesn't require 8 billion
humans from which to draw odds of finding the right talent
and odds at doing so. Nor likely does solving anything else.

> other shit slows us down.
> it's all a big race really.

True. Which is why society needs to seriously
start picking apart the legacy ignorables above,
discarding the bullshit, and proceeding with what isn't.

The chance that the bulk of it is some protective
feedback circuit breaker built into the genome
to prevent suiciding ourselves, as opposed to
being utter bullshit FUD impediment, seems low.

> It makes for good sci-fi.

Only if you sit on your ass doing nothing about it.
Instead of reading it, ignore shit and try creating and living it.