...I wish you would not exaggerate their weaknesses by labeling them complete nonsense. Cybernetic life support...
I agree with you and actually think that cybernetic life support it quite undervalued as possibly the best short-term solution to life extension (or at least the one with the least variance). If it works, the life expectancy would be the one of head/brain rather than being bottlenecked on heart/lungs/liver.
The reason I think it’s the best is because head transplants have already been done and sustained head’s life for few hours, in 1960s (that’s 50-year old medicine, those crazy Russians again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Demikhov). At that point all that was apparently needed is sufficient blood oxygenation. I wonder what kind of extension would be possible with modern medicine. There are obvious and huge life quality issues, but they are theoretically not different from those of neck-down paralysis cases, and might still score above “being dead forever”. On the plus side BCIs are hitting pretty incredible strides and it seems quite conceivable that good amount of sensory input and “natural-feeling” (vs computer-mediated as in “walk 5 steps”) body control can be recreated. I think this is a very serious strategy and people should be looking at it. You can always freeze yourself at the end anyways.
I agree with you and actually think that cybernetic life support it quite undervalued as possibly the best short-term solution to life extension (or at least the one with the least variance). If it works, the life expectancy would be the one of head/brain rather than being bottlenecked on heart/lungs/liver.
The reason I think it’s the best is because head transplants have already been done and sustained head’s life for few hours, in 1960s (that’s 50-year old medicine, those crazy Russians again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Demikhov). At that point all that was apparently needed is sufficient blood oxygenation. I wonder what kind of extension would be possible with modern medicine. There are obvious and huge life quality issues, but they are theoretically not different from those of neck-down paralysis cases, and might still score above “being dead forever”. On the plus side BCIs are hitting pretty incredible strides and it seems quite conceivable that good amount of sensory input and “natural-feeling” (vs computer-mediated as in “walk 5 steps”) body control can be recreated. I think this is a very serious strategy and people should be looking at it. You can always freeze yourself at the end anyways.