ShanksTheTruthSeeker: “Back in the days, what motivated you to decide to cure aging ?”
Aubrey de Grey: “The correct question is, what the hell is wrong with everyone else that stops them from being motivated to cure aging? It’s responsible for the overwhelming majority of global suffering. WTF?”
Speaking personally, I’m motivated to cure aging for obvious reasons, but demotivated by the immense complexity of the task. To cure aging we need to essentially devise a way to remove most forms of decay from an extremely complicated system. Remove some forms of decay and other forms arise. The body has natural mechanisms to fight decay but the mechanisms themselves suffer from decay.
I don’t understand why brain transplants don’t seem to be a high priority for anti-ageists. It seems putting an old brain into the head of a clone would solve like half of all medical issues all at once. The other half would be extremely messy to deal with, maybe impossible, but first things first, no? Is there any serious work that’s been done on this that I’ve overlooked? If not, why? Ethics boards, maybe?
This is consistent with 27chaos’s statement, though. If you get a body transplant at 65, you have solved a number of medical problems, and the chance of living the next 30 years without having to worry about Alzheimer’s is ~70%. Of course, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for only 60-80% of cases of dementia. But still, I think there would be a market.
It is also worth noting that cardiovascular factors, physical fitness, and diet contribute to the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. These are not the greatest risk factors (as you might have guessed, age is the greatest risk factor), but these can be managed if you are motivated to do so—in fact, getting a new body should be a fairly effective way of managing cardiovascular fitness.
I am sure there would be a market. And if someguy just showed up and said “Hey, look, I can do brain transplants, this is how it works, ain’t it great?”, everyone would go Yeah! That’s great! Huzzah!
But the issue is with two words in the (grand)+parent post: “high priority”. Given limited resources, are brain transplants what people should be working on?
I suspect that China underreports the prevalence (“My uncle Xi who lives in a remote village became a bit strange as he got old, but it’s OK, there is no need to take him to a doctor in the city...”), but I have no idea why Europe is different from US/Brazil. I think it would be easy to google up more data if you want to explore this further.
If I could clone myself (including brain-state), I’d of course pre-commit to roshambo amongst myselves for organs. And then clone more.
If the clones didn’t include brain-state, I’d probably look for ways to make brain-free partial clones to avoid the question of who I’d be killing to live extra years.
Ok, the answer to OPs question is that action flick “clones” are not possible with near future technology, and most likely making them (with Drexlerian nanotech or something) is strictly more difficult than just fixing your present body. Your real world clone would take 20 years to “make” and be a separate person, like you would be if you grew up when they did.
Your real world clone would take 20 years to “make” and be a separate person, like you would be if you grew up when they did.
This is partially missing the point. The goal is to make a separate body, compatible with your biology. There is no need to grow a clone with a functioning brain—any medical science sufficient to clone a human would be able to clone an acephalic human (WARNING, NSFL, fetus with head damage), and growing a clone with a fully functioning brain (i.e., not driven insane by being grown in a de facto sensory deprivation chamber) would be much more expensive, even if you kept education to a minimum.
Still, all this is ethically questionable, something that would need a lot of advance planning, and will be a long time in the future. It is true that fixing your body piecemeal will almost surely be a better option—even if it does end up involving some limited form of cloning organs.
There’s a quote I haven’t turned up about people praying for eternal life in heaven when they don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon.
It may be worth noting that the quote is from before the internet. It’s a lot easier to have something to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon than it used to be.
I have shelves. They hold books, and board-games, and occasionally even DVDs. I live with my girlfriend and another friend. At last resort, we have alcohol.
Most people can’t imagine what a world without ageing would be like, and they can’t want what they can’t imagine.
I have to agree with Lumifer—most people can imagine (and want) a world without aging, because they would not bother to think about the demographic trends. I would compare this to asking someone to imagine a world in which no one was living below the average income level; I think most people would agree that this is easy to conceive of, and desirable. It’s only the select few who would think this through and wonder how the powers that be are going to achieve this without doing something very drastic to a lot of people.
That was sort of my point. Most people are going to imagine it as a more perfect world. But if they were to think through all of the implications, they would see that it probably involves massive taxation and a very very strong central government, with less motivation for people to do dirty and difficult jobs.
They want something they can’t, or don’t, accurately imagine.
Less ageing, people still dying from starvation, diseases, wars—should be easy to imagine.
Ironically, if you would cast a magic spell that makes everyone on the whole planet stop ageing at 30, the situation in undeveloped countries would probably remain similar. It’s the developed countries that would have a problem.
If a population has an average birthrate of 1.5 children but a small subset, say Amish or Hasidic Jews have a much, much higher birthrate, then in the long-run the population birthrate will likely be much higher than 1.5.
ShanksTheTruthSeeker: “Back in the days, what motivated you to decide to cure aging ?”
Aubrey de Grey: “The correct question is, what the hell is wrong with everyone else that stops them from being motivated to cure aging? It’s responsible for the overwhelming majority of global suffering. WTF?”
From a Reddit AMA.
Most people can’t imagine what a world without ageing would be like, and they can’t want what they can’t imagine.
Speaking personally, I’m motivated to cure aging for obvious reasons, but demotivated by the immense complexity of the task. To cure aging we need to essentially devise a way to remove most forms of decay from an extremely complicated system. Remove some forms of decay and other forms arise. The body has natural mechanisms to fight decay but the mechanisms themselves suffer from decay.
I don’t understand why brain transplants don’t seem to be a high priority for anti-ageists. It seems putting an old brain into the head of a clone would solve like half of all medical issues all at once. The other half would be extremely messy to deal with, maybe impossible, but first things first, no? Is there any serious work that’s been done on this that I’ve overlooked? If not, why? Ethics boards, maybe?
Look at the prevalence of Alzheimer’s as a function of age:
Until you solve that particular problem, transplanting brains seems to be pointless.
This is consistent with 27chaos’s statement, though. If you get a body transplant at 65, you have solved a number of medical problems, and the chance of living the next 30 years without having to worry about Alzheimer’s is ~70%. Of course, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for only 60-80% of cases of dementia. But still, I think there would be a market.
It is also worth noting that cardiovascular factors, physical fitness, and diet contribute to the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. These are not the greatest risk factors (as you might have guessed, age is the greatest risk factor), but these can be managed if you are motivated to do so—in fact, getting a new body should be a fairly effective way of managing cardiovascular fitness.
You also add additional medical issues that come up with transplantation. Likely you won’t get all nerves to be perfectly lined up.
I am sure there would be a market. And if someguy just showed up and said “Hey, look, I can do brain transplants, this is how it works, ain’t it great?”, everyone would go Yeah! That’s great! Huzzah!
But the issue is with two words in the (grand)+parent post: “high priority”. Given limited resources, are brain transplants what people should be working on?
Why are USA and Brazil higher than China and Europe? Is something different about Western Hemisphere? Indian curses or something.
I suspect that China underreports the prevalence (“My uncle Xi who lives in a remote village became a bit strange as he got old, but it’s OK, there is no need to take him to a doctor in the city...”), but I have no idea why Europe is different from US/Brazil. I think it would be easy to google up more data if you want to explore this further.
If you could clone yourself, you would kill your copy for spare parts? I think more than just ethics boards have trouble with that.
(I also get the sense that brain transplants are neither feasible nor projected to be before uploading, basically.)
If I could clone myself (including brain-state), I’d of course pre-commit to roshambo amongst myselves for organs. And then clone more.
If the clones didn’t include brain-state, I’d probably look for ways to make brain-free partial clones to avoid the question of who I’d be killing to live extra years.
Ok, the answer to OPs question is that action flick “clones” are not possible with near future technology, and most likely making them (with Drexlerian nanotech or something) is strictly more difficult than just fixing your present body. Your real world clone would take 20 years to “make” and be a separate person, like you would be if you grew up when they did.
This is partially missing the point. The goal is to make a separate body, compatible with your biology. There is no need to grow a clone with a functioning brain—any medical science sufficient to clone a human would be able to clone an acephalic human (WARNING, NSFL, fetus with head damage), and growing a clone with a fully functioning brain (i.e., not driven insane by being grown in a de facto sensory deprivation chamber) would be much more expensive, even if you kept education to a minimum.
Still, all this is ethically questionable, something that would need a lot of advance planning, and will be a long time in the future. It is true that fixing your body piecemeal will almost surely be a better option—even if it does end up involving some limited form of cloning organs.
Most people do want to live forever in heaven
And they can’t really imagine what that would be like.
There’s a quote I haven’t turned up about people praying for eternal life in heaven when they don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon.
The downvote isn’t mine. On the other hand, my reply to that quote is that I can pretty easily keep myself occupied on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
Thank you.
It may be worth noting that the quote is from before the internet. It’s a lot easier to have something to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon than it used to be.
I have shelves. They hold books, and board-games, and occasionally even DVDs. I live with my girlfriend and another friend. At last resort, we have alcohol.
Why not? That seem to be a very trivial exercise of imagination.
Really? What are the trivial demographic trends?
Also, it’s emotionally threatening to say that they’re suffering the ravages of ageing meaninglessly.
I have to agree with Lumifer—most people can imagine (and want) a world without aging, because they would not bother to think about the demographic trends. I would compare this to asking someone to imagine a world in which no one was living below the average income level; I think most people would agree that this is easy to conceive of, and desirable. It’s only the select few who would think this through and wonder how the powers that be are going to achieve this without doing something very drastic to a lot of people.
“Imagine a world in which no one was living below the average income level.”
This is a world where everyone has exactly the same income. I don’t see any special reason why it would be desirable, though.
That was sort of my point. Most people are going to imagine it as a more perfect world. But if they were to think through all of the implications, they would see that it probably involves massive taxation and a very very strong central government, with less motivation for people to do dirty and difficult jobs.
They want something they can’t, or don’t, accurately imagine.
Yes, really. We’re talking about imagining a world, not about writing a paper on the likely consequences.
So what are the trivial demographic trends?
Less ageing, people still dying from starvation, diseases, wars—should be easy to imagine.
Ironically, if you would cast a magic spell that makes everyone on the whole planet stop ageing at 30, the situation in undeveloped countries would probably remain similar. It’s the developed countries that would have a problem.
In the long run, Malthus wins.
With birthrates of 1.5 children or less per woman that might not be true.
If a population has an average birthrate of 1.5 children but a small subset, say Amish or Hasidic Jews have a much, much higher birthrate, then in the long-run the population birthrate will likely be much higher than 1.5.
The Amish are a problem that’s quite separate from curing aging. They likely wouldn’t use it.
A population with a high birth rate grows exponentially even without curing aging.