If you want a logical reason for the complete disinterest in longevity research shown by the powers that be, the most obvious, if you’re even a little paranoid, is that they already have the secret, and aren’t interested in distributing it to the hoi polloi. If so, members of the inner circle would obviously have to fake their own deaths every so often – otherwise they might face mobs of angry peasants bearing torches.
Biological immortality is cancer-cure-complete. And cancer is very tough, it’s a breakdown of multicellularity coordination. Conspiracy theory bug in brain seeing agency everywhere is much more likely.
It’s virally or bacterially or fungally induced much more of the time than in animals, and metastasis is basically a no-go in an organism that has zero internal cellular mobility due to cell walls, but it does happen.
I would also not be surprised if the fact that a lot of plant cells that are not at the growing tips of shoots are massively massively polyploid (we’re talking 128n in a lot of mature leaf cells) and thus difficult to divide successfully makes it harder for issues to originate in mature plant tissue. Also in most plants there are pretty much only the equivalent of ‘stem cells’ at said growing tips while we tend to have them all over. The growing tips can get screwed up too, and when that happens you get fasciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation) [EDIT: or witche’s brooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch%27s_broom)]
Amusingly, plant cancer can be quite valuable. The unusual grain patterns in large burls make them sought-after for specialty woodwork, and they’re hard to grow deliberately, which has led to problems with poaching from protected forests.
It would be more plausible that they don’t have true immortality, but they do have extended healthy lifespans and some better cancer treatments than we do.
This might take a lot of work. If so, don’t count on seeing effective immortality any time soon, because society doesn’t put much effort into it. In part, this is because the powers that be don’t know understand the points I just made. Sometimes I wonder what they do understand.
Cochrane’s model of the “powers that be” seems to be that they are kind of dumb.
Dunno, but he’s not very consistent in whatever it is. He says at the end of that paragraph:
[Faking your death and returning] wouldn’t mean losing power – real power is already invisible.
If the real powers that be are invisible, i.e. so powerful you’ll never hear of them, they don’t need to pretend to die.
Presumably, the visible powers that be that he begins by talking about are taking their orders from the invisible PTB, who discovered the secret of immortality in their own secret laboratories. But this is Weekly World News territory.
If the real powers that be are invisible, i.e. so powerful you’ll never hear of them, they don’t need to pretend to die.
Sure they would. If some random nobody was living forever without aging, they would still get noticed, as Joseph Curwen discovered.
It’s funny to me that you can’t recognize the sardonic quality of the post (e.g. reference to becoming a “sequoiah farmer.” Being rational does not mean you must exhibit Spock-like literalism!
Sure they would. If some random nobody was living forever without aging, they would still get noticed, as Joseph Curwen discovered.
The PTB are not random nobodies, and Curwen is fictional.
It’s funny to me that you can’t recognize the sardonic quality of the post (e.g. reference to becoming a “sequoiah farmer.”
I can recognise many things in the post. I can imagine he’s not serious, and recognise non-seriousness in the post. I can imagine he’s lost it and means every word, and recognise that in the post. I can imagine it’s an idiot test to judge his commenters by their responses, and recognise that in the post. I can read all of these things into the post as easily as each other, which means I don’t know which, if any, is the true meaning. But there is that internal inconsistency about who and what he thinks the PTB are.
The PTB are not random nobodies, and Curwen is fictional.
Seems like you missed the point. I mentioned the example of Joseph Curwen as an illustration, not as evidence. The basic point is that it does not matter how famous/obscure someone is, if they just stay young forever, people will notice. And the idea is that they prefer to remain unnoticed. So the obvious solution is to kill off the old identities every so often and start over in some other place under some new identity.
So that makes it clear that there is no inconsistency in Cochrane’s scenario. As long as they are immortal, they will have to keep switching identities or their anonymity is compromised.
I don’t know which, if any, is the true meaning.
Maybe it’s just because I’m familiar with his general attitude, but I think it is very clear he is joking. I pointed out in my other comment that he’s talked about this before, and he makes it clear that he thinks that longevity research is underfunded because elites are ignorant of the possibilities. He’s comically assuming the opposite: that elites ignore longevity research for the only rational reason: because they are already immortal. If it has to be explained it isn’t as funny, I suppose.
See, if people trying to bring in a new age where people can be brought in line to the legitimate views can just stop posting nonsense like this maybe we can get somewhere. Great, now one of the few legitimate blogs we had now look crazy and we would be delegitimized if we link to it.
I put higher weight on joking than crazy. He might be trying to build up plausible deniability for past/future claims that he really believes in but could get him fired.
The post is about how he was born in a parallel world and then woke up in this world. It’s full of statements intended to be plausible deniable and therefore complicated to read. Eliezer withdraw the post from LW.
This could explain the recent popularity of the vampire romance novels, and the new model of the vampires.
In the past, the most reliable way to longevity was calorie restriction, mostly practiced by hermits. This was the old model of the vampire: an old person, fragile to weather changes (holy water, even daylight), wise and evil, but nonetheless easily defeated by a determined human attack.
These days, I am not sure what exactly the longevity treatment is, but it seems to allow the person to remain young and attractive and strong and quick etc. Maybe not exactly as attractive and as strong as the Twilight novels describe, though; part of that impression is probably just a halo effect around a very-high-status person. Thus, the new kind of vampires. Ones who are obviously superior to average humans, and the only danger for them is their vampire competitors. Unless that is also a metaphor for the world oligarchy.
I get the impression that vampires = superheroes for adolescent girls.
I also find it interesting that from what I’ve heard (I haven’t read the things), Bella Swan in the Twilight novels undergoes a kind of “reverse Arwen” transformation, shedding her humanity and mortality so that she can stay with her vampire husband forever.
From Greg Cochran
He is joking or crazy, right?
Biological immortality is cancer-cure-complete. And cancer is very tough, it’s a breakdown of multicellularity coordination. Conspiracy theory bug in brain seeing agency everywhere is much more likely.
Why do plants not get cancer btw?
They do, but to paraphrase Spock, “its cancer but not as we know it”.
http://www.quora.com/Can-plants-get-cancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oak_burl_wheelbarrow.jpg
It’s virally or bacterially or fungally induced much more of the time than in animals, and metastasis is basically a no-go in an organism that has zero internal cellular mobility due to cell walls, but it does happen.
I would also not be surprised if the fact that a lot of plant cells that are not at the growing tips of shoots are massively massively polyploid (we’re talking 128n in a lot of mature leaf cells) and thus difficult to divide successfully makes it harder for issues to originate in mature plant tissue. Also in most plants there are pretty much only the equivalent of ‘stem cells’ at said growing tips while we tend to have them all over. The growing tips can get screwed up too, and when that happens you get fasciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation) [EDIT: or witche’s brooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch%27s_broom)]
Amusingly, plant cancer can be quite valuable. The unusual grain patterns in large burls make them sought-after for specialty woodwork, and they’re hard to grow deliberately, which has led to problems with poaching from protected forests.
Thanks, that is interesting!
http://33.media.tumblr.com/0e0b568b0d99ae96426e1c4ee3c54fc8/tumblr_nc97h81Sa51qk10pvo1_500.png
As far as I remember there are also a few animals (such as the naked mole rat) which do not get cancer or at least get it very very rarely.
But they do.
It would be more plausible that they don’t have true immortality, but they do have extended healthy lifespans and some better cancer treatments than we do.
He’s joking. Look at his previous post on longevity.
Cochrane’s model of the “powers that be” seems to be that they are kind of dumb.
Dunno, but he’s not very consistent in whatever it is. He says at the end of that paragraph:
If the real powers that be are invisible, i.e. so powerful you’ll never hear of them, they don’t need to pretend to die.
Presumably, the visible powers that be that he begins by talking about are taking their orders from the invisible PTB, who discovered the secret of immortality in their own secret laboratories. But this is Weekly World News territory.
Sure they would. If some random nobody was living forever without aging, they would still get noticed, as Joseph Curwen discovered.
It’s funny to me that you can’t recognize the sardonic quality of the post (e.g. reference to becoming a “sequoiah farmer.” Being rational does not mean you must exhibit Spock-like literalism!
The PTB are not random nobodies, and Curwen is fictional.
I can recognise many things in the post. I can imagine he’s not serious, and recognise non-seriousness in the post. I can imagine he’s lost it and means every word, and recognise that in the post. I can imagine it’s an idiot test to judge his commenters by their responses, and recognise that in the post. I can read all of these things into the post as easily as each other, which means I don’t know which, if any, is the true meaning. But there is that internal inconsistency about who and what he thinks the PTB are.
Seems like you missed the point. I mentioned the example of Joseph Curwen as an illustration, not as evidence. The basic point is that it does not matter how famous/obscure someone is, if they just stay young forever, people will notice. And the idea is that they prefer to remain unnoticed. So the obvious solution is to kill off the old identities every so often and start over in some other place under some new identity.
So that makes it clear that there is no inconsistency in Cochrane’s scenario. As long as they are immortal, they will have to keep switching identities or their anonymity is compromised.
Maybe it’s just because I’m familiar with his general attitude, but I think it is very clear he is joking. I pointed out in my other comment that he’s talked about this before, and he makes it clear that he thinks that longevity research is underfunded because elites are ignorant of the possibilities. He’s comically assuming the opposite: that elites ignore longevity research for the only rational reason: because they are already immortal. If it has to be explained it isn’t as funny, I suppose.
Yes, time to clean up your RSS feed ;)
Remindes me of Lazarus Long resp. the Howard Families.
See, if people trying to bring in a new age where people can be brought in line to the legitimate views can just stop posting nonsense like this maybe we can get somewhere. Great, now one of the few legitimate blogs we had now look crazy and we would be delegitimized if we link to it.
I put higher weight on joking than crazy. He might be trying to build up plausible deniability for past/future claims that he really believes in but could get him fired.
I don’t think that strategy is likely to succeed. Just look at the criticism that Eliezer got after his April first post.
I think the most charitable reading is that he wants to run an experiment on his audience to see the effect of writing utter crap.
I sure hope that we get a post in a few days saying ‘It seems I can’t Social Text you guys.’
What happened? What is this post?
The post is about how he was born in a parallel world and then woke up in this world. It’s full of statements intended to be plausible deniable and therefore complicated to read. Eliezer withdraw the post from LW.
This could explain the recent popularity of the vampire romance novels, and the new model of the vampires.
In the past, the most reliable way to longevity was calorie restriction, mostly practiced by hermits. This was the old model of the vampire: an old person, fragile to weather changes (holy water, even daylight), wise and evil, but nonetheless easily defeated by a determined human attack.
These days, I am not sure what exactly the longevity treatment is, but it seems to allow the person to remain young and attractive and strong and quick etc. Maybe not exactly as attractive and as strong as the Twilight novels describe, though; part of that impression is probably just a halo effect around a very-high-status person. Thus, the new kind of vampires. Ones who are obviously superior to average humans, and the only danger for them is their vampire competitors. Unless that is also a metaphor for the world oligarchy.
What do you mean, you’re not sure? It’s blood! X-D
I get the impression that vampires = superheroes for adolescent girls.
I also find it interesting that from what I’ve heard (I haven’t read the things), Bella Swan in the Twilight novels undergoes a kind of “reverse Arwen” transformation, shedding her humanity and mortality so that she can stay with her vampire husband forever.