Longevity research has improved at a rate of about 1 year longer every 10 years. The probability of a major breakthrough in the next 30 years is quite low, but the existence of an FAI substantially increases that probability. I would argue the probability of a superintelligence being created multiplied by the probability of that entity increasing human lifespan beyond current research trajectories is greater than the same result occurring in the absence of a superintelligence. FAI isn’t just important because of the need to preserve the human race; it increases the growth rate of all other technologies.
We haven’t cured aging, we’ve just improved treatment for a lot of specific diseases. A cure for aging would massively improve life expectancy almost overnight. And it wouldn’t be predictable from previous trends of increased vaccinations or whatever.
A cure for aging would be almost as difficult as “cure” for entropy.
I mean, it wouldn’t necessarily be physically impossible, but short of massive nanotech, I don’t see how you could prevent DNA mutations and oxidative damage to extracellular proteins from accumulating over the years.
This is wrong—The body isn’t a closed system, but an ongoing exporter of entrophy. There is no fundamental reason why “better repair mechanisms” wouldn’t result in an permanent health. I don’t like calling this immortality, because.. well, mishap and violence will still get you eventually, but the whole decay and slow dying thing isn’t written into the laws of physics or even biology. It’s just that Azathoth never had a reason to fix it.
There are animals which don’t appear to age. And there have even been some successful anti aging treatments applied on animals. Even simple stuff like caloric restriction might significantly increase lifespan.
My ideal method would be cloning bodies and doing brain transplants. Of course you still need to prevent damage to the brain itself, but that solves like 90% of the other problems which occur elsewhere. And it’s been shown that young blood helps the brain too. At some point we might be able to grow new brain tissue as well and keep you alive Ship of Theseus style.
Same way you prevent cuts and bruises from accumulating over the years: Repair and replacement. Your body doesn’t stay whole by preventing cuts from happening, but by effectively patching over them when they do. In principle there’s no reason this couldn’t be applied to DNA and oxidative damage. At least for DNA we know that mutation rates vary between organisms (as indeed do rates of aging), so it’s theoretically possible to lower the mutation rate.
I wouldn’t expect there to be a single cure that would change things “overnight”. Even de Grey talks about 7 different categories of aging damage, each of which will need a different type of treatment; and those are just general categories, most likely there will be different treatments for different systems in the body as well. And he’s probably somewhat optimistic in his description of the problem.
However, I think it’s entirely possible that we’ll make enough progress in enough different areas to reach longevity escape velocity in our lifetimes. It’s not going to be a single breakthrough that happens overnight though.
It has more or less been following a logistic growth curve, with the majority of the change occurring around midcentury and the vast majority of longevity increase occurring in early life due to infectious disease. The oldest people have not gotten appreciably older over civilized human history either.
Longevity research has improved at a rate of about 1 year longer every 10 years. The probability of a major breakthrough in the next 30 years is quite low, but the existence of an FAI substantially increases that probability. I would argue the probability of a superintelligence being created multiplied by the probability of that entity increasing human lifespan beyond current research trajectories is greater than the same result occurring in the absence of a superintelligence. FAI isn’t just important because of the need to preserve the human race; it increases the growth rate of all other technologies.
We haven’t cured aging, we’ve just improved treatment for a lot of specific diseases. A cure for aging would massively improve life expectancy almost overnight. And it wouldn’t be predictable from previous trends of increased vaccinations or whatever.
A cure for aging would be almost as difficult as “cure” for entropy.
I mean, it wouldn’t necessarily be physically impossible, but short of massive nanotech, I don’t see how you could prevent DNA mutations and oxidative damage to extracellular proteins from accumulating over the years.
This is wrong—The body isn’t a closed system, but an ongoing exporter of entrophy. There is no fundamental reason why “better repair mechanisms” wouldn’t result in an permanent health. I don’t like calling this immortality, because.. well, mishap and violence will still get you eventually, but the whole decay and slow dying thing isn’t written into the laws of physics or even biology. It’s just that Azathoth never had a reason to fix it.
There are animals which don’t appear to age. And there have even been some successful anti aging treatments applied on animals. Even simple stuff like caloric restriction might significantly increase lifespan.
My ideal method would be cloning bodies and doing brain transplants. Of course you still need to prevent damage to the brain itself, but that solves like 90% of the other problems which occur elsewhere. And it’s been shown that young blood helps the brain too. At some point we might be able to grow new brain tissue as well and keep you alive Ship of Theseus style.
Same way you prevent cuts and bruises from accumulating over the years: Repair and replacement. Your body doesn’t stay whole by preventing cuts from happening, but by effectively patching over them when they do. In principle there’s no reason this couldn’t be applied to DNA and oxidative damage. At least for DNA we know that mutation rates vary between organisms (as indeed do rates of aging), so it’s theoretically possible to lower the mutation rate.
I wouldn’t expect there to be a single cure that would change things “overnight”. Even de Grey talks about 7 different categories of aging damage, each of which will need a different type of treatment; and those are just general categories, most likely there will be different treatments for different systems in the body as well. And he’s probably somewhat optimistic in his description of the problem.
However, I think it’s entirely possible that we’ll make enough progress in enough different areas to reach longevity escape velocity in our lifetimes. It’s not going to be a single breakthrough that happens overnight though.
It has more or less been following a logistic growth curve, with the majority of the change occurring around midcentury and the vast majority of longevity increase occurring in early life due to infectious disease. The oldest people have not gotten appreciably older over civilized human history either.