If you're alive in 30 years you might be in 1000 years too - <AUTHOR> http://haakonsk.blogg.no/1456259429_if_youre_alive_in_30_.html <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, no, this is pure wishful thinking.

Using life expectancy is a misleading argument, and I believe intentionally so. Life expectancy is a function of early mortality. Longevity is the average age at death of people who die only of old age, and it doesn't vary much and hasn't for thousands of years. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity)

Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fears of people to make arguments about the fountain of youth that won't come to pass. I wish they would, but they won't.

The part that bothers me is that Kurzweil, at least, knows his argument is wrong, it is clear that he's intentionally misusing the data and knows it. Take a look at the very last graph and paragraph in this piece, for example: [http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating- returns](http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns).

Kurzweil uses data from 1850-1920 and then conveniently skips all the years between 1920 and 2000. That is not possible to do accidentally, it is a misleading abuse of statistics. Unfortunately for Kurzweil, if you look at the data between 1920 and 2000, it paints a completely different picture, one of life expectancy asymptotically flat-lining.

Kurzweil also appears to conflate life expectancy with longevity, he says "In the eighteenth century, we added a few days every year to human longevity;". That statement is false. We added to human life expectancy, _not_ longevity. And the gains were due to reductions in infant mortality and violence, and improvements in medicine and general health.

<comment><USER4> > Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey De Grey are playing on the hopes and fears of people > to make arguments about the fountain of youth that won't come to pass. I > wish they would, but they won't.

Oh but they will. Most certainly. It's a question of _when_ , not if.

The body is nothing but a very quirky, very complex bit of machinery. Our task is to scientifically probe that complexity until we have such a great understanding of it that we can manipulate and improve that machinery _in vivo_.

To say that we cannot do that is to say that Science itself is too weak a method to overcome the level of complexity presented by advanced biological organisms.

It is therefore to predict that scientific progress will come to an unexpected, screeching halt, some time in the next decades.

I find this an absurd scenario, and therefore believe to the contrary. Science will overcome the level of complexity of human biology, and continue onward even long after that.

Because, putting anthropocentric intuitions to the side, the human body is not the most complex phenomenon imaginable.

<comment><USER3> Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death.

To be clear, I'm not saying it can't ever happen, I'm saying that DeGrey's and Kurzweils claims that it is happening and will come to pass in the next century are bogus.

<comment><USER5> >Kurzweil and DeGrey are arguing that it's already happening. It is not, there is no evidence to date that we've moved longevity in a meaningful way, nor that technology is involved in anything other than improvements in health and medicine and environment, further delaying death.

This is absolutely incorrect, unless you are being exceedingly facetious about the scientific process. There have been some truly remarkable advancements that span the gamut from simple behavioral changes like reduced calorie intake to advances in knowledge of certain enzymes and other compounds that have yielded statistically significant results - published results of just these two examples have yielded up to 50% increase in longevity in various animals with the latter leading to accelerated FDA approvals for human trials.

I think you're attempting to split hairs by quantifying two necessarily qualitative terms which really have a common understanding to be how long people live on average. And in doing so, you commit the same error you highlight: surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average between 1920-2000? Even if you hold fast the true importance of lexical disambiguation, most would disagree on straw man grounds.

Where I do somewhat agree or at least am very open to consider is that some other force is at play that we don't yet understand. The fairly recent theory of hormosis presents some profound philosophical arguments that cannot be ignored. Life as we know it may have evolved to live less than its full potential for reasons we have yet to discover - perhaps highly interdependent relationships between co-evolved cooporative cells can only resist entropy for so long. If this is the case, then this sort of predefined balance/order would mean gains are offset by newly emerging losses - an example would be the massive increase in cancer occurrence that has mirrored increases in life expectancy, moreso when this broad category of diseases is considered by its generic definition of "uncontrolled cellular growth".

So there's certainly room for reasonable skepticism and it should shape our expectations accordingly. But that shouldn't mean the end of these pursuits nor the hope for what they could yield. And prudent scientific observation should at least suggest that greater longevity is possible. I recently read an interesting article about jellyfish and Hydra, which go through various developmental stages that actually come full circle and leading some to theorize that these somewhat basic life forms may actually be immortal. There's also tardigrades, which can live in the most extreme environments imaginable, including volcanic vents and even celestial bodies traveling through space! They've experimentally proven all our understanding of life wrong and that's only in the past few decades. Kurzweil is overly optimistic about these things because I suppose there's a degree of fear and insecurity there - he's likely predicting accelerated time lines because that's a narrative he can be part of and wants to believe that to be likely for obvious reasons. But I don't think he's wrong and fully admire anyone promoting a hopeful and tenacious outlook on life instead of the increasing opposite trend of disillusionment and cynicism - but that's an entirely different discussion.

<comment><USER3> You don't have to believe me. I'm only relaying what is the currently accepted scientific understanding, that so far we've only treated the symptoms of aging, not increased the potential for longevity.

"The U.S. Census Bureau view on the future of longevity is that life expectancy in the United States will be in the mid-80s by 2050 (up from 77.85 in 2006) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, _as opposed to merely treating the effects of aging as is done today._ " (emphasis mine)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity)

> surely you're not suggesting that longevity decreased on average between > 1920-2000?

You've completely lost me here. This is a straw man argument, I didn't say a thing about what happened to longevity this century, and the data clearly shows it has gone up slightly. Experts agree it will reach an asymptotic peak _unless_ some science magic happens. But no science magic has yet happened, and while I agree we should pursue it, we have no scientific reasons to suspect that it will aside from human curiosity, desire to live longer, and fear of death.

> Kurzweil is overly optimistic about these things

Now that's just funny. There's a world of difference between being optimistic and overtly lying to prove a point that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER5> Again, The Census Bureau is hardly an authority on this matter - they're concerned with the challenge of just logistically counting Americans every few years via surveys (the lowest order of the scientific method) and it's questionable how precisely they even do that considering I can attest to having missed one such survey myself years ago. I treat their predictions on longevity with the same skepticism I view their census stats, which is optimistic given the massive gap in expertise. This, by the way, is in no way an attempt to diminish the very real and difficult challenges this task presents - only to place their expertise accurately.

Experts very much DO NOT agree on this and the fact that literally billions of dollars in R&D are expended on this area of science in just the US is testament to that. Sure it doesn't mean any groundbreaking discovery is guaranteed to happen - but it does show that belief in the possibility is alive and well. And why not? Those immortal jellyfish share 97% of the same DNA, including long stretches of matching sequences and compatible genes that have been experimentally transferred between them and other life forms numerous times. Even Right Whales, which are conscious mammals sharing immense biological relation to people can live 200 years or more, and that's in the absence of anything remotely resembling science and the presence of numerous impediments, including us, their generic brethren. Tardigrades may end up being miniature space suits for the most advanced intergalactic life forms known - who knows? What we do know is they throw most of what we believed to be true about life and morality right out the window - and that's a good thing. All this is to say that the possibility of longetivity increases driven by scientific exploration is much greater than the likelihood of that not being the case.

Kurzweil is who he is, for better or worse. But he has made outlandish predictions over the years, many of which have come about despite the skepticism. He's a successful entrepreneur and employed in a very senior position at one of the most valuable and forward looking companies in the world. He's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't completely dismiss him as a crank. I disagree with some of the time lines he has, though cautiously because it doesn't take many compounding discoveries to get there on his schedule. But fundamentally, I agree with much of what he says - even though I think what they mean for us as humans and the universe as a whole is much less certain, and likely as scary as they are promising.

EDIT: here are some links you might want to read to confirm that whole "experts agree" conclusion:

Henrietta Lacks - the woman whose specific cancer mutation provided the vast majority of cells used to study cancer and numerous other cellular process, to this day. Cells which are effectively immortal: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was- on...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/05/there-was-once-a-woman- who-had-immortal-cells/)

Immortal Jellyfish, from that disreputable rag, The New York Times..: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a- jellyfish-u...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish- unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all)

Just search HN for immortal and see what you find, then let me know if your assessment remains the same

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > So if you've made it to 150, you're "over the hump" (a long time ago), and > then there's simply no limit to how long you can live.

Even if we accept that life-extending and rejuvenating technologies will progress as described, and that all diseases will eventually be either curable or eradicated, there's still the risk of death from accident (or murder).

In England and Wales in 2010, about 0.025% of the population died from accidental or malicious (but not self-inflicted) injury or poisoning. If we take that as a typical annual risk of death, then over a thousand years you have a 22% chance of dying from one of those causes. At about 3000 years, it becomes more likely than not: at about 9000 years, overwhelmingly more likely (~90% chance of death); at about 50000, a practical certainty (> 99.999%).

Of course, the above assumes that risk of death from injury won't drop as medical technologies improve, which is wrong, but as long as it's non-zero, there is still going to be a statistical limit on the length of life. No hanging around till the heat death of the universe for you.

<comment><USER7> Getting to 150 and then stopping ageing means you'll live the next 850 years of your life in the body of a 150 year old. That doesn't sound fun.

<comment><USER8> Some of the treatments are expected to also reverse the effects of aging, so you wouldn't live for 1000 years in the body of a 150 year old. Although I suspect it won't be neat and clean. So if you're born into a world with aging treatments, you might live for 1000 years in the body of a 25 year old, but if you age and then get the treatments, even though you might have the body of a 25 year old, you might have some scarring or other effects left over (like an obese person who loses weight very quickly and has extra skin).

<comment><USER9> Why would you think that you'd have to tolerate scarring in a world that could fix DNA and implant it as easily as we run shell scripts to change our UNIX environments?

<comment><USER8> Why would you think that the effects of aging would all automatically disappear? Eventually, sure, you might be indistinguishable from someone born a hundred years after aging treatments, but that may take a specialized (or more advanced) treatment.

Just as one example, I think it is far more likely that an anti-age treatment would prevent the formation of wrinkles than that it would remove existing wrinkles.

<comment><USER9> Because your comment was regarding our having the technology needed to allow someone to live 1000+ years. In order to allow that, we'll need to have mastered manipulation of literally every cell in the body.

By the time we can go in and reinvigorate teeth, bones, all the internal organs, all the cells in the brain... restoring patches of skin will likely be trivial.

Solving the problem of aging generally means solving an avalanche of specific problems - one of which is the rejuvenation of skin.

<comment><USER8> > Because your comment was regarding our having the technology needed to allow > someone to live 1000+ years. In order to allow that, we'll need to have > mastered manipulation of literally every cell in the body.

This is not correct. The core concept is that we will develop individual solutions which solve pieces of the longevity problem. Living to 150 may only require solving one of them. Living to 1000+ may require what you propose (although that is not clear either) but in the intervening time period between the initial solution and the ultimate solution you cannot assume all other physical aspects of an aged individual will simply vanish.

<comment><USER9> Earlier, you said:

 _you might live for 1000 years in the body of a 25 year old, but if you age and then get the treatments, even though you might have the body of a 25 year old, you might have some scarring or other effects left over_

I feel that you're moving the goalposts on me by talking about the initial stages when some might make it to 150. My comments were regarding what you originally said above, not what you might have meant and tried to clarify in later comments.

I agree with you that at first we might solve some problems that extend life some years here and there but still be left with other semi-debilitating issues.

But once you're talking about all of the issues needed to be solved to reach 1,000 years, the technology will have to be far far far beyond the ability to repair some scarred skin.

<comment><USER8> I was responding to a commenter who suggested that you'd spend 850 years in the body of a 150-year-old. I was objecting to that idea, but conceding that there might be _some_ unpleasantness left over. I only clarified the timeline of that unpleasantness when you objected.

To be clear, I wasn't only talking about scarred skin, but any consequence of aging. I was using excess skin due to rapid weight loss as an example of this type of comorbidity, in which one problem must be dealt with separately from another problem. It may be true that extending lifespans to 1000+ years will require technologies which will also resolve all other age-related issues. It may even be likely. But there is no principle that says it _must_ be so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Biologists hate him! This programmer discovered Philosopher's stone with this one weird trick!

Anyway: Yes, we will do great advances in health care, but will we _cheat_ death? Will those advancements be available? Is this something we _should_ do as a society? Technological determinism/solutionism (as presented in the article) is a really shoddy idea. It ignores so many things and assumes that progress is an arrow always flying forward…

<comment><USER11> Why would you not want to stop people from dying?

<comment><USER12> You wouldn't want population growth to outgrow your capacity. Also, usually, the longer someone lives, the more their ideology defines them. Could be a problem too

<comment><USER13> Your argument is "we don't want more old people because I disagree with them ideologically." Shoddy at best.

<comment><USER14> If you re-read the post, that's actually _not_ his argument.

<comment><USER13> He's saying that the older someone is the more their ideology defines them, which is itself probably inaccurate. And he says that that "could be a problem."

<comment><USER15> He's arguing about ideological stagnation. That's bad regardless of just about what the ideology is and whether you agree with the particular.

To quote Max Planck, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." That's as true of anything as it is of science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't mean to be a pessimist but this entire article boils down to describing Moore's law, and saying that medical research will advance quickly because it uses computers as well.

Seems a little shoddy.

<comment><USER17> Not to mention that most in the know seem to agree Moore's law has come to an end, as all exponential growth must at some point in the real world.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, Some things work with Eroom's_Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom's_Law?previous=yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom's_Law?previous=yes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I consider myself a transhumanist, though even I can't help but notice that these advances always seem just _close enough_ so the author might manage to benefit from them shortly before he expects to die. Kurzweil did the same thing.

I used to do yearly blog posts on the current state of whole brain emulation, and we are very very far away from any breakthrough there. So far away in fact that some prominent neuro scientists like Dennett believe this can't be done even in principle (I disagree with them, but it shows how far we have to go still).

In any case, I'll probably not be around in 30 years, and many HNers won't be either.

<comment><USER20> The part where you think we're very far away, may be because a breakthrough is most likely going to be revolutionary when it occurs. Rather than a small increment, it'll be a substantial leap (even if it's not recognized at that moment). On the order of the transistor.

I'd be very skeptical that it will be noticed that it's possible, around the time that leap forward is about to occur. History indicates the exact opposite is most common when it comes to great technological leaps forward. Instead, what will occur is an ecosystem of supporting technology will prime the ground. Among the very few people that recognize the time as being ready, will be the person that actually invents said leap technology. And it may even be by accident, the ground was primed and an inventor in a garage put the pieces together (ala the inbound virtual reality revolution, it was all skepticism skepticism skepticism for decades, until the ground was primed to leap forward, while most weren't even looking at it).

<comment><USER19> _> may be because a breakthrough is most likely going to be revolutionary when it occurs_

Not in this case, no. I realize your argument is mostly generic, too. Everybody understands that some problems are expected to have these kinds of revolutionary solutions or no solution at all. However, reading a mind into the computer and then executing it is not a matter of figuring just one missing thing out.

A workable solution requires us to be able to decipher and efficiently digitize the fine structure of the brain. Acquiring missing pieces of technique or technology is a necessary but not sufficient piece of this specific puzzle's solution. There is no sudden eureka moment where it all falls into place, it's just a near endless chain of painstaking detective work in biochemistry.

<comment><USER21> That's basically what he was arguing. "Instead, what will occur is an ecosystem of supporting technology will prime the ground."

Those problems you're talking about will be figured out bit by bit, and only once all those things are figured out, will someone realize "Oh shit, we're at the point where this is possible now!" while everyone around them isn't paying attention and still thinking "It's impossible. It's impossible."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As someone who turned 50 this year - immortality being available in 30 years sounds pretty good to me!

However, I seem to remember a similar argument being made in a book I read at high school, which obviously wasn't yesterday. _The Mighty Micro_ , published in 1979, talked about the imminent creation of UIM's (Ultra-Intelligent Machines) by the 1990s and that these would, naturally, lead to such rapid advancements in healthcare as to give effective immortality.

[http://www.tof.co.uk/stories/page8.html](http://www.tof.co.uk/stories/page8.html)

[NB Mind you that book did make me rather interested in AI and I did do a CS degree and go on to do post-grad AI research for 6 years up to 1994 where I encountered a far better technology for enhancing intelligence. I can't really be too critical of someone getting this excited, after all I did, eventually somebody _is_ going to do it...].

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I'm almost your age. When I was in high school, I had naive confidence that medical science would advance quickly enough to prevent my getting "old". I even remember a speech from a principal when I was in middle school, claiming that most of us in my class would live to well over 100 years. I believed him.

Despite that optimism and my very healthy diet and exercise regimen, I deal with increasingly deteriorating knee cartilage, loss of muscle mass, an impinged disc in my neck, decrease in reaction times, typical age-related memory degradation, increase in hair loss, yearly removal of pre-cancerous skin anomalies, failing reading vision, mild hearing loss, etc... you know, I'm getting old. This crap is building up and modern medicine offers no magic bullets to even the most minor of my age-related symptoms.

If I do make it another 30 years and if I'm still mentally with it, I'm sure that I'll be poo-pooing some claim that "in just another 30 years, you may live forever".

I don't doubt that eventually humans will figure out aging and be able to stop it -- but by that time, society will look a lot more like Star Trek with ubiquitous ability to manipulate our biology at an atomic level. Star Trek is at least hundreds of years away, not 30.

<comment><USER22> "decrease in reaction times"

I seem to find that playing online games does wonders for this...

Only thing that really annoys me at the moment is my eyesight - I'm quite shortsighted and wear contacts to do things like skiing. Trying to navigate a new ski area (just back from the vast Portes de Soleil) with a map is now getting quite tricky as I can't read stuff up close with my contacts in....

Also I seemed to develop the rare blue/black colour blindness which my wife wasn't happy about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Oxygen[0] by Nick Lane makes a pretty compelling argument why this will _not_ happen. With perfect health you can at best achieve ~120 years age. I think this paper A unifying view of ageing and disease:the double-agent theory[2] covers some of the arguments in the book.

To give a simplified view, the big obstacles are a) a technology capable of repairing damaged mythocondrial material in a living organism and b) a technology capable of repairing neural cells w/o replacing them (that is if you want to preserver 'you', not just your body). That is assuming that our current understanding of senescence[1] is even mildly accurate.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular- Science/...](http://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Molecule-World-Popular- Science/dp/0198607830) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence) [2] [http://www.nick-lane.net/double-agent%20theory.pdf](http://www.nick- lane.net/double-agent%20theory.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure that you can replace a significant number of my neurons without changing "me".

<comment><USER23> What makes you sure? Central nervous system neurons are incapable of regeneration[0], so is anybody's guess what would happen if they _did_ get replaced. And, long term, "significant" has to be "all".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroregeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroregeneration)

<comment><USER11> People can have rather serious strokes that kill large number of neurons without losing their sense of self. Sometimes we remove half the brain

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy)

That gives me confidence that replacing neurons at a rate that counters natural aging does not significantly alter me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article seems inherently flawed in its assumption that a. the exponential growth of computing power will keep up, despite the numerous technical and physical boundaries imposed upon them, b. computational power will solve many of the unknown inner workings of the human body, and c. that being aware of, and understanding those inner workings allows us to modify the human body in such a way that we can 'rejuvinate' the system.

While I do feel that life expectancy of everyone below 40 is probably going to massively higher than historical life expecancies (disregarding systemic failures of society and outside influences), I don't foresee a future where everyone gets to live forever.

<comment><USER25> Moore's law has not been an exponential increase in technological capability in general. It has only been an exponential increase in one particular technology - more of the same. I see no evidence that the development of novel technology in general has sped up in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's funny watching techno-religious belief systems emerge in the West as Christianity recedes. This is literally the replacement of the afterlife. Sorry guys, this ain't gonna happen. One day you will die, get over it and start praying.

<comment><USER26> I've had the same thought so many other times. We blindly believe the 'clergy' of science despite not having any evidence ourselves of what is taught (other than for the obvious that we experience every day). String theory? Black holes? Gravitational waves???Granted, it's probably true (I'm a believer too), but it's blind faith -- I've never replicated any experiments myself, would have to trust the measuring devices even if I tried to replicate the experiments, so I believe because everyone else tells me to. And that's the hard-core replicatable physics! It gets worse as you move to less mathematical sciences like chemistry, biology, psychology, nutrition, etc.

<comment><USER27> Come on, science is not the faith part! Things that are observable and testable are clearly science. Things that are just ideas, ideas that are not verifiable (like string theory which don't predict anything) are not science, it's just ideas. Just like saying god created me, prove it wrong. If I make up some equation that I say I believe with evidence is true, that's not science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This TED talk by Aubrey de Grey puts the argument quite succinctly:

[http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Seeking-immortality-Aubrey- de...](http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Seeking-immortality-Aubrey-de-G)

More info on Aubrey de Grey:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey)

[http://www.sens.org/about/leadership/executive- team](http://www.sens.org/about/leadership/executive-team)

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a whole profession of people whose job it is to predict this called actuaries. They disagree with your conclusion.

<comment><USER30> But it's in their best interest to assume it wont happen.

If I correctly predict, as an actuary, the demise of the industry, I don't win anything. If I can calculate a superprecise premium for my insurance product based on this being true, I have an expensive product that underperforms the competition, and management is not happy. Whereas if I ignore superlong trends, I get to earn my salary, probably until I retire - you know, it probably won't happen. I value a product competetively. And if we miss, it won't be my only problem. So even if I can do the right thing, I will be punished for the event.

<comment><USER31> If actuaries can collectively predict the future, then term life insurance premiums should show a strong trend down as we approach the point where longevity increases significantly (adjusting for income, inflation, etc). From a few seconds of googling, they seem to be flat or increasing. It might be good to look back in 100 years and see if they got it right.

<comment><USER27> Predicting the future of lifespan based on the last 100 years is reasonable. That sensible system can't predict a black swan or revolutionary idea; suppose wereduce the chance of heart attacks by 90% by treating your blood chemistry. That's not impossible, also not possible today. But that would expand life expectancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Life expectancy has been increasing by ever smaller amounts in the past decades. I am hopefully that a lot of new technologies could help buck that trend, but so far the trends don't support the author's hypothesis.

<comment><USER33> It was mainly increasing because we almost made the death at birth close to zero. Now the gains are much harder to get on the other side.

<comment><USER34> Most people - at least most people here - know that a lot of those publicized numbers are due to infant mortality, but ...

Post-childhood life expectancy has gone up in smaller amounts as the parent comment says. The grand numbers ("life expectancy was just 60 in 1900!") obviously reflect infant and childhood mortality, but we've increased the average lifespan in the United States by 2-3 years in the last few decades alone.

Here's a graph that shows life expectancy at various ages in the UK - you can see this is not all due to childhood mortality:

[http://www.maxroser.com/gains-for-all-life-expectancy-by- age...](http://www.maxroser.com/gains-for-all-life-expectancy-by-age/)

<comment><USER35> This is quite compelling. At first I was going to mention the absence of war, but that shouldn't impact people in their 70s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of the better societal aspects of Richard Morgan's _Altered Carbon_ was the concept of "Meths" \- super rich people who could effectively afford to live forever by inserting their consciousness into new bodies (or "sleeves" to use Morgan's terminology). One of the downsides of this was that, since the rich lived effectively forever, they only accumulated more and more wealth in greater and greater quantities, and limited the trickle down to other people.

<comment><USER37> The Meths differ from the modern-day superrich only in that _they_ live on to continue concentrating wealth, rather than passing it on to their offspring to continue as has been the case throughout human history.

I quite enjoyed the book, and the idea of sleeving was pretty interesting and well-explored. It was kind of sad to see that most people worked their whole lives to save enough to re-sleeve simply so that they could live another life doing, effectively, the same. On the flip-side, it was quite well-observed that the eternally young Meths actually suffered from extreme cynicism and boredom.

<comment><USER36> It's been a few years since I read it - probably about time I gave it another go.

On a side note, I just found out today that Netflix is apparently making it into a series. Neat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "The latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it is defined as The Maes-Garreau Point. The period equals to n-1 of the person's life expectancy.

This suggests a law:

Maes-Garreau Law: Most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point."

[http://kk.org/thetechnium/the-maesgarreau/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/the- maesgarreau/)

<comment><USER39> "Trust but verify" is a good way to lead one's life. Ideally, we'd never take anyone's word for anything, and have the time and means to dig up supporting evidence for any position or statement that we encounter. But who has the time for that? We have to organize our busy lives around blocks of selective ignorance, portions of human knowledge and culture wherein we choose to take statements at face value, or follow the consensus viewpoint without doing the necessary groundwork to validate it. Books can and have been written on how to best go about this: acquiring and processing information costs time, and time is the most valuable resource most us of possess.

There exist a growing number of people propagating various forms of the viewpoint that we middle-aged folk in developed countries may (or might, or certainly will) live to see the development and widespread availability of radical life extension therapies. Which is to say medical technologies capable of greatly extending healthy human life span, probably introduced in stages, each stage effective enough to grant additional healthy years in which to await the next breakthrough. You might think of Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey, both of whom have written good books to encapsulate their messages, and so forth.

Some people take the view of radical life extension within our lifetimes at face value, whilst others dismiss it out of hand. Both of these are rational approaches to selective ignorance in the face of all science-based predictions. It usually doesn't much matter what your opinion is on one article of science or another, and taking the time to validate science-based statements usually adds no economic value to your immediate future. It required several years of following research and investigating the background for me to feel comfortable reaching my own conclusions on the matter of engineered longevity, for example. Clearly some science-based predictions are enormously valuable and transformative, but you would lose a lifetime wading through the swamp of uselessness and irrelevance to find the few gemstones hidden therein.

As a further incentive to avoid swamp-wading, it is generally well known that futurist predictions of any sort have a horrible track record. Ignoring all futurism isn't a bad attention management strategy for someone who is largely removed from any activity (such as issuing insurance) that depends on being right in predicting trends and events. You might be familiar with the Maes- Garreau Law, which notes one of the incentives operating on futurists: 'The Maes-Garreau Law is the statement that "most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point", defined as "the latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it".'

If you want to be a popular futurist, telling people what they want to hear is a good start. "You're not going to be alive to see this, but..." isn't a compelling opening line in any pitch. You'll also be more convincing if your yourself have good reason to believe in your message. Needless to say, these two items have no necessary relationship to a good prediction, accuracy in materials used to support the prediction, or whether what is predicted actually comes to pass. These incentives do not make cranks of all futurists - but they are something one has to be aware of. Equally, we have to be aware of our own desire to hear what we want to hear. That is especially true in the case of predictions for future biotechnology and enhanced human longevity; we'd all like to find out that the mighty white-coated scientists will in fact rescue us from aging to death. But the laws of physics, the progression of human societies, and advance of technological prowess don't care about what we want to hear, nor what the futurists say.

I put value on what Kurzweil and de Grey have to say about the potential future of increased human longevity - the future we'll have to work to bring into being - because I have performed the due diligence, the background reading, the digging into the science. I'll criticize the pieces of the message I don't like so much (the timescale and supplements in the case of Kurzweil, WILT in the case of de Grey), but generally I'm on board with their vision of the future because the science and other evidence looks solid.

But few people in the world feel strongly enough about this topic to do what I have done. I certainly don't feel strongly enough about many other allegedly important topics in life to have done a tenth as much work to validate what I choose to believe in those cases. How should one best organize selective ignorance in fields one does care about, or that are generally acknowledged to be important? What if you feel - correctly, in my humble opinion - <USER2> engineered longevity is very important, but you cannot devote the time to validate the visions of Kurzweil, de Grey, or other advocates of longevity science?

The short answer is trust networks: find and listen to people like me who have taken the time to dig into the background and form our own opinions. Figuring out whether ten or twenty people who discuss de Grey's view of engineered human longevity are collectively on the level is not too challenging, and doesn't require a great deal of time. We humans are good at forming accurate opinions as to whether specific individuals are idiots or trustworthy, full of it or talking sense. Fundamentally, this establishment of a trust network is one of the primary purposes of advocacy in any field of endeavor. The greater the number and diversity of advocates to have taken the time to go digging and come back to say "this is the real deal," the more likely it is that that they are right. It's easy, and probably good sense, to write off any one person's views. If twenty very different people are saying much the same thing, having independently come to the same viewpoint - well, that is worth spending more time on.

One of the things I think we need to see happen before the next decade is out is the establishment of more high-profile longevity advocates who discuss advancing science in the Kurzweil or de Grey vein: nanotechnology, repairing the molecular damage of aging, and so on. Two, or three, or five such people is too few.

<comment><USER40> You say you've spent a ton of time reading about this, but don't actually say what your conclusions are. I know it's sort of counter to your point, but I would be interested in hearing your opinions on how soon we will start seeing significant increases in longevity.

<comment><USER38> That was their old post copypasted:

[https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/the- maesgarreau-...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/the-maesgarreau- tendency.php)

You can ask there, or search through that blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on an area doubles > every two years ... [and] will probably also hold true after it is no longer > possible to increase the number of transistors per area. At that point > another technology with significantly greater potential will take over for > transistors.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we already "maxed out" Moore's Law? Aren't hardware manufactures already running into problems at the quantum level because of how small and packed transistors are already? That would be why we've "maxed" CPU speed at around ~3-4GHz.

<comment><USER42> The confusion here is that people refer to several distinct exponential growths as Moore's Law, and some of them have already faltered.

The CPU frequency growth has halted primarily due to the fact that going any higher means we can no longer cool the chips. Power usage (and, consequently, the heat you need to dispose of) is proportional to the square of the frequency (higher-frequency gates also usually require higher voltage to get the switching times down, which means it's really the cube).

Another aspect is the size of the transistor. Some features are already getting down to the point where it's more useful to talk about them in terms of monolayers--i.e., the exact number of atoms. Some elements of a 14nm transistor are already two or three monolayers in size, and the distance between two transistors is already about 100 monolayers, which puts a hard cap on the maximum possible minimization, since you can't make transistors smaller than a single atom. In terms of the smallest transistors that can be feasibly made, the general consensus is that there is at most around 3 shrinks remaining.

There's another dimension, too: whether or not it's cost-effective to keep doing these shrinks. The 14nm node itself has given Intel lots of trouble, and the 10nm node doesn't look like it's much better. Intel has already been forced to give up its Tick-Tock cycle, and the semiconductor industry as a whole may explicitly give up maintaining Moore's Law as a collective research goal shortly.

In short, then, Moore's Law either ended a decade ago, is just now ending, or will end in a decade, depending on what you want it to mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Probably off by a factor of 10. Very few people work in science doing research. The economy doesn't support enough people doing research to think we're going to make that kind of breakthrough within 30 years.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us- pu...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for- more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> > According to Ray Kurzweil, as soon as something becomes an information > technology, it starts progressing according to Moore's Law

My field of chemical information - a subfield of cheminformatics - has been an information technology since the 1800s. It was the Big Data of the 1940s and 1950s, many of the pioneers of information retrieval worked on chemical data (Luhn, Mooers, Taube), and the term "information retrieval" and concepts like stop words (as part of KWIC) were presented at chemistry conferences.

The doubling period for chemical information is 15-20 years.

Citation indexing is another offshoot of 1950s information technology. Scientific publication grows by about 5% per year (says [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/) ), so doubles every 15 years.

Either 1) those are not information technology fields, in which case, why not? or 2) "according to Moore's Law" means generally "has exponential growth", not the more specific doubling every two years.

With #2 firmly in mind, consider "and that's the main reason why we can expect medical technology to advance exponentially in the future."

How do we measure "advance" in medical technology, how do we know it isn't already an information technology field, and why should we expect the doubling rate of under 20 years?

Finally, here's a quote from someone who "served on the advisory council of [a longevity] organization, along with the chairmen of a number of major US corporations":

> Why has the problem of aging been such an intractable one? Up until > [recently], the prevalent view of scientists had been that the task of > controlling aging was fundamentally impossible. But today, such a consensus > no longer exists. Many researchers now believe that their predecessors > failed, not because their goals were misguided, but because the tools and > the level of sophistication they could bring to the task were inadequate. > Moreover, it is argued that progress has been hampered because funding has > been scarce, and researchers concerned with aging have been too few and far > between. ...

> Growing public and private support for aging research reflects the > scientific community's own increasing commitment. Today, aging research > occupies unprecedented numbers of highly talented individuals, not only > specialists in gerontology, but researchers from other disciplines as well. > These include biochemistry, endocrinology, immunology, neurobiology, > genetics, and cell biology, to name only a few.

I'll give the link to where that quote comes from, but before following the link, when do you think it was written? [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf](http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p107y1983.pdf) .

<comment><USER45> Probably should have obfuscated the link.

<comment><USER44> D'oh! Didn't see that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There is a huge difference between life expectancy and life span and this article [1] covers it pretty well.

Life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality rates:

> Our conclusion is that there is a characteristic life span for our species, > in which mortality decreases sharply from infancy through childhood, > followed by a period in which mortality rates remain essentially constant to > about age 40 years, after which mortality rises steadily in Gompertz > fashion. The modal age of adult death is about seven decades, before which > time humans remain vigorous producers, and after which senescence rapidly > occurs and people die.

[1] [https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life- expec...](https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy- in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/)

PDF: [http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...](http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Infant mortality for births beyond 24 weeks gestation in the developed world is well below one half of one percent[0], some below one quarter of one percent. It's not that big of an effect anymore.

[0] [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_05.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_05.pdf) page 3

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We are way too far from really understanding our own biology to be able to predict such an over-the-horizon end result.

I don't even know if we'll be able to reliably cure toenail fungus in the next 20 years - much less be able to solve a significant number of problems with aging in 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd be curious to know how old the author is, since the selection of 30 years to me points to biased analysis. As one likely knows that's spent any time researching the topic, and as others have committed, there's no evidence to support the author's claims. Historically speaking most people have been able to live as long as they do now on average. To my knowledge infant mortality was the big outliner historical speaking when it came to average life expectancy and points to why average life expectancy is a pour measure. Truth is that if there was a major leap, there's zero reason the general public would ever get wind of it; basic economic both in terms of it as a product and the impact it'd have on populations.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm of the opinion that I was born anywhere between 2 months and a year too soon to ride the wave of immortality.

</comment><comment><USER49> His life expectancy graph is a bit naughty. Why doesn't the y axis start at 0? How about showing something more realistic...

[http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/...](http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/03/17/le02.gif)

Doesn't look quite so good now, does it.

</comment><comment><USER50> As I see it Kurzweil's predictions were mostly based on his understanding of computational complexity and extrapolating the development trend in semiconductor technlogy - and figuring out which things are practical. But still, extrapolation based on more or less theoretically well understood concrete principles.

I'm not sure if there is yet _anything_ well understood in the human body. Just mapping the genome will give us very little hints of the consequences in the physical body. Even figuring out how a protein folds is still considered a computational achievement (I think?).

Chess is a concrete computational system. Even most tasks that we have can be considered to be constrainable to a well defined system (hence the AI will replace a lot of manual workforce).

But until such a well defined "theory of human body" exists, computers are quite helpless to create it for us. Just adding computers will not magically make us understand everything better.

Thus, just quoting "exponential development" will certainly provide nice food for thought but will not offer any practical footholds for concrete progress.

</comment><comment><USER51> What can you say? I really hope this will be the case. I want to live 1000 years and preferably even longer.

</comment><comment><USER52> You might want to check this rather well documented article about AI

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolu...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolution-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> The original paper in which the idea of actuarial escape velocity was proposed by Aubrey de Grey is open access, and worth reading for a full treatment of the concept.

The thing to take away here is that this is inevitable, but not necessarily for us, unless we dig in and get the job done right now. The development of the necessary technologies is very thinly funded, meaning that timelines are very uncertain. Senescent cell clearance may be under development in two US startups right now, a part of allotopic expression of mitochondrial DNA in clinical trials in France, clearance of one type of amyloid has had a successful trial in the UK, and clearance of glucosepane cross-links a couple of years away from a drug candidate, but other areas of biological repair needed for SENS-style rejuvenation of the old are still years away from getting to even this nascent stage. It is a miserable state of affairs given that the cost of progress towards prototypes in mice is a few hundred million, less than a single drug's development funding. Funding and advocacy make a huge difference at this point in the bootstrapping of rejuvenation therapies.

\----

Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC423155/)

The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess. Since we are already so long lived, even a 30% increase in healthy life span will give the first beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another 20 years—an eternity in science—to benefit from second-generation therapies that would give another 30%, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, if first-generation rejuvenation therapies were universally available and this progress in developing rejuvenation therapy could be indefinitely maintained, these advances would put us beyond AEV. Universal availability might be thought economically and sociopolitically implausible (though that conclusion may be premature, as I will summarise below), so it's worth considering the same question in terms of life-span potential (the life span of the luckiest people). Those who get first- generation therapies only just in time will in fact be unlikely to live more than 20–30 years more than their parents, because they will spend many frail years with a short remaining life expectancy (i.e., a high risk of imminent death), whereas those only a little younger will never get that frail and will spend rather few years even in biological middle age. Quantitatively, what this means is that if a 10% per year decline of mortality rates at all ages is achieved and sustained indefinitely, then the first 1000-year-old is probably only 5–10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have a feeling we'll have to go through a period of global catastrophe before humanity resumes making progress at a quick pace. The momentum of the previous age of intellect[1] is coming to an end, and we're well into the age of decadence. The strong pillars of duty in Western society have gradually, in the past two hundred years, been swapped out piece by piece with some kind of weak inflammable material of decadence. These days single terrorist groups conquer entire nations before being slowed down, and our inefficient & corrupt governments whose hands and feet act independently are hardly able to stop them even with funding of billions. Millions of migrants from wars encouraged by the West's governments threaten the unity of the EU. The enormous sovereign debt burden carried by the likes of Japan and U.S. creates economic instability which threatens the social fabric, leading to a situation where the choice of leaders is between an egomaniac (Trump) and a megalomaniac (Clinton). The supposed saviour of the world economy and driver of global growth, China, suffers from enormous mal-investments and is burdened with even more debt than the U.S.

My own pessimism is not helping.

[1] [http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf](http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf)

        (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
        The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
        The Age of Conquests
        The Age of Commerce
        The Age of Affluence
        The Age of Intellect
        The Age of Decadence.
        (e) Decadence is marked by:
        Defensiveness
        Pessimism
        Materialism
        Frivolity
        An influx of foreigners
        The Welfare State
        A weakening of religion.
        (f) Decadence is due to:
        Too long a period of wealth and power Selfishness
        Love of money
        The loss of a sense of duty.

The very decadence that corrodes an empire's institutions, rendering its governments unable to effectively thwart the rise of bandits who conquer vast swarths of territory, creates the conditions necessary for a new cycle with a new empire. Even if they can deal with one, or two, or three, each new group of bandits will become harder and harder for a decadent declining empire to deal with. Taliban, Shia militias, ISIS....

</comment><comment><USER54> I'd like to believe you, but what kills people is not their age, today it's mostly cancer and heart disease. While I'd hope we'll make progress, I doubt those 2 will be just gone in 30 years.

<comment><USER55> What makes you think we won't cure them? Cancer I think will definitely be cured in 30 years. I haven't been following heart disease so much but chances are we will have huge health breakthroughs by 30 years. I would put my money on there being new/different diseases that kill us in 30 years.

<comment><USER56> In theory, couldn't a lot of heart disease (if not more general cardiovascular diseases) be addressed by figuring out how to affordably grow new hearts from tissue? I understand that's not something we're capable of doing right now but from my (largely ignorant) perspective, it seems like the issue is "hearts break down over time". The heart is essentially a mechanical part, and unlike neurological systems, there's no qualitative difference between one heart and another aside from how well it pumps blood. When you have a mechanical part that wears out, you replace it. Artificial hearts have issues stemming from the fact that they aren't 1:1 replacements for human hearts but if you could grow a new heart from a person's cells and get to a point where doing so is relatively affordable, could you not swap out an old heart the way you'd swap out a fuel pump that's wearing out?

Compared to stuff like cancer, I feel like replacing hearts is more an issue of cost and engineering rather than developing entire new forms of treatment.

<comment><USER57> Well, today hearts are replaced by perfectly healthy hearts of other people and yet life expectancy after such a procedure is not great and patients have to take meds for as long as they live. Also cardiovascular performance is much reduced. So as long as this is not working really well, i guess growing hearts and replacing them is still a long way off. Also there are other kinds of common cardiovascular disease like coronary heart disease which can't be fixed by replacing the heart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> However appealing this might be for some, I hope we "solve" global population growth first.

Of course that means we need an ethical, voluntary, way of keeping population in check.

Which infers true sexual equality, or you get one child policies as successful as China's.

Or we have an exponential increase in lifespan and ever more people chasing those finite resources.

So, it's going to be a world very different from ours, or it's going to be a bloody mess.

May you live in interesting times?

<comment><USER59> Population growth has been declining since the 60s.

UN estimates are that we'll peak at 10 billion.

Besides that it's already happening, reducing population growth isn't necessarily a good thing, in econimic terms of aggregate "utility." Is there a difference between preventing birth and causing death?

<comment><USER8> That estimated peak is based on existing and projected death rates. Even Japan's population would grow if death from old age and age-related disease ceased.

<comment><USER59> Correct. The projection is a projection. If the projection is wrong, the projection will be wrong.

I just give slightly more credence to the UN's projection than Aldring's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> If a scientist working in the field writes about this, backing his assumption with research papers and actual work that's being done in the field: I'm listening.

If a futurist writes about this, mostly backing his assumption by repeating alterations of the phrase "because of technological progress": I'm expressing my skepticism on hn.

</comment><comment><USER61> The growth of life expectancy looks quite linear to me: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Lebenserwartung_Deutschl...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Lebenserwartung_Deutschland- Welt_1960-2009.svg)

I don't really see a miracle technology coming around the corner that will help us reduce deaths faster than now.

</comment><comment><USER62> this reads to me like "better die soon or you'll miss your chance and be forced to live as a human slave forever."

<comment><USER11> You can always jump from a bridge...

<comment><USER62> you would think, but it's really hard to do. I cannot self terminate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> What an optimistic roller coaster that reading was.

If you are interested in (anti) aging science Aubrey de Grey work seem like a good start.

</comment><comment><USER64> My issue is that while medical technology may progress at an exponential rate, so too might the challenges of repairing our biology. So yea, we may be getting way smarter, but the problems may keep getting way harder, and then it is not as self evident as this particular article makes out that we are all going to be immortals.

</comment><comment><USER65> I feel like these types of articles always miss a key point, which can easily be corrected by adding the phrase "If You're Filthy Rich" to the end of any headline.

"Cure for Cancer Around the Corner, If You're Filthy Rich"

And...

If You're Alive in 30 Years You Might be in 1000 Years Too, If You're Filthy Rich"

See? Clarity is king.

</comment><comment><USER66> They were saying that 30 years ago

</comment><comment><USER67> You can't fool me internet. I'm not going to get my hopes up on such a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER68> If I recall correctly China has reached the escape velocity at some point in the sixties, gaining more than one year of life expectancy every passing year. The even harder part is to sustain this for long period of times.

</comment><comment><USER69> Big damned if. Personally, I expect us to all starve or burn within the next 30 years. We have repeatedly shown that we are not responsible guardians of our own technology, and our disasters just get bigger.

Additionally, immortality is not a good thing. It would lead to domination of the world from now until eternity by the powers that be at the point at which the tech becomes available, stagnation of development (if you have 1000 years to do something, you'll take your time), and ultimately the depletion of what it is to be human.

The only way immortality could work would be with a complete moratorium on new births, and perhaps a Logan's Run style annual carrousel that randomly eliminates a percentage of the population.

None of that sounds better than what we have now.

</comment><comment><USER70> How can you regulate population with people living half a millennium? The earth won't be able to deal with that unless we apply population control which is... pretty unethical.

</comment><comment><USER71> The important question to answer is whether those advancements will be available to everyone or just the rich. In the case of the latter economic inequality will go ballistic.

<comment><USER27> They will likely cost billions for the first person, 100s of millions for the next, and keep getting cheaper. Think cell phones, now so cheap your pencil could have one inside for almost nothing in a few years.

</comment></comment><comment> blubb-fish ... with your head attached to tubes and wires floating in a jar. Oh yeah ... but thanks to VR it will feel like being on vacation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Something tells me the author's definitely of "quite likely" is very different from the statistical definition.

</comment><comment><USER72> So you think wage slaves have it bad now? Just imagine what "low income" will mean in future. Credits for rejuvenation plus wage low enough so that your expected life earnings are just enough to pay for next life extension... Indentured servitude can be eternal problem now.

</comment><comment><USER73> There is not a more horrible future to imagine than the one described here.

</comment><comment><USER74> WHAT DO YOU THINK?

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

This is talking about biological immortality - obviously an external event can still kill a person. In fact, a catastrophic species-ending event like a meteor would still be devastating.

And we still have to worry about runaway viruses (the Black Plague), political mind viruses (Nazism, Communism, Islamism), bacteria (Malaria etc.)

The biggest danger would be, as it already is, overpopulation. I think people would have to make a trade-off: have children or live forever. You won't be able to have both. At first, only the rich would be able to afford children and live forever, but given a long enough time period, social mobility will rotate enough people into being rich enough to afford it.

Now think about it realistically and philosophically. If computers are going to take over most of the tasks we do today - driving, cooking, research etc. as well as have a worldwide network of knowledge (eg Watson, Google) then what does any individual person become? Like an animal in a zoo, who exists mostly for pleasure and socializing but whose services to others aren't required. We can already see this as people get internet-connected cellphones... why ask your parents anything if you can google it? Both parties actually prefer that we google it.

Now imagine if it moves to even less latency, via heads up displays or into a computer-brain interface. What is each individual person really doing if the hive mind already has all the answers? Why do other people need this person? Just for pleasure and interaction.

And now think about your life when you were 1/3 the age you are now. Do you remember doing a lot of particular things? How does it feel to realize that most of the things that you did, it's almost as the same as if you didn't do them? Had sex that one random time with that person - how much would it matter to your current self if you did or didn't? Outside formational life events, most routine things you do today might matter to your future self almost as much as to some stranger!

So what is this continuity between your current self and future self? If you lived until 5 million years old, how much of your life could you really meaningfully remember, unless you are accessing an external memory? If you lived 5 trillion years but only remembered around 50 years total of your personal life, how is that much different than a person living 300 years and remembering 50? Only that you continue to live and your self preservation instinct always wins.

The older I get, the more I have questions about the meaning of my future self living 1000 years from now, with dim memories of my current self, versus someone else living 1000 years from now. Does anyone have similar questions and what answers have you come up with?

</comment><comment><USER75> ... I need to increase the amount I'm putting in my 401k.

</comment><comment><USER76> Not unless they find a way to deal with boredom.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is very bad writing, with very bad logic. Not worthy of HN.

</comment><comment><USER78> Total garbage...

</comment><comment><USER79> overpopulation anyone?

</comment><comment><USER80> tl;dr: "i engage in wishful thinking because i didnt get the memo that moore's law is close to reaching its limits"

</comment><comment><USER81> Bullshit

</comment><comment><USER82> That sounds like utter torture. Hell I probably won't make it to 59 so what do I have to worry about?</comment>


Solar Now Provides Twice as Many Jobs as the Coal Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068125/solar-now-provides-twice-as-many-jobs-as-the-coal-industry <comment><USER2> An electrician whose company advertises it installs solar panels gets counted as a "full-time employee in the solar industry" even if installing solar panels is a minuscule part of the business -- they are a full-time employee (of the company) and the company is "in the solar industry" because installing solar panels is a service it offers.

It's equivalent to counting every housebuilder in the country as "employment in the automotive industry" because they install garage doors on some of their houses.

Solar's economic advantage is that it doesn't require many jobs. The panel on your roof just sits there producing electricity, with no need for regular shipments of coal to be transported to it by train... It shifts power production from an ongoing cost to a fairly small capital cost.

<comment><USER3> > An electrician whose company advertises it installs solar panels gets > counted as a "full-time employee in the solar industry" even if installing > solar panels is a minuscule part of the business -- they are a full-time > employee (of the company) and the company is "in the solar industry" because > installing solar panels is a service it offers.

Not saying you're wrong, but where does it state this? I didn't want to download the full report to check myself as it asks for email/name etc and so it'll have to wait until I get home. But all I could find on that was:

"Since 2010, the National Solar Jobs Census has defined solar workers as those who spend at least 50 percent of their time on solar-related work."

Which could be taken either way.

As an extension, are you saying they define "solar related work" as working > 50% of your time for any company which is any part of the solar industry? And if so, could you tell me where they state that?

<comment><USER4> My company takes the census every year (because we're in the solar industry), and it just asks if you're primarily in the solar industry. It also asks what other industries you're in and what the split is and how many of your employees do what split of work.

So it's fairly detailed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't get me wrong, I want solar power to replace coal as much as possible.

But if this is accurate, I'm not sure it's a good sign for solar, since solar power provides 1.3% of US power, vs 35% for coal.

I'm sure that there are higher labor costs installing solar vs running established coal plants... but that's 70x the labor of coal.

A labor cost that high would mean that solar costs will never become competitive with coal in the open market. So I'm hoping these numbers are exaggerated or just wrong.

<comment><USER6> That's what I was thinking. It's not really a good thing if it takes a huge amount more people to generate the same amount of power.

<comment><USER7> It's tricky to compare though. Consider.

The cost of coal is mostly the cost of the raw material inputs. And coal has a significant off the books negative externalilty because of CO2 emissions and environmental destruction.

vs

Solar which has a high labor cost component. Noting that providing jobs for large numbers of lower skilled workers is an off the books positive externality.

<comment><USER8> In what way is employing people in an offical capacity (you pay them, withhold income tax, holiday pay, health cover, superannuation (401k or whatever you call it) _off the books_?

Don't these data get reported to government, and worker on academic and corporate economists? Who endeavour to account for the effects of employment in an econo-socio-politio-historic evaluation of the world.

<comment><USER7> > off the books?

It's counted as a 'cost' but over the big picture it's not.

It's like this economics teaches us that labor is a cost to be minimized. All good and well except if workers have no money they can't buy anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many solar jobs will persist over time? Once the market is filled, there will still need to be maintenance and replacement when systems wear out. Seems like a pretty involved model to construct, but would be interesting nonetheless.

Broad assumptions:

IF all residential structures in the US had their own solar systems:

44 million residential structures [0]

4-person crew works 4 days to install = 16 man-days

250 work days per year

30 year useful life [1]

= 2.816 million full-time jobs

Naturally, not all residential structures will go solar. And, there are many solar-related jobs besides rooftop installers.

How will a migration to solar impact the current electric utility employment? Net gain or loss?

[0] [http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708#Structures](http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708#Structures) [1] [http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar- panels/](http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/)

<comment><USER10> You haven't even considered how the technology may evolve where it may become more efficient. The solar technology of today could be obsolete and it may be cost effective to upgrade in 10-15 years due to efficiency/cost gains.

As far as solar related jobs you have the manufacturing and delivery of solar panels, all the related industries for raw materials, etc for solar panels and then the installation. That's quite a few jobs.

Also you need to consider jobs outside the US, even the North American continent. Solar may be more expensive than other sources in the US but that's because we have an electrical grid. Solar is the most cost efficient option when considering the developing world, i.e. Africa, parts of Asia, etc. Those solar panels are more likely to come from outside the US, i.e. China, as the dollar exchange value as well as delivery might make it cost prohibitive for developing nations to purchase solar panels from the US.

<comment><USER11> I'm not so sure that solar is cheaper in the developing world. As these Indian villagers said protesting solar, "we want real electricity, not fake electricity." [http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477](http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477)

<comment><USER12> Solar is not a magic wand. People who couldn't afford to get hooked up to the grid for the last 36 YEARS were gifted a limited solution that cost far more than their little village could afford. The wealthy celebrated by hooking up more appliances than the system could handle and then all the recipients of all this free stuff complain that johnny can't study by the light of the silvery cfl.

When some are just plugging in a lightbulb and a phone and others are plugging in "energy-inefficient televisions and refrigerators" perhaps either the wealthier should abstain from doing so or should instead invest in more capacity.

On a larger scale this would be accomplished with meters and prices that would make using 100x more juice than your neighbor either uneconomical or at least costly enough to build infrastructure but on this scale it would have to have been solved by common sense which like electricity appears to have been scarce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "... according to a new survey from the nonprofit Solar Foundation."

You should take this with a pretty big grain of salt, because I'm pretty sure something called the Solar Foundation isn't an unbiased source.

</comment><comment><USER14> Get those labor costs down from having to have so many presumably high-skilled workers, and it may start to be a little more competitive with coal price- wise, which is what it's all about.

<comment><USER15> According to the article, they are not highly skilled workers.

> Many of the jobs are also accessible to people who might otherwise struggle > to find well-paying jobs. An entry-level worker without a degree can > conceivably double their salary within a year, from $10-$12 an hour for > simple manual labor to $20-$23 an hour. The median wage posted for solar > installer jobs in 2016 was $26 an hour.

<comment><USER7> > from $10-$12 an hour for simple manual labor to $20-$23 an hour.

What that says to me is jobs installing solar have higher productivity than other available low skilled jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article says 40 coal plants were shut down last year.

Global warming skeptics like our current president want us to stay on fossil fuels forever. They don't seem to realize the issue has already been decided, and fossil fuels are going to be increasingly replaced by renewable energy.

Does anyone really think that, fifty or a hundred years from now, our electricity will still be produced by coal and natural gas, and our cars still powered by gasoline?</comment>


Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/chatroulettes-founder-17-introduces-himself/?src=twt&twt=nytimesbits

<comment><AUTHOR> "I am glad that my relatives helped me with it by 'investing' some money in my idea. It wasn't very much money, so I couldn't just buy new servers just like that, I had to optimize my code as much as possible instead."

No choice but to optimize. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a question for Hacker News. I started working on a website extremely similar to Chatroulette about three months ago (with a few interesting differences). But I haven't finished it yet because I'm busy on other things in my life, I chose some wrong technologies to get started with, and I'm not the best developer in the world. Now that I've heard of Chatroulette, should I keep on going 'til I finish my project, or move on to the next thing?

My biggest concern is that I thought the site would be so cool that traffic would grow exponentially from organic word of mouth. Now that there is a Chatroulette, I'm afraid it loses its wow factor.

In fact, I can still think of some features that would lower the penis count and increase the usefulness/fun of the site.

edit: Is this query too off-topic? Should I start another thread? Seemed like a good place to ask.

<comment><USER4> You want an honest answer, Jacob? You're competing with a 17-year-old kid who made this web site for fun. I think you're taking yourself a bit seriously, and that's not a good thing.

Are you having fun with making it? Make it, then. Make a damn good web site. If it's damn good, people will use it. You _can_ make this a damn good web site, right? It's not going to be a shitpile? I'm asking seriously, not rhetorically. Generally quality is more important than anything; if you've got it, you're set.

If you're not making it for fun, then frankly, I don't know why you'd have bothered to start in the first place. You don't think you're going to get rich off something like this, I hope. If you're learning something by making this site, you can still learn by making.

Or did you do it just to see the results? Because you can see the results on ChatRoulette. If you think you can do better, stop asking us if a better product will be worth anything and start asking yourself if you can really do better. If it's better, in a way that people care about, they'll use it. If it's not, then nobody will even care enough to mock you.

Are you doing something meaningful with your time? Answer honestly. If you are, then I can't see why you'd ask us anything of this sort. If you're not, then get yourself together and do cool shit.

(Somebody who uses this site more translate what I said into Hacker Newspeak. Something something penetration adaptability futureexperience something tippingpoint gladwell rand.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your reply. You have a clarity of thought in your comment that is actually very helpful. I feel a bit foolish asking dumb questions sometimes, but it gives me an opportunity to learn from people with better thinking on a subject.

<comment><USER5> Its not a dumb question, and I hope you haven't been discouraged from future participation. The advice you've been given here is excellent though. If I could add one thing, it would be this:

In your first paragraph, you've already made 3 excuses about why you haven't released anything:

       - "I'm busy on other things in my life"
       - "I chose some wrong technologies to get started with"
       - "I'm not the best developer in the world"

You've got to cut that shit out right now. Let this be the last time you got jumped on an idea because somebody else was working his or her ass off on it, while you were making excuses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _...the simultaneous user count grew from 10 to 50, then from 50 to 100 and so on. Each time the user count grew, I had to rewrite my code completely, because my software and hardware couldn't handle it all._

A nice real-world example of how getting something out there is more important than trying to achieve technical perfection first. He validated the concept, then worked out the technical issues as he scaled up. Meanwhile he had some revenue coming in to help fund development and hosting.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has been the fastest growing site I've seen in a while.

One interesting sidenote: the word "roulette" is terribly hard to spell. Pretty much every typo domain for it got snatched up pretty quickly, and are currently showing AdSense for domains. (chatroullette.com, chatroulete.com, etc.)

Probably making a solid amount of money. I hope the owner himself is the one sitting on them.

<comment><USER8> It's only hard to spell if you have no clue about french ;-)

Here's a memory hook:

\- "ou" because that's french for "oo", as in: douche.

\- "l" since it comes from "roule" or "rouler", as in: joule, boule (there is no "ll" between "ou" and "e" in french, ever).

\- "tt" since it's a female noun, as in: cassette, baguette, couchette.

<comment><USER9> Well I think most visitors don't know French, as the article indicates most are from the US. Even I misspelled the domain on my first try. doh!

<comment><USER8> Honestly, it took me a minute to realize that the overlap between French and English is actually smaller than I thought (and much smaller than between English and German). I had a hard time coming up with sticky analogies for the spelling of "roulette".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After reading this, I gave the site a try. It sucked. For half an hour or so, one person after another just clicked next. In that space, there was one person who asked "where u from?" and 2 doodlers. There were at least a dozen people filming themselves masturbating. Using the site was simultaneously revolting and mind-numbing.

It would be difficult to get a worse user experience from a website.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't take long to realise that truly random is not what you want - <USER2> want somewhat filtered so people who are being disgusting / absurd can do it in their own space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> countdown to the mixergy guy tracking him down. "HOW SOME RUSSIAN KID BUILT A SITE THAT'S BIGGER THAN YOURS" ...and how you could do it, too!

<comment><USER13> Frankly, I'm a little slow. I should have jumped on this the minute Fred Wilson brought up the site.

Update: Thanks for the prod. I sent him an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He is an awesome and inspiring guy! I really appreciate how honest he is still, and how not sure what the service actually is.

</comment><comment><USER15> \--I actually think that it would be best to found Chatroulette as a U.S.-based company. But this is just an idea.

If that thinking starts to change it will be devastating to the US business sector.

</comment><comment><USER16> 7 Gigabits/second...can someone translate that into a dollar amount for me?

<comment><USER17> The cheapest bandwidth most can buy is about 2-3$ per mb/s in the US. Likely to be more expensive in europe.

That would mean each gigabit would cost between 2k-3k USD.

<comment><USER18> That adds up to around $5 _billion_ a month. I think your estimate is a bit off ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some things I find odd:

A) There is something different about this site. In a craigslist (no high production value type of way). It also has very strong network effects because as more people join, the whole site becomes even more valuable.

B) I feel like I need a friend with me as we play. It's odd that it feels like going into the city or a bar (never know what I'll find), but I'm also totally safe.

C) This kid ABSOLUTELY needs to meet up with PG, Craig Newmark, or somebody before he's taken advantage of by a crazy VC.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know anything about streaming video - anyone got any idea what kind of software stack he'd be running for this, and what kind of custom development he would have had to do?

<comment><USER21> Flash + Flash Media Server (or clone, like Red5). It's just a matter of plugging together the pieces.

<comment><USER22> Is there a way to send the video stream directly to the other user, not through the server? Sort of P2P-like?

<comment><USER23> Yes, and this is what chatroulette does.

I did a TCP dump of the traffic and the data sent to the central servers is very minimal, mostly short plain-text messages containing little bits of information - your partner's camera status, number of users online, next button pressed, etc.

<comment><USER17> If thats the case, and its using stratus:

1: He is either misquoted or lieing about bandwidth usage in the article.

2: He is breaking adobe's tos for stratus, as you are not allowed to run ads along side any tech using it.

<comment><USER24> <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/eula/stratus.html>

I don't see anything in the TOS against advertising.

Nor in the FAQ, with regards to commercial applications: <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/stratus/>

Edit: That's an article. We're talking about the actual TOS, which does not specifically disallow advertising: i think they simply want to make sure people aren't billing for access to p2p services (which is stated clearly in the TOS).

<comment><USER17> Look harder then:

[http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/p2p_ap...](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/p2p_apps_stratus_lccs.html)

"Stratus is for non-commercial use only."

Additionally, when you receive your beta access they show additional docs letting you know that if you want to run ads/make money you need to look into livecycle. Even had a adobe rep contact us after we launched one of our p2p services informing us of such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Quick, someone apply this format to dating!

<comment><USER26> already been done, search for internet speed dating or something along those lines .

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hes not even old enough to view the most of the cams

<comment><USER28> Why, does he have no eyes? You're using American cultural assumptions where they don't apply :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You are sooo cool---Chat Roulette Russian kid --- whoever you are. You are in fact a global peace maker and connector of people-ideas. I was a little revolted of course--like most---at first-but then I started playing my guitar for people and singing and they played back at me and we did songs together. But then of course it all broke down when one of the guys at the singing chat party ran into his bedroom---got a guitar and whipped of his clothes and put a sock on his dick---but you know---it's the thought that counts! kudos to chat roulette my friend from katy in eugene oregon!!

</comment><comment><USER30> I am trying to learn German and I would love to chat with people from Germany in German. Is there a service like that?

I wonder if he could modify the randomness to at least just a single country.

<comment><USER31> Check out livemocha.com

<comment><USER30> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Best chat roulette screen shots: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-24-best-chat- roulette-s...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-24-best-chat-roulette- screenshots-nsfw)

I kind of liked the jolly nazi&israeli couple doing thumbs up. :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> Reminded of when voice chat was first available on win95 via netmeeting back in the day where there were maybe 50 people tinkering with it and you just connect to any of the other early adopting nerds to tell each other how frikin cool it was. Random, anon, but friendly.

</comment><comment><USER34> honeslty...an amazing site would be one were you can do the same video chat as on chatroulette but u could pick at what u are looking for....such a girls/guys who just want to talk ... girls/guys who want some webcaming pleasure...

that would be the best site :0 thx

</comment><comment><USER28> That's the Moscow State University in the photo's background. Suddenly I feel so warm!

</comment><comment><USER35> From the article: _"I would love to visit the United States."_

If people like him wanted so hard to travel to my country, I'd already be rallying my government to give those people a damn grant. Time for the USA to reconsider whether the TSA's "security" pays.

<comment><USER36> What? What does 'TSA security' have to do with some kid saying he wants to visit the US? Can't believe this comment was upvoted.

<comment><USER37> I think you misunderestimate the animosity many people hold towards the TSA.

The upvotes likely reflect that animosity as much or more than simple agreement with the implication that there's some sort of connection between the TSA and the kid's inability to travel to the US. Not to mention the rest of the comment regarding giving the kid a grant.

<comment><USER38> Except, really, it's more likely to be because Russia is not in the Visa Waiver Program that makes it super easy for most Europeans to head to the US on a whim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid_

As opposed to a 17 year old Russian adult? Or a 17 year old Russian senior citizen?

</comment><comment><USER39> moot for the masses.</comment>


BusyBox and the GPL Prevail Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100803132055210 <comment><USER2> Sadly no relation to Judge Judith Scheindlin

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shira_Scheindlin>

Westinghouse should have read : Judge Judy's "Win or Lose by How You Choose"

All they had to do was print a line in the manual and offer a download. Jeesh, why did they think they could rip people off.</comment>


Stockton mayor forced to relinquish electronics and passwords to agents at SFO - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/small-town-mayor-relinquishes-electronics-and-passwords-to-agents-at-sfo/ <comment><USER2> > Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or > any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property. > In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all > devices. [linked article]

> "Our priority is assuring the integrity of the investigative process and > generally speaking we don't acknowledge that an investigation is underway > ... unless or until charges are filed, arrests are made, or documents are > publicly filed with the court that confirm a probe is taking place."[1]

Wat? They can take your stuff without a court order, not even from a secret court, and if they don't make any arrests or charges, they're not even required to confirm or be accountable for what happened? I really hope this is a case of a handful of idiots doing something unsanctioned that will be fully and transparently corrected. If this is upheld as fully legal, how is this not a mockery of basic rights? I'd expect this from a totalitarian state; what does that say about the USA?

I can understand why DHS would feel national security is served by being able to seize or detain without any justification before or afterward. It's awfully convenient to forget about all that red tape. I don't understand how the judiciary would uphold such a tradeoff of basic rights. (A comment[2] suggests they won't.) They better _at least_ require a secret court to sign off if this were to be 100% legal... it's sad that anyone accepts that, but it's better than absolutely zero oversight.

A mayor, of all people! It's sad to think of all the less-powerful people who've already had this happen, but at least a mayor should be able to get some kind of resolution.

[1] [http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stockton-mayor-was- brief...](http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stockton-mayor-was-briefly- detained-on-return-6546419.php) [2] [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2015/10/small-town-mayor-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2015/10/small-town-mayor-relinquishes-electronics-and-passwords-to- agents-at-sfo/?comments=1&post=29873637)</comment>


What  Has Us Interested at Homebrew - <AUTHOR> https://quip.com/rcLXASq4IbIj

<comment><USER2> I'll admit, it took me longer than it should have to figure out why an open- source OS X package manager was getting into VC.

Cool list though.</comment>