Lj Transhumanist Community's Journal (original) (raw)
Друзья! Уважаемые сторонники движения за радикальное продления жизни! Если мы сами, не поддерживаем движение, то и другие не будут. Если мы проявим активность участвуя сообща в распространение идей радикального продления жизни, то и другие присоединятся. Фонд “Наука за продление жизни” имеет большой опыт организации проектов для нашего движения. Мы можем помочь ему приблизить разработку технологий продления жизни. О помощи фонду я написал пост в своём ЖЖ.
https://imm-project.livejournal.com/58315.html
Присоединяйтесь!
Cross-posted from 
xuenay.
One of the most common objections against the prospect of radical life extension (RLE) is that of overpopulation. Suppose everyone got to enjoy from an eternal physical youth, free from age-related decay. No doubt people would want to have children regardless. With far more births than deaths, wouldn't the Earth quickly become overpopulated?
There are at least two possible ways of avoiding this fate. The first is simply having children later. Even if nobody died of aging, there would still be diseases, accidents and murders. People who've looked at the statistics estimate that with no age-related death, people would on average live to be a thousand before meeting their fate in some way. Theoretically, if everyone just waited to be a thousand before having any kids, then population growth would remain on the same level as it is today.
Of course, this is completely unrealistic. Most people aren't going to wait until they are a thousand to have kids. But they might still have them considerably later than they do now. The average age for having your first child has already gone up as lifespans have grown. If you're going to live for a thousand years, why rush with having kids as soon as possible?
Currently there is (at least for women) an effective maximum cap on how high the age for first childbirth can grow, since once a mother's age grows beyond 35 or so, the probability for birth defects goes up radically. However, current reproductive technology has already made pregnancies over the age of 50 a real possibility. At the moment, this frequently requires egg donation, but a rudimentary ability to produce eggs from stem cells may not be that far away, certainly a lot closer than RLE. By the point that we have RLE, we'll likely also have the ability to produce new sperm and eggs from a person's own cells. Combined with an overall better condition of the body brought about by RLE, this seems like it could increase the maximum age for pregnancy indefinitely. With that, the average age for a first birth going up at least a couple of decades doesn't seem all that unrealistic.
Besides the average age for having kids going up, there's the possibility of larger family groups. Must we necessarily have a norm for children being the kids of exactly two adults? As a personal example, my best friend has a daughter who's two years old right now. I've been over there helping take care of the girl a lot, enough to make me feel like she's part of my family as well. Even if I never had children of my own, I already feel something resembling the feelings related to having a child of your own. In addition to growing attached to the children of your close friends, polyamory is also gradually becoming more common and accepted. With romantic relationships involving more than two people we also get children with more than two parent-like figures. Many have a strong desire to pass on their genes, something which can be helped with e.g. the recent creation of 3-parent human embryos.
So with both the prospect of having kids later and a child having more than two parents, I really don't think that the population problem is as hard to solve as some people make it out to be. It should also be noted that it's not like scientists are going to develop RLE one day, and then the next, blam, everyone lives forever. Rather, the technology will be developed in stages. In the early stages, there are going to be a lot of people who have grown far too frail to be helped, and it might take a long time before we hit acturial escape velocity, so there might simply be an e.g. 10-year bump on people's lifespan and then 20 years could pass before the next major breakthrough.
The treatments may also not be affordable for everyone at first, though it needs to be noted that governments will have a huge incentive to subsidize the treatements for everyone to reduce the healthcare costs of the elderly and to push back the age for retirement. A 2006 article in The Scientist argues that simply slowing aging by seven years would produce large enough of an economic benefit to justify the US investing three billion dollars annually to this research. The commonly heard "but only the rich could live forever" argument against RLE does not, I feel, take into account the actual economic realities (amusingly enough, as its supporters no doubt think they're the economically realistic ones).
So we're going to get a slowly and gradually lengthening average lifespan, which at first probably won't do much more than reverse the population decline that will hit a lot of Western countries soon. The replenishment rate required to keep a population stable is about 2.1 children per woman. The average fertility rate in a lot of industrialized countries is well below this - for instance, 1.58 in Canada, 1.42 in Germany, 1.32 in Italy, 1.20 in Japan and 1.04 in Hong Kong. The EU average is 1.51. Yes, in a lot of poor countries the figures are considerably higher - Niger tops the chart with 7.68 children per woman - but even then the overall world population growth is projected to start declining around 2050 or so.
To give a sense of proportion: suppose that tomorrow, we developed literal immortality and made it instantly available for everyone, so that the death rate would drop to zero in a day, with no adjustment to the birth rate. Even if this completely unrealistic scenario were to take place, the overall US population growth would still only be about half of what it was during the height of the 1950s baby boom! Even in such a completely, utterly unrealistic scenario, it would still take around 53 years for the US population to double - assuming no compensating drop in birth rates in that whole time.
We've adapted to increasing lifespans before. Between 1950 and 1990, the percentage of population over 65 almost doubled in Sweden, going from 10.3 to 18.1. (In the United Kingdom it went up from 10.7 to 15.2, in the US from 8.1 to 12.6, and in the more-developed countries overall it went from 7.6 to 12.1.) The beauty of economics is that like all resource consumption, having children is a self-regulating mechanism: if a growing population really does exert a heavy strain on resources, then it will become more expensive to have children, and people will have less of them. The exception is in the less industrialized countries where children are still a net economic benefit for their parents and not a cost, but most of the world is industrializing quickly. Over the last fifty years, the gaps between the rich and poor have gotten smaller and smaller, to the point where people are calling the whole concept of a first world/third world divide a myth. I see no reason to presume that radical life extension and indefinite youths would pose us any problems that we couldn't handle, at least not on the overpopulation front.
Но не все это понимают.
большая часть людей использует технологию для изменения разума и расширения своих возможностей. любые лекарства, психотропные вещества, информационные технологии.
даже при использовании нейроинтерфейсов типа ЭЭГ устройств человек не осознает себя трансчеловеком.
можно сказать, первым трансчеловеком был древний человек, пивший алкоголь и читавший клинописные таблички)
четкая грань может существовать при осуществлении более постоянных изменений в человеческом теле. понятно, что человек с имплантом в мозгу или подвергшийся генной модификации будет уже иметь несколько иную идентичность.
но вот насколько важным и частым будет такой путь резких постоянных перемен ?
не получится ли, что гораздо легче действовать понемногу и незаметно, предлагая населению постепенные улучшения ?
YouTube and the World Economic Forum are opening the doors to Davos to provide unique access for an individual to elevate a worthy and important cause. 'The Davos Debates' are an opportunity to engage and debate with the world's leaders, and join them on stage for a special panel to help pitch your cause to the world. Russian immortalists («Science for Life Extension») wish to take part in this project.
Our video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCKV_ZnC9kk&feature=player_embedded
There is a defective gene that is common to all humans. It is the 5-ht2a receptor gene. The 5-ht2a receptor is a serotonin receptor in the brain. The 5-ht2a gene has a promoter region which causes it to be expressed in the brain in response to testosterone, which binds to receptors on a neuron's nuclear membrane. The 5-ht2a receptor is responsible for egotistical intimidating aggression, and thus responsible for much of the world's evil. Testosterone also causes numerous changes in the body and brain that improve health and fitness, and the lack of testosterone causes poverty of health and fitness.
These effects include:
*Testosterone increases male muscle strength, and improves the response of muscles to exercise.
*Testosterone increases a man's general physical masculinity, including the length of the penis.
*Testosterone increases enkephalin in the brain, which decreases pain.
*Testosterone suppresses the activity of the adrenal glands, making a person less susceptible to anxiety.
*Testosterone increases dopamine and D1 receptors in the brain, which increases a person's general pleasure, and especially increases sexual pleasure.
The consequence of this defective 5-ht2a gene is that egotistical intimidating aggression has a positive correlation to health and fitness. This defective gene must be fixed. The solution is to replace the gene's promoter with a suppresser, such that testosterone decreases 5-ht2a expression rather than increasing it, such that the correct correlation between character and fitness exists. Eventually, all first-world countries must make this gene rectification mandatory. Obviously this would occur after the safety is perfected.
| Poster: |  natowelch |
|---|---|
| Date: | 2009-06-15 14:50 |
| Subject: | Meta |
| Security: | Public |
Why does it matter whether a thing "makes us human" or not? What are the salient consequences to the proffered answers to the "debates" over whether any given modifications or other interventions make us human, not human, "inhuman", more humane, or "less" human?
Try to think about what answers to this question would be given by those you disagree with in regards to whether - or how much - certain "debated" changes would change an entitie's status as a human.
Why does it matter who we call human?
| Poster: | ultrapeach |
|---|---|
| Date: | 2009-05-22 17:05 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
I hope it's appropriate to ask this:
I was wondering is anyone is interested in speculative reproductive technologies specifically, and what impact these could have on sex and gender. For example, the existence of synthetic wombs would completely remove sex from procreation, finally pushing sex in the direction... finally legitimising once and for all sex for pleasure's sake (with any gender). Synthetic wombs would also free women from a painful fact of their biology - childbirth.
Basically, I'm writing an essay on this and was wondering if anyone has some good sources dealing with this? Discussion is fine too, of course!
Thanks.
Cross-posted to xuenay.
A colleague's posting on the Finnish Transhumanist Association's mailing list made me think about a phenomenon I've observed both in myself and several others, but never thought about so explicitly. I call it the Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism.
The excitement phase is when you first stumble across concepts such as transhumanism, radical life extension, and superintelligent AI. This is when you subscribe to transhumanist mailing lists, join your local WTA/H+ chapter, and start trying to spread the word to everybody you know. You'll probably spend hundreds of hours reading different kinds of transhumanist materials. This phase typically lasts for several years.
In the disillusionment phase, you start to realize that while you still agree with the fundamental transhumanist philosophy, most of what you are doing is rather pointless. You can have all the discussions you want, but by themselves, those discussions aren't going to bring all those amazing technologies here. You learn to ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time. Having gotten over your initial future shock, you may start to wonder why having a specific name like transhumanism is necessary in the first place - people have been taking advantage of new technologies for several thousands of years. After all, you don't have a specific "cellphonist" label for people using cell phones, either. You'll slowly start losing interest in activities that are specifically termed as transhumanist.
In the reorientation cycle you have two alternatives. Some people renounce transhumanism entirely, finding the label pointless and mostly a magnet for people with a tendency towards future hype and techno-optimism. Others (like me) simply realize that bringing forth the movement's goals requires a very different kind of effort than debating other transhumanists on closed mailing lists. An effort like engaging with the large audience in a more effective manner, or getting an education in a technology-related field and becoming involved in the actual research yourself. In either case, you're likely to unsubscribe the mailing lists or at least start paying them much less attention than before. If you still identify as a transhumanist, your interest in the online communities wanes because you're too busy actually working for the cause. (Alternatively, you've realized how much work this would be and have stopped even trying.)
This shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm saying the online h+ community is unnecessary, and that people ought to just skip to the last phase. The first step of the cycle is a very useful ingredient for giving one a strong motivation to keep working for the cause in one's later life, even when they're no longer following the lists.
One might think that this cycle isn't really specific to transhumanism, and that a more general form of it ought to apply to all communities. While I have no doubt that it probably does apply to other communities as well, I find that the transhumanist cause is somewhat rare in that it is so technology-dependant. Hobby communities are built around a certain interest, and for those you don't need much more than the community - having gathered a bunch of RPG or BDSM enthusiasts, you can then go enjoy the activity in question together with them. For purely political movements, you can make progress with a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people aren't really going to care about the social implications of a technology before they can be convinced that the technology in question is actually going to become real soon. And even if everybody did agree that radical life extension, say, is a good thing, that wouldn't really matter for as long as you didn't have life extension available. You'd need to actually get involved with things that actually brought life extension forward, instead of just twiddling your thumbs in the general transhumanist community. This makes the transhumanist community very different from most other kinds of communities.
There's an ongoing discussion on Reddit which has reeled in a lot of comments. Take a look. It is essentially the age-old conflict between those who want to cure aging and those who think aging is good, our lifespans are enough, we must all die to make room for our children, etc.
What really surprised me is how many are in that second category. Not something I'd expect from Reddit. Kind of tantamount to seeing a huge evolution vs. creationism thread, isn't it?
With a touch of wit, Dr. James Hughes summarizes market fundamentalist backlash against Marshall Brain's heretical idea that democratic government can actually help as technologies continue to disrupt labor-based economies.
Yo, fellow meatbag, isn’t this the conference about the idea that greater than human intelligence will be such a profound rupture with all human history that we can’t predict the outcome? So that Singularity idea applies to everything except the magical capability of the market to find ways for human beings to compete in labor markets with super-capable robots, which you think is easily extrapolable from the migration of human peasants into human industrial jobs and then into shuffling meaningless numbers through computers with human fingers? What exactly are the jobs you imagine humans doing better than robots and AI in the Singularity future?
Just curious about what people in this community do actively for the transhumanist cause? Perhaps we could have a debate on the efficiency of various initiatives?
Me, I don't do much apart from spreading the word, reading articles, participating in debates and running Rosetta@home to help with disease and aging research.
I suppose our priorities have to do with which parts of the transhumanist spirit we're the most interested in, be it immortalism, singularity, body modification, space colonization et cetera.
But do you have any practical suggestions? Could we make a list of ten things that are doable for the common people (people who aren't employed as specialists in emerging technologies)?
Aug 8th 7p First Hill Bar and Grill here in Seattle (901 Madison).
Facebook invite (including some reading materials) can be found here. Whitechapel discussion here.
Topic will be information intake, filtering, healthy information diets.
Greetings, everyone. This is my first post, nice to meet you and all that. Let's talk about something!
Most of what I've read about transhumanism or posthumanism seems to fall in lines with the same sort of predictions that Vernor Vinge makes with the technological singularity. Our society is going to change, utterly.
And I'm relatively okay with that.
I like the idea of us becoming something else. What I'm curious about is whether or not we can see what we might become. My example is built on the idea of the Outside Context Problem, as described by Iain M. Banks in the Culture series.
Namely, it's a problem so big that you can't predict it. It changes you, fundamentally, for having interacted with it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't adapt to it. For the Aztecs, Cortes and his ships might have been an Outside Context Problem. However, that doesn't change the fact that the people adapted, even if their culture did get torn apart in the process.
So, I'm of the mind that we might be able to see where we're going. And I want to start speculating. After all, isn't that what futurists (and writers) do?
I think that our transhumanist future is going to first manifest itself as stunning increases in intelligence afforded by man-machine interfaces. We're going to start removing parts of our brain (or maybe just increase the size of our cranium...or hell, store the 'ware in another part of our body) to increase our recall and basic processing capabilities. And after that, once we've harnessed that technique to increase our ability to conceive of ideas, I think we'll become the new intelligences that will break through the singularity. I don't think computers are going to get there first, but that's just my thought, rather than any kind of educated guess.
What do you say?
Hey there, I'm currently experimenting with nootropics and have started a regimin this week. If anyone is interested in following my progress or chatting about smart drugs or transhumanism in general, please feel free to drop by my journal, all open minds welcome :)
I'm an atheist.
As such, I don't believe in any sort of afterlife or spirituality. In fact, I find these beliefs childish, naive and harmful - they obstruct the truth, thereby retarding progress, and their adherents force them on everyone else in an effort to increase their own well-being. Everything I know points to that the universe is a machine; a fantastically complex one, but a machine nonetheless. Thus, I've answered two questions for myself: life is an abstract concept (meaning, "artificial life" and "artificial intellect" are no different from the real thing), and death is impossible to experience (as the brain ceases function, it cannot register any stimuli and thoughts just slow down infinitely).
My existence is not pointless however, and I refuse to die. Our knowledge of the universe is far from being even remotely complete, and for that reason utter nihilism makes about as much sense as hope for an absurd "Holy Kingdom" where you frolic for all eternity. I want to live - survival instincts and hedonism aside, I want to live out of sheer curiosity.
Now that I've explained myself, I'll share some thoughts on life extension. I consider saving my own life from death - from aging - to be of paramount importance. In fact, as it stands, it's infinitely more important to me than everything else put together. This means that I need a working solution of some kind within the next sixty years (and that's an optimistic number). From what I'm seeing, this isn't going to happen - though it doesn't have to be this way. And here's why.
First of all, there's the idea of a "Technological Singularity". What's expected of it is just madness; the same kind of madness that surrounds the Christian rapture. I don't doubt that artificial intellect that matches or surpasses human intellect is just decades away; however, expecting it to blossom into some kind demigod and usher in a utopia sounds just like the sales pitch of a religion. An AI going to be just as clueless as we are, regardless of how quickly it thinks. Perhaps it could truly turn into some kind of exponentially growing demigod if we gave it an autonomous body of some sort, like giving self-replicating machines a collective consciousness. But that notion is too silly to even consider: any healthy intellect would just kill us all - as evident from nature; and one burdened by some kind of Asimov's Laws is bound to be a sad, dependent cretin.
And then there's the emphasis on gene therapy. Everyone seems to think that gene therapy is going to reverse aging. Indeed, it'll make individual cells more robust, and it has the potential to make future generations far superior. Gene therapy can also potentially cure cancer. DNA research is a good thing that's certain to give us good things in turn. But it's not going to reverse aging. Implanting new DNA in an old person using something like a viral vector won't magically turn them young. Wrinkles won't disappear, and bodies will continue to deform. DNA is an algorithm by which the body builds itself; it's also the mechanism by which cells in an adult body are replaced. But it does nothing for the body's maintenance. Once the organs are fully developed, their structure isn't going to change. That's the reason we have wrinkles in the first place; they are the result of skin growing more and more chaotically with each cell generation.
I did say that it doesn't have to be hopeless, so I'm going to offer ideas for life extension which I consider to be workable in the near future.
The soonest, and the most likely reason for death in adults is mechanical failure of the circulatory system. Trying to fix it is a futile endeavor, because it's in essence a pulsating chunk of meat connected to a whole lot of meat tubes - and we don't have a whole lot of experience with meat repair; we have never treated meat like machinery. If anything, the trade of a surgeon is closer to the trade of a tailor. And, well, damaged cloth isn't fixed thread by thread - it's replaced, or patched. Best of all is the replacement of an entire body; a "head transplant", if you will. But that type of procedure is still impossible, since we can't yet reattach nerves. A whole body is bound to be ridiculously expensive anyway. So I think organ replacement is more realistic. Organs which teeter on failure can be surgically replaced. These replacements can be grown inside genetically modified animals, or cloned human beings.
No, I do not find dismantling mutant pigs and cloned human babies to extract the goodies within to be an inherently abominable practice.
Another solution I suggest is biomechatronics. It is less realistic than (and further off from) organ replacement in that it requires the development of utterly novel devices, but is still quite possible nevertheless, and is certain to perform a lot better in some ways. The only problems are developing the parts, and figuring out how to integrate them into the body so it does not reject them.
Am I wrong? It's a possibility. I'm quite nervous about posting all this for that reason. Hope this wackiness solicits some good replies, at least. Please comment.