What will humanity become? 1
August 17th 2007 02:15
What will happen in the future which will make it useful to call ourselves something other than 'Human'? I shall attempt to compile a list of tangible and rational things which are very likely to happen in the near future which will facilitate a fundamental change in our nature.
1. Immortality.
Hygene and Medicine have given us ever longer and longer life spans, we are now at the point where the complete erradication of disease will only increase the average life span by around 12 years or so.
But medicine is becoming an information technology, which will bring with it the exponential growth associated with information technology. Medicine used to be this process of trial and error, test a whole bunch of chemicals or procedures and see if any of them are useful, and put those into use. With medicine as information technology we will be able to design what effects we wish to have on the body and implement those.
In this way we can have regenerative medicine. Medicine that fixes the negative effects of metabolism. Alzheimer's, for example, is caused by a protein build up in the brain. All your life your neurons produce tiny ammounts of a certain protein that nothing in your body can break down. Seeing as ammounts of this protein are so negligible, in terms of survival and procreation, it has never mattered, so no mutation which happens to 'eat' this protein has sprung up and spread. So by the time you're 90 you've got a traffic jam in your brain, because this protein is just building up. We can engineer an enzyme to 'eat' this protein and poof, goodbye Alzheimer's, that's what's being worked on now.
In a similar way we can perform specific, targeted tasks in the body with the aim of repairing these negative effects of metabolism, in a sense reversing the aging process. There will still be some effects of aging which we won't be able to reverse, but lets say you get an extra 30 years on your life. In those 30 years think of the huge advances this rapidly accelerating technology will take. By the time that 30 years is up, regenerative medicine will have learned to fix some parts of the previously unfixable damage, giving you another number of years. In that time more advances will be made. As you can see there will be a point when the number of extra years given will be long enough for you to live indefinitely, or more accurately aging will be removed as a cause of death. Without disease and aging, that leaves accident, murder and suicide. But with our better medicine it will be harder and harder to die by these methods.
Essentially, life will become a choice. Everyone who is alive, will be alive because they choose to be and shall remain alive so long as they choose to be. Thus the only cause of death shall be choice. This seems to have something fundamentally right about it, it just seems to be the perfect way we would want it. Some may say it's unnatural, or death is an essential part of life. If they attempt to stop such technologies from coming into existence, they shall be responsible for billions of preventable deaths, the biggest crime against humanity ever perpetrated. Let them choose to die if they wish not to live forever (or more accurately: indefinitely), but let them not interfere in my choice, that seems fundamentally immoral and, moreover, unethical.
The only important question is: Will you choose to live forever?
1. Immortality.
Hygene and Medicine have given us ever longer and longer life spans, we are now at the point where the complete erradication of disease will only increase the average life span by around 12 years or so.
But medicine is becoming an information technology, which will bring with it the exponential growth associated with information technology. Medicine used to be this process of trial and error, test a whole bunch of chemicals or procedures and see if any of them are useful, and put those into use. With medicine as information technology we will be able to design what effects we wish to have on the body and implement those.
In this way we can have regenerative medicine. Medicine that fixes the negative effects of metabolism. Alzheimer's, for example, is caused by a protein build up in the brain. All your life your neurons produce tiny ammounts of a certain protein that nothing in your body can break down. Seeing as ammounts of this protein are so negligible, in terms of survival and procreation, it has never mattered, so no mutation which happens to 'eat' this protein has sprung up and spread. So by the time you're 90 you've got a traffic jam in your brain, because this protein is just building up. We can engineer an enzyme to 'eat' this protein and poof, goodbye Alzheimer's, that's what's being worked on now.
In a similar way we can perform specific, targeted tasks in the body with the aim of repairing these negative effects of metabolism, in a sense reversing the aging process. There will still be some effects of aging which we won't be able to reverse, but lets say you get an extra 30 years on your life. In those 30 years think of the huge advances this rapidly accelerating technology will take. By the time that 30 years is up, regenerative medicine will have learned to fix some parts of the previously unfixable damage, giving you another number of years. In that time more advances will be made. As you can see there will be a point when the number of extra years given will be long enough for you to live indefinitely, or more accurately aging will be removed as a cause of death. Without disease and aging, that leaves accident, murder and suicide. But with our better medicine it will be harder and harder to die by these methods.
Essentially, life will become a choice. Everyone who is alive, will be alive because they choose to be and shall remain alive so long as they choose to be. Thus the only cause of death shall be choice. This seems to have something fundamentally right about it, it just seems to be the perfect way we would want it. Some may say it's unnatural, or death is an essential part of life. If they attempt to stop such technologies from coming into existence, they shall be responsible for billions of preventable deaths, the biggest crime against humanity ever perpetrated. Let them choose to die if they wish not to live forever (or more accurately: indefinitely), but let them not interfere in my choice, that seems fundamentally immoral and, moreover, unethical.
The only important question is: Will you choose to live forever?
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Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
And, as fantastic as these are, theres also nanomachines, synthetic advances....
I believe, no matter how far we come, there will always be death from old age. I also believe, that nature has a cause an effect aspect - cure cancer, and something else will rear its ugly head.
I would love to live forever, Im sure Id extend my life for as long as I could. I do not fear death however. He's gotta come sometime.