9 replies to this topic

[Kacht]

Gooday. When will humans become immortal? What is the status as of march 2018? 

[Kacht]

Any thoughts about this?

[Oakman]

Google has articles saying 2050 is the magic date, but I have my doubts about prediction. After all, we were supposed to have flying cars by now, and what do we get indstead? ...electric cars that run into things occasionally. But seriously, I think right now in 2018 we're in the phase of we are beginning to have the right ideas about what we need to look into to become immortal, but we have a long long way to go to completely understand the processes involved and, more to the point, be able to change them, repair them. And besides the socio-economic implications of all this, somewhere along the line we will need to redefine what is 'old' satisfactorily, and what do we do with all these forever old people!

[sthira]

I think many longevity scientists hate talk about immortality. That freighted word makes the discipline sound kooky, and we need no kooky. The word also diverts attention away focusing on practical life extension strategies. Repairing, replacing, and rendering harmless what is now aging the human body will happen incrementally. Everyone wants to know who, where, how, and especially WHEN.

Radical life extension is an investment, too, and maybe when one demonstrable intervention is decloaked, and obviously seen, more money will flood into this nascent research. Some of the holdups should have been solved decades ago; they languished because of public policy, lack of funding, ethical concerns, yadda... De Grey has been addressing tired excuses for nearly two decades -- we have a 50/50 chance for X date if financial targets are met and clinical trials are successful.

I hope technological advances in human longevity are farther along than I think, though, but of course hope depends upon on who we believe. Kurzweil, for example, does now work for one of the richest companies ever created -- motivated -- does that bring humanity closer to LEV? I don't know, I have hope for Calico, I mean, Cynthia Kenyon, right, doesn't she seem pretty motivated about translating longevity effects in worms to rodents to humans? There's so much we don't know.

[Kacht]

According to Ray Kurzweil it is 9-14 years to living forever. 

[aribadabar]

According to Ray Kurzweil it is 9-14 years to living forever. 

 

If by immortality he means brain upload - I think it's more like 20+.

An actual physical body immortality - even more, if ever.

[QuestforLife]

According to Ray Kurzweil it is 9-14 years to living forever. 

 

Kurzweil is not claiming it will be a done deal in that timescale, only that he believes by that date we will have passed the point at which we are gaining more years than we are losing.

[OP2040]

It would certainly be nice to have a date, but we all know that's impossible.  What's interesting is that we could have all the answers and even be implementing them, but we still wouldn't know for sure another 10-20 years after that.  I tend to use the hallmarks of aging as my guide to what causes aging.  I think it's fairly comprehensive which is a breakthrough in and of itself.  Because it is fairly comprehensive and accurate, solving those 9 hallmarks, or even just the first 4 may be enough to get us many more healthy years, which is fine because really we just want to buy ourselves and our loved ones lots more time for now.  Of the hallmarks, the only one that seems pretty far out is epigenetics.  The rest of them can be crudely effected in humans right now.  So once we bring epigenetics into the fold, and expand our understanding and implementation of all of them, I think we are basically "there" and it's all politics from that point.  By "there", I do not mean immortality, or even something quite clear.  I mean at a point where we can start dramatically preventing and reversing some aspects of age-related disease, and we are clearly getting healthier even in old age.

 

So having said all that, I really do believe it is closer than many people think in terms of the science.  But it could be very far away in terms of the politics.  My official prediction is that we will see age reversal of some or all tissues in humans by around 2030.  Call me an optimist.

[ihatesnow]

We barely scratched the surface understanding protein folding 

  Check out these research groups http://boinc.bakerla...setta/          http://folding.stanf...ford.edu/       https://youtu.be/7tz...Mw?t=29        https://youtu.be/WHP...wnt8ds0w?t=142  https://youtu.be/cAJ...QbSLlonI?t=135  https://youtu.be/WHPwnt8ds0w?t=251

Edited by ihatesnow, 08 July 2018 - 10:55 PM.

[ihatesnow]

 The protein folding problem                                                  https://youtu.be/zm-3kovWpNQ?t=94