Editor's Blog
Just as the Manhattan Project was conceived in 1942 to beat the Germans to the atomic bomb during World War II, the “Manhattan Beach Project” was founded as an “all-out assault on the world’s biggest killer – aging,” according to project organizer David A. Kekich.
An end to aging may be just as explosive as the atomic blast that occurred at Alamogordo, New Mexico during the predawn hours of July 16, 1945. It’s serious enough that members of the Obama Administration consider it to be one of the major global destabilizing forces of the next 25 years. It will require the political mastery of a scientific and societal transition built around the Nano-Info-Bio-Cogno (NBIC) roadmap.
After nine years of research and collaboration, a group of entrepreneurs and scientists – many known to h+ readers –- are disclosing their plan “to start saving up to 100,000 lives lost to aging every day, by 2029.” A Longevity Summit in November 2009 — organized by Kekich — brought together a number of researchers on human aging and longevity for a discussion on the state-of-the-art research, the implications of their discoveries, and round table, cross-disciplinary discussions that may lead to new and accelerated results. Here’s a video of Kekich explaining the project:
The goal of the summit was “to devise scientific and business strategies with the goal of demonstrating the capability to reverse aging in an older human by 2029.” Many at the conference believe that humans are approaching something Aubrey De Grey calls “longevity escape velocity” (see the h+ article “Aubrey de Grey on ‘The Singularity’ and ‘The Methuselarity’” in Resources). This is the point at which the yearly advances in procedures for extending human life expectancy result in adding one year to the human lifespan –- potentially making death-by-aging a choice rather than a date with destiny.
Entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurzweil opened the conference with a virtual presentation on exponential technology trends that are bringing the prospect of achieving longevity escape velocity ever closer. “We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity,” explained Kurzweil. “We are about 15 years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.”
University of California, Riverside biochemist Stephen Spindler reported on his research seeking caloric restriction mimetics. (See the h+ article “You Are What You Don’t Eat” in Resources.) Research shows that restricting mice and rats to about two-thirds of their regular diet extends their healthy lifespans. For example, calorie-restricted mice live up to 50 percent longer and experience less heart disease and cancer than those who eat as much as they want. Spindler is testing a variety of compounds including pharmaceuticals to see if they mimic the effects of caloric restriction in mice.
Michael Rose, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, talked about his work breeding long-lived fruit flies. Rose is testing the hypothesis that natural selection contributes to aging. Using artificial selection for longevity, Rose has produced fruit flies that live four times longer than normal, the human equivalent of being healthy at age 300. These “Methuselah flies” are more fecund and better at handling environmental stresses than non-selected flies.
William Andrews, head of Sierra Sciences, talked about his company’s project to identify compounds that lengthen telomeres –- repeated sequences of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes to keep them from unraveling and to keep them from binding to other chromosomes. According to Andrews, when an adult’s telomeres get down to about 5,000 repeats they die of old age. By looking at telomere length in a blood sample, he claims to be able to predict how much time until you die a natural death. “I can tell how old you are and how long you have before you die of old age,” claims Andrews.
A group of entrepreneurs and scientists – many known to h+ readers –- are disclosing their plan “to start saving up to 100,000 lives lost to aging every day, by 2029."
Stephen Coles heads the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF) and wants to answer the question why some people live to be over 100 years old. Supercentenarians are people who are over 110 years old. In the world there are 76 currently validated supercentenarians, 72 are female and 4 are male. His research shows that most died of senile cardiac amyloidosis, the accumulation of amyloid fibers in their heart muscles.
John Furber, founder of Legendary Pharmaceuticals, discussed the problem of accumulating cross-linked proteins and sugars inside and outside of cells – these are the fibers that killed Coles’ supercentenarians. The digestive organelles inside cells called lysosomes slowly become clogged with advanced glycation end-products (AGEs).
Nanotechnology pioneer Robert Freitas – recipient of the prestigious 2009 Feynman Prize for Theory, in recognition of his pioneering work in molecular mechanosynthesis –- gave a talk with Ralph Merkle on how medical non-biological nanotechnology will likely work in the next 20 years. “The difference between good and bad health is how your atoms are arranged,” said Merkle. The goal of medical nanotechnology is to mobilize nanobots to patrol the body and its cells repairing damage as it occurs.
The business strategy session included new media entrepreneur and Disney executive Oliver Luckett, 2008 Libertarian Party VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root, computer and biotech entrepreneur Richard Offerdahl, marketing expert John Lustyan, social media marketer Michael Terpin, Lifestar Institute COO Kevin Perrott, CEO of TA Sciences Noel Patton, filmmaker Michael Potter, marketer Joe Sugarman, computer entrepreneur Ken Weiss, and Bill Faloon, co-founder of the Life Extension Foundation.
Can you stay healthy enough to make it to 2029? If you can, you may be able to live indefinitely if you choose – although the political and societal challenges you’ll face will likely be more daunting than the ones that followed the dawning of the Atomic Era at Alamogordo in 1945. Follow the progress of The Manhattan Beach Project at www.manhattanbeachproject.com
36 Comments
Not so fast. With businessmen and, gag!, a libertarian involved, it means that any treatments that come available will ONLY be available to the rich and “worthy”. If you are not rich or not adjudged to be otherwise “worthy” by some libertarian or businessman, then you are SOL.
In another vein, the rules should be simple assuming indefinite lifespan is achieved: if you elect to have your life extended, then you have to give up your fertility. No reproduction/children allowed so long as you are receiving treatments. If you decide at some point that you just gotta make a baby, then you are required to go off longevity therapies and accept normal aging from that point on. Otherwise, population would literally explode in just a couple generations beyond any theoretical or desirable carrying capacity of the earth.
Sorry, but we are not going to give up open land, wildlife, forests, parks, etc, so that people can literally inhabit every available square foot of space. Of course, that is impossible in the first place because LONG before we reached that population and the environmental destruction that must come with it, we as a species (along with all the others we stupidly took out on our way) would be toast.
“…gag!, a libertarian…” it’s funny that freedom makes you gag.
Libertarians generally don’t care about “freedom” as much as they suffer from class anxiety. Their support for Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile shows where their real priorities lie.
“If you are not rich or not adjudged to be otherwise “worthy” by some libertarian or businessman, then you are SOL.”
If you’re not rich or “worthy”, you go to the black market, obtain the life extension drugs/treatments for much lower price and without any judging and then give a middle finger to the businessmen who will cry and rage, trying to criminalize people’s attempts to save their lives.
If advances in robotics and software algorithms eliminate the majority of jobs instead of eliminating the idea of work altogether
If artificial scarcity is forced upon the public through DRM locked nanofactories instead of open source MNT that can make anything for pennies… eliminating the need for money and credit
If human genetic enhancement and radical life extension are only available to the wealthy in said artificial scarcity model economy
If the nation state model begins to move to a centalized bureaucracy (EU, NAU, ASEAN) staffed by unelected officials controlled by special interests (read: fractional reserve bankers), instead of more transparent governments that are directly accountable to their constituents
The above situations, if they play out, will cause tremendous social, poltical and economic strain the likes of which we’ve never seen. No amount of media spin will be able to cloud the argument. These inequalities can’t be ignored, denied or made light of. You’re either a slave or you’re not. Will we see an empowered humanity freed from disease and wage slavery or will we have a neo-feudalist global plantation dominated by a transhuman elite? Conflict will explode using lethal nanotech weapons. Hugo De Garis may not have to worry about an Artilect War. Humanity may have gigadeath war not over species dominance, but over issues concerning control and dominance over the population.
yep. quite true.
However, I don’t foresee that happening for one very simple reason. The internet.
All of those things require control of information. The internet allows the universal dissemination of information.
DRM has been being tried for how many years now? It’s still useless. Anyone who is seriously interested can find a way around DRM.
The feudal system ended when the printing press arrived. Information was suddenly available and accessible to the masses. The Social order was over turned when the knowledge previously controlled by the Church was suddenly uncontrolled. Knowledge previously hard to obtain in very rare tomes owned by only a few suddenly was being passed around by many. The Reformation occurred because the common man could now access the knowledge once only the priests could read.
All forms of Tyranny depend on suppression of knowledge. Our history has proved this time and again. Suppression doesn’t work forever though. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Our modern “war on drugs” certainly hasn’t, and as climategate is proving, all it takes is one leak on the internet to open a huge can of worms.
A DRM controlled nanofactory might be tried. But as sure as a black market for drugs appeared as soon as they were made illegal, and a million DRM free mp3 sites sprung up following the attempts to ban music sharing, a black market for non-DRM nanofactories will occur.
And as Drexler pointed out, all it takes is one single self-replicating nanofactory to create a world filled with them.
We’ve been slaves to the Corporatacracy. But we’re moving out of that phase now. They are trying like hell to restore their power through lobbying to kill reform in health and finance and eliminate net neutrality, but all they are truly doing is spending millions on efforts that will fail. They may buy a few more years of life, but that is all.
The only ones who will survive are those who adapt to the new realities. Google seems like it might do well, but those who continue to cling to the past won’t.
We’re at the start of the elbow curve for the internet. It’s been growing in power slowly, but the next decade it is going to skyrocket in influence, especially once VR becomes commonplace.
In 20 years… there may not be a tyrant left standing.
Good response to that comment, my boy. Made me feel warm and fuzzy.
Awesome!
Google is becoming cozy with the NSA.. no one is safe as long as the Patriot Act is in effect. We need pervasive cryptography.. the freenet project has come a long way.. need more like it.
wait, we can’t handle the amount of people on the planet yet, why are we trying to stop aging? that’s just wasteful, stupid, and mainly just selfish. it’s the way our bodies work, there are real problems to solve.
Wow I didn’t know aging was an imaginary problem.
Also, explain to me how it’s selfish to want to cure aging when EVERY SINGLE LIVING BEING ON THE PLANET suffers from it?
This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard of. Over population is the biggest problem on the planet as it is. How is keeping people alive longer gonna help anything?
Amazingly enough, when you factor out immigration, industrialized countries are actually seeing population declines rather than increases. However, even though our current resources and technologies could support 6 billion more people (according to world renowned economist Julian Simon), these concerns should still be addressed.
Life extensionists are generally responsible, problem-solving people who share these concerns. And the longer we keep them alive, the more brainpower we have to see these problems through, by developing better technologies for cheaper and more plentiful food and water, pure air, clean abundant energy and affordable housing.
Just as technology extends lives, it makes life more livable for larger populations. Since the Industrial Revolution, alarmists screamed doom and gloom about overcrowding and limited resources (backed by their “statistics”). However, the opposite has happened. The population increased by 740% since then, and standards of living have soared. It’s not so much a question of resources as it is one of education, individual productivity and distribution—social problems, not life-extension problems. As long as people produce more than they consume, it’s impossible to run out of resources.
Telling people they should die to make room for others is not a good solution to any problem.
http://www.manhattanbeachproject.com/About/Objections-to-Extreme-Life-Extension.htm
If you want to die, go ahead.
I do not, however, and will not allow someone to tell me when it is my time to die.
Every day, 100,000 people die from old age.
Every day, 1.02 billion people don’t have enough to eat. It’s just my opinion, but it seems like it might be prudent to solve *that* problem first.
Don’t worry, they can’t afford life extensions anyway. They would die off soon enough.
FACT:
Capitalism will bring the singularity and there’s nothing you socialists can do about it
Freedom will win in the future.
My only complaint about longevity research is how it’s always presented with the “live as long as you choose” and “dying of old age will become a choice”.
The article writers all seem to live in an ideal world where we’re all either amazingly rich, or the entire planet has access to universal, unrationed healthcare. The articles should say “live as long as you can afford” and “dying of old age will become a choice of your insurance provider”. The research absolutely should continue, and I’m just as excited to see the day we conquer aging as anyone. I just think that it should be presented in a more realistic fashion.
The Atomic Age was presented as an amazing cureall that would change the planet with unlimited “free” energy. While we have seen a good number of very useful things out of nuclear technololgy, we’ve seen just as many negatives as positives. So I suppose the comparison is actually valid.
Although this may sound great it will be very expensive and only the exremly whelthy will be able to under go the treatmeant. So this is the first stept in transforming the current global elite in a the law of the world and the perpetual order of history.
You mean I’ll have to be 68 forever? Uggh.
I share your vision, assuming all other factors remains the same , then just the wealthy will be able to afford such treatment.
I don’t expect scenarios of economic systems utopyas such as post scarcity society, capitalism seems to be staying for long time…
Wow, the short sighted pessimism.
First, capitialism is dying. It is suffering it’s death throes right now as we speak, and is desperately doing everything it can to latch a stranglehold onto a lifeline of government bailouts.
The era of big corporations is coming rapidly to a close. Either they will be shoved out of the government feeding trough and die normally, or they will bankrupt the government and collapse with it. Either way, capitalism is doomed.
The only question is how many years it will take (not decades) and how many people they make suffer and die along with them.
Aging research will not simply freeze you at your current age. Present research is to restore and repair all damage caused by aging as well as stop the process. So you will be an 80 year old in the body you had when you were 25.
And only the rich will have it? Please. I’m sorry, but if you think 90% of the population is going to sit still for letting 10% live forever, you have a much distorted view of how the human beast thinks and acts. Quite simply the rich would be well advised to make it available to all… or fail to be able to enjoy that immortality they paid so much for as a head riding on the end of a pitchfork.
Somehow I see living forever being something that the common populace will not tolerate being rationed.
I could not agree more with the idea that capitalism is on its last legs.Good riddance to it.
The core foundation of the wage slave economic system is that of the masses being forced by necessity to trade labor for goods.
A robotic work force with the ability to mine refine and manufacture all material goods including more robots will end the tyrannical hold the market system has on humanity.
As a roboticist I am confident that the level of intelligence necessary for this game changing advance to occur is almost at hand.
We need only have synthetic minds capable of ant or bee level reasoning to reach our goals.Properly guided such minds working cooperatively will set us all free.
Now it will be up to a new set of human thinkers to build with that freedom.
No utopia here only new challenges to overcome.
My question is how will our wealthy overlords deal with their Dethronement.
Not well is my guess.
Let’s hope we can sneak it past them.
Kelad.
I’m not at all worried about it.
You have to understand that Corporations will quite happily do themselves in.
The first company to develop cheap robot labor forces will use it. They will quite happily spend billions to put it to work for them, because it will give them a HUGE advantage over their competition.
At which point every company has to do it, or perish.
shortly thereafter, when all companies have the tech, prices will plummet, because each company will be fighting to sell more products than the others. Due to fast robotic production, fast development times, and the pressure to constantly stay ahead of competition, smaller and smaller lots will become normal, customization will dominate, and r&d and design will become the primary function of the companies.
Eventually one company will figure out that it’s too expensive to maintain manufacturing facilities when they can put desktop units in every home and simply concentrate on design and R&D sold online to customers who can “print” it out at home. Due to the fact that a home unit could easily build all the parts for another home unit, there’s very little profit to be made “selling” them, but lots of money to be made in “branded” designs.
But as individuals begin building a database of “open source” designs, even professional designs will begin to have to be charged less and less for.
And this applies not only to manufacturing, but almost every business you can think of.
Cheap robot labor is inevitable. And once it is available, it WILL dominate the business world, because it’ll be the only way to continue to profit… and that very fact will drive the final nails in capitalism.
Groups can fight, try to supress, and ban and outlaw, and all that will occur is the one company which embraces the new technology will begin looking at the rest as lunch.
It’s a dog eat dog world after all.
As for how soon… well if you are a roboticist, you might find this interesting: http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/fujitsu-labs-can-form-graphene.html
to summarize. Graphene directly used in modern chip making processes as a replacement for copper. Orders of magnitude greater conductivity, lower resistance heating, and uses the same technology as currently used to make silicon chips.
Which means the GHz wars are about to start again, with multicore technology.
We are likely to see a leap of an order of magnitude in processing power with 6-10 ghz multicore chips running cooler than current chips on less power, and all in the space of just a few more years. By 2012 or 2013, we just might have enough computing power to run those cheap labor bots.
The history of industry, no matter what political system, is one of competition for resources, including labor. The fairly recent move to offshore American jobs, for example, means cheaper labor for corporations, which in turn means higher profits. Not necessarily less expensive goods for the customer, though. As the competitive drive forces other companies to rely on ever cheaper workers, a downward spiral of labor costs continues, with the lowest common denominator being a continuous quest for ever cheaper labor. Folks may think this will change with time, and at some point the world will achieve a sort of economic equilibrium. But it doesn’t take into account two points. At some point, there must be customers in this continuum. And corporations only have customers if profit is to be had. And secondly, it presumes that corporations are not “gaming” humanity. Who would ever presume that China would be the next consumer mecca, and America the source for cheap labor. It could happen. As for robots, I think Jack Williamson captured much of our future dilemma quite well in his 1948 book, The Humanoids. As for the work described regarding human life extension, the rich will of course be first in line. And the scientists in the article have a strong profit motive. Some things never change.
Ironically the supercentenarian freaks usually got to their 110+ ages cheaply. Most of the ones I’ve read about spent their lives in poverty, which means that they didn’t have the wherewithal to consume much mainstream healthcare, unless they lived in countries with universal coverage like Jean Calment’s France. Even then, medicine couldn’t do much for the health of the elderly until fairly recently, when new drugs to postpone the onset of cardiovascular diseases and manage diabetes better became available. (Yet the “war on cancer” has bogged down, despite the $100 billion or so spent on it since Nixon’s presidency. Refer to Reynold Spector’s article in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of “Skeptical Inquirer.”) But the supers apparently didn’t need these drugs any way.
And the supers certainly didn’t ingest all the quackery back in the 1920′s, 1930′s, 1940′s, etc. pushed today by the likes of the Life Extension Foundation and Ray Kurzweil’s physician, Terry Grossman.
Will be following the development of the Manhattan Beach project. More than interesting.
The death of capitalism? Thanks for the day’s chuckle.
“Quite simply the rich would be well advised to make it available to all… or fail to be able to enjoy that immortality they paid so much for as a head riding on the end of a pitchfork.”
This and the death of capitalism comment shows me that there is profound economic illiteracy here. When this research and longevity reach the mainstream when it’s completed demand for it will rise, slightly decreasing the price, and more producers will enter the market as the huge profits will be a signal to businesses in similar industries, and entrepreneurs, bringing more competition lowering the price further.
The same pathetic argument that “Only the rich can afford it!” could have been made for anything expensive including semi-automatic guns, cars, planes (“the rich will bomb us and run us over!”).
And if you think there has been any sort of free capitalism in the past, well, ever, you’re wrong. There has been state capitalism, corporatism, and economic fascism predominantly.
Corporations haven’t just recently used the state to stay alive, it’s the entire basis for their existence, they use it to externalize costs of barriers to entry to secure their oligopolies and shield them from consumer reproacch.
Your opinion based on whatever ideology you follow. Not mine.
Never once stated at all that any capitalism was free. It never *has* been. However, the very economic principles of capitalism are what will inevitably lead to a economy of abundance. The path of greatest profit dictates it even though it brings about the collapse of capitalism and the end of money.
I fully agree with your assessment of the economic path longevity is likely to follow. Violence is unlikely to be necessary. However, in NO SITUATION do I see attempts to control access to longevity working. Once it is achieved, regardless of method or cost, if the vast majority does not receive it in a reasonable time frame, or if the vast majority believe it is being withheld, I do foresee everything from peaceful demonstrations all the way up to full fledged chaos and rioting to ensure the right to access.
Regardless of belief systems, if the vast majority of the human race knows life extension is available, they will not settle for dying… for ANY reason.
You can disagree, won’t change human nature though.
two things you’ve overlooked.
cheap labor cannot be any cheaper than that provided by robots.
The sole reason that robots have not already replaced humans at many jobs is that they are not intelligent enough to do many of the tasks which humans do. That is changing. We are constantly creating software in which human knowledge is reduced into a series of tasks, all working together. These programs take certain kinds of human knowledge, and make it available to anyone. 30 years ago someone needed extremely good knowledge of the rules of the English language to be an editor. Word now will correct your spelling and grammar as you type. Many of the skills and abilities used in day to day work are all rules based, and therefore able to be done via software of sufficient complexity.
Manufacturing works on the basis that you have to pay people to do the labor. But a robot intelligent enough to cope with the rules needed to cope with nearly any manufacturing job is going to be available soon. It will not only be able to do the job, but will most certainly be designed to do it faster than a human can.
So say the first robot costs the same as the annual salary, benefits, taxes and whatever other expenses exist for 1 single human worker. Downtime, repairs, and daily maintenance is equal to the time spent in breaks, lunches, bathroom breaks, and sick time over the course of the year.
Consider it a 1 to 1 identical cost.
That robot doesn’t tire. It doesn’t suffer mental fatigue, it doesn’t get distracted. It also doesn’t need sleep.
By years end, working all three shifts, minus maintenance, repairs, and unforeseen events, that robot has done the job of three people for the cost of one.
In other words, it paid for itself, and two more just like it. Next year, since it’s already paid for, it will pay for three more identical units. Meanwhile, those other two units will have also paid for three other units. Thats nine units by the end of the year, doing the work of 27 people.
Simple math. If the job cost’s can be reduced by 1/3rd, then that equals 2/3′s more profit. 2/3rds more profit than your competitors means you can reduce your products price by 1/3, still make twice what your competitor does, and totally undercut his product, ensuring that your company makes even more profit than it did originally. You will continue to rake in profits until your competitor also buys robots and can compete with your price.
So, follow this to it’s ultimate end, you have a society in which material wealth is meaningless. A society where a ton of gold holds no more value than a modern copper penny, if that.
But that is not to say that there will be nothing of value. But that will be in the form of data, not material goods. The “Poor” of the future will be those who have nothing of value datawise, but who will still be able to live without hunger, disease, or lack of any material luxury they may wish.
In the words of Micheal Douglas in “Wall Street”, “Greed is Good”. And I have every belief that corporations will do anything to game the system. I depend on it actually. As an American Citizen I am quite well aware of exactly how hard they are willing to play to make a profit. That’s why I’m not really worried about the economy. Companies are still reaping the vast wealth of cannibalizing each other, but that well is tapped out, so it will be on to the next victim. Very soon I expect prices for many things to actually start falling in order to maximize how much money can be leeched out of America’s pockets. Probably sooner I expect to see some new companies releasing the “next big thing” and needing workers. The big companies might not have realized it before, but they’re not going to be able to simply pull up and leave, because if one major economy falls, the whole ball of wax might collapse. The world is just too small these days for them to escape the mess if they don’t begin taking their own steps to improve the economy.
There will be turmoil, Chaos, and far more human misery than I could wish, but I don’t believe in doomsday, nor do I believe the human race will allow itself to go extinct. I most especially do not see the predators on the human race allowing their food source to perish, though that food source will change from material wealth to intellectual wealth. Call me a cynic if you want, call me an optimist, whatever, but I have a deep and abiding faith in the self serving nature of corporate greed, and it’s ability to adapt and profit.
And provide humanity with unlimited material wealth.
And of course the wealthy will be first in line for rejuvenation. The rest of the human race is going to need Ginny pigs to work the kinks out of the process. It’s quite entertaining to contemplate that they will PAY to be the experiments.
They can have the “Expensive/Doesn’t work very well.” I’ll be more than happy with “cheap/works extremely well.”
That’s why I fully believe life extension will be available to everyone. That “Greed is Good” corporate mindset will never be satisfied with skimming the cream off the top. They’re always going to want to drain the whole bucket.
And if they don’t, well, like I said, I seriously doubt that the 90% will agree that only the 10% deserve life extension…
What I stated was basic economics, not opinion. Will longevity and the advancements in robotics destroy the current way we think about economics and interact in relation to goods(perhaps not all services, though)? Seems likely.
But don’t you see that once we rid ourselves of the need to compete for limited resources it will depend on our altruism whether we share value with others? If we get robots and immortal greedy rich people they could in theory just leave the rest of us to die off. I don’t see how greed serves any real purpose in a post scarcity environment. Luckily, information leaks so easily nowadays that a scenario where only the elite stops ageing is very implausible. Things like hunger and poverty will have to be solved through altruistic giving if selfish greed doesn’t accomplish it before we enter physical post scarcity, which it doesn’t seem to be able to. Soon most of us won’t be needed to sustain the systems of production. The greed based economy is inevitably collapsing and most don’t seem to be aware of it yet. Altruism will have to eventually replace greed as a source of happiness. We will soon all be at the mercy of each other. Survival in this universe is only compatible with love and compassion in the long term.
Altruism is as based on selfishness as most other human impulses, my friend. You give not because it helps someone, but because YOU feel better for it. You give to satisfy your own personal needs.
The same with value of intellectual wealth. You have a great idea! Fantastic! It will CHANGE THE WORLD!!!
But it can only do that if you SHARE it with the world.
A mountain of gold is utterly without value if there is no-one to exchange it with for other things.
Wealth only exists in a collective.
You have to understand that the human animal is at heart and genetics, an ANIMAL. We are ruled by Alpha Dominance pack instincts, which is both the biggest danger we face, and in a perverse sense, our biggest advantage next to our intelligence.
Accumulation of wealth is part of that instinct. Greed = Control of more resources = Proof of Dominance = superior breeding material = greater chances of sex = more opportunities to pass on genes.
TBH, almost everything we do when broken down to it’s most basic level is about sex. Reproduction is the ONLY thing our genes give a damn about. Wealth, fame, glory, all of the things we humans struggle and fight for, these are all things which arose because our genes wanted to increase our chances of passing them on.
That will not cease. We will still be driven to accumulate wealth to prove our superiority over other potential mates. Wealth will still exist. It is the NATURE of that wealth which will change.
The rich will be those who lead the pack which contributes most to producing knowledge, the Heads of the R&D departments whose designs are downloaded most and copied most often. The CEO’s of the most bleeding edge research firms. The genius who’s gathered a pack of geniuses doing the next big thing.
Today, these people work for money. Many of them do it because they love what they do so much they don’t give a damn about the money. They are unlikely to stop simply because money no longer means anything. That Social Status will continue to reward them once everything money could buy is free.
There will indeed be those who don’t give a damn about contributing, but will only consume. They exist today as well, and in every age they serve a purpose. But in a world where people can live for centuries, are free to educate themselves in whatever they are interested in, and pursue any goal they chose without a worry about failure, then many people will chose to contribute to earn those social “brownie points” and social rewards.
Everything we do is about survival, and social standing. The economy of abundance will eliminate the need to struggle for survival. VR, Cybernetics, Gene engineering, and many other technologies will make us all look however we wish, leveling the social playing field.
It will not however make us not be Alpha Dominant pack animals, unless we CHOOSE to stop being them. Since doing so more or less means eliminating our sex drive, I seriously doubt we will choose to do so. We will reign it in, most assuredly, by rigidly controlling our ability to conceive, which will essentially free sex from procreation to the point that I’m fairly sure we’ll have about as many taboos about sex as the ancient greeks and romans… which is to say none at all.
But we will still seek the social rewards of approval from our peers, acknowledgement from non-peers, and even such status symbols as fame or stardom.
Not because of any material reward, but because it will provide those social awards we crave.
Additionally, an enormous part of the darker side of human nature is due to scarcity. We do bad things to get for ourselves things we think we cannot get any other way. Unlimited material wealth is going to eliminate many of the causes of human misery, but it’s not going to change people.
But there are other technologies we will use that will mitigate those as well.
however fully covering those will take far more space than I think this comment window will allow, so I’ll just leave it at this:
We face a future in which almost anything is possible. Every path that does not lead to destruction leads inevitably to this future. Every non terminating path goes to the Singularity.
The ONLY choice we have is how many bodies we are going to pave the road with to get there.
Right now, there’s an awful lot of corpses ahead of us.
If you are really concerned about the future, work for it now. Vote whenever you can. Educate yourself in the political issues, pressure your congressman to work towards reform for the people, not corporations. And if he doesn’t listen, vote him out for someone who will.
The Singularity is going to come either way. We’re too far past the event horizon to go anywhere else except oblivion. I don’t care what political affiliation you are. If you truly want to make a difference in how many bodies pave that road, you can.
Otherwise those words about love and compassion are only empty phrases.
Getting poetic now, huh?
“We face a future in which almost anything is possible. Every path that does not lead to destruction leads inevitably to this future.”
You didn’t put a time constraint on that. So, basically, you didn’t say anything at all. All you did was point out that you think we will do something in particular as long as we don’t die off. Without a time constraint, all predictions are upheld by default.
“The Singularity is going to come either way…If you truly want to make a difference in how many bodies pave that road, you can.”
What do you think the upper and lower bounds are on pre-Singularity deaths? Can we get there with zero? Is there a number that you think is most likely? Would it still count as the Singularity if we reached it, but lost so many people that the human race could no longer sustain itself and croaked shortly afterwards? What, specifically, can Joe-six-pack vote for that will decrease the deaths necessary to get to the Singularity?
Can’t help being poetic, I’m a writer, artist, and fanfic author, as well as a computer tech. Actually flunked a research paper once in 6th grade because the teacher refused to believe I was capable of such “well composed prose” so obviously I must have plagiarized it. It took my mother coming to the school to inform them she had watched me write it to get her to finally give me a B-.
Time constraint? Before 2050 in my estimate. Before the end of the century in others.
As for bodies? My preferred choice would be zero, but that would require a corruption free world government, universal healthcare for everyone in the world, universal democracy with every person in the world participating with full understanding of all issues, and the conquest of all disease, death, and of course, well, most everything that people seem to want the singularity to provide for them.
The Singularity isn’t a savior. It’s simply a point in time in which our ability to predict the future reaches a blank wall because we simply cannot envision what a superhuman intellect could do.
The fact is, we may not even realize it is happening until long after it has passed.
It’s the steps along the way towards the Singularity which are truly inevitable. Only the exact order and timeframes are in doubt.
But until then, working to minimize the body count is the best way to proceed. I don’t care what your political affiliation is, working to save lives is possible. Work to push political agendas which enhance the quality of life for EVERYONE, not just the “Elites” or the “Middle Class” or the “Poor”, nor even for Americans or Chinese, or Somalians, but for everyone who lives on this planet. Support research into technologies which save lives, not those that take them. Vote for whichever policies you feel will save the most lives for the smallest cost, or which will provide the most good for the greatest number. We are all human after all, even the richest and the poorest of us.
Above all, keep an open mind. Examine ideas individually instead of simply allowing entire groups of them to be handed to you as lumps. Educate yourself in whatever subjects interest you, and continue to educate yourself as time passes and things change. Above all, learn to think for yourself instead of letting yourself be controlled by ideologies, others expectations, or preconceived stereotypes. Don’t simply take someone’s word for anything without educating yourself on the subject as well. Even authorities in their fields are not gods who’s words should never be questioned. They are as prone to rigid thought and fallacies as anyone else. The more you educate yourself, the more likely it is you will find your own way to help minimize the body count and improve our world without the Singularity.
In many ways, thats the saddest thing I see about our world today. We could make this world a paradise without ever having a singularity… we simply can’t be bothered while we wait for a savior.
The singularity can occur even if the entire human race dies if you go with the AI version, in fact there are some AI proponents who seem to believe that humanity should be utterly expendable in favor of our AI children. I don’t agree, but I can see no path that does not proceed over the bodies of the dead, simply because we do not yet have life extension technology enough to overcome death. I am sad to say I see it likely that the world will get more dangerous before it becomes safer, because too many radical elements are gaining ever greater power with no effective means to nullify them. I do not believe in doomsday scenarios, but transitional times are always chaotic, because those who want the old ways to remain will inevitably fight against those who are willing to accept the new. It has happened every single time we have had a Singularity event in our entire history, so I have no illusions it can be avoided now. We are already experiencing the first signs of that turmoil now. It will only get worse for awhile, but it will eventually improve. The next two to three decades are likely to see some of the most violent changes occur to our entire world as old systems collapse and new systems are constructed.
But Humans adapt. We acclimatize. We get used to things. We bitch and moan and complain to high heavens, we lash out and fear and hate, but in the end, we move on. We’ve walked the razorblade between paradise and oblivion our entire history, and will likely walk it for all eternity.
Maybe the Singularity is just going to give us pair of shoes so we won’t bleed so much doing it.