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We are past the point where medicine can help. The situation looks something like this;

1. We go extinct.

2. We design newer and better versions of humans using medicine, science and technology.

3. We spend our time enjoying the limited time we have left and stop worrying about healthcare, medicine and science.

So these are 3 potential outlooks, there might be more, but in general there is not much time left. Fusing technology and medicine is fine, and transhumanism is fine, but what exactly does surgery have to do with it? In the end, even if we have the worlds greatest hospitals, it will not make a bit of difference because we cannot even decide if we want to live or die, or have long or short lifespans, or if we want to be transhumanist or extinct. The point is, nothing can change if people simply consider it business as usual, if this is just a ploy to make money by the technology and medical industries, in the end there will be a lot of very sophisticated yet useless equipment, that may extend the lifespans of a few individuals, but which won't really influence the lifespan of the species itself. So the whole debate is about the lifespan of the species not simply the lifespan of the individual, how does this technology change anything?

I'm guessing it doesnt, but it would make a very wise investment, and it will be very profitable, much like cosmetics and genetically engineered food. In our current stage, the next debate will be designer babies, and nootropics. Yes it is possible to invent a pill to boost an individuals intelligence. Yes it is possible to ONLY have intelligent babies, and this would decrease the need and cost of the education system.

Go to Better Humans . COM, Plenty of info there.

Wow, an actual deathist. You guys are scary. Actually you're just sad; those like Leon Kass with actual power are scary.

curing a disease is one thing. fixing a natural process is another.

Cancer is a very natural process. So are malaria, dysentery, and thousands of other conditions that have killed billions of people. I eagerly await your pronoucements as to which diseases are "unnatural" and should be cured, versus those that are "natural" and should be welcomed.

wow. WOW. did you spend time THINKING about what you just said?

Funny, I was just going to ask you the same thing.

you know what? keep pining for your parents, there's a difference between missing them and needing them. and if you still need them, they didn't do their job right. you just blew my mind with that one.

Cartman, what the hell are you talking about? My statement was that many people would be happier if their parents (or friends, spouses, children) hadn't died. "Missing" vs "needing" is irrelevant; in both cases the person in question would be happier if the dead people were still alive and healthy. Are you actually going to dispute that point, or just continue with inane personal attacks? (For the record, my parents are alive and well. Maybe you have issues with *your* parents, I really don't care).

one of the problems of being human is that we LEARN PATTERNS, and unlearning them is difficult.

Wow. So you'd rather kill people than try to teach them new ideas. Such humanitarianism.

No, the sex will be better, and entirely virtual.

Seeing so many posts describing this as a "man versus machine" thing compels me to mention advanced chess, a new form of chess recently proposed by Garry Kasparov. The gist of it is that instead of humans and computers working either alone or against each other, a human player and a computer player team up. Personally, I think competitions like that are great for exploring how humans and computers can achieve a better symbiosis with each other, taking advantage of the strengths of each.

From wikipedia:

Advanced Chess is a relatively new form of chess, first introduced by grandmaster Garry Kasparov, with the objective of a human player and a computer chess program joining forces and competing as a team against other such pairs. Many Advanced Chess proponents have stressed that Advanced Chess has merits in:

* increasing the level of play to heights never before seen in chess;
* producing blunder-free games with the qualities and the beauty of both perfect tactical play and highly meaningful strategic plans;
* giving the viewing audience a remarkable insight into the thought processes of strong human chess players and strong chess computers, and the combination thereof.

• World Transhumanism Association
• Singularity Institute
• KurzweilAI.net
• Extropy Institute
• Transtopia
• Better Humans

• Anders Transhuman Page - a comprehensive directory of transhumanist resources
• Transhumanism at del.icio.us

...here either:

http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?article ID=2003-04-01-1

I'm curious to see if Kasparov will continue to be involved with Advanced Chess, a new form of chess which he introduced. Basically, in it a human and computer program compete as a team against other human-computer teams. This symbiosis is much stronger than either member alone, as humans and computers are better at different aspects of chess. It's thought that Advanced Chess tournaments may help further human-computer interaction.

And Lessig misses this point, as he is trying for compromise.

Some related issues:

If copyrights impose a burden on society (like real estate), why not tax them annually at some self-assessed buyout value (the cost the copyright holder would be content with to have the work in the public domain)?

Oh, but copyright holders might protest they can not fairly evaluate the copyright as some copyrights make a lot of money, and most do not. But there we have it -- the notion of copyright as a lottery ticket which the essay touches on. Do we want creative works funded as lotteries?

Also, with the increasing use of automation and robotics, people are less and less needed to produce things, so ultimately most people will become out of work in our society -- unless they get a guaranteed income in terms of a part of the production of the automated systems. If people had such a guaranteed income, then they would not need an incentive to create digital works, and they would not need to receive royalties from copyrights just to get the basics of food, water, shelter, education, manufactured goods, and medical care for themselves and their children.

So the future you are talking about is bound up into issues like a guaranteed income or fair share of rapidly increasing industrial productivity. So essentially a "Star Trek" like society, with matter replicators -- which are at most ten or twenty years away, as people are using limited prototypes of them now. Remember, thirty years ago, for most people there was no such thing as desktop publishing or local printing. Now you typically get a printer bundled for "free" with a computer. Thirty years from now, it may seem as ludicrous to get something other than raw materials delivered or to go out to shop for an object as it would seem now to have one-off printing done at some remote computer center (as was typical thirty years ago).

Related links:

The Abolition of Work
http://www.deoxy.org/endwork.htm

Robot Nation
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

The Dream Factory: Any product, any shape, any size - manufactured on your desktop!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.html ?pg=4

Getting Paid in Our Jobless Future: Only a guaranteed basic income can ensure economic growth, technological innovation and social welfare
http://betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Change_Su rfing/column.aspx?articleID=2003-09-22-1

US BIG: The basic income guarantee (BIG) is a government insured guarantee that no citizen's income will fall below some minimal level for any reason. All citizens would receive a BIG without means test or work requirement. BIG is an efficient and effective solution to poverty that preserves individual autonomy and work incentives while simplifying government social policy. Some researchers estimate that a small BIG, sufficient to cut the poverty rate in half could be financed without an increase in taxes by redirecting funds from spending programs and tax deductions aimed at maintaining incomes.
http://www.usbig.net/

More discussion of "BIG" - Basic Income Guarantee (source of some links)
http://novogate.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=5374&t hreadid=79208

Advancements like these

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Fundación Tecnohumano

World Transhumanist Association

KurzweilAI.net

www.BetterHumans.com

BG

One person who is a quadriplegic recently (this past year) had a chip implanted. He can now control things by thinking about it.

Here are some other articles from a google and some things I have marked...

• Electric dreams
• Brain chip offers hope for paralyzed
• A company with a potential product
• Clubbers choose chip implants to jump queues
• A collectino of references to articles on Neural interfaces
• A display in thin air.
• Some people who do not see some things as good.

Incorrect. That is not what the order says.

Maybe you should read it slower, or perhaps you should read supporting information as to how it is interpreted and implemented. Maybe Bush wants to privatize it so his corporate cronies can profit ?

Where's the logic of twisting a ban on federal funding of research into a ban on that research?

See above, and I'm not twisting anything... I'm used to this with the articles, but RTFP - read the parent post again. I made it quite clear that it's a funding rule.

And of course I haven't seen anyone really give proof that single-walled nanotubes (SWNT) used in these FEDs can be produced cost-effectively.

I guess you should search it by yourself (I found it on the First link). The article title reads: "For cheap nanotubes, just add water". Oh, the Irony ;-)

How many times have we read about a new display technology that's going to be better/faster/higher quality/cheaper/stronger/smarter/prettier/jumps higher/etc than LCDs and Plasma.

Yeah, but Plasma,LCD and OLED's were revolutionary in the way they produce the light in the displays. FED's only use the existing phosphore pixels technology that we have been using in our CRT's for decades.

The revolutionary (and therefore expensive) part of Field Emission Displays are the nanotube arrays replacing the bulky vacuum tubes. About freakin' time I'd say. I always had the idea that smaller vacuum tubes could be arranged in arrays to flatten the displays - i was stunned to find out that nanotech would do the trick. So actually, nanotube-based FED's are not a true revolution, but rather an evolution of the existing CRT model. They use revolutionary technology, but that's a minor detail.

A couple of months ago I found out in nanoapex that a new method of nanotubes mass-production was discovered. I don't doubt that other methods are discovered within the next 2 years, dropping production costs.

However, nanotubes have similar properties to graphene (single sheets of graphite), and maybe using simple graphite instead of nanotubes could do the trick (nobody has tried, tho, and I don't have gazillion dollars to do the research myself :P ).

Whatever the delay is, I expect nanotube FED's to replace all CRT's afterwards.

In an organism as ancient and lowly as the slime mold, a genetic feedback mech evolved so that cheating would balance with altruism...You should hope your species hangs around as long as the slime mold [> 1 billion years!] see this article at BetterHumans and elsewhere.

According to this article, longer!

From the article:
" Mice with a high metabolism live longer than their low-metabolism counterparts, a finding that conflicts with a long-held theory of aging and suggests new approaches to extending lifespan."

All the worse when the government is making those decisions for you.

Awww...come on. You just weren't looking looking hard enough.

BTW, Rice is a great place for nanotech (I know, master of the obvious). They're even getting a medical nanotech conference together here accross the street (Texas medical center) on 5/14. It's billed as "bridging the wet and dry divide". Smalley & Hirsch are going to be speaking, along with a bunch of others. I'm going to try to go, if I can get away from the lab for a while.

phtyomining

Phytomining cleans soil, generates revenue

Gold phytomining [PDF] (very informative)

The last link explains, among others, how the metal is extracted from the plant.

It's already being done - except they're going to have the engineered device (I think it's a matter of incorporating into traditional tech what some plants already do) produce hydrogen directly.

This article at BetterHumans.com covers it.

It's already being done - except they're going to have the engineered device (I think it's a matter of incorporating into traditional tech what some plants already do) produce hydrogen directly.

This article at BetterHumans.com covers it.

If a diet is too high on anti-oxidants, our bodies will stop creating their own. So, one has to be careful when it comes to this.

Either way, if someone wants to change their anti-oxidant diet, now they have the Super Vitamin E which is rather neat.

The present US administration has been attempting to bury stem cell research and therapeutic cloning - both fundamental technologies in regenerative medicine - since it came to power. Therapeutic cloning is essential to many stem cell therapies and much related research. Immense damage has been done. Christopher Reeve and many stem cell scientists (including the founders of the field) believe that the actions of this administration alone have set the field back by 5 years.

Some nasty math works out from here. There is currently an 80% effective stem cell therapy for heart disease that has been demonstrated in the US, Germany and Japan in human trials. It saves lives. 2000 people die EVERY DAY in the US from heart disease, yet the FDA is currently blocking any application of this working therapy. For more, see:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/protest_fda_ interference.cfm

A stem cell/therapeutic cloning cure for Parkinson's has been demonstrated in mice, as have stem cell cures for nerve damage, diabetes, cancer (yes, a cure for cancer based on stem cells has been demonstrated in mice:

http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?article ID=2003-12-10-3

) and many other conditions. This isn't pie in the sky science! Real, working cures based on stem cell medicine are in the labs, only 5-10 years from being available for us. This is the science that the US administration is trying to drown. It's sickening that any group of human beings would try to enforce so much suffering...

The US house of representatives passed a therapeutic cloning ban last year, but the US senate has been sitting on it. More on that here:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_t herapeutic_cloning_ban.cfm

The Bush administration basically went over their heads to try and get what they wanted now from the UN, and damn near succeeded. You can read more about that here:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_globa l_therapeutic_cloning_ban.cfm

This stopped being about human reproductive cloning a long time ago - there is a large, influential group of organizations, politicians and factions who stand opposed to any medical progress that will lead to longer, healthier lives. If cures for cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other things get thrown away as well...well, too bad. You can see these views in their raw, ugly forms in the pronouncements of Leon Kass and the President's Council on Bioethics:

http://www.bioethics.gov

In their view, living healthily for longer is bad. Working to cure suffering is bad. Medical progress is bad.

Time to kick these people out of power - if we don't stand up for our right to develop and use better medicine, we're all going to be paying for it in years to come. See more at:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/

Speak out!

Reason

note Gender as the word not SEX.

Gender:
The condition of being female or male; sex.
(American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Yea, good job there.

As for the thinking differently That's bollocks, that's tied into the constructed social roles argument.

Hopefully this will cure your "non-difference" stance:

Read me
Me too
Don't forget me
I'll end with this one

Such ballocks.... indeed... (be sure to read the WHOLE article in each case...)

Physical characteristics aside... men and women think differently. End of story.

The philosophical and logical attack you have when presenting your arguments is entirely unscientific. You state statistics, probibilities, and analise human behavior on a purely social and artificial standpoint... much in the same effect as politicians actually choosing the most rational course of action for the government - that method is horrible at actually getting the job done.

The only way to fully understand a problem is to figure out what is going on below the surface. Your approach of analyzing social behavior and performance in the work place based on how they were brought up is like trying to understand a computer by measuing how hot the insides get and what kinds of noises it makes.... you can't.

I'm done with this argument.

That would seem to help with your average lab rat's life expectancy...

Unfortunately not. Half starving them does seem to improve life expectancy.

dogs monkeys

If immortality were to come to pass, who's to say we wouldn't also have the medical techniques to allow braincell replacement?

Also, why do you imagine a human with an extended lifespan would have to work for 90% of that span, then retire? Why wouldn't they work for 40 years, then temporarily retire for 20-30 years until they needed money again?

For anyone who's interested... Here's a link to a popular transhumanist site. Lots of stuff about longevity tech and ethics.