I, and many of you folk no doubt, rest my optimism for the potential of longevity medicine atop our hard-won knowledge of physics. The physics of molecules and atoms, the building blocks of our biology is very sound, very proven - and it tells us that there is no reason why we can't build cells from scratch and nanomedical robots to repair the molecular damage of aging in those cells. The path is clear, we can read the nearest waysigns, but we have some walking to do. As Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it:

Consider the statement "It is physically possible to construct diamondoid nanomachines which repair biological cells."  Some people will tell you that molecular nanotechnology is "pseudoscience" because it has not been verified by experiment - no one has ever seen a nanofactory, so how can believing in their possibility be scientific?

Drexler, I think, would reply that his extrapolations of diamondoid nanomachines are based on standard physics, which is to say, scientific generalizations. Therefore, if you say that nanomachines cannot work, you must be inventing new physics.  Or to put it more sharply:  If you say that a simulation of a molecular gear is inaccurate, if you claim that atoms thus configured would behave differently from depicted, then either you know a flaw in the simulation algorithm or you're inventing your own laws of physics.

It is rational to believe, on the basis of solid evidence, that possible beneficial technology will be built. Which is not say that any particular beneficial technology will be built to a defined schedule - schedules, like the work of building, require those notoriously ornery humans to be organized and willful. There are any number of possible technologies that could exist today, but have yet to be built.

And so on to this rather interesting remark:

there are people who apparently believe "Medical interventions aimed at immortality are, therefore, a potential source of evil." That has got to be the worst version of Stockholm Syndrome ever seen. And it's utterly beyond my comprehension. I say to those folks: if you don't want to live a long time, you're free to jump out of a skyscraper any day you want. Please let the rest of us encourage, and maybe benefit from, anti-aging research.

Stockholm Syndrome indeed; we are brutalized by the human condition, yet you'll find its defenders everywhere. The world is seemingly full of people aging to death yet willing you and I to suffer and die on the same schedule:

Nuland also devotes a chapter to the work of Aubrey de Grey and others who believe that aging is simply an engineering problem that can be solved, allowing humans to live for centuries if not forever. He questions the wisdom of striving to extend life beyond its natural limits (approximately 120 years) and stands by the view that "both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do."

If one agrees with this perspective (as I do), then the task for each of us is to live a long and healthy life not because we are afraid and want to live forever but because we love life, we embrace the cycle of generations and we value the future of those who will live long after we are gone.

I find it hard to get inside that mindset - "life is good, so die already." Not to mention the odd and entirely false idea that 120 years of life is in any way a natural limit, or the errant Malthusianism and hints of old pagan memes inherent in a concept of "ecological balance" that requires human sacrifice. It suffices as a reminder that our fellow travelers are strange folk indeed.

Technorati tags: life extension, science

Posted by Reason at August 20, 2007 8:04 PM | TrackBack (0)