Knee-Jerk Skepticism
Michael Shermer, Scientific American's skeptic-in-residence, has run off a rather sub-par column on Kurzweil and healthy life extension. While I have to agree with him on points relating to supplements and Kurzweil (see some of my previous thoughts, harsh and more forgiving), Shermer makes a number of pronouncements with no basis in anything other than his own opinions. For example:
Two, I question the idea of extrapolating trend lines very far into the future. Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. Plus, in my opinion, the problems of creating artificial intelligence and halting aging are orders of magnitude harder than anyone has anticipated. Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.
Personally, I think it's amusing to see someone think that developing general artificial intelligence is 10 times easier than defeating aging! I think that Shermer would benefit greatly from reading the work of Aubrey de Grey, who makes a very compelling case that we a) know more than enough to get going now on serious anti-aging research and b) making meaningful progress in radical life extension is only a matter of a few decades with the right level of funding.
In addition, I don't think that Shermer grasps the concept of escape velocity in healthy life extension. Even if true physical immortality is a thousand years away - a highly unrealistic thing to say in and of itself - all ("all") we have to do to live that long is to keep adding new medical technologies to extend healthy life span, bit by bit, more rapidly than one year ever year. This is not an unreasonable goal - it is within the capabilities of a large, directed research community. Kurzweil is quite clear about this concept in his writing, and presents it as developing a series of bridges to the future.
The sort of knee-jerk, unfounded skepticism of the sort expressed by Shermer - and millions of other people who think the same way - is one of the many obstacles to widespread support for healthy life extension research. The future is not a conveyor belt, but rather something that is built, brick by brick, by the actions of people. The future is directed, open to change, a road that could go in any direction. Just because something could be done does not mean it will be done: without public support and understanding of healthy life extension and its potential, research will not be funded and science will not move ahead. Skepticism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - which may briefly satisfy some folks, but we'll all be just as dead because of it.
Just what the hell does this guy think that we will be working on in 2100 to 2150 that it will take an additional 850 years to cure aging? Is this guy for real?
I also think that developing AI will prove to be more difficult than curing aging. I think that Aubry de grey's estimates are spot on but I think that Ray Kurzweil's predictions are optimistic.
Shermer doesn't know what he's talking about. Hasn't he ever heard of the concepts of 'exponential growth' and 'accelerating change'?
I personally think that artificial general intelligence is the best route to immortality and we'll have AGI by 2030 at the latest. AGI by 2030 and indefinite lifespans to follow shortly thereafter.
Actually I'm puzzled why virtually everyone isn't having a go at coding an AGI in their basements ;) We know *a lot* more about intelligence than we currently know about aging.
The skeleton out-line (starter ideas) for my own AGI design can be viewed here:
http://www.sl4.org/wiki/MarcGeddes/UniversalDataTypes
To those wanting to give the AGI route a crack, happy coding!
I see the seeds of an interesting discussion here - GAI versus a cure for aging; what is harder and what do we know more about. It seems to me that we know far more about aging than the foundation of intelligence, however.
Hmm. Let's just leave aside the question of what we know more about for the moment and focus on what is harder.
Reason, you must admit that it is currently much easier to manipulate code than it is to manipulate DNA right? When writing software we have total control over the program. The tools for effectively manipulating DNA on the other hand, are only now beginning to be developed. Aging may be well be a simpler in *conceptual* terms, but in *practical* terms the AGI problem seems to be proving easier to tackle.
Coming back to the question of what we know about, I do think our knowledge of the foundations of intelligence is *at least* as good as our knowledge of aging. Although the AGI problem is conceptually more complex, researchers have been working on the problem for longer and have better tools for doing so. As I pointed out above, the bio-tech tools for tackling aging are still at a primative stage. Info-tech is more advanced.
A read of the supurb book :
'The Race For Consciousness' , by John Taylor
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262700867/qid=1120114381/
should convince skeptics that the foundations of intelligence are now quite well understood.
Finally, note that once we AGI, it would help solve the problems of aging and develop all the neccessery tools (for instance adanced nano) far faster than would occur without it.
Michael Shermer is a biased numbnut. Supplements are merely a part of an overall longevity program, and will only add a few years on their own. Also, the majority of supplements I take (120+ daily) and Kurzweil takes are merely concentrated food and plant extracts, or boosters of what's already in your body, such as CoQ10 (which declines as part of our programmed aging process). Vitamins/minerals are actually only a small part of supplementation.
The idea behind supplementation is:
[1] You cannot possibly get enough of key supplements via eating, such as vitamin C (we should get 8-10 grams daily, for example).
[2] Daily full coverage of beneficial anti-oxidants and polyphenols.
[3] Beneficial manipulation of pro-aging hormones, such as cortisol and insulin.
[4] Maintaining optimal amounts of self-made molecules that decline with aging, such as superoxide dismutase, CoQ10 and phosphatidylserine, to name only a few.
That's really about it. Those who do not supplement are clearly at a disadvantage to those that do, in terms of maintaining optimally health body chemistry, and protection from free radicals, DNA damage, and numerous other ailments.
You have to view Shermer's comments in the context of where he's coming from. His life is concerned with combating the ~70%(?) of the population that believe in snake oil, astrology, crystals, faith healing, psychic powers, the list is endless. The tiny % that know about real anti-aging research are of little interest to him. He is fighting the battle against the anti-science majority who want creationism taught in the schools and believe that homeopathy is better than a hospital and lose their money to every fraudulent scam that gets advertised.
He is not against real anti-aging techniques. He just hasn't met any. :) He probably feels that if he edges open the door to anti-aging, then thousands of scammers and frauds will rush through.
I don't think it's an either/or choice - you can be careful and precise in your discussion about healthy life extension. In attacking frauds and nonsense, you don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater - and Shermer's latest was not in any way careful. He's done better on other topics, so why not this one? His comments on the future of healthy life extension science are in no way different in character from those he attacks - unscientific, unfounded, there as fodder for the credulous. If you're in the business of skepticism, you have to do better than that.
When talking about Shermer, one must consider the source. SciAm is a left wing sheet with a little science thrown in. They lost me back in 1983 when they came out with Carl Segan's nuclear winter theory, which was discredited one year later.
shermer cultivates smugness as a virtue