# HG changeset patch # User Robert McIntyre # Date 1409871492 25200 # Node ID b6cbdd5a954736296e6ba01535cfef06af33b8f8 # Parent 35eb4c1a7bf70e8082a953ab0584714dd3c1d00a moar ideas. diff -r 35eb4c1a7bf7 -r b6cbdd5a9547 org/ideas.org --- a/org/ideas.org Thu Sep 04 15:33:15 2014 -0700 +++ b/org/ideas.org Thu Sep 04 15:58:12 2014 -0700 @@ -31,6 +31,61 @@ getting credit. #+end_quote +- problem with Aubrey de Grey's ideas :: Aubrey de Grey says that we + might be able to live forever by continually repairing our bodies + at the cellular level -- he details 7 different mechanisms of + damage and says that if all of them are dealt with /together/ + that it would stop aging. (You can't miss even one because + they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take into account that + we are also beings of information and that there is a very real + software component to our existence. Even if our biological + chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is unlikely that + our minds will operate well far outside of the design constraints + that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a webserver with + the express goal of it being able to serve webpages for month on + some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to make sure + that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now say that + you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver running + indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and the + computer it's running on is like your body). You might very well + be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running for + forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However, + since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably + has memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other build in limits + / constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans) + that will ultimately kill the webserver server even with eternally + perfect hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver + engineered to work for 1 month will run for 10 years? In fact, if + I put in the extreme effort to make it that robust, I've wasted + time that I could have spent on other projects by pursuing an + unnecessary engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only + ever run for at most 122 years before they are destroyed due to + hardware degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any + software bugs that are almost certainly present in the human + mind. Think of all the pathological things that can go wrong with + a webserver, multiply it by a million, and that likely how + evolution has designed our minds. For example, consider memory : + why should you expect that we have evolved the ability to + coherently organize memories past say 150 years? There's been + absolutely no selective pressure for this ability, so you can bet + that if there's any fitness to be gained from not having + unlimited memory potential (such as better metabolic efficiency), + we have it! You might think that maybe we would just forget + things the same way that we sort of forget things that happen + earlier in our lives, but complicated information processing + systems don't have to fail gracefully when they're pushed far + past their design constraints. A 150 year old person is just as + likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to software + limitations associated with memory as he is to do something with + all those memories we might consider reasonable. More likely, in + fact, since there are so very many ways for a complicated + software system to break and so few ways for it to run + successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's "hardware-only" + approach is missing a very important component of longevity + science, and any successful effort to make people live orders of + magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal with + people's software as well as their hardware. + - validating neurocryopreservation :: Problem : you want to test whether a brain is functionally preserved through vitrification, but you don't want to figure out how to preserve all the other