On immortality
It's apparently Newton's birthday. I honestly don't care overmuch. However, during the small hours, I thought I was hallucinating when I saw some movement on the Google page out the corner of my eye; it shocked me as though getting tazed in the taint. Not fun. Apparently they decided to animate a falling apple. Had better not pull that shit in the future... But they just might.
Let's talk a bit about immortality (the technological kind, not the bullshit kind). It's really one hell of a pipe dream, when you think about it. Somewhere I read an article about trauma-related death; it gave a plausible number. Basically, if you didn't age or get sick, and society did not change whatsoever from what we have now, the average lifespan would be six hundred years due to accidental death, murder, war, etc. In reality it'd probably be much less, and we cannot anticipate what horrors the approaching centuries might bring. The anti-immortality degenerates and mindslaves are actually way off with their doomsayer nonsense, in other words. Even if we could extend our lifespans by a century (of youth), it would be a triumph.
I frequently go around saying that the modern engineered senescence movement is a pipe dream. That's because it is; but I also go around saying that a practical, realistic way of reversing aging is possible but dismissed for being too abominable. Senescence.info contains a bunch of information on the current objectives of engineered senescence research; what it all boils down to is that they want to modify and/or improve our natural molecular machinery into performing rejuvenation and repair. Godseed details a hypothetical molecular machine that would be introduced into an aged human, and would then get to work reversing the effects of aging. Other ideas include devising some kind of "gene therapy", a modification of the human genome in such a way that the resulting creature starts fixing aging.
These ideas are miserable fucking balderdash. Molecular machines are stupid as fuck. They already exist, and are called proteins; and they can have only rudimentary functions, accomplishing complex things by virtue of being numerous and varied in function. Proteins cannot adapt themselves to macroscale 'objectives' because proteins don't know what the fuck. Trying to devise a protein (oops, sorry, "nanite") system that fixes the organism from the inside is an exercise in fucking ants. Those who are seriously working on such a system are antfuckers. One does not fix a problem that arose from entropy with throwing more entropy on it! In other words, "aging" is when an organism turns to a worn-down clusterfuck, and clusterfucks never solve themselves.
To put it quite simply, all that genetics research that's going on right now is quite wonderful, and will teach us a lot about ourselves, possibly making several groundbreaking discoveries in the process - but it isn't moving toward engineered senescence. Biotech can give us uber-babies who may indeed live to be two hundred years old, but for the currently living it doesn't really mean jack shit in terms of extending lifespan.
You heard me. All those advanced biotech treatments don't amount to anything at this point, because we've already hit a major hurdle: heart disease. Heart disease is overwhelmingly a mechanical failure of our circulatory system, and it's the top killer of civilized people worldwide. Heart disease typically happens due to either the failure of the heart to pulsate correctly (lapse in brain signals...) or some kind of decrepification of the heart itself (long-term worsening of intercellular membrane shape), or clogging of the blood vessels with stuff like cholesterol. Proteins can only help with number three. The other two need replacement of the organs involved.
That's exactly what it boils down to; aging can't be mitigated bottom-up as with a magical elixir of some kind. It needs to be fixed top-down, the same way you would fix a car. When I mentioned a realistic way of reversing aging, parts replacement is exactly what I meant. These parts would be either harvested from young specimens grown for that purpose (or better yet grown separately), or created artificially with a significant degree of inorganic components - biomechanoid parts, in other words. Classic cyborg variety. Now you understand what I meant by "too abominable". We live in a society that thinks there's some kind of sanctity in life. We live in a society that refuses to even perform simple experimentation on convicts, and for that matter believes that irreparably retarded persons and semi-vegetative persons are to be kept alive and respected. It sickens me to realize that incalculable billions who aren't even born yet are being condemned to die like fucking maggots from the ravages of old age by the same delusional shits who maintain the above morality.
The retard in the neighboring house has been acting up a little, and I'm also on edge due to various other nonsense. Do forgive the brashness of this post.
Let's talk a bit about immortality (the technological kind, not the bullshit kind). It's really one hell of a pipe dream, when you think about it. Somewhere I read an article about trauma-related death; it gave a plausible number. Basically, if you didn't age or get sick, and society did not change whatsoever from what we have now, the average lifespan would be six hundred years due to accidental death, murder, war, etc. In reality it'd probably be much less, and we cannot anticipate what horrors the approaching centuries might bring. The anti-immortality degenerates and mindslaves are actually way off with their doomsayer nonsense, in other words. Even if we could extend our lifespans by a century (of youth), it would be a triumph.
I frequently go around saying that the modern engineered senescence movement is a pipe dream. That's because it is; but I also go around saying that a practical, realistic way of reversing aging is possible but dismissed for being too abominable. Senescence.info contains a bunch of information on the current objectives of engineered senescence research; what it all boils down to is that they want to modify and/or improve our natural molecular machinery into performing rejuvenation and repair. Godseed details a hypothetical molecular machine that would be introduced into an aged human, and would then get to work reversing the effects of aging. Other ideas include devising some kind of "gene therapy", a modification of the human genome in such a way that the resulting creature starts fixing aging.
These ideas are miserable fucking balderdash. Molecular machines are stupid as fuck. They already exist, and are called proteins; and they can have only rudimentary functions, accomplishing complex things by virtue of being numerous and varied in function. Proteins cannot adapt themselves to macroscale 'objectives' because proteins don't know what the fuck. Trying to devise a protein (oops, sorry, "nanite") system that fixes the organism from the inside is an exercise in fucking ants. Those who are seriously working on such a system are antfuckers. One does not fix a problem that arose from entropy with throwing more entropy on it! In other words, "aging" is when an organism turns to a worn-down clusterfuck, and clusterfucks never solve themselves.
To put it quite simply, all that genetics research that's going on right now is quite wonderful, and will teach us a lot about ourselves, possibly making several groundbreaking discoveries in the process - but it isn't moving toward engineered senescence. Biotech can give us uber-babies who may indeed live to be two hundred years old, but for the currently living it doesn't really mean jack shit in terms of extending lifespan.
You heard me. All those advanced biotech treatments don't amount to anything at this point, because we've already hit a major hurdle: heart disease. Heart disease is overwhelmingly a mechanical failure of our circulatory system, and it's the top killer of civilized people worldwide. Heart disease typically happens due to either the failure of the heart to pulsate correctly (lapse in brain signals...) or some kind of decrepification of the heart itself (long-term worsening of intercellular membrane shape), or clogging of the blood vessels with stuff like cholesterol. Proteins can only help with number three. The other two need replacement of the organs involved.
That's exactly what it boils down to; aging can't be mitigated bottom-up as with a magical elixir of some kind. It needs to be fixed top-down, the same way you would fix a car. When I mentioned a realistic way of reversing aging, parts replacement is exactly what I meant. These parts would be either harvested from young specimens grown for that purpose (or better yet grown separately), or created artificially with a significant degree of inorganic components - biomechanoid parts, in other words. Classic cyborg variety. Now you understand what I meant by "too abominable". We live in a society that thinks there's some kind of sanctity in life. We live in a society that refuses to even perform simple experimentation on convicts, and for that matter believes that irreparably retarded persons and semi-vegetative persons are to be kept alive and respected. It sickens me to realize that incalculable billions who aren't even born yet are being condemned to die like fucking maggots from the ravages of old age by the same delusional shits who maintain the above morality.
The retard in the neighboring house has been acting up a little, and I'm also on edge due to various other nonsense. Do forgive the brashness of this post.