Are you a real mad scientist?

Finding a cure to aging is hardly mad science, giving yourself glow-in-the-dark-skin by incorporating luciferases into your genome is.

@Chemrox, public health officials used that same argument against vaccination in Pasteur's time. Overpopulation can be solved with a bit of (ethical) chemistry. Once we figure out how to synthesize REALLY REALLY long carbon nanotubes, we will be able to build an elevator to space and start shipping people off to space colonies.

@jeffB the main moral/ethical debate is not about spinning off multiple copies of yourself, but if the uploaded version of you would actually be you. So far we are doing fairly well at simulating neurons, but we need to know more about hormonal and other interactions with neurons before we can upload you. Oh yeah, and current subcellular brain scanning technology results in destruction of your original brain.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/connec...
more on the scanner
http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/lichtman/ATLUM/ATLUM_web.htm


My response to are you a mad scientist, YES!

I want to glow will it make me live longer probably not but a least I wouldnt
get lost in the dark.

I would think that you are only a "Mad Scientist" when you have tested novel psychoactive reagents upon yourself.

Quote:

Originally posted by sbovisjb1 I would think that you are only a "Mad Scientist" when you have tested novel psychoactive reagents upon yourself.

Which is thus another component of aging.

For better or for worse, human evolution is probably going to proceed via "artificial" means.

Tim

Quote:

Originally posted by 12AX7 Which is thus another component of aging. For better or for worse, human evolution is probably going to proceed via "artificial" means. Tim

Wait what! I didn't even see that. The only way that I could have SOMEHOW put that in my quote was when I was reading a book on Hitlers Scientists and I saw that quote. I am Jewish and am very proud of that fact (and German at that) How could that have gotten in my signature?

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

Entropy is cruel indeed.

He is.

Quote: Originally posted by Ephoton

I want to glow will it make me live longer probably not but a least I wouldnt get lost in the dark.

It'd help stop you getting run over in the dark.

I have been looking at following these links since I was about 13, having watched a parent dying for most of my life and then realised how permanently and suddenly they disappear - which woke me up to that fact at an early age.

I also saw Blade Runner before my teens, and the experience tied in well with Roy's last words, about all his memories being lost, forever. And I thought, people accept dying, because they think it has to happen; not because it actually has to be so.

Ignoring DNA and thinking about more empirical experiences that it can not carry over, life extension, in many ways, began when animals started teaching their children. Then went forward with recorded information (cave paintings), again with writing and pens, and again with what with have now.

Children today can see countless pictures and videos of their parents, and others, once they die as access to digital recording is so wide spread.

Aubrey de Grey is a well known person in the circle of life extension speak.

I think he is correct in his assertion that current trends look far too much towards either a complete genome rework (which is incredibly difficult given you will be altering the very base processes of things like metabolism, which have currently uncountable and complex downstream effects) or treating the pathology of disease once it is established.

Where as, stuck in the middle, there are changes that could be made that are seemingly far easier than a complete genome overhaul, but that may also be far more effective than waiting for disease to appear - e.g. helping the body to remove plaque from the brain, rather than trying to treat alzheimers once it appears or rewire the growth of a brain from birth. ***{see the footnote}

Retroactive genetic work is also not really a good option for people who are already alive. The potential for a wave of mutant babies, mutated in the wrong way, also means I expect it's highly unlikely it'll happen any time soon. Think about how much shit is entailed in GM'ing a potato to make it disease resistant.

Genetically selecting embryo's has been a controversial idea for a long time, and still isn't ethically sound in almost all examples.

I was also turned off the subject by people 'grasping at straws' with regards to the wacky ideas, that are far too in line with the miracle cures being sold hundreds of years ago.

The people who spend 10 years of their life anally picking which brand of pills to eat, and starving themselves for.... no statistically significant gain.

For instance, there are people who will eat next to zero calories as experiments have shown this causes some worms to live twice as long. What they choose to overlook is that these specific worms are the ones that have genetically adapted to have very low metabolisms, so eating less does cause less metabolic damage.

If you're not born that way, there is not much eating barely anything will do to help you. It's better than porking out in terms of your health, but it can also mean you end up lacking in some other manner as you try to pick your way through the traces your body needs - enjoyment of life would be a prime example, and spare time, which then impacts on what job you can do and so on.

Someone who eats a lot might also spend less time thinking about that, more time making a lot of money, and have better health care and enjoyment.

There is a correlation between enjoyment of life and the ability to fight disease. If you have ever seen older people dying, they can rocket down hill when they 'give up' - e.g. see their children leave home and have their own children, or go into a care home. Placebo studies have produced those 'miracle results', people getting better without ever actually receiving the drug or surgery, but thinking they have.

Of more interest to me is the idea of establishing a neuron by neuron interface with a brain.

If you look at something like a human spinal cord, the maximum data rate of that is an order or two of magnitude below a single fibre optic. And this is assuming the neurons are running at their absolute maximum bandwidth - around 1kHz - that all of them are going to the brain and that all of the data is unique.

In reality, if you look at how humans experience the world, much of what they feel and do is not unique. They treat walls and surfaces as vectors. They don't see one pixel of white, another of white - they see a sheet of white and only the imperfections.

The same is true of the other senses. E.g. unless they put a finger in a cup of tea, much of their body is at a constant temperature, so it all feels about the same. All of that can be compressed using vectors without loosing any information.

Neurons are not like transatlantic fibres, optimised to be continually at their peak transmission rate. They spend a lot of time doing not a lot, and many of them have bandwidths down around 100Hz or below. For some people, the amount of 'not a lot' is worryingly high.

If you then look at emerging technologies, such as holographic storage, and compare them to the none compressed, maximum possible data rates of the human spinal cord, you discover that you can store tens of minutes worth of that data on a CD.

So, forgetting any lossless compression, or that a lot of the neurons won't actually be busy or at 1kHz, you have there the ability to save the entire sensory experience going through someone's spine for those tens of minutes.

This gets more and more positive, as higher density storage methods are already being developed, such as atomic holographic storage or spin state storage using Bose Einstein condensates, which have phenomenally high densities - way beyond the terabytes on a holographic disc.

As I have suggested, it is quite likely a large percentage of the data in a sensory experience is in fact vector based.

What's more, humans will happily accept lossy compression. WAV files are an example. Find me one person you know in the real world who actually listens to WAV files when they're out and about.

Everyone listens to MP3's, despite the lossy encoding. And if you asked a hundred people, they either a.) wouldn't know the difference or b.) wouldn't care.

If they're watching something now, it'll likely be a ripped, low bit rate youtube copy. They don't care about it not being blu-ray and through a $10k dolby system, they care more about getting lots of different experiences for less.

This is a demonstration that people will already accept this kind of experience, and prefer it, when they're not analysing data at a high level. The brain it's self feature these compressors, to filter out the massive volumes of 'junk' information and treat the world in a manner more similar to SolidWorks, with it's vectors and surfaces.

It is beneficial to do so, because it allows the subconscious to get on with working out where the road and car is, whilst you think up a good excuse for being late to work.

People have long said computers need programming. Well, human babies have things called mirror neurons as well - effectively the copy / paste button of the brain. And what does mum spend years doing? Talking to them and playing with them to teach them, which continues up to university and on.

Machines need repairing! Well.... so do humans. In fact, the reason for cancer becoming a problem is the body's built in repair system going faulty. The same for the metabolic damage caused by radical escape from the electron chain carrier and countless other processes.

With regards to silicon and intelligence;

A major factor is.... a computer experiences it's world through one or two sensors, where as a baby has billions of neurons to collect data through, arms and legs to move about and people purposefully trying to fill it's life with differing sensations and learning experiences. The current version of AI most people think about is essentially a baby with a broken spinal cord, no eyes, ears, mouth or nose.

New transistors are now up in the hundred if billions of hertz, versus our 1kHz. The problem being, computers are designed to do things we can't, not imitate us.

There would be little point, financially, for a highly intelligent piece of AI when a human is cheap to buy.

Also... why create something smarter than you if the goal is to make money? It's going to end up having you working for it. Why create that AI and then program it to enjoy doing a shitty job, how would that be more ethically sound than getting your staff hooked on heroin and then giving them some on their breaks?

The downside to all this is not that transistors and storage methods aren't ready to chat with a human brain, it's being able to establish a connection between the two, neuron by neuron, and then map that connection so it makes some form of sense.

MRI will never manage that. MEG scanning is far superior in those terms, but can only detect at those resolutions, not communicate back - which would be important.

I have also considered if it would be possible to grow such a connection within the brain, as there are signalling systems already in place to do that, and molecules like melatonin that function as organic semiconductors.

The brain, is a mess. It's like looking at a phone junction box with around a trillion interconnections in it, with no consistent wiring pattern.

To access this download and silicon based consciousness, you need to solve that puzzle.

MEG scanners can reach the correct temporal resolution, roughly, but still require around 1k depolarisation events before the SQUID elements will pick up the signal. There is nothing more sensitive to magnetic fields than a SQUID element in existence (I believe they managed to quantise magnetic fields with them), meaning the only option is to move them closer to the source of a field; inside someone's head.

This could be done as MIT has now managed a microscopic semiconductor fridge that will reach critical temperatures for the superconductor to begin functioning.

There are also massive problems with regards to keeping the scanning elements and neurons geometrically stationary.

And again, deep brain stimulus is as advanced as communicating back has gotten thus far - stick coil of wire near head, stimulate palm sized areas of brain, gather rough results.

It is interesting, to me, to note that the body senses and even processes data in a highly digital manner. All neurons transmit signals as discrete, digital pulses. Not continuous, analogue values. They are summed and subtracted to produce a quasi-analogue stream at the synapses. But these too rely on a countable numbers of neurotransmitter molecules and are then converted back into a purely discrete signal as they dock and trigger the next neuron.

I am also not all that impressed by my own senses, having stared at electromagnetic spectrums since my early teens and noted the painfully thin pencil line down the middle that we experience. This distrust in my own senses was made even more apparent when I ate a handful of magic mushrooms and realised how easily they can be fooled into believing utter gibberish is more real than real; an experience that many people are so scared of, they won't want the few hours it lasts in their memory. And it went on to mean, I didn't assume any of the equipment at university was actually working without checking it against others - e.g. I was the only person out of the two hundred on the course who bothered checking my pipette against the balance.

I will finish this gigantic post by saying that Arthur C Clarke mentions in the beginning of ?3001? that in the future, humans roam the universe as intelligence, stored in crystals as they make the million year journeys between stars - and the highest density, practical storage method being developed at the moment is the crystallisation of a laser beam in a condensate.

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***

I thought I would add something here.

I have long been a supporter of pharmaceuticals and clinical trials, as the alternative is letting nature take it's course; which means wiping out many, many more people in the process.

However, last year I was playing around in the garage, burning cigarettes in test tubes, and discovered a series of compounds that will dissolve the resulting tar and put it back into aqueous solution.

This may not seem like much, but what is critical about it is that these compounds are not only none toxic, they have a very well known route through human metabolism, to the point that they are added to food products and pharmaceuticals and have been for a long time, featuring a complete excretion.

I went on to look at cancers and discovered approximately 1.2 billion people currently smoke, with around 600 million of those predicted to die of the known diseases related to smoking. The World Health Organisation has identified smoking at the primary, preventable cause of disease in society today.

When you look at the cancers caused by smoking, they are often related to areas in contact with the tar (throat / lung). And, if you extract the tar and then paint it on a shaved mouse, skin cancer appears where the tar is left.

I wrote 12 letters, one to each of the highest earning pharmaceutical companies, mentioning that I had found a possible method of dissolving these tars using compounds already present in the food chain and pharmaceuticals, making them less risky in terms of downstream metabolism and easier to move through clinical testing.

I received a reply saying "We do not have any interest in the discussion of removing carcinogenic material from the lungs of smokers", despite me not having explained the process in detail, only that it involved these metabolically inert compounds.

There are numerous reasons for them writing such replies, such as research focuses and legal problems. Contrary to this, I then found this same company was about to release a drug from trials specifically for treating cancer patients - the downstream pathology that may be avoided if the carcinogenic material was removed.

I also attempted to speak to numerous people at cancer charities, societies for physicians and other such agencies. Cancer Research UK took months to reply, saying they couldn't really help themselves - but I will get back in touch with them.

Others, simply didn't bother.

Of coarse, I am not claiming to have invented a cure for cancer, but with this disease ripping through hundreds of millions of people, and the goal of medicine being prevention over cure, I am somewhat bemused by the depressingly lack lustre level of interest in even hearing out a possible preventative method - which would take all of five minutes to look over.

[Edited on 20-1-2011 by peach]

"I want my life measured in breath not length"