Google vs. Death

http://techland.time.com/2013/09/18/google-vs-death/

by weu • 13 years ago

187 132 13 years ago

techland.time.com

bproper• 13 years ago

Can anyone find meaningful detail in here about how Google hopes to solve the problem of death? Beyond the name of the company and the guy running it, this seems like a stock profile of Google X.

radley• 13 years ago

What's with the fake, trollish headline on HN?

It should say "Google vs. Death".

raldi• 13 years ago

It does say that, now.

What was the original headline?

wissler• 13 years ago

Google can't extend human life but maybe it can pick the right people who can.

This is similar to iPhone. Steve Jobs didn't make the iPhone possible. What he did was recognize something that many engineers had recognized for a long time and he permitted the resources to flow to the right people. Sure, he introduced some of his own artistic flair. But the combination of radio, UNIX, with a nice API was an idea whose time had come. We just needed a CEO with the balls to let his engineers go for it.

There are many brilliant scientists and engineers that can nearly do magic, and not enough people who know how to discern what visions to fund. Every so often we get blessed with a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk who can send the resources the right way, but for the most part we get Carly Fiorina.

hosay1233• 13 years ago

So this article was presumably written beforehand and embargoed to coincide with the official announcement of Calico. While I guess there's nothing wrong with that, it does make me wonder what kind of pre-approved message is supposed to be imparted by a premeditated PR campaign.

Perhaps it is just to avoid scaring investors, going by Larry's concern assuaging in the second paragraph of his post.

One of the Google founders was also behind funding the first purely lab-grown burger eaten in London a few months ago. That also had an obviously professional PR campaign attached to it, although little of this was explicit in the press. A professionally edited HD recording of the event appeared on the BBC web site only a few minutes after publication, so obviously some PR mechanism was at play.

But that event wasn't to promote Google or anything else, it was absent of any commercial labels attached to the copy or the video itself, and no mention was made of who organized or funded it. I have no idea what the message, or the point of that campaign was either.

What are these campaigns trying to tell us?

eli• 13 years ago

I think you're reading too much into it. Of course there's a premeditated PR campaign -- it's the launch of a major new initiative!

bsullivan012• 13 years ago

Google does everything in a very orchestrated campaign. Bash Adwords or Search here and you will see "them" show up to defend it.

But unless Google already transferred $x billions to Calico's bank account, I have to laugh at the 20-30+ year investment agenda and that somehow Google will be in for the long run--unlike other companies. This will be shut down the minute Adwords growth slows down...and they're running out of places to put them due to over-saturation and "free" traffic to sites is disappearing at an alarming rate already.

Google, Page, Brin should've put $500 mil each and then pledged regular contributions.

Or maybe this is Brin's divorce package: Calico will buy 123andMe for a lot of money ;-)

DominikR• 13 years ago

You don't have any information on how much money they have invested.

All you do is speculate and inform us about your aversion towards Google.

And the enlightening insight that Google would probably drop this project if their profits started going down isn't really informative unless you think that we all here have problems with understanding fundamental logic.

Florin_Andrei2• 13 years ago

Google does everything in a very orchestrated campaign.

Who doesn't, at that level?

greatzebu• 13 years ago

Google does everything in a very orchestrated campaign. Bash Adwords or Search here and you will see "them" show up to defend it.

I would assume this is because a lot of Google engineers read Hacker News and they want to defend their work, rather than because of an orchestrated PR campaign.

michaelfeathers• 13 years ago

Funny. No mention of Kurzweil.

lukev• 13 years ago

Kurzweil is a joker. His entire hypothesis rests on the assumption that computational power is the only obstacle to general AI, which is manifestly not the case.

melange9• 13 years ago

Kurzweil works for Google.

jcutrell• 13 years ago

I mostly agree here, but he does have quite a bit of a history of accurate predictions. Not a logical reason to believe in his future predictive ability, but certainly seems relevant to the anti-aging conversation.

devanti3• 13 years ago

after money, fame, what else? the google founders desire to live forever

nullc3• 13 years ago

Desire _everyone_ to live forever.

What kind of monster are you that you don't think thats a laudable goal?

sigzero• 13 years ago

You have no idea what you are even saying. Have you even thought about what "everyone living forever" means? Probably not.

objclxt• 13 years ago

What kind of monster are you that you don't think thats a laudable goal?

I think there are many compelling ethical and philosophical arguments one can make against wanting everyone to live forever.

We shouldn't confuse live extension with living forever. Oddly enough, David Attenborough is in the news today for suggesting population control is a huge and growing problem[1]. You could argue that research into extending human life when we are looking at significant problems with population overcrowding and competition for resources in the near future is putting the horse before the cart.

I am not sure which side of the fence I fall on. Medical research can allow people with previously incurable conditions to live full lives. This is a laudable goal. But that's not what you said - you're talking about living forever. Is that so laudable? I would certainly not call someone who thought that was a truly awful idea 'a monster'. Indeed, there's lots of speculative fiction based around how awful it would actually be to live forever (or even a very long time).

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10316271/Sir-D...

devanti3• 13 years ago

woah, woah, hold on there. I never said it was bad

victorhn• 13 years ago

Who would not desire that?

hosay1233• 13 years ago

I never became confident that my worldview had matured into adulthood until I lost my fear of death. And not only that, someday will welcome it (and all the agonizing pain it may likely entail) as the ultimate justification for everything that came before and that will occur after.

Actually, I have no fucking clue what kind of mindset wants to live forever. Reminded of the beautiful (book) scene in Ender's Game where Wiggin ponders the death of the buggers, and the essential union of death and rebirth.

devanti3• 13 years ago

I find it interesting that they are actively pursuing it.

Kind of like watching a lion, king of the jungle, fighting and clawing furiously against a roaring avalanche to reach the top of a mountain

enjoy the show

nova3• 13 years ago

Deathism is an insidious and pervasive meme. It is so widely accepted that we didn't have a word for it.

That's why I am so happy right now with this announcement: extremely rich and influential people moving beyond the same old Death Stockholm Syndrome.

nohuck13• 13 years ago

When Google sponsors an awesome project like this, I see the tech company equivalent of Nike sponsoring LeBron James for $105 million. Even if the R&D angle doesn't work out, Google gets real value (i.e. indirectly interchangeable for money) in terms of PR and recruiting. Consumer products companies pay huge amounts of money for PR. Google is just doing the same thing in a typically Googlish way. I don't think it's as cynical as just that: Google, and Larry Page in particular have been talking about making the world a better place for 15 years in a way that makes me pretty inclined to believe them, but the side benefits must counterbalance the longshot-ness quite a bit.

modeless• 13 years ago

It's a bit more risky than sponsoring a popular athlete I think. Few peope think we shouldn't play sports, but there is a surprisingly large group of people who believe we shouldn't be engaging on research like this. Reasons include religious, environmental, and social concerns.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

There are plenty of people prepared to question the veneration of professional athletes.

(Though I should concede that they are not anything like a majority)

breckinloggins2• 13 years ago

When I first read about Aubrey de Grey, I instinctively knew that he had the right approach to the problem of aging and immortality but I also suspected that he would run afoul of the religious, environmental, and social criticism that you're suggesting.

However, I no longer think that is the case, and I think if Calico takes the same tack they will mostly avoid it as well.

Here's why: a gross simplification of de Grey's entire research program is "aging and death happen because things start breaking faster than we can fix them, and because things start breaking that we have no idea how to fix." One of the greatest things about tackling the fountain of youth from this perspective is that it will continue to look like normal medicine and cosmetic procedures.

I predict that effective "eternal youth and immortality" will be achieved, but by the time the mass population notices enough to care, the majority of the population will be composed of people who grew up with the idea of accelerating progress on human health (in the same way that today's kids simply do not know an era without exponential advances in information technology). Thus, they will probably experience this threshold as completely normal, if they experience it at all.

In other words, there won't be a "magic moment". That moment will only appear retroactively, similar to today's magazine articles that say "hey look, here we are in the future with our video phones and what not! Isn't that nice?"

Let's say in the next 20 years the following things happen:

1. A therapeutic AIDS vaccine performs the equivalent of Polio eradication

2. Highly targeted and effective cancer therapies are developed at an increasingly alarming rate

3. An actual cure for baldness is found

4. A preventative therapeutic regimen for treating obesity at a genetic level is discovered

5. A "nano-cream" that restores collagen in the skin becomes available first by prescription, then over the counter

6. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's can be detected and prevented early and completely managed in those that are in advanced stages

Each one of those 6 things will likely face some opposition, but the opposition's voices will most probably not reach any kind of "critical mass"; people will (for example with the AIDS vaccine) simply regard as cruel the idea that people should die of AIDS because you don't want them having sex (a silly protest that I can still predict happening).

Each of these advances will happen individually, and to the average person they won't look anything alike.

But if you stack enough of these together long enough, you eventually get your fountain of youth. It's just that by the time it arrives there won't be riots in the streets, just 90% of the population saying "oh cool" and the other 10% viewed as harmless luddites with an interesting perspective on life.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

I think I'll go with death, then.

pjscott2• 13 years ago

That's fine, as long as you choose it rather than having it thrust upon you. Currently, we lose this choice after less than a century.

qu4z-22• 13 years ago

I worry that it will not be a choice (or at least taboo, like suicide is these days -- given that's basically what it will be).

EDIT: I wonder if the possibility of living nearly forever will make society even more risk-averse?

vibrolax• 13 years ago

Last week, my fiancée telling about me a novel she was reading "Google Démocratie" by David Angevin and Laurent Alexandre (2011, French language). This article sure makes the premise of the novel (genetically modified trans-humans vs the good old fashioned kind) seem a little less far-fetched.

stiff2• 13 years ago

There is something very weird about people routinely speaking of immortality as something that is actually a thing. For all we know, stars die eventually, the sun will burn out eventually, the universe as we know most likely comes to an end and so forth, you can not cheat basic physics. To me this is the same kind of refusal that makes some people believe in god, and that shows how hopelessly biased we get on topics we are emotionally involved in. On any other topic with the information available everyone sane would asses the likelihood of success as maybe less than 0.001%, but if you ask about this specific thing, it's more like 50%...

(Speaking in advance: I understand this is in fact about life extension)

flatline2• 13 years ago

Due to these circumstances, I suspect that this having possible applications into life extension is a really good way to get funding for your research, because death is 100% certain, and a .0001% chance of evading it sounds so good to some people that you can just about write your own check. Agreed though, death can be terrifying, but the idea of immortality is flawed in more ways than one. Are you really the same person you were 10 years ago? 10 Months? Weeks? Days? Minutes? Seconds? What is it, other than one's own fragile ego, that people are trying to perpetuate into eternity? A few extra years is one thing, immortality sounds like a fool's paradise to me.

JoshTriplett3• 13 years ago

A few extra years is one thing, immortality sounds like a fool's paradise to me.

Feel free to pass on it then, assuming you'd actually make that decision if you really had the choice. That problem will naturally solve itself: the set of people still alive will trend towards 100% rejection of having a limited lifespan.

"Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra on that subject just, you know, _died_, a generation before. [...] didn't need to convert its detractors, just outlive them." -- Cory Doctorow, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom".

technotony• 13 years ago

I think it's even simpler than that - if you are a billionaire life is pretty good, and the only thing that can get in your way is death so it's a natural place to want to invest - it's basically one of the only problems you have left!

JoshTriplett3• 13 years ago

You can't cheat physics, but there's a great deal about fundamental physics that we don't yet understand. Given solutions to the most fundamental bug of biology, we'd have a few million or billion years to solve the cosmological limitations on lifespan, and that's ignoring the possibility of improvements to the speed of thought or to the subjective experience of time.

So, yes, the ultimate battle is with entropy, but we have a long way to go before that's the actual limiting factor.

eli_gottlieb12• 13 years ago

Please point out even the slightest indication that entropy is beatable.

Otherwise, make an ethical argument that covering every inch of the planet in people is a good idea.

Otherwise, explain how you'll get the proper sterilization procedures working to control population growth and get resource consumption down to sustainable levels.

mattstreet• 13 years ago

How about the probability of some accident killing you (however small) multiplied for the millions or billions of years you're alive?

Florin_Andrei2• 13 years ago

It would be awesome to get to the point where we're worrying about the thermodynamic death of the Universe. But we're not quite there yet. Let's take the first steps first.

And yes, "immortality" is a figure of speech. Much like "the infinite space" - we don't know if it's really infinite.

nova3• 13 years ago

I'd happily take the 5,000 million years (or whatever physics say) lifespan now please.

If I can't call it immortality, well, it'll have to do.

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

If this random stat I found on Gizmodo (yeah, I Googled and couldn't find anything better) your chances of dying of an accident in a year are 1 in 1656.

So "immortality" is really a couple thousand years.

Don't get me started on "brain uploading". Unless you can guarantee me that I'll still be me (which is really a religious question) I'm sticking with a couple thousand years tops.

Impressive life extension. Not immortality. Not even talking about the "heat death of the universe" here - you're getting nowhere near that.

You can live your life through robotic surrogates, and that could extend your life further, but wherever you warehouse your body becomes a single point of failure so it had better be secure.

eli_gottlieb12• 13 years ago

Oh, don't worry. Ecosystem collapse is already occurring. 2000 years? We won't last 200 at this rate.

patrickaljord• 13 years ago

That's only true if we assume that the chance of dying of an accident will remain constant in the next 2000 years (it won't).

loup-vaillant13• 13 years ago

Don't get me started on "brain uploading". Unless you can guarantee me that I'll still be me (which is really a religious question) […]

Luckily, religions are false. The supernatural is unlikely, and immaterial souls even more so. But we have quantum mechanics.

Current quantum mechanics say that copy&paste transportation doesn't kill you. (Yep. The question was philosophical, and the answer came from physics.) The reason is, you're not a heap of atom, you're an arrangement of atoms. Mind uploading goes a bit further, but should work just as well. Imagine a "temporary" uploading, where your memories from the Matrix are downloaded back into your brain (by rewiring your neurons accordingly). It's still you, only older. Anyway, a deeper understanding of our brains' inner workings may resolve the question of mind uploading more definitely. We'll see then.

melange9• 13 years ago

Assuming that we accept that the 'arrangement' is what we are, and not the specific atoms, copying that arrangement would produce a new arrangement that isn't you, since all the atoms are arranged differently relative to all the other atoms in the universe.

Assuming that the preceding is wrong, and that it's only the relative arrangement of atoms inside the brain that matters, a computer representation of the arrangement of atoms is represented by a totally different arrangement of atoms that is the computer, and therefore cannot be you.

Uploading only works if we can say that you are just an abstract mathematical pattern that can be represented in any medium. Quantum physics does not address this question. It is a question of philosophy.

krapp3• 13 years ago

Current quantum mechanics say that copy&paste transportation doesn't kill you. (Yep. The question was philosophical, and the answer came from physics.)

[citation needed]

As far as i'm aware, there's no evidence that the mind is anything more than a physical construct. As such, the idea of 'uploading' it makes no sense. You can create a copy, sure, and perhaps even a running simulation might be self-aware and identify as you, but you still only last as long as does the hemisphere of jelly in your head.

I agree though that it is a question of philosophy, but a different philosophy altogether. We will have to redefine what a 'mind' is to take into account the persistent pattern of the brain in whatever form it takes as software, but that's not actually going to solve the problem of mortality any more than religion does.

qu4z-22• 13 years ago

I'm afraid I don't feel physics really answers that particular philosophical question. I do a lot of philosophical questions arise from edge-cases in our relatively informal definitions of things.

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

So, if the exact same arrangement of atoms were to appear somewhere else in the universe, would I be both? Would I be controlling two bodies at once, and see two worlds/viewpoints superimposed over one another?

I doubt it.

ronaldx• 13 years ago

Healthy life expectancy is only 75.0 max (in Japan)

If we expected to live much longer than that, we might be more cautious of accidents.

If you only have ~10-50 years to live, you might be prepared to take some small risks to save time: cross the road 100m in front of a speeding vehicle... it's a tiny risk and you might die of an acute disease tomorrow anyway.

If you have ~1000-unlimited years to live, people might generally take fewer accident-causing risks: the cost of an accident is hugely greater.

Then again, who knows? Maybe a society of immortals would need to take more risks in exchange for status.

But, you essentially decide your own level of accident-risk and I'm sure you could get it way down from 1/1656.

nooneelse• 13 years ago

How much slower would someone drive if they knew they had a good shot at 2000 healthy years ahead of them? Would the airline industry be able to survive and still use jumbo jets? Perhaps the long-lifers would pay to ride in pods with parachutes which that can be ejected from the plane.

samstave2• 13 years ago

A couple of years ago, after it was revealed that Sergey had some genetic disorder I wrote this sci-fi short story inspired by the fact that Larry/Sergey would be doing exactly this:

----

In the year 2010, scientists perfected suspended animation through the use of cryogenics for the purpose of surgery. After more than a decade of study and refinement, long term suspended animation became a reality, yet a privilege reserved for only the most wealthy and influential.

The thinking at the time was that only those who showed a global and fundamental contribution to society (while still viewed through the ridiculously tinted lenses of the global elite of the era) were worthy of entering into such state.

The process was both incredibly complex and costly. As each Transport, as they were known, required their own stand alone facility to be built around them. Significant resources were put into the development of each facility as they required complete autonomous support systems to accommodate whatever duration was selected by the Transport.

Standalone, yet fully redundant, power, security and life support systems were essential to the longevity of each facility.

Additionally, it was recognized that monetary resources would be subject to change over time, especially fiat-currency based resources. Thus there was a need to place physical holders of value that would be perceived to not deplete/dilute over time into the facilities for use by the Transport when they resuscitate.

These resources are the most sought after treasure of the new world.

After hundreds of years of human progress, civilization could no longer sustain itself in an organized self-supporting system. Through utter corruption of what some call the human soul, the world has fallen dark. There are very few outposts of safety in the current Trial of Life, as its now known.

Many Transporters have been found, resuscitated and exploited already. There are believed to be many many more, but their locations are both secret and secure. Akin to your life relying on the discovery of an undisturbed Tomb of a Pharaoh - even though every consciousness on the planet is also seeking the same tomb.

They are the last bastion of hope for they alone have the reserves of precious materials needed to sustain life for the current generation.

Metals, technology (however outdated), medicines, seeds, weapons and minerals are all a part of each Transport 'Crop'.

One find can support a group or community for years alone based on the barter and renewable resource potentials in each Crop.

One transport, found in 2465, that of a long dead nanotech pioneer - who was purportedly responsible for much of the cybernetic medical capabilities of the 21st century, which he sought to cure his genetic predisposition for a certain disease, was so vast that the still powerful city-state in the western province of North America was able to be founded.

The resources of this individual were extraordinary, but his resuscitation, as they all are, was rather gruesome and cold.

The security systems in each Transport Facility are biometric and very complex. They can only be accessed by a living, calm and (relatively) healthy Transport.

If the system, and its control mechanism AI, detect signs of duress, stress or serious injury to the Transport - they go into fail-safe. Which is to say they self detonate. Taking with them all resources, the Transport and the Seekers as well.

There have been many instances of this, such that the art of successful Resuscitation has become an extremely profitable business.

The most active and successful Resuscitation Team (RT) have been the ironically named, Live Well Group.

The most conniving, well practiced and profitable con in the history of mankind.

LWG alone has been responsible for the resuscitation of more than 370 Transports. Their group is currently the most powerful in the world. With their own city-state, established after the Brin case mentioned, they have a cast of thousands of cons all working to ensure the Transport believes they have been Awakened to a new, advanced, safe world and that they would be allowed to stake part in a significant way now that they have been Transported.

They are fooled into releasing their resources, then brutally tortured for information about any other Transports or any other knowledge they may possess, which invariably is less than nothing.

It is a hard world out there now, and the LWGs ruthless strive to locate the thousands of other Transport Facilities is both the worst aspect of our modern struggle - yet ironically will serve to be the basis of the ongoing endeavor of the species.

There is rumor of a vast facility of resources and Transports in an underground 'CITY' of the most elite Transports ever. A facility supposedly comprised of the 13 most powerful and rich bloodlines of people to have ever existed.

It is not known which continent this facility is on, but I believe it is in Antarctica - fully automated and with the ability to auto-resuscitate at a given time.

This is my mission, this is my life's work. To find and own this facility and crush any and all other groups that oppose me.

loup-vaillant13• 13 years ago

I like the background, though from a narrative standpoint, it is better presented piecemeal, as the hero progresses.

Just one quibble: cryonics (not "cryogenics") today is much less expensive than that. Okay, you don't live back (yet). But if we get working suspended animation, with resuscitation and all, it will probably be much cheaper, much more dependent on the survival of our current civilization, and much less protected.

samstave2• 13 years ago

I wrote it in 2010 after the wired article about Sergey's gene issue came out... it was a stream of conscious post, and I hadn't edited it since...

I predicted that given his resources and being found to have a genetic predisposition to a disease with later-in-life onset, he would focus on health/longevity.

With the article that came out at the same time about cryonic (thanks) surgery, I was thinking that he would be more likely to be able to freeze himself later in life than to cure his genetic disorder.

gmack• 13 years ago

Succeed or not in their stated goal, it could end up throwing off a lot of interesting science, assuming actual bio/neuro/genetic science is backed by the venture. Presumably all this enhanced by vast amounts of computational prowess, as well.

That said, there are a lot of questions about what the philosophical, cultural, sociological and political underpinnings and implications might be. Creating a friendly environment for discussing those could be a worthwhile exercise as well. For example, what is the interaction between individual wellbeing and longevity, and the quality of world in which you live? Perhaps it's a two-way street, a wholistic set of factors that includes social wellbeing in addition to medical health, taking for example the case of that Greek island with famously long-living people (Ikaria).

As someone said, it's not the years in your life, it's the life in your years.

consider_this• 13 years ago

You'd think with everything Google already knows about most people they could just solve for x.

_stuart2• 13 years ago

Love that it has a cat name... they're the ones with seven lives, right?

dsego• 13 years ago

I thought it was 9.

_stuart2• 13 years ago

Depends what country you're from.

kjofol• 13 years ago

Damn, I thought Pratchet wrote another book...

tomd01• 13 years ago

The date publish on the article is wrong? Its also cuts off and trys to get me to pay money?

Google vs. Death

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