Time interviews Larry Page about new venture to extend human life

http://business.time.com/2013/09/18/google-extend-human-life/

by raldi • 13 years ago

47 23 13 years ago

business.time.com

Extended life is great, provided you solve the problems of over-population / birth rate exceeding death rate, and resource depletion. The carrying capacity of the planet is limited. Technology and ideas don't replace physics and chemistry.

So, can we radically extend life? Probably, with sufficient research.

But without solving the other two issues it raises huge problems. Unless of course we're talking a tiny immortal class controlling all the world's wealth and dwindling resources, and the rest with no access to it.

julespitt2• 13 years ago

Why are we limited to this planets resources exclusively?

rizzom5000• 13 years ago

I think the answer to that in the part where the parent mentions physics and chemistry.

Until we can provably show that resources outside of Earth are available for human consumption, and within some range of feasibility; it's not valid to use the argument that the potential availability of said resources are a solution to the magnification of natural resource depletion on Earth caused by overpopulation.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

For the same reason you cannot buy a 300 feet yaught today.

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

Technology and ideas do replace physics and chemistry when they improve efficiency. No comment, at the moment, on how that impacts the broader discussion.

richardjordan7• 13 years ago

No they don't. Ideas don't replace energy. Once we run out of fossil fuel inputs to the system it's highly unlikely we can run things as we are doing.

lbrandy• 13 years ago

Why can't we make an identical argument against all forms of medical research? Should we also stop cancer research?

richardjordan7• 13 years ago

I am not suggesting we don't do this. Just highlighting that radical life extension poses unique problems which are an order of magnitude more serious to think through than regular medicine advances.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

Extended life is great, provided you solve the problems of over-population / birth rate exceeding death rate, and resource depletion.

No need. This is just for those with the dough to spend. Who cares about the unwashed masses?

To the people that will use this, upper middle class is like white trash.

Terretta• 13 years ago

Why isn't anyone mentioning that this is coming not long after Google hired Ray Kurzweil?

http://www.kurzweilai.net/monolith-when-google-hired-ray-kur...

Now he can put Google's resources to work on the problem.

yolesaber• 13 years ago

I wonder what capacity he is operating in with regards to this project. I was actually surprised that he wasn't named as the CEO of Calico.

manifold• 13 years ago

One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you’d add about three years to people’s average life expectancy ... it’s not as big an advance as you might think.

Thinking about improving total life expectancy in this way is not so useful because the large gains have already been made. For instance if no-one in the UK ever died between birth and age 60 it would only add 2-5 years to life expectancy at birth. 100 years ago the same situation would have added 20-25 years.

Perhaps more interesting would be to look at increasing the maximum life span, reducing the variance about the age of death, increasing the median age of death, or to consider the effect of curing cancer/other diseases on healthy life expectancy which I think could still be meaningfully increased.

pamparosendo• 13 years ago

Life expectancy is increasing, but quality is decreasing... we've been made to die; not live forever... but some egos just can't stand it.

Time interviews Larry Page about new venture to extend human life

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