Inventor sets his sights on immortality

[Dookus]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6959575/

WELLESLEY, Mass. - Ray Kurzweil doesn’t tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn’t take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.

As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his “tactile sensitivity.” Adjustments are made as needed.

“I do actually fine-tune my programming,” he said.

The inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in
his new book is no more than 20 years away.

(more at link above)

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First, I think he's probably mistaken in his assessment that we're so close to achieving such a thing. But more importantly, I believe it's undesirable.

Immortality would be a horrible development in mankind's development. It would concentrate even further wealth in the hands of a few, would be a tremendous drain on resources, and would basically insure that the people from whom our only release is their certain death would hang on to dog us forever.

I also find it odd that he points to his 1990 "prediction" of a worldwide computer network and a computer that could beat a chess champion as evidence of anything other than being slightly aware of the world around him.

[rawtribe]

1. Who wants to live forever

if you have to spend all you time in the bathroom? 10 glasses of water and 10 cups of green tea....no thanks!

[Dookus]

2. LOL

good point.

[lapfog_1]

3. Wow... In 1990 he predicted a computer could beat a chess champion

His acumen knows no bounds!

Actually, in 1983 *I* helped write a chess playing program which,
given sufficient cycles on the computer it was designed for - a
Cray 1 - could have given a grand master a hard time. It did very
well in the ACM chess tournaments of the era. I was quite certain
THEN that a chess playing computer would someday very soon defeat
any human opponent.

As for a global network? WTF? I started working in the Arpanet
in 1976... by 1988 (while working at NASA) not only did we HAVE a
global computer network, but we had plans to place internet nodes
into planetary probes, making the Internet at least a Solar wide
network.

[Spinzonner]

4. A piano will fall on him

He's neglecting the influence of quantum events

[Orsino]

5. Hmmm.

The advertising slogan: "You can't take it with you, but who says you have to go?"

Imagine wealthy families torn apart, as the offspring vie to do away with parents that stand in the way of their inheritance.

The poor, who would never be allowed anywhere near such a treament anyway, will maintain stable familial relationships.

[htuttle]

6. Without death, there's no sex

At least, there's no need for it.