How long will people live in 50 years time?

[addict]

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | IBM to build brain-like computers

Matrix here we come.

[albannet]

The desire for eternal physical life is profoundly evil because the planet can barely support the nearly 7 billion people alive today, let alone the billions more if people stopped dying. Childbirth would have to be stopped (!)

So, now some are imagining that a nanotech robot could somehow be invested with a person's memory cells so they could go on "living" as a robot after their physical body dies. But electronic circuits cannot feel like organic nerve tissue. A person's identity of self is physical flesh, not metal wires.

The only reason people want their bodies to live forever is because they don't believe there is a spiritual afterlife. But I'm a near-death experiencer and I KNOW the afterlife is real because I've been there and back, and so have many thousands of others.

The only likely outcome of such extreme technology would be some kind of "Terminator" syndrome where the robots self-realized human beings are innately selfish and destructive and should be erased to save the planet.

Advertising makes people slaves to their appetite for more and more of everything, including physical life. Better to breathe deep and relax to enjoy the natural life span of 100 years or so, then pass on to discover the miracle of spiritual existence.

[bruce]

The natural span of life was about 50 years not that long ago, and less than that in the centuries previously. I'm quite happy with where technology is taking us, and as a non-afterlife believer would be very happy to see my time here extended for as long as possible.

[debs]

Making Computers Based on the Human Brain - BusinessWeek

I don't think we know enough about the brain to make a computer emulate it. The brain is way too complicated.

[albannet]

Originally Posted by bruce

The natural span of life was about 50 years not that long ago, and less than that in the centuries previously. I'm quite happy with where technology is taking us, and as a non-afterlife believer would be very happy to see my time here extended for as long as possible.

It requires the entire industrial complex to produce the surplus of wealth necessary to finance such advanced scientific research. But that industrial complex is destroying the natural environment, which nobody can live without. So, by the time the scientists discover new ways to extend physical life, the air, water and soil will be so contaminated and the food so laced with toxins, cancer and organ failure will be pandemic. It already is and getting worse as more coal-fired power plants are built every year to deliver electricity to millions more people around the World -- except in Europe where women have the freedom to decide if and when to birth their children. There the population is slowly declining, as it should.

The best way to extend physical life is to re-create the Earth's natural balance by reducing the human population through family planning, close down all toxin-producing industries and recycle 100% of our waste and garbage. Instead of cutting down the last remaining forests and jungles to feed our billions, we should carefully surround ourselves with more of it, because a wilderness planet is a healthy planet. Green technology can do this and it has already begun. That way, almost everyone could enjoy the maximum life span of about 120 years.

[bruce]

The problem with that is that it assumes that whilst technology will advance enormously to lengthen human life it will stay exactly the same in all other areas of life. Instead the likelyhood is that technology will improve exponentially and deliver advancements that we cannot even begin to imagine. I certainly don't think it spells the end for life as we know it

[albannet]

I agree technology is wonderful, but it's being used by self-centered megalomaniacs to produce weapons of mass destruction to enforce their robber baron empires, which are likely to blunder into World War Three or toxic ecocide. It's insane to develop techniques to prolong life while simultaneously pushing everyone towards global destruction, yet that is exactly what they are doing.

[bruce]

Suffice to say I don't have the negative attitude to life you seem to have. I don't think we're all going to hell or that the world is run by corporate types and robber barons.

[albannet]

A negative attitude toward life is when corporate CEOs hire organized criminals to dump tons of industrial waste into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

A negative attitude toward life is when macho husbands and organized religionists threaten and force women to birth more children than they can support.

A negative attitude toward life is when corporations export homeland factories to the low-wage labor of poorer nations, or hire illegal immigrants to drive down the wages of law-abiding citizens.

A negative attitude toward life is when corporations pay politicians to steal billions of dollars from the public treasury to rescue their criminal mismanagement and fatten their retirement packages.

A negative attitude towards life is when the human species obsessively grows its population beyond the planet's ability to support it.

A negative attitude toward life is when -- the list goes on and on, ad nauseum ad extinctum.

The human race needs to change its predatory lifestyle, or die.
.

[karmakop]

Geez dude, lighten up.