We can now programme cells with entirely artificial DNA

[Humodour]

Next stop: creating not just artificial DNA, but artificial cells (also known as artificial life)

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/201...ife_nh_sl.shtml

[Purkake]

[Walsingham]

I'm a little concerned that the potential energy in the system - or What We Can Do - is outstripping our moral energy and ability to collectively exercise that moral energy - or What We Know Agree We Shouldn't Do.

[Monte Carlo]

Does this mean that they can grow me a new foot? My old one is giving me no end of grief.

[Walsingham]

Does this mean that they can grow me a new foot? My old one is giving me no end of grief.

 

Perhaps if you cleaned your teeth more regularly it would be less painful?

[Monte Carlo]

^ Dammit, man, you're a genius!

[Gorgon]

Remember Avatar, that really bad really pretty movie. In it genetic engineering was possible, for the very wealthy, who lived longer much healthier lives. Doesn't sound implausible at all.

[Walsingham]

I'm cautious about the societal benefits of living a long time.

 

It's been my experience that the longer you live the more likely you are to do really crappy things to people. I don't regard this as being a function of ageing, but just the effect of repeated throws of the dice, so to speak. As people find they've done nasty things their resistance to doing more of them is reduced for a variety of reasons. Therefore I would expect an aged population to be on everage more likely to be ****s than they would be if they'd died younger. Call it the 'dead rockstar' effect.

 

Add to that the my feeling that - engage hippy mode - goodness tends to reside in an awareness that the boundaries between people are frequently illusory, and the good live on in the good that they do rather than the body they use to do it. In other words the good wouldn't really want to live to a massive age.

 

Having said that I don't think there would be a serious problem with us living in very functionally young bodies until we reached a normal age to die.

[Monte Carlo]

I would happily live for five hundred years if I could. I have no wish to die, I want to see the future in all it's hideous, mushroom-clouded horror.

[HoonDing]

Genetic engineering making longer lives possible, combined with cloning, could be useful for space exploration. No longer bother with all that relativistic mumbo jumbo, just spend a couple of thousand years on a space ship.

[Morgoth]

And the pension costs will be teh horror!

[Gorgon]

Up to now the theoretical length of a human life is about 120-150 which is the extreme length of non renewable cells like those in the major organs. If we have cell regrowth for all cell types things solar radiation and exposure to oxygen, which starts to kill us literally from the moment we are born, would cease to be an issue. Those who could afford life long gene therapy to replace damaged cells could be immortal.

 

I see promise for the second coming of LoF's Communist world revolution if money was the difference between life and death for everyone on the planet.

[Gorgon]

Further, if generational rifts that lead to radical changes are no longer common because the world is controlled by a cadre of immortals it would slow down or maybe even reverse progress in the organization of human society.

 

If Brezhnev and Reagan had never left office, how long would the cold war have remained cold. 30 years, 100 ?.

[Orogun01]

Gattaca Gattaca!

 

Truly though, it could be the next great revolution. Completely virgin grounds with extensive applications, from the improvement of the already existing to the creation of something completely new.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Orogun01

[Walsingham]

Further, if generational rifts that lead to radical changes are no longer common because the world is controlled by a cadre of immortals it would slow down or maybe even reverse progress in the organization of human society.

 

If Brezhnev and Reagan had never left office, how long would the cold war have remained cold. 30 years, 100 ?.

 

Why am I imagining a cadaverous immortal Stalin, with pincers?

[Orogun01]

Further, if generational rifts that lead to radical changes are no longer common because the world is controlled by a cadre of immortals it would slow down or maybe even reverse progress in the organization of human society.

 

If Brezhnev and Reagan had never left office, how long would the cold war have remained cold. 30 years, 100 ?.

Why do you assume that immortality would lead to longer presidential terms? What's more this technology is still far away from drastically changing humans, since most of the human genome's function remain a mystery. I doubt that this will cause a technological boom that will sweep the face of the earth, it's more likely that the changes will be gradual allowing for adaptation and easing further use of this technology.

 

On the other hand why must you be so negative?

[Gorgon]

Sci Fi isn't generally positive, utopia is a pretty boring story, and I'm sure ol' Ronny could have gotten an amendment through eliminating term limits.

[Orogun01]

Sci Fi isn't generally positive, utopia is a pretty boring story, and I'm sure ol' Ronny could have gotten an amendment through eliminating term limits.

This isn't sci fi, it's real life. For that matter sci fi has been declining since Kindred.

[Humodour]

Up to now the theoretical length of a human life is about 120-150 which is the extreme length of non renewable cells like those in the major organs. If we have cell regrowth for all cell types things solar radiation and exposure to oxygen, which starts to kill us literally from the moment we are born, would cease to be an issue. Those who could afford life long gene therapy to replace damaged cells could be immortal.

 

I see promise for the second coming of LoF's Communist world revolution if money was the difference between life and death for everyone on the planet.

 

The removal of capitalism is not a problem if it's not necessary - e.g. in a post-scarcity civilisation.

[Walsingham]

Communist rule by committee can make ANWHERE a scarcity environment, Krez. I went to the Seychelles a couple of years ago, and even though limes were literally growing on trees and a key part of the cuisine, the government had still managed to make them a rarity. Couldn't get them anywhere. [The Seychelles isn't called communist, but they are privately; and ignore the Wiki page about free and fair elections]

~~~

Orogun brings up a point I'd been about to raise about change, and the speed of change. I would suggest as a general theory of all systems and organisms that their environment should not change beyond the speed the organism/system can adapt to. Discrepancies will automatically cause problems. Even a transition to a world without any scarcity would provoke social and mental health problems!

[Orogun01]

Communist rule by committee can make ANWHERE a scarcity environment, Krez. I went to the Seychelles a couple of years ago, and even though limes were literally growing on trees and a key part of the cuisine, the government had still managed to make them a rarity. Couldn't get them anywhere. [The Seychelles isn't called communist, but they are privately; and ignore the Wiki page about free and fair elections]

~~~

Orogun brings up a point I'd been about to raise about change, and the speed of change. I would suggest as a general theory of all systems and organisms that their environment should not change beyond the speed the organism/system can adapt to. Discrepancies will automatically cause problems. Even a transition to a world without any scarcity would provoke social and mental health problems!

 

On Communism: I don't that Communism is a cause of poverty rather a consequence. The proletariat is comprised of the poor and uneducated is most likely that a country that is already poor and has these people by the dozen will become a Communist country. With Cuba being the only exception that I know of.

 

 

On to thread: Change for the better is easier to adapt to, the worse I've seen is people developing a sort of passive resistance to it. But this is up to the individual's level of adaptability and this is what will determine who thrives and who falls after drastic changes.

 

What is most worrying is not the speed of this change but it's nature. This is genetic manipulation, if the ground rules for the ethical research are not set now the future may actually be in peril. I imagine that first would be the research on viruses and cancer, then on to improve the quality of life, then synthetic materials for all purposes from space exploration to pharmaceutics. This is the point were I begin to concern, this is all based on the chance that we actually master the "programming" of life and are able to write up as we see fit.

Standing on the brink of such power, how do we stop from making a bad choice?

[Monte Carlo]

A small, super-rich clique of the international elite will be able to enjoy extreme longevity. They will then create a genetic weapon that will kill all the folks who aren't like them, except for a small-ish slave caste to bury the bodies and do all the menial work. It will be like Conquistadors taking flu to the New World.

 

Then they will have the entire planet as their eternal playground, served by advanced technologies to satsify their every whim.

 

This doesn't strike me as a remotely outlandish theory.

[Orogun01]

A small, super-rich clique of the international elite will be able to enjoy extreme longevity. They will then create a genetic weapon that will kill all the folks who aren't like them, except for a small-ish slave caste to bury the bodies and do all the menial work. It will be like Conquistadors taking flu to the New World.

 

Then they will have the entire planet as their eternal playground, served by advanced technologies to satsify their every whim.

 

This doesn't strike me as a remotely outlandish theory.

It is, because the elite is not going to bother with killing all the folks. The two social classes are worlds apart and the elite only bothers with two things: making money and keeping their never ending vacation.

[Monte Carlo]

With respect, I disagree.

 

Such long lifespans, in my mind, might well lead to a sense of ennui that borders on the insane, a sense of moral detachment whereby those living 'the lifespans of the poor' are effectively an untermensch.

 

They might well think: why suffer sharing this potential eternal eden with vermin?

[Walsingham]

Isn't there a book of sci fi on this subject? I think it's called The Trouble with Lichen.