Google executive plans to live forever

[LiberalElite]

http://nypost.com/2013/10/21/google-executive-plans-to-live-forever/

Google executive Ray Kurzweil takes 150 vitamins a day – the first step in his plan to cheat death.

The 65-year-old futurist and inventor, who is director of engineering at Google, is using a “bridge to a bridge to a bridge” system he says will enable him to live long enough to see a biotechnology revolution.

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Future headline - next week:

Google Exec OD's On Vitamins; Taken Off Life Support

[trumad]

4. Actually hit by a bus.

which I hope doesn't happen---of course.

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

18. Wonder if Rob Schneider is his supplier....

need the fix and all

[Rex]

2. Yeah how nice, but you are still going to die from old age.

65, 650, 6,500 - it is all just numbers...everyone dies. Nobody lives forever.

[randome]

6. But if we all lived for thousands of years...

...think how much more effort would go into reversing the effects of climate change. Pollution. Reducing wars.

We would all have more of a stake in making the world a better place.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Rex]

8. True that, but you will still die one day.

The thought of being immortal is fantasy land stuff. Pouring vitamins down ones throat won't help one iota.

[randome]

10. Kurzweil is no Linus Pauling, though.

He's not downing vitamins without knowing exactly what they are doing to him. He doesn't come across to me as someone who has 'faith' in vitamins.

He has personal physicians who monitor everything about his health that can be monitored.

It's a scientific effort and we'll have to see where it leads.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Rex]

12. I predict to nowhere or are there already studies that show

inhaling massive amounts of vitamins can retard the aging process? I've heard of people doing such things before, but never followed up to see if they actually lived to be 1000.

[randome]

15. Maybe they are among us now and we just don't know!

I know. 'Vitamins' seems silly because of all the other researchers who came before and put their 'faith' in vitamins.

But Kurzweil isn't putting anything into his body that can't be metabolized, unlike most over-the-counter vitamins. And he's not taking chances like Steve Jobs did on something 'magical' happening.

He's dedicated, that's for sure.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Rex]

17. Well I wish him luck, I could never swallow that many pills a day.

nt.

[Pab Sungenis]

9. I'm waiting for Cory Doctorow's "Bitchin' Society" and its "cure for death."

Force-grown clones with your brain downloaded into them from backups made before you die.

If you get bored being immortal, you just "deadhead" for a while, keeping your backup in a computer with new data added to it from time to time until certain criteria are reached.

[Rex]

13. I'm shooting for Futurama.

I want to be a head in a jar next to Leonard Nimoy...so I can bug him with endless Star Trek trivia.

[NuclearDem]

32. Why stop with just one clone per body?

There is no individual. We are geth. There are currently 1,183 programs active within this platform.

[el_bryanto]

3. What's more likely - bio-engineered immortality or digital mind copying? nt

[randome]

7. The first one.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[seveneyes]

27. bio-engineered mind copying

It's being worked on.

[Dreamer Tatum]

5. Pft. He's getting older and will be dropping singularities in his Depends

just like everyone else. Get over yourself, dude.

[Blue_Tires]

11. If he freezes himself he'll get to live in "Futurama"

[Nye Bevan]

14. Hmmmm. His vitamin regimen is certainly more complex than my daily "One-a-Day Mens".

[Rex]

16. Looks like a lot of Omega 3.

Hope he has breath mints.

[hatrack]

19. He'll end up part of the Stinkularity if he's not careful . . .

[malaise]

20. Poor fool

The only philosophical truth is that we all die and so does every living thing.

[TlalocW]

21. That man has the most expensive urine in the world

There's only so much of any vitamin your body can absorb. The rest gets pissed/pooped out.

TlalocW

[randome]

22. I don't think 'vitamins' means the same thing to him as it does to us.

I doubt he's taking anything that isn't readily metabolized.

His is a very scientific approach. And interesting, IMO.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[TlalocW]

30. Still, I bet it's still pricey.

TlalocW

[randome]

33. Having personal physicians monitor your health on a daily basis...

...isn't something the rest of us can have. But the experiment may prove illuminating.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[cemaphonic]

23. He sure made some awesome keyboards though.

I didn't know he was at Google now.

[LongTomH]

24. What terrifies me is the possibility of an elite living for centuries, while most of us are left....

.....with even shorter lifespans. Imagine people like the Kochs, Adelson, living and shaping future societies on out for millienia.

[Nye Bevan]

28. Seriously, there is a great sci-fi premise there.

I'm not overly concerned that this would happen in real life. But it could be a very good movie. Or Doctor Who episode.

[LongTomH]

31. I'm really concerned that it could happen in real life!

Check out this article: Scientists discover DNA body clock. There's a lot of ongoing research on resetting biological clocks, and stopping or reversing the aging process.

I can easily see anti-aging therapies being available to the mega-rich at secret clinics in place like the Cayman Islands while the average person in this country is denied access to even basic health care (If the Republicans get their way with the ACA!).

Edited to add: Take a look at this map of life expectancies in the US: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/map-day-falling-life-expectancies

Some cohorts in the US, particularly low-income women are actually experiencing shorter lifespans. The reasons are complex; but, they all relate back to inequality in the US, with the differences in access to both health care and healthy food. The Affordable Health Care act will help, to some extent, but won't wipe out the differences.

[RedCappedBandit]

35. Check this movie out..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time

[Ikonoklast]

39. No different from hereditary dynastys. The faces change, the oppression stays the same.

One reason some of the founders of this nation were against inherited wealth. They knew the outcome already.

[bhikkhu]

25. As long as he doesn't start drinking liquified babies or something...

he's welcome to try living forever. I'm shooting for 100 myself, which means little more than staying fit and being prudent about things.

[bluestate10]

41. I figure that once I exceed the age at which my father passed, in my mind, I will be playing

with house money.

[mathematic]

26. This guy wrote a book that inspired me to pursue math and computer science

The Age of Intelligent Machines.

Somewhere along the line his natural futurism led him to believe that we would soon develop computer technology that would enable essential immortality. The grand idea is called the technological Singularity. Think "nerd rapture". It's a fascinating subject and some aspects of it have a utopian appeal.

[SummerSnow]

29. He even did a movie...

[DJ13]

34. He does know this was a cartoon, right?

[DireStrike]

36. He won't make it. Too old.

[bluestate10]

37. Why would a person want to live forever? Living forever would bore me shitless.

I have specific goals for my lifetime, once I have accomplished a critical mass of them, I would be perfectly ok with death if it happens.

[randome]

38. Easy way around that.

Every thousand years, wipe your surface memories, leaving behind the personality and basic memories that make you unique.

Kind of like The Doctor's regeneration process.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[0rganism]

40. one problem with extending one's natural life indefinitely...

... is that it inevitably leads to an unnatural, sudden, violent and (if you're unlucky) painful, death. Once you eliminate all the mellow, slow ways to die, what's left are messy quick unavoidable deaths.