From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Feb 19 2001 - 00:23:46 MST
At 10:37 PM 18/02/01 -0500, "Ben Houston" <ben@exocortex.org> wrote:
>Damien said:
>>Hayflick said
I didn't say any of those things. I was quoting someone else who said
someone else said them.
But finally I did say:
>> It will come from a blend of the genome program data, fast
>> computational protein folding, and nanotechnology. Neither of the latter
>> are receiving as much funding right now as routine cardiac surgery, say
Ben retorts:
>I would argue that there is tons of work being done in the area of
>"computational protein folding". It really is a hot field right now.
And there's more money now invested in that field than in routine cardiac
surgery? (You might be right; I ask in my ignorance.)
>your listing of these three keys is strange to me. I understand it as
>someone saying that "we need to learn the alphabet! You know, the vowels
>and the letters B and M." What you list is surely important to the problem
>but do not really cover much of the actual problem space
Of course not. That's not what I was saying. You go on to enumerate various
health issues and specific approaches to solving them, most of which I
agree with (except that nanomedicine will solve some of those problems
sideways. if Robert Freitas is right). But I was discussing the topic of
major life extension at a coarser grain than that. It's as if I said in the
1930s: `To get into space, we'll need a lot of money spent on rocket
design, telecommunications and fuel development', and someone retorted: `Oh
come on, you've left out the design of portholes, the kinds of soles
they'll need on their spacesuits, and special brushes for sweeping up all
the coal'.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:05:57 MST