From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 03:17:02 MDT
On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, gts wrote:
> Yes, but ultimately this instance of life will fail. I'll be lucky to
The chain which lead to you didn't break over gigayear scale. It will
break eventually (could take a great deal longer, if some of the more
outlandish schemes proposed here land instanter), but not for the reasons
you consider the bottleneck.
> live past 76 or so (my expected lifespan). One reason for this is that
> the molecules in my body are damaged over time by free-radicals --
> molecules that due to an electrical imbalance damage their surrounding
> molecules. I may be able to reduce this damage and extend my
> biological life if I can prevent some or all of this damage. There is
> every reason to believe that such damage is preventable, at least in
> theory.
It is not completely preventable, which is where you need powerful repair
mechanisms.
> A similar type of damage occurs as a result of quantum tunneling, albeit
> at a much slower pace. But unlike free-radical damage, quantum tunneling
> damage is not preventable even in theory.
Nothing is absolutely preventable in praxis. The point is rather, how good
is your scavengers, your damage recognition and repair? Right now, you
could probably buy a two decade longer lease on life with built-in
equipment. That's your current limit. The other issues are: is cryonics
going to work? When will we be able to make in-vivo nanorepairs?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:39 MST