From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 17 1999 - 21:47:37 MST
'What is your name?' 'Geoff Smith.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':
> how can a journalist talk to all these scientists, and come to the
> conclusion that only -20 year olds have a chance at immortality?
Most scientists refuse to go on the record saying "immortality soon." He
mentions this in the article: grants don't flow that way. It's not
politically expedient. So saying "immortality someday, but way after
we're dead" is, as I take it, a pretty politically acceptable thing to
say.
> By the author's own admission, 40 years olds may live to 135, so
> they'll be around in 95 years. 95 years of technological progress,
> without immortality? Is this guy crazy?
Actually, the author says that 40 year olds will live to 135 "if the most
optimistic researchers are right." (That means they'll make it to 2175,
according to those researchers.) He says of 30 year olds that "some of
you may even live to see 2100."
<blink blink> Only SOME of them? Only SOME of the 30 year olds alive
today will live to SEVENTY??? SOME of the people born in 1930 are still
alive today! In one hundred years of research, this author thinks that we
won't even be able to get MOST of us past seventy. In 1900, we weren't
clear on the germ theory of disease, hadn't discovered DNA, were WORKING
on electricity, and there were billions fewer minds and workers dealing
with the problem. From now until 2100 we'll make no progress AT ALL?
Yet we will solve the problem in between 2160 and 2190... since 2160 is
when the 10 year olds die, so the -20 year olds have only 30 years in
which to do it. These figures dictate zero progress for a hundred years,
then a mildly increasing slope for the next fifty, and then, boom! These
figures are laughable.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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