11 replies to this topic

[Stefanovic]

many people say: within 10, 15 or 20 we could be much closer to a cure for aging, but what exactly has already changed over the last 10 years and do you think it's a good indicator for what will change over the next 10 yrs? Or will it only go faster from now on?

[ViolettVol]

I can;t comment with scientific studies behind me,but I think we are on a good accelerating track -ten years ago it went slower, but it gradually accelerated and now that we have advanced internet and info can be exchanged and processed quicker it all reaches a new level.
We read about new research/treatments almost daily - be they anti-disease, antiaging of organs or skincare.beauty. True, many of the products turn out to work weakly or not at all or are in development but there are also gems and even through mistakes knowlege is accumulated. I think its accelerating and the more attempts we make the more chances we have of success. That's why its important to convince more and more people that life extension isnt just a madmans dream or a far off-in the future dream. The more people focus on it, the more chance we have. Thats why I think its important we propagate this idea of longevity/immortalism wherever we go, no matter with how much sceptisism we meet. The more people work on this goal, the faster we reach it! :D

[Mind]

One good sign is that cancer survival rates are increasing. This is a very tough disease to fight but we are winning slowly but surely. Also, more organs are now being grown in a lab. 10 years ago there were virtually none. Now we can grow several and more are in the works. That is a good sign as well. What I would really like to see, to really make me optimistic about our progress is too extend the life of a super-centenarian a few years past the 113 to 114 mark that we are stuck at right now.

[hivemind]

Cancer survival doesn't mean you are going to have a nice life after the harsh and toxic treatments. Our cancer treatments are still very primitive.

[Elus]

I think I heard Kurzweil say that we won't experience the equivalent of 100 years of progress in the 21st century, but we'll really experience the equivalent of 20,000. 10 or so years ago we didn't have the human genome, didn't have an LHC, vast social networks...

Education is changing and becoming internet based, and we're gaining increasing understanding of genes and their relationship to human disease.

We're developing powerful new tools that work against a broad range of viruses as we increasingly understand biology.

In addition, we're building sub-human level AIs that demonstrate considerable ability to perform and beat humans at certain tasks (jeopardy) that were previously impossible, and may revolutionize medicine when we incorporate the entirety of our medical knowledge into such AI.

Object recognition software has become immensely powerful to the point where we may soon widely implement self driving cars that have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles on public roads.

Our medical knowledge doubles every year, and smart phones are enabling us to monitor our vitals, sleep, and health in increasingly potent ways.

We're developing labs on chips and we can already use them to detect many diseases. Combined with our increasing knowledge of disease protein markers, we've been able to develop blood tests for diseases like alzheimer's.

We're changing our energy sources and solar is (or will soon be) just as competitive as fossil fuels with incredible breakthroughs in efficiency and commercial viability. Robotic, including humanoid robots, are already very robust and have replaced incredible numbers of humans at manual labor jobs.

Our social networks are making corrupt regimes increasingly transparent and weak.

Things have changed immensely in 10 years. Kurzweil said that by 2045 we won't be able to keep up with progress. I can barely freaking keep up with the world now.

Happy new year all.

Edited by Elus, 02 January 2012 - 12:20 AM.

[okok]

I can barely freaking keep up with the world now.

That's really getting a problem, esp. for people who want to know it all...

[niner]

Thanks for that great survey of progress, Elus.

The cost of gene sequencing has fallen dramatically. Ten years ago, there was no 23andMe. Today getting a full gene sequence for a human is not terrifically expensive, and falling in price. Look at the iphone 4 and compare it to the bricks of ten years ago. And whats-her-name, the AI that lives in it. That's a pretty good marker for hardware/software progress. There's the movement to open source science and public access to journals; that's huge. We had pubmed ten years ago, but it's a lot bigger and better today. Ten years ago there was sci.life-extension; today there's us. (Yay ImmInst!)

It's been a while since we had a really earth shattering scientific development, like antibiotics or space travel, but then again, maybe the new developments are happening so fast that we've become used to it and don't really notice. It does seem like it's been a long time since the sort of thing that becomes a real marker in our lives, where we think of the world before X and the world after X. I'm thinking only of technology and not of things like the breakup of the USSR, which was pretty momentous. At any rate, there are a lot of biomedical technologies that are now poised on the brink of something bit. At some point in the relatively near future we could see major progress against cancer, Alzheimer's, and viral infections in general, to name only three. There are incipient breakthrough technologies in energy generation and storage that could change most of the machines in our lives and re-order geopolitics. When something's been five years away for the past fifty years, the predictions get a little tiresome. And it always takes longer than you think it should to move something from the lab to full implementation in the world. Nevertheless, we're closer than ever in a host of areas, and I expect a couple big events to break between now and 2020.

[TheFountain]

I think I heard Kurzweil say that we won't experience the equivalent of 100 years of progress in the 21st century, but we'll really experience the equivalent of 20,000. 10 or so years ago we didn't have the human genome, didn't have an LHC, vast social networks...

Education is changing and becoming internet based, and we're gaining increasing understanding of genes and their relationship to human disease.

We're developing powerful new tools that work against a broad range of viruses as we increasingly understand biology.

In addition, we're building sub-human level AIs that demonstrate considerable ability to perform and beat humans at certain tasks (jeopardy) that were previously impossible, and may revolutionize medicine when we incorporate the entirety of our medical knowledge into such AI.

Object recognition software has become immensely powerful to the point where we may soon widely implement self driving cars that have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles on public roads.

Our medical knowledge doubles every year, and smart phones are enabling us to monitor our vitals, sleep, and health in increasingly potent ways.

We're developing labs on chips and we can already use them to detect many diseases. Combined with our increasing knowledge of disease protein markers, we've been able to develop blood tests for diseases like alzheimer's.

We're changing our energy sources and solar is (or will soon be) just as competitive as fossil fuels with incredible breakthroughs in efficiency and commercial viability. Robotic, including humanoid robots, are already very robust and have replaced incredible numbers of humans at manual labor jobs.

Our social networks are making corrupt regimes increasingly transparent and weak.

Things have changed immensely in 10 years. Kurzweil said that by 2045 we won't be able to keep up with progress. I can barely freaking keep up with the world now.

Happy new year all.

But our society is still extremely politically archaic, and this is slowing down many fields of progress by having legislators who are essentially pastors in a suit and tie determine what is and is not best for our development. And there seems to be no way of changing this, because they have the system by the balls in terms of their corporate ties. That's why I am moving out of the U.S as soon as I can.

[mikeinnaples]

It's been a while since we had a really earth shattering scientific development, like antibiotics or space travel, but then again, maybe the new developments are happening so fast that we've become used to it and don't really notice. It does seem like it's been a long time since the sort of thing that becomes a real marker in our lives, where we think of the world before X and the world after X.

I think the marker went unnoticed because the world gradually slipped into the technology over a period of time until it became ubiquitous. It is mostly unrecognized as a milestone because the before/after moment spanned two decades. The internet...

[niner]

I have to agree with you, Mike. The internet is the biggest thing in human cultural evolution since... at least the development of writing. Maybe not as big as the development of language, but that might be splitting hairs, and anyway, this is supposed to be about the last 10 years. Technically, that rules out "the internet", but would still include most social media, which is a huge thing.

[Mind]

Cancer survival doesn't mean you are going to have a nice life after the harsh and toxic treatments. Our cancer treatments are still very primitive.

Cancer treatments are primitive. I would not wish them upon anyone, however, slow but steady progress against the disease is much better than the alternative. Here is another article about the very slow gains against cancer.

[treonsverdery]

well the pubmed.org search engine says

2001 generated 1500 papers with longevity, 2011 generated 4300

2001 generated 200 papers with resveratrol, 2011 generated 1500

2001 generated 25 papers witrh antiaging at title, 2011 generated 111

2001 generated 670 papers with "Mechanism of Aging", 2011 generated 2124

The 2011 peer reviewed medical establishment is now four to seven times as active researching longevity as it was during 2001.

Now I think an few orders of magnitude on antiaging research right away is the way to go

Truly though if anybody here has some truly beneficial thoughts the likely over 4300 researchers (multiauthor papers) might like to hear your ideas

Edited by treonsverdery, 11 January 2012 - 12:34 AM.