10 replies to this topic

[VictorBjoerk]

http
://blog.infeasible.org/2007/04/08/aubr...8-million.aspx


What do you think about it? refuting transhumanism?

[caston]

He has a point about transhumanisn but He doesn't argue against SENS very well. SENS is not about transhumanism it's about reversing the damage that causes senescence.

Besides there is no reason why transhumanism cannot built wonders greater than Gothic cathedrals even if it is a gnostic religion.

Edited by caston, 11 July 2008 - 06:03 PM.

[Mind]

The person seems like an all around pessimist. I read a couple other of his "arguments" and they were similarly devoid of logic and seemed designed for attention - meaning the person isn't all that serious, just looking to get attention.

[Mixter]

Luckily, that article is pure junk.

He bases the success chances on the overall probability of any drug getting into phase I trials being 8%.

This figure is based on the therapeutic potential of experimental substances based on ADME and
pharmacokinetics. But often, pharma industry is almost throwing random chemicals at cell cultures
and mice to see what effects they have.

As I understood it, this figure would only hold if the SENS treatment basically were a random chemical...

It's not even clear if any of the SENS targets would be modulated with a chemical substance,
most probably it would be biological drugs/enzymes, gene therapy or early nanomedicine,
in which not ADME/PK but MABEL and other measures of treatment efficiency would apply, and
chances would be much higher, because the drug targeting is much more thought out than
the general pharma method of discovering drugs, often almost by accident. Plus, SENS and more broadly,
Mprize motivated research would not try a single drug or therapy but hundreds or thousands...

Edited by mixter, 11 July 2008 - 07:21 PM.

[JMorgan]

I'd actually like to read some good arguments, but all of his entries are far too short to have any real insight.

[Mind]

The best alternative arguments I have seen are genomic drift (Jan Vijg) and of course SENS-E from Michael Rose.

[kmoody]

I sent him an e-mail. I'm a bit curious to see what he responds with.


HP, I have some concerns regarding the legitimacy of your website, http://www.infeasible.org/. Having recently returned from Aging 2008, a UCLA conference at which some of the latest breakthroughs in aging biology were presented, I have acquired a highly optimistic view of the credibility of SENS and Aubrey de Grey's theories on the matter. With such prominent speakers as Jerry Shay, Bruce Ames, and William Haseltine (to name a few) suggesting that success against biological aging is both feasible, and likely, puts considerable strain on the faceless arguments you seem to be making. Perhaps you are well grounded in scientific prowess, but may I request that your website list your credentials? Or perhaps you could just e-mail them directly to me. I am curious to see on what educational grounds and scholastic expertise do you claim to refute the dispositions of multitudes of brilliant researchers. If your website is simply about generating traffic and you are merely a blogger hobbyist, then I would respectfully request that you retain a bit more objectivity in your articles. Websites as trafficked as yours surely is can be especially damaging to public support for technological advances. If your logic is loosely based and poorly construed, that is simply shameful to be hindering real scientific progress. If you are looking for a topic to easily bash on and will bring you considerable traffic on your website, then perhaps you would consider attacking various religious dogmas. The Bible would be a great start as Genesis contains virtually no support from the scientific community and you could make an interesting arguement that if one section of it is false then you certainly cannot logically accept any other portion of it as fact. Just food for thought. I await your response. Kelsey Moody Director of Undergraduate Affairs Methuselah Foundation

Hmm... seems to have come out a bit messy with the cut and paste but the message is there lol

[maestro949]

The flaw in his calculation is that there will only be 7 solutions engineered.

Within each of the 7 there will be numerous sub-strategies and interventions devised. Take as an example cancer and its 11,000 therapies currently in trial. Even with a .08 success rate, cancer still eventually loses. Same applies to aging but we will probably need a comparable $6BN annual investment in aging to beat it down.

Edited by maestro949, 15 July 2008 - 09:17 PM.

[John_Ventureville]

Aubrey's *real* chance of success has to do with whether or not he can raise the 3 billion he sees as necessary to fully implement his plans. I sadly just don't see it happening. I find it especially sad since so much money is wasted by the United States and other governments around the world. And just a tiny percentage of the "war on terror" money would cover the 3 billion dollar budget. But I think that if we as Transhumanists/Immortalists cannot work together and somehow make this happen for Aubrey, then perhaps we do not really deserve to live for centuries, forget forever.

Future generations will probably shake their heads/minds in disbelief as they study all the waste of our age and how supposedly very intelligent, industrious and enlightened people such as ourselves could not harness the resources to greatly extend their lifespans and reach escape velocity.

John Grigg

[lightowl]

Aubrey isn't doing this alone. Sure, he is one of a few who are trying actively to end aging, but large parts of the bio-science field is dedicated to developing new technologies to manipulate all stuff that is bio. As those technologies become more advanced, and as diverse discoveries are being made in other areas of research, in combination with folks like Aubrey, this will probably eventually lead to the need for much smaller budgets to reach the same results. It is of cause a disaster that so much money is wasted on war and what have you, but I am still optimistic that relatively soon (my guess 20-50 years) it will become sufficiently obvious that aging can (at that time) be cured relatively (thats a big relative) easily.

Our job is (IMO) essentially to ramp up support for ending aging, so that when mainstream discovers the possibilities, many will already have made up their minds and there will be a large community ready to argue against those Luddites and Ultra-conservatives who will make a big deal out of arguing against us. There are plenty of people out there who don't even know they are against ending aging yet. The mainstream couldn't care less at this moment. Put the issue on the political agenda, then things will start moving people to whatever side of the fence their constituents push them. That's when the real money starts flowing in both directions.

Edited by lightowl, 22 July 2008 - 11:40 AM.

[Heliotrope]

Besides there is no reason why transhumanism cannot built wonders greater than Gothic cathedrals even if it is a gnostic religion.

this "religion" should produce great wonders if you're calling transhumanism a "religion"

it should be able to eventually produce physical immortality , post-human cyborgs, virtual-reality living, superman-like human beings, symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, the uploaded consciousnesses etc. just watch out for witches and antichrists

Edited by HYP86, 22 July 2008 - 01:13 PM.