February 12th, 2013
An Upcoming Oxford Debate With Aubrey de Grey and Richard Faragher
Via the SENS Research Foundation:
Dr. Aubrey de Grey, SENS Research Foundation's Chief Science Officer, will be debating Dr. Richard Faragher, Chair of the British Society for Research on Ageing and Professor of Biological Gerontology at the University of Brighton, at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre on February 19. Dr. de Grey will argue that the diseases of aging can be treated comprehensively by SENS therapies, and that these therapies could be developed in the coming decades, given sufficient research and funding. Dr. Faragher will dispute these points.Most importantly, both researchers agree that aging research is critically underfunded, and is the key to a healthier future. SENS Research Foundation is proud to be a sponsor of this event, and looks forward to an insightful debate about the most direct and effective research strategies for addressing age-related disability and disease. We would like to thank the Oxford University Society of Biomedical Sciences for hosting the event.
Link: http://sens.org/outreach/outreach-blog/dr-de-grey-debate-oxford
I hope they'll record this and put it up on Youtube. SENS Foundation did post the last Oxford debate, and it seemed to generate some buzz at least.
They confirmed they will put a video of this on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/OUSBMS
It is important to state that the speed of technological development is exponential, not linear. As a consequence to comprehending this fact, you ought to see that the next twenty years will result in an explosion of new market oriented technology for sale including cosmopolitan space travel, extreme longevity treatments, artificial general intelligence, along with less controversial (because there are specific examples already on the market but not well know) technology like the Sling, a water purifier that makes water so clean it can be injected, along with generates energy from sewage or salt water, or LENR in the form of the E-Cat, which utilizes nickel and hydrogen to make energy too cheap to meter (credible third-party verification expected next month).
What I am trying to tell you is that in five years we can expect robots to bet men in soccer. In ten, according to Moore's Law, we can expect computer processors to be powerful as a human brain. In less than twenty years, we can reasonably expect artificial general intelligence to be smarter than Einstein.
Abandon your linear heuristics of what the future will be like. Instead, realize the clear evidence that if you can manage to live twenty more years, you will likely have available a treatment to live hundreds more - even if you are a shriveled 90, it will give you the body of a teenager. It isn't rocket science, nor is it even a leap of faith: it is just plain common sense interpreting the data of what has come before. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT SPEED IS EXPONENTIAL NOT LINEAR, duh.
I certainly hope your prediction is correct, though I'm not disputing how you arrived at it. It's just that even if techno progress will be exponential, the problem will still center on overcoming the array of resistence from Rapturites and fundamentalists of all stripes, corporate behemoths buying and stashing patents for decades until their existing destructive inventories are exhausted and regulatory bodies influenced by rival corporations, etc. If only the ability to neutralize this resistance was also exponential, I'd feel a lot more positive.