On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 4:19 AM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
> Even without solving protein folding problems, regenerative medicine is > predicted to enable us to regrow any organ "on-demand" by 2025. > Organs on demand will certainly happen eventually and I hope it happens by 2025, but of all the sciences medicine's rate of improvement is by far the slowest. People throw around the word "breakthrough" all the time but, although there have been lots of incremental improvements, medical science hasn't had a real breakthrough since the introduction of antibiotics 60 years ago. In fact I'd say that it wasn't until after about 1900 that doctors started doing more good than harm. It's frustrating, we know astronomically more about how the body works now than we did 60 years ago, but translating that knowledge into cures for diseases has been difficult. If it turns out that medicine is moving too slowly to keep your body operational then cryonics would be your best bet, in fact your only bet. Given a choice between little chance and no chance at all I'll pick little chance every time. > And within 30 years an average thumb drive will have the capacity to > store an entire brain scan in sufficient detail to serve as a backup of you. > Actually I think a thumb drive with that capacity will come considerably sooner than 30 years and before organs on demand becomes common; having the technology to extract that information from your brain to fill that thumb drive is another matter. > I think mind uploading to non-biological substrates is the more likely > future for most individuals as opposed to spending eternity in a fragile > limited inefficient physical body, > That's almost certainly true. > in which case solving protein folding is of little importance, > Not so, if you knew how protein folding worked you could make some pretty neat protein machines which would be a invaluable stepping stone to the development of full fledged Drexler style Nanotechnology. And without full fledged Nanotechnology there is probably no way to extract all the information in your brain so you can be uploaded. And without Nanotechnology there would certainly be no way to revive somebody who has been cryogenically frozen, and maybe not even then. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
