On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote: > See this article by Aubrey on the difficulty of funding life extension > research: > > http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2011/sep2011_Why-Arent-More-Wealthy-People-Funding-Aging-Research_01.htm > > The idea of atheist billionaires funding longevity research with a > hope of extending their lives, is also a "simple concept", yet happens > counterintuitively rarely... > > Human resource allocation decisions are often short-sighted and inconsistent..
That is an interesting parallel to AGI. Not just because the payoff is so huge, but also because (I believe) the level of difficulty is about the same. A few people in each field believe that the problem can be solved in one fell swoop by a stunning breakthrough. But the majority of investment goes into making small incremental improvements, such as a better way to automate a factory process, or a better way to treat a disease. People are skeptical of a grand solution because if it were simple then someone should have figured it out by now. People get old because (among lots of other things) our chromosomes have telomeres on the ends that unravel with each replication. After 50 copies, the cells can't replicate any more. This prevents runaway cell growth, as in cancers. Germ cells require a means of replacing the lost telomeres so we can reproduce, so we have an enzyme (telomerase) to replace them. This gene is inactive in most other cell types with a few exceptions such as the skin and lining of the small intestines. Cancer cells invariably activate this gene. As you can see, it is starting to get complicated. Understanding our genetic code is hard. Predicting the effects of coding changes is hard. Like in software, it is an experimental process. We can debug our code on mice and monkeys before experimenting on humans, but there are still bound to be unexpected bad consequences that might not show up for centuries. For example, our brains have finite memory capacity. What happens when they run out of space? My guess is that rewriting our genetic code is going to be at least as hard as embodied AGI. It is essentially the same problem, to replace our bodies and minds with better versions (perhaps robotic) such that our memories can be backed up. -- -- Matt Mahoney, mattmahone...@gmail.com ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
