{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Do you believe that curing death or mastering cryonics will happen within your natural lifetime?", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/702039767721918464/", "html": "
3dspacejesus asked: Do you believe that curing death or mastering cryonics will happen within your natural lifetime?
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binary-bluejay:

kontextmaschine:

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binary-bluejay:

kontextmaschine:

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prudencepaccard:

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kontextmaschine:

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slartibartfastibast:

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kontextmaschine:

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No. Immortality has been \u201cjust a few improvements on the current state of the art\u201d away for approximately ever.

Don\u2019t tell the most recent immortality cult about this. It would break their clich\u00e9d little hearts.

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Yeah the funny thing is how the \u201cstate of the art\u201d consistently refers to whatever field\u2019s particularly prominent and cutting-edge at the time.

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It\u2019s been alchemy in medieval Europe and ancient China, electricity in Revolutionary France, extremely low-temperature liquid circulation in the rocket age, data storage in the computer age, now it\u2019s biotech because of course it is.

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In 16th Century Spain with the whole Fountain of Life thing it was fucking western hemisphere cartography.

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\u201cIn 16th Century Spain with the whole Fountain of Life thing it was fucking western hemisphere cartography\u201d holy shit this is 100% right

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This post was one of the ones that \u201cmade me\u201d early on

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Incredibly stupid to equate biotech with any of these other things but go off I guess.

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the current thing is different, you see

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Kontext, you\u2019re an idiot. An entertaining one! But you are a clown and nothing you say is worth taking seriously.

\u201cHow on earth could the field working on developing a mechanistic understanding of biological systems be different in it\u2019s contribution to how we manipulate those systems than fucking alchemy\u201d

If humanity does make meaningful advances in extending the human lifespan beyond where it is currently, it will absolutely be attributable to advances in medicine, biotechnology, and molecular biology.

Establishing your prior from base rates is important, but you do then have to actually look beyond the base rates.

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Like, I assure you, alchemy, 19th century electricity, post-war physics and computronics were all master life sciences of their day, understood as the keys to understanding life, and our world and lives today heavily rely on insights and innovations derived from all of them.

And yet.

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