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Google's Ray Kurzweil Wants To Live Forever, and He Thinks It Includes Nanobots (playboy.com) 185

Posted by msmash from the achieving-immortality-101 dept.
Reader Esther Schindler writes: Whatever else he is (author, computer scientist, inventor, futurist, Google employee), Ray Kurzweil is undeniably fascinating, with intriguing predictions about the future -- some of which might be accurate. In an interview, he discusses life extension and technology, as well as how he thinks they'll be connected. "When people talk about the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence, they very often have the common dystopian Hollywood-movie model of us versus the machines. My view is that we will use these tools as we've used all other tools -- to broaden our reach. And in this case, we'll be extending the most important attribute we have, which is our intelligence." Part of what I like is that he sees ways to use technology for good and not for evil. "By the 2030s we will have nanobots that can go into a brain non-invasively through the capillaries, connect to our neocortex and basically connect it to a synthetic neocortex that works the same way in the cloud. So we'll have an additional neocortex, just like we developed an additional neocortex 2 million years ago, and we'll use it just as we used the frontal cortex: to add additional levels of abstraction. We'll create more profound forms of communication than we're familiar with today, more profound music and funnier jokes. We'll be funnier. We'll be sexier. We'll be more adept at expressing loving sentiments."Kurzweil also thinks his diet can help him live forever. Kurzweil claims that he spends "a few thousand dollars per day" (or roughly a million dollar a year) on diet pills and eating right. According to a Financial Times report from last year, Kurzweil's breakfast includes:Berries (85 calories for a cup), Dark chocolate infused with espresso (170 calories for an ounce), Smoked salmon and mackerel (100 calories for a 3-ounce serving), Vanilla soy milk (100 calories for a cup) Stevia (zero calories), Porridge (150 to 350 calories for half a cup, depending on ingredients and cooking method), and Green tea (zero calories). Kurzweil takes 100 pills a day (down from 250 a few years ago, technology has advanced, you see) for "heart health" to "eye health, sexual health, and brain health."
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Google's Ray Kurzweil Wants To Live Forever, and He Thinks It Includes Nanobots More

Google's Ray Kurzweil Wants To Live Forever, and He Thinks It Includes Nanobots

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  • Whatever else he is (Score:4, Informative)

    by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:05AM (#51956287)

    Whatever else he is, Kurzweil is undeniably a self-promoting hack who is almost always completely wrong about everything.

    Sorry. He's going to die just like the rest of us.

    • Re:Whatever else he is (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:13AM (#51956351)

      He's going to die just like the rest of us

      ...and probably from liver damage, considering he takes 100 pills a day.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by kuzb ( 724081 )

      I don't think I'd go so far as calling a man with his achievements a hack, but I would say he's a bit of a self-promoting blowhard that sometimes tries to sell science fiction as science fact.

      • Re:Whatever else he is (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:57AM (#51956771)

        Personally, I think he's just over-enthusiastic and drinking his own Kool-Aid. I believe he's sincere, but lacks a certain sense of realism about where things are going and the actual challenges inherent in it.

        I think we need people like that to sort of keep things moving forward, as it is far too easy to simply accept the world the way it is. Just as long as we collectively maintain a balanced perspective about what we are actually doing in regard to reality.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kuzb ( 724081 )

          I don't think he's personally responsible for keeping anything moving. Technology is going to advance whether he has something to say about it or not.

          • Everything moves based on economic support - if you can't fire the imaginations of the people with money, you don't get any money. Without people like Kurzweil helping the rich and bored to see an exciting future, they will continue to invest in yachts, mansions and all the other traditional wealth sinks.

            If you get rich old men excited about developing better viagra, immortality, etc. they will fund research in those directions. Succeed or fail in their actual aims, that research will add to our knowledge

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kuzb ( 724081 )

              But we're not talking about people like him, we're talking about him. Yes, the world needs visionaries, and we have a lot of those these days. I just prefer to hear more from the people who are actively trying to bring their visions to reality instead of doing nothing but talking and writing a stream of books.

        • So, the "we'll be sexier" comment probably doesn't apply to the first generation of people with nanobots wiring a 2nd neocortex into their brain...

    • Re:Whatever else he is (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:54AM (#51956737) Homepage
      I don't know if he is completely wrong about everything. Some of his predictions are spot on and others seem less so. For example, back in the late 2000s he predicted a one-world government by 2020. Pretty sure that's not going to happen. http://lesswrong.com/lw/diz/kurzweils_predictions_good_accuracy_poor/ [lesswrong.com] has a good analysis which suggests that Kurzweil is more accurate than many other people making predictions but at the same time he's highly overconfident in his predictions. See also http://lesswrong.com/lw/gbi/assessing_kurzweil_the_results/ [lesswrong.com].
      • He got the one about everyone carrying around a cell phone and talking to it all day correct. And that was during a time before the internet got big and bigger (sized) computers were better. A monstrous PC on every desk. Laptops weren't even that popular then and cell phones were about making calls and not yet popular other than drug dealers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )
        He probably read some Heinlein or Doc Smith written back when the early UN and earlier league of nations looked as if they might lead to a world government. Those guys had hope and an excuse - we have an example with some hard learned lessons as to how hard it would be and why we wouldn't want it in the first place. A mix of nepotism and global control would be a nightmare for all but a few.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      With a bit of luck he will have some miscalculations in his mega-load of pills and he will die a lot sooner.

    • I particularly like the "sexual health" pills, considering that one of the few verified ways we know of to considerably extend mammalian life is complete sterilization (verified in humans by analyzing church documents containing the lifespans of choir castratos versus the unmodified monks they lived alongside)

      The only other verified means of extending life I can think of offhand is extreme calorie restriction, and to look at him he doesn't practice that either.

      So, available evidence is he's just another wis

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epine ( 68316 )

        verified in humans by analyzing church documents containing the lifespans of choir castratos versus the unmodified monks they lived alongside

        You need to rethink verification.

        In A/B results taken from one environment (and a really weird one, at that) was worth a hill of beans (freshly severed) then thousands of mutually contradictory diet studies could all be true.

        • We had already done rigorously controlled experiments on many other mammals, with conclusively positive results. And it's not exactly the sort of human experiment you could get past an ethics committee. Meanwhile, what's so weird about the situation? A bunch of men and castrato leading fairly similar moderate-impact lifestyles not physically so unlike the typical modern lifestyle. And since they were living side by side with the same diets and workloads you could hardly ask for a better designed experim

      • Castratos had less V.D.

      • the lifespans of choir castratos versus the unmodified monks

        That's selecting for a group with the ability to have recovered from a major injury without the benefit of modern medicine versus the general population. Too many variables to assume it's all down to testicles especially since the death toll from castration was not low.

        Bulls versus bullocks today would be a real comparison.

    • Anytime someone mentions the Singularity and immortality through a cyber avatar, I think of this absolutely hilarious skit:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • "Sorry. He's going to die just like the rest of us."

      Sure, but he'll be the healthiest guy ever to be run over by a truck.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Speak for yourself. I plan to live forever, or die trying.

  • madness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:11AM (#51956329)

    >> Kurzweil claims that he spends "a few thousand dollars per day" (or roughly a million dollar a year) on diet pills and eating right. Kurzweil takes 100 pills a day (down from 250 a few years ago...

    Typical American "Money is the answer to everything" mindset. The obvious proof that it doesn't work is that he still actually looks his age.
    It seems to me that the best thing you can do for yourself is eat simply and regularly exercise, avoid drugs, live a happy stress-free life (which includes not worrying about things you can't change, such as aging/death and the insane belief that there's a pill for everything).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      He may be a nut, but he's doing something different than most people, so it constitutes a meaningful experiment, albeit not a very good one. No one can say for sure at the moment that his diet won't work for extending life, but should it eventually be the case that he lives an extraordinary length of time, it will be reasonable to suggest that his diet may have had something to do with it. It seems unlikely, but if he wants to do the experiment on himself, I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

      • He isn't doing anything different. There are a million wackjobs out there that experiment with diets and pills.

    • which includes not worrying about things you can't change

      That last bit is very important, but very hard.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      which includes not worrying about things you can't change

      Or find religion. If there's no way to know if it'll rain or not and your crops will wither and you'll starve to death, make up a rain god that you can do a rain dance to. Why do you think pretty much all major religions have a concept of afterlife, reincarnation or such? Because "no, you just die" sucks. People want to believe that life is longer and fairer and with more reason than reality and scientific rationality tends to lose simply because the alternative feels so much better.

    • Re:madness (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21, 2016 @12:20PM (#51956975)

      That's an incorrect quote from the article, the article actually says:

      > I ask how much this regime costs. “It’s a few thousand dollars a year. But it’s not one size fits all. A healthy 30-year-old might just need basic supplements”

      So it's a few thousand a year, not a few thousand a day. Geez editors, wtf?

    • Kurzweil is anything but a "Typical American".

    • 100 pills a day is lunacy in any analysis.

      Millions of dollars a year funding health studies is, though, actually a positive thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        ...presuming those health studies aren't just a gravy train to keep executives employed, which many are.
        Most studies are run by drug companies, they explicitly don't want to find an actual cure for things, just ways to temporarily offset symptoms, because that means so they get residual payments for life, not just a one-time hit.
        More often than not drug companies are just looking for new patentable drugs that do the same job as those they already have because the ones they already have are falling out of pa

  • I'm planning to live to 120 years old. That's another 75 years of life for me. One major problem that many retirees have these days is outliving their retirement funds by 20 to 30 years. If I die sooner than 120, my heirs will have a nice inheritance.

    • One major problem that many retirees have these days is outliving their retirement funds by 20 to 30 years

      If you're healthy enough to live for 30 more years, you're probably healthy enough to work a little longer, too.

      • But why would you want to wait to retire until you're to ill or feeble to enjoy it?

        Besides, life expectancy in the US is ~79 years - just to live an expected 30 years beyond your day of retirement would require retiring at 49.

        • Besides, life expectancy in the US is ~79 years - just to live an expected 30 years beyond your day of retirement would require retiring at 49.

          Not everyone can retire early. Most people retire between 59-1/2 and 65, and those who are outliving their retirement funds are in their 90's or 100's.

          • Indeed. But most people won't live anywhere near that long - if you retire at 60, the odds are good that you'll live less than twenty more years. Unless your family medical history suggests otherwise, attempting to budget your retirement to reach 90 or 100 probably means you've deprived yourself of enjoying that wealth while you were young and healthy to no good purpose. Even if you have children to inherit it, inflation means it's probably worth far less than when you earned it, so it's a net loss of hu

            • Unless your family medical history suggests otherwise, attempting to budget your retirement to reach 90 or 100 probably means you've deprived yourself of enjoying that wealth while you were young and healthy to no good purpose.

              I would rather be the guy everyone thinks is poor for living a modest lifestyle and surprise everyone by leaving a fortune behind. Living a modest lifestyle has its own rewards.

              http://news.sky.com/story/1422048/frugal-janitor-was-secret-multimillionaire [sky.com]

              • No argument. But consider - you could also be living modestly while working far less, giving yourself far more time to enjoy the rewards of that modest lifestyle as you see fit. Unless you really enjoy your job you'd probably be happier spending those extra hours volunteering for a worthy cause, sitting in contemplation, reading, playing video games, or whatever else floats your boat.

                • But consider - you could also be living modestly while working far less, giving yourself far more time to enjoy the rewards of that modest lifestyle as you see fit.

                  I'm already doing that. My employment contracts for the last 10+ years prohibits me from working more than 40 hours per week. None of the Fortune 500 companies want to pay overtime anymore.

                  • So, work less. There's nothing sacred about 40 hours per week, if it hadn't been codified in law we'd probably be down to 30 as the standard by now, based on employment trends and productivity increases up to that point.

                    Of course there can certainly be difficulty in finding employers interested in hiring you for less, and you may have to make significant compromises to do so. If that's not your cup of tea, then there's sabbaticals (which can carry their own problems) and early retirement. Once you've acc

        • But why would you want to wait to retire until you're to ill or feeble to enjoy it?

          So you don't have to eat expired cat food?

      • If you're healthy enough to live for 30 more years, you're probably healthy enough to work a little longer, too.

        My father retired at 59-1/2 because his older brothers died at 60 right on the dot. A year later he went back to construction work on a semi-retired basis for another 15 years. He worked 50 years at the same company for three generations of owners. Six months later he died.

  • I like Kurzweil (Score:3)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:12AM (#51956339) Homepage

    I think he's entertaining, and he has some interesting, creative ideas.

    But I think his stuff is interesting proportionally with how far away in time he's referring to. Distant future? Fun speculative ideas. Right now? Pseudo-science speculative nonsense.

  • Pssh, Nanobots? Nanobots won't cure a sword to the neck

    THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

  • They left out the "Cocoa Puffs" from his menu, because he's obviously Cuckoo....

  • Even if all that technology pans out, would it scale to the global population? If not, we will have the sci-fi nightmare where the rich live forever and the poor die. Not sure our society could survive the social implications of such a development...

  • So far so good...

  • If nothing else.... (Score:3)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:25AM (#51956463) Journal

    When and if he does die, hopefully he has a clause donating his body to science so we can see the effect of all those pills

  • 100 pills a day, keeps the doctor away. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mats Svensson ( 1745652 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:32AM (#51956533)
    To be fair, 50 of those are laxatives, to dislodge the log-jam from the other 50 pills.

  • Characters in the anime/manga "Ghost in the Shell" [wikipedia.org] had external memories where they could store things to augment their own memories. You could talk with someone using term "tapetum lucidum", your external memory would kick in and you would instantly recognize what the speaker meant. (The reflective tissue behind the retinas of some mammals, the thing that makes predator eyes reflect light at night.)

    I've come to realize that I use Google in exactly this way - as an external memory. I *knew* about the tapetu

    • I love the "Ghost in the Shell" animated films.
      Too bad Pixar or some other US animation studio can't do something interesting like that, instead of the usual cutesy stuff.

    • Google voice search on my phone has increased my integration to the net by an order of magnitude - I can make queries from most locations with simple speech and often get accurate voice replies (in a fraction of the time it would take to tap in the query on a mobile keyboard, and with a fraction of the attention required to focus on and read a mobile screen.)

  • What about the Slashdot Interview? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CaptainJeff ( 731782 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:36AM (#51956579)
    Ray never responded to the Slashdot interview that was begun in December. https://features.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

  • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpatters ( 883 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:43AM (#51956645)

    What good is living forever if you can't enjoy a bacon cheeseburger from time to time?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      If it was forever ever, then maybe... but mostly you're just a bit ahead of the curve, sure being fifty and in the shape of a thirty year old is nice. But in ten years you'll be sixty and struggling to keep up with a forty year old. By seventy most really start to feel their age, it's way different than fifty. And very few eighty year olds can keep up with a sixty year old. By ninety most are dead, while seventy year olds are mostly still alive and kicking. It's not like being in good shape actually slows d

  • "I found them. They're natural." (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:54AM (#51956751)

    Kurzweil claims that he spends "a few thousand dollars per day" (or roughly a million dollar a year) on diet pills and eating right. According to a Financial Times report from last year, Kurzweil's breakfast includes: Berries (85 calories for a cup)

    If my diet consisted largely of diet pills and "berries"--just "berries", no particular kind--I'm pretty sure I would be making wild predictions about the future too. That doesn't mean you should listen to them.

  • Seriously, processing all those supplements, I wouldn't be surprised if his liver starts to tank a bit down the road. And his kidneys are probably having a good time as well. Oh, well, I'm sure he'll find somebody to grow him new ones.

  • This is a person with no connection to reality, an over-active fantasy and, unfortunately, a gift for convincing others. Would probably have had a great career as politician, priest, marketeer or con-man. This way, he just looks stupid.

    • He's made millions inventing and selling stuff, and has a prestigious post at one of the most prestigious tech companies ever seen... I think he's done a fair job of selling his thinking, successfully.

      After he's dead, he'll probably resemble Atkins - but if he doesn't, he'll be hailed as a visionary.

  • Recently saw Kurzweil speak at TECHBC and have read one of his books. The advancement in life expectancy he is referring to is derived from the advancement of nanobot technologies that will allow us to better address the limitations we have today based on the natural evolution of our DNA. The idea is that as medicine becomes understood by big data, we can remove the trial and error approach that largely drives it today, with tailor made technology solutions to promote and fix our natural biological deficien

  • 250 to 100 pills per day... props to all those stepping up to help separate rich fools from their money.

  • He's 68 years old. Not even the average life expectancy. Let's see what he looks 10 years from now popping his quack pills and professing long life assuming he lives that long.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      I think he's talking about his own conscious self-awareness, not his genes.

      >> For millions of us there is no doubt that we'll live forever.

      Given the number I'm assuming you're talking about Christianity? In which case, you're wrong about your own faith. There are many versions of Chrsitianity (Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Quakers, Protestants, etc etc) and equally as many versions of what exactly will happen, but as far as I am aware, they all explicitly say you will NOT live forever, but tha

  • We don't get to keep Ray around without the risk of putting up with any number of despots for eternity as well. Is the price/risk really worth it?

  • So, because he's tossed off the shackles of "faith", he has nothing to comfort him and he has nothing to replace the post-death mythology of religion.

    So he's trying to invent his own mythology where science will save the day and he'll live on...forever.

    And yeah, death is a scary concept.

    As if eternal life wasn't equally "shit yourself" scary.

  • Doubtful (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday April 21, 2016 @06:01PM (#51960535) Homepage Journal
    Throughout the ages, there are plenty of guys who wanted to live forever. From kings in Egypt using the latest pyramid-building technologies to the alchemists in the middle ages experimenting on their own bodies with completely unknown substances to cryogenics guys a decade or two ago. You know what all those guys have in common? They're all thought immortality was right around the corner, and they're all dead now.

    I expect this trend to continue at least another several hundred years, assuming humanity actually makes it that long and doesn't slide back into another dark ages along the way. The body is the most complex system we've ever encountered, and we're still just poking at it without completely understanding what we're doing.

  • I frequently post writings about nanobots on Facebook, and I think it bores my friends who are mostly non-technical. I have no interest in robotics, so I cover nanobots from a programmer's perspective. I think this makes my writing unique because most people think about nanobots with respect to what they would do rather than how they would do it.

    Let's assume from the start that you have nanobots whose hardware functionality is close to perfect. You have a diverse set of nanobots. Some nanobots can program n

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