Harvard Scientists May Bring Immortality

[Democratic East-Asia]

Immortal Stalin time.

[Socio Polor]

We don't know how many extraterrestrial civilizations could be out there in the universe. There could be hundreds,thousands maybe up to a million different extraterrestrial species in our universe alone.

Assuming that by "universe" you mean "galaxy" (otherwise that makes no sense at all): if there were that many, we'd have noticed them by now.

No, the universe is space itself while a galaxy is a massive cloud of gas and dust that contains all the stars,planets,asteroids, stuff like that. Also to explain why we haven't seen aliens yet, simply use your imagination. Why do you think we haven't seen any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Maybe they don't want to be contacted by us yet,maybe we have seen them just in there spacecrafts which would explain all these UFO sightings, or maybe they already contacted us and world governments are keeping this info far from public grasp, but I'd rather not delve into that too much as we'd be going off topic with the thread. Be as open minded as you possibly can.

[Novus America]

Not neccesarily. The galaxy is really big.
Plus if FTL travel is impossible or nearly so then we will never find them.

Fermi paradox is just humans unable to comprehend the sheer size of space time.

On the contrary, the scale is exactly the problem: given vaguely reasonable assumptions, there should be a fucking lot of them, and since it's very unlikely that we're at the front of the wave, there should be a fucking lot of them that are ahead of us, and in particular plenty who have been throwing out signals into space for long enough for them to be arriving here now.

How reasonable those assumptions are is highly debatable. This is why it is circular.
It creates the conclusion from the premise without demonstrating the premise beyond assumptions.

The chance of the us being able to find and decipher the singnal are absurdly small.
All it tells us is what we already know.
The the galaxy is huge in both space and time, intelligent life very rare, and FTL impossible or nearly so.

It could easily take millions of billions of years for the signal to reach another, and then you assume they know what it is. It is quite possible intelligent species are spaced millions of light or and time years apart.

And we are quite possible we are in the front of the wave. Why not assume we are? Everything started are the same time and we have not reason to believe we could have reached such a level of technological advancement much faster than we did. And at our current levels we will never find anyone anyway.

Fermi paradox selectively applies the scale to only one single factor, ingnoring the other, bigger factors.

It is cherry picking on a truly epic scale.

[Novus America]

Sure. Unless they have supper efficient FTL, which might not even be possible we would never know. And it is improbable, but possible we are in fact the first or the most advanced.

Someone has to be.

True, we could very well be the very first intelligent civilization in this universe. But, against the fact on the amount of galaxies there are, how old we believe the universe to be and simply how massive and vast space is, I highly doubt it. Astronomers say they're approximately 100-200 billion galaxies in our universe, and on average each galaxy probably contains somewhere in between 100,000 to a million planets so multiply that by either 100 or 200 billion. I'm not going to soove that myself because that's just too much math but obviously it'll give you a ridiculously high number. So you're to tell me that only 1 planet out of the trillions and zillions of planets there are in the universe, only 1 contains intelligent life. Possible yes but the probability is beyond puny. Heck, it's practically impossible for us to be the only intelligent life in the universe.

Sure the probability is tiny, but every species would be saying that and one of them could be wrong. But that is just one explanation not even the most likely one of course.

More likely we are just to far space apart in space time to find each other. That our chance of running into each other less than one in billions of years.

[Socio Polor]

True, we could very well be the very first intelligent civilization in this universe. But, against the fact on the amount of galaxies there are, how old we believe the universe to be and simply how massive and vast space is, I highly doubt it. Astronomers say they're approximately 100-200 billion galaxies in our universe, and on average each galaxy probably contains somewhere in between 100,000 to a million planets so multiply that by either 100 or 200 billion. I'm not going to soove that myself because that's just too much math but obviously it'll give you a ridiculously high number. So you're to tell me that only 1 planet out of the trillions and zillions of planets there are in the universe, only 1 contains intelligent life. Possible yes but the probability is beyond puny. Heck, it's practically impossible for us to be the only intelligent life in the universe.

Sure the probability is tiny, but every species would be saying that and one of them could be wrong. But that is just one explanation not even the most likely one of course.

More likely we are just to far space apart in space time to find each other. That our chance of running into each other less than one in billions of years.

You may have a point there, but who knows? They're a magnitude of things we have yet to truly comprehend about space

[Salandriagado]

Assuming that by "universe" you mean "galaxy" (otherwise that makes no sense at all): if there were that many, we'd have noticed them by now.

No, the universe is space itself while a galaxy is a massive cloud of gas and dust that contains all the stars,planets,asteroids, stuff like that. Also to explain why we haven't seen aliens yet, simply use your imagination. Why do you think we haven't seen any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Maybe they don't want to be contacted by us yet,maybe we have seen them just in there spacecrafts which would explain all these UFO sightings, or maybe they already contacted us and world governments are keeping this info far from public grasp, but I'd rather not delve into that too much as we'd be going off topic with the thread. Be as open minded as you possibly can.

Specifically, the universe is "everything that exists", so it makes precisely no sense to talk about "our universe alone".

And they don't need to try to contact us: just reach a level of technology involving radio transmissions. There are way, way, way too many people watching the skies for it ever to be kept secret by anybody (and most of those people have no incentive to do so: indeed, they'd be climbing all over each other to be the one who got to announce it to the world and go down in the history books forever). This isn't a matter of open mindedness, this is a matter of numbers: while there very well might be other technological civilisations in the galaxy, there are vastly fewer such than we would expect with any set of assumptions that don't involve a Great Filter.

[Camicon]

As much as I love reading discussions about space, the topic of this thread is decidedly Earthbound.

[Jamzmania]

Man was not meant to live forever. I doubt it will work out, anyway.

[Socio Polor]

No, the universe is space itself while a galaxy is a massive cloud of gas and dust that contains all the stars,planets,asteroids, stuff like that. Also to explain why we haven't seen aliens yet, simply use your imagination. Why do you think we haven't seen any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Maybe they don't want to be contacted by us yet,maybe we have seen them just in there spacecrafts which would explain all these UFO sightings, or maybe they already contacted us and world governments are keeping this info far from public grasp, but I'd rather not delve into that too much as we'd be going off topic with the thread. Be as open minded as you possibly can.

Specifically, the universe is "everything that exists", so it makes precisely no sense to talk about "our universe alone".

Have you not heard of the multiverse theory, if not, look it up when you get the chance.

As much as I love reading discussions about space, the topic of this thread is decidedly Earthbound.

Camicon is right, we should focus on the topic at hand.

[Salandriagado]

On the contrary, the scale is exactly the problem: given vaguely reasonable assumptions, there should be a fucking lot of them, and since it's very unlikely that we're at the front of the wave, there should be a fucking lot of them that are ahead of us, and in particular plenty who have been throwing out signals into space for long enough for them to be arriving here now.

How reasonable those assumptions are is highly debatable. This is why it is circular.
It creates the conclusion from the premise without demonstrating the premise beyond assumptions.

On the contrary, they're very well supported: we have reasonable lower bounds from available evidence on the prevalence of earth like planets (there's a shitting lot of them) and the probability of life arising (it's happened on earth, and we can replicate that process extremely easily just by throwing together the expected conditions, so this probability is pretty high).

The chance of the us being able to find and decipher the singnal are absurdly small.
All it tells us is what we already know.

On the contrary: we are far more likely to get false positives than to miss something: we've already had several (cf pulsars), and we're picking up anything vaguely resembling any sort of pattern.

The the galaxy is huge in both space and time, intelligent life very rare, and FTL impossible or nearly so.

It could easily take millions of billions of years for the signal to reach another, and then you assume they know what it is. It is quite possible intelligent species are spaced millions of light or and time years apart.

[/quote]

If intelligent life is rare, then there's some reason that life isn't getting that far. That's a problem.

And we are quite possible we are in the front of the wave. Why not assume we are? Everything started are the same time and we have not reason to believe we could have reached such a level of technological advancement much faster than we did. And at our current levels we will never find anyone anyway.

Elementary statistics: if there are many, we're probably somewhere near the middle.

Fermi paradox selectively applies the scale to only one single factor, ingnoring the other, bigger factors.

It is cherry picking on a truly epic scale.

That's just not true.

[Victores]

Immortal Stalin time.

If we inject Lenin with this, then electrocute his brain, couldn't we bring him back to life!
I'm sure we will find a Comrade willing to donate all his organs

[Orostan]

HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT


THIS IS AMAZING!


How soon will it be out? Does anyone know that?

[Novus America]

How reasonable those assumptions are is highly debatable. This is why it is circular.
It creates the conclusion from the premise without demonstrating the premise beyond assumptions.

On the contrary, they're very well supported: we have reasonable lower bounds from available evidence on the prevalence of earth like planets (there's a shitting lot of them) and the probability of life arising (it's happened on earth, and we can replicate that process extremely easily just by throwing together the expected conditions, so this probability is pretty high).

The chance of the us being able to find and decipher the singnal are absurdly small.
All it tells us is what we already know.

On the contrary: we are far more likely to get false positives than to miss something: we've already had several (cf pulsars), and we're picking up anything vaguely resembling any sort of pattern.

The the galaxy is huge in both space and time, intelligent life very rare, and FTL impossible or nearly so.

It could easily take millions of billions of years for the signal to reach another, and then you assume they know what it is. It is quite possible intelligent species are spaced millions of light or and time years apart.

If intelligent life is rare, then there's some reason that life isn't getting that far. That's a problem.

And we are quite possible we are in the front of the wave. Why not assume we are? Everything started are the same time and we have not reason to believe we could have reached such a level of technological advancement much faster than we did. And at our current levels we will never find anyone anyway.

Elementary statistics: if there are many, we're probably somewhere near the middle.

Fermi paradox selectively applies the scale to only one single factor, ingnoring the other, bigger factors.

It is cherry picking on a truly epic scale.

That's just not true.[/quote]

If there are many not everyone is in the middle. Statistics does not mean everyone is average.
Probablity only says where a random sample is likely to be. Not were an single selected point IS.
Nor do we know any of them he premises beyond that space time is huge. But this is beyond the topic.

[Democratic East-Asia]

Immortal Stalin time.

If we inject Lenin with this, then electrocute his brain, couldn't we bring him back to life!
I'm sure we will find a Comrade willing to donate all his organs

The USSR will rise again!

[Salandriagado]

If there are many not everyone is in the middle. Statistics does not mean everyone is average.
Nor do we know any of them he premises beyond that space is time is huge. But this is beyond the topic.[/quote]

If there are many, then by the law of large numbers, it's normally distributed, which means that very nearly everybody is near the middle.



But yes, this is off topic.

[Empire of Cats]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

[Volitopia]

Better for me; I'd much prefer to live forever, and then take myself out whenever I eventually think "Eh, fuck this shit."

That's just my preference, though. I sure ain't gonna let mother nature get that kill.

That's bold of you. Maybe I should live more boldly. I have more fear than you think.

"People always get it wrong with Time Lords - we take forever to die"

"Eventually you just get tired - tired of watching everything turn to dust"

[Anywhere Else But Here]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

More time to do stuff? Like, there are loads of books I'd like to read (and write) and films and TV shows I'd like to watch. More than I could consume in my life. And bastards keep making more of them. Immortality wouldn't let me consume everything I'd like to, but I'd certainly make more progress that way.

[Socio Polor]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

to cure us of the disease of aging

[Xeng He]

We don't even know what causes Alzheimer's, and I doubt it is DNA damage.

Wasn't it related to a degradation of the myelin sheath?

Did a quick check, and found this.

Anyway, realized I made a dumb mistake anyway, because brain cells aren't known to reproduce anyway, but hey, on the plus side it was a learning experience, hah.

[Gauthier]

Where do I sign?

You have the money?

[Conscentia]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

I've never understood how people can ask that question. I don't know about you, but I actually like living. I'd prefer my own body not break down and end my life before I'm done with it.

That said, the OP is exaggerating with the whole "immortality" thing. This discovery won't bring biological immortality.

[Major-Tom]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

Watching every single show on Netflix you never had the time to watch.

In all seriousness, I voiced my loud opinion on this earlier, I really dislike the idea of transhumanism.

[Empire of Cats]

I'm not sure what to think. I guess it's good to see that science is capable of many things. But what's the point of living forever?

Watching every single show on Netflix you never had the time to watch.

In all seriousness, I voiced my loud opinion on this earlier, I really dislike the idea of transhumanism.

It's just, for me, part of what makes life so interesting is knowing you only have so much time. It's what you do with it that matters, at least for me. And while immortality would extend your life, once you've done everything, then what? You can't die if you're immortal, right?

[Conscentia]

It's just, for me, part of what makes life so interesting is knowing you only have so much time. It's what you do with it that matters, at least for me.

How does being forced to ignore things you're interested in because there's not enough time for it make life more interesting? It's just frustrating. If what you do matters, then surely being able to do more of it is preferable?

and while immortality would extend your life, once you've done everything, then what?

If you're bored of living, suicide would still be possible. It's not like you'd be invincible. Although you'd probably die in an accident or to some act of violence a long while before getting even close to that point.