I'm semi-optimistic about space flight and longevity. I think Starship will fly, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of its most ambitious specs get dialed back a bit. I'll be somewhat (but not totally) surprised if the "chopsticks" idea works.
We will probably see aging-reversal to some limited extent within 10-20 years, but the effect will probably be more to extend "health span" than add that much to life span. (I'll take it.)
I'll add one not on the list: the use of deep learning to discover theories in areas like physics and math that have not occurred to humans and maybe are not capable of being found by ordinary human cognition.
Wildcard, but plausible: detection of a strong extrasolar biosphere candidate using JWST or another next-generation telescope. Detection would be based on albedo absorption spectra, so we wouldn't know for sure. Talk of an interstellar fly-by probe would start pretty quickly.
I wouldn't list sub-5nm as "far out." We will almost definitely get sub-5nm. AFAIK 3nm is in the pipeline. Sub-1nm is "far out" and may or may not happen.
Hololens 2 has shown that it isn't so easy to advance the field.
I don't think an Apple device is forthcoming or likely to leapfrog.
Facebook, Apple and others are releasing their first AR glasses then.
[1] https://static.aminer.org/pdf/PDF/000/273/730/ar_table_tenni...
I think longevity research is a path to stagnation, and ultimately counter-productive, and should cease. If science advances one funeral at a time, then longevity is counterproductive for all other progress.
There are reasons to worry about the ethics of longevity research (especially if the benefits of it are not justly shared), but I don't think you can justify withholding life-improving medical treatment from people just because you want to help science by letting people die early.
That sort of thinking is how we get Logan's Run.
The thing that lives on, that can be effectively immortal (if we choose to protect it) is the biosphere in which we're embedded and, to a lesser extent, the nest of symbols humans have fashioned for themselves over the last few millenia. It is fascinating to imagine what it would be like to live through human history; however it is terrifying to imagine what the "great men" of history would have done or become if not cut down by time. The inevitability of death has surely stopped some great things from being done, but I'm equally sure it has stopped even worse things from being done - imagine human history if the Pharoahs of Egypt had had access to immortality! It's too horrible to imagine.
BTW the Logan's Run system was purely about maintaining homeostasis given limited resources, NOT about maintaining (or even enhancing) dynamism in the population by decreasing average life-span. In other words, unrelated.
I think what we disagree on is what it means to "engineer away" death. Are we engineering away death if we cure a disease, but don't extend the maximum lifespan of humans? Is extending the average lifespan to 100 years all right as long as those treatments are designed to not work on people over 100 years old? If a treatment is later found that helps 100 year olds to extend their age to 101, is that the treatment that should be banned, or is there some number N where adding N years to the previous maximum is morally wrong and the whole world has to agree on banning it?
Your point about the Pharaohs is maybe not as strong as you think, since of course the Pharaonic system did outlast any of the individual office holders. I don't think it was old age that lead to the fall of that regime, and there are plenty of regimes which manage to be equally horrible within a single lifetime, or that are overthrown within the space of one lifetime.
Thank you for that succinct explanation of the premise of Logan's Run. I wasn't sure if it worked as an analogy, since, as you say, the motivation of the society was different from the one you are advocating for, but I think the most relevant aspect of Logan's Run is the dystopian nature of a society which imposes age limits on its members, against their wishes.
I'm not at all against small increases in lifespan, and certainly for improving quality of life (e.g. defeating disease). I'm specifically against individual immortality because I strongly suspect it would quickly and inexorably lead to stagnation and death for our species.
short term hype (real advances that will happen in 1-2 years, but won't matter by 2030, because they are just a generational iteration)
Over-hyped far-future research. (things where the possibilities have yet to be brought down to earth by the practical limits of implementing them broadly / cost effectively) When these things do happen, they tend to be a bit of a let-down, because they don't actually provide the promised revolutionary changes. These things basically have to be over-hyped in order to get the necessary funding to bring them to reality.
Of the examples you have, I am only really excited about CRISPR, and to a lesser extent commercial spaceflight, and new nuclear. These have promise IMO, but I also don't expect them to be decade defining.
Personally I don't think we know what the next breakthrough will be yet. I expect it to take us very much by surprise, and start out as something unthreatening which then grows to a disruptive size / scale.
I hope there will be some unexpected breakthroughs too.
Compared to most of the other things listed, this is more of a nerd-aestheticism thing rather than something which is hugely important technologically.
Synthetic fuels.
- Unfortunately, even less local computing, with everything provisioned from the cloud under a SaaS payment model.
- More mRNA applications
- Power/energy networks and markets across borders.
- Theranos, but legitimate. Better, cheaper and more convenient early monitoring/diagnostics for vitamin deficiencies and early stages of disease.
- Carbon neutral combustible fuels.
- Cheaper grid-scale storage.
- Better understanding of the gut-brain connection.
- Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).
- Supersonic airplanes (Boom).
Been there, done that.
- VR/AR (photonic override, more specifically)
- Fundamental physics (unlocked by tech)
Remote education. Available to any kid or adult anywhere.
I couldn’t learn maths in class. Too distracted, too annoyed with stupid questions. But I increased 3 symbols in 3 school terms with a slide projector and audio tape, where I could focus and rewind. Teacher there was for bits I didn’t learn from the slides. I’m probably in the minority but I’m sure there are more of me.
Digital education catches kids like me and kids who have no access to excellent educators. And marginal cost is zero, so no harm in giving access to the world.
And longevity research is not even a real need - we already live too long as it is, from the evolutionary and economic standpoint. I'd much rather someone came up with a way to cheaply and painlessly end one's life once quality of life begins to deteriorate due to chronic disease and such. Some kind of company (and legislative framework) where you pay, say $1K and they put you into a nitrogen chamber and then cremate and flush the ashes down the toilet afterwards. Or perhaps use them as fertilizer. I'd use the service myself at some point in distant future.
Voluntary euthanasia is ultimately challenging because of similar legal issues as with the death penalty - it cannot be undone, and there are forces in society that can lead individuals to use it for other reasons than just being over and done with suffering through old age.
> and there are forces in society
So? You're going to tell me I can't go anytime I want to? That's not the case even now. It's just that now I'd have to procure the nitrogen myself (which isn't difficult), and my relatives would have to deal with the body. I'm merely suggesting a service that resolves this purely logistical complication, and excludes the possibility of not quite dying but living the rest of one's life as a vegetable.
Think of what we have now: people spend years, sometimes decades suffering from chronic diseases, or just plain not having anything or anyone to live for. And it'll get worse as medicine "improves", and lifespans "improve" with it. Is it humane to withhold the option to end it all from them? I don't think it is. I will grant you that there are likely tens of millions of such people on the planet right now. I will also grant that this is not an uncontroversial thing to suggest. But the alternative we have now doesn't seem any more humane or dignified to me.
If this still doesn't sit right with people, we could age and condition-restrict it, or require a long waiting period for when this is not related to acute incurable disease.
> as with the death penalty
Which is also inhumane, IMO. It's much worse to spend the rest of one's days in confinement instead of 30 seconds until barbiturates kick in. That's what the sadists who are against the death penalty are counting on.
The death penalty does not exist to reduce the suffering of the convicted, but to get rid of them. The true issue with the death penalty is that it can't be graduated (except by adding "cruel and unusual punishment") and it can't be undone. Prison sentences can be legally challenged and the innocent can be freed early.
There is a real slippery slope here: what length of prison sentence is considered to be worse than the death penalty? An additional thing to consider is that many countries without the death sentence actually don't impose true life sentences, but very longish ones (upwards from 20 years). Confinement for life is for those irredeemly judged to be a threat to society after their sentence. Compared to that, many death row inmates actually spend decades fighting their sentence. They could end it at any time if they wanted.
> The death penalty does not exist to reduce the suffering of the convicted
There's an easy way out of your moral dilemma that you go into after this sentence, much like what I suggest for those on the outside: let the convicts choose whether they want to suffer for the rest of their days in prison, or be humanely and painlessly killed. I know which way I'd go, under the circumstances. And yes, I do insist that the killing must be humane, dignified, and painless. We have the technology to ensure all three of those things.
- Nuclear fusion (Helion, ZAP, TAE, Tokamak Energy, CFS, Wendelstein).
- Self-driving cars.
- New types of nuclear fission reactors.
- Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).
- Supersonic airplanes (Boom).
- Solid state batteries.
- Quantum computing.
- CPUs and GPUs on sub-5nm nodes.
- CRISPR-based therapies.
- Longevity research.