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Kurzweil on Engineering Away Aging
(Tuesday July 07 2009)
 | Here Ray Kurzweil responds to views expressed recently by aging researcher Leonard Hayflick: "Entropy is not the most fruitful perspective from which to view aging. There are varying error rates in biological information processes depending on the cell type and this is part of biology's paradigm. We have means already of determining error-free DNA sequences even though specific cells will contain DNA errors, and we will be in a position to correct those errors that matter. The most important perspective in my view is that health, medicine, and biology is now an information technology whereas it used to be hit or miss. We not only have the (outdated) software that biology runs on (our genome) but we have the means of changing that software (our genes) in a mature individual ... Our intuition is linear so many scientists, such as Hayflick, think in linear terms and expect that the slow pace of the past will characterize the future. But the reality of progress in information technology is exponential not linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years." |
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