Mitch Gann’s

A week after I wrote about Ray Kurzweil here, the New York Times picked up the scent in “The Coming Superbrain.”

The NYT article by John Markoff discusses the rebirth of scientific interest in artificial intelligence, which had a bad spell after initial rosy forecasts did not pan out.  But will a self-aware superbrain emerge any time soon, and will it be nice or nasty?  Markoff notes that this question is moving from  science fiction into reality.  He brings in Kurzweil about half way through the article.  Through his sources, Markoff expresses skepticism about Kurzweil’s idea of living long enough to live forever. For instance, the article concludes with a quote from robotics expert Gary Bradski: “Kurzweil will probably die, along with the rest of us not too long before the ‘great dawn’ . . . . Life’s not fair.”

In truth, it is easy to be skeptical about living forever.  No one has ever done it.  Even the most optimistic religions present heaven in terms of “life after death.”  Kurzweil is cutting out the death part.  As I said, it’s easy to be skeptical.

Markoff focuses on the issue of emerging artificial intelligence and Kurzweil’s notion of humans and computers mind-melding somehow or other. But in his book, Kurzweil spends as much time discussing two other technologies — genetics and nanotech — which he argues will provide a “bridge” to the joining of human and machine minds. How much of a difference that makes, I don’t know.

Markoff provides a link to a trailer of “Transcendent Man,” an entry at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival that explores the debate over Kurzweil — is he the crackpot prophet of a new religion or a legitimate scientific investigator?

I have been reading a book this week — the old-fashion kind with paper pages — Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near (2005).  Kurzweil is an inventor, futurist and Baby Boomer who believes that he and other Boomers just might be able to live long enough to live forever.

Even though the book was a best-seller in 2005 and proclaimed the 13th most blogged about book of 2005 by the NY Times, I somehow missed it. I had heard of or read eight of the first twelve books on the list, so it isn’t that I am completely out of the loop.  (Oddly, the 14th most blogged about book for that year was Orwell’s 1984.  This suggests to me that there is a lot of paranoia on the Web.)

Anyway, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about Kurzweil until recently because living forever happens to be one of my ambitions. According to Kurzweil, we just may be able to do it; “we” includes Baby Boomers who take care of themselves enough to last another 30 years or so.  By then, accelerating advances in bio-tech, nano-tech and computer science should guarantee anyone who wants it immortality.  You will, of course, have to get intimate with machines; that is, become a machine yourself. Some may see this as a drawback, especially if you get stuck in a computer running, say, Windows 2038. (I think this will be one time to spend a little more and go with a Mac.) Then there is the question of room-mates. What if you get stuck with neighbors you can’t stand and you can’t get away from them ever for all time? However, from the scientific perspective, being dead also has clear drawbacks for any organism. And it makes it harder to get credit or a good table.

Kurzweil calls this approaching change the “Singularity” because it will be a one-time event in human history — perhaps in the history of the universe. He thinks that the destiny of the universe is to achieve a maximum state of information.  Merging human intelligence (including emotional intelligence) with artificial intelligence is a big step toward fulfilling that destiny.

It sounds a little nuts in summary — a geeky, secular version of The Rapture. And there is a risk that if we don’t handle things just right, trillions of malevolent nanobots will take over and destroy us all.  Those of us who are getting up there in years and facing oblivion in the next couple of decades, give or take, may be willing to accept the risk. But is it right to gamble the future of humanity to achieve personal immortality?  Or for once in our self-centered lives, ought we just to go gentle into that good night?

Just when you thought it was safe, I am back.  Sorry.

What this blog lacks — what all of my blogs have lacked — is focus.  That I aim to correct.

My intention is to focus on the joys of aging.

“Are there any?”  you ask.

“Of course!” I say.

For example, by aging you outlive the people who do not.  Let’s face it,  most of them were better human beings than you are.  Thus when they go you are relieved of the pain of a good example.     Also, by outliving your wittier friends you can steal their best lines and nobody will know.  You also get to declare victory in any arguments you had going with the now permanently silenced.  To some, it may seem childish to one-up the dead.  To them, I say patooey!

Whom the gods love die young — leaving the rest of us to clean up.

I guess Barack Obama really is going all out to court the college-age voters. Who the hell else was up at three in the morning to get his VP text message? Not old guys like me, that’s for sure.

Did I say “old”? I meant, “mature.”  Which reminds me — the other day my wife and I had breakfast at a chain restaurant with a meal-club for “seniors,” meaning anybody 55 and over. “You should join,” my wife said.  I told her I didn’t want to go through the hassle of being carded.  “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” she said. Turned out she was right. But, then, even when I was 21, nobody ever carded me.  I just have always looked . . . mature.

Of course, when Obama’s VP announcement went out, it was only midnight on the West Coast; maybe he was trying to nail down California. Yeah, that’s a toss-up state there.

What bugs me the most is that I had signed up for his email notice, and then never got it.  I did receive some other junk mail from the campaign, so I know I gave the right address.  Oh well. I guess Barack figures he has the senior vote in Michigan in the bag.

I do like Joe Biden. For one thing, he’s 65.  He and McCain and I could all enjoy the senior breakfast special down at the Big Boy some morning.

Barack will have to pay full price.

“Life Expectancy Hits Record High in United States” (Washington Post):

The overall U.S. life expectancy of 78.1 years was up 0.3 years from 2005. Life expectancy for women was 80.7 years, and for men, 75.4 years. The disparity between the sexes — 5.3 years — has been declining since it peaked at about eight years in 1979.

White women had the longest life expectancy, at 81 years, followed by black women (76.9 years), white men (76 years) and black men (70 years). The gap between men and women is markedly greater in blacks (6.9 years) than in whites (five years).

This is good news for Hillary Clinton. She can bide her time for two Obama terms, get elected in 2016, and still have more life-span left than John McCain does now. Indeed, according to the statistics, it is unlikely that McCain will live out even one presidential term, except maybe Bush’s second. Meanwhile, if Obama were as old as McCain is now, he would have been dead three years. That would’ve been a severe blow to his chances. I would say insurmountable, but he is from Chicago.

Of course, factor in regular doses of red wine and herring, and anything could happen.

“Substance in Red Wine, Resveratrol, Found to Keep Hearts Young” (Science Daily):

How, scientists wonder, do the French get away with a clean bill of heart health despite a diet loaded with saturated fats?

The answer to the so-called “French paradox” may be found in red wine. More specifically, it may reside in small doses of resveratrol, a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates, red wine and other foods, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.

What’s new here is the “small doses” finding. Previously, it was thought that you needed to down several buckets of red wine a day to see any heart benefits. The cost to your liver seemed to offset any heart gains. But now it looks like a glass or two of red wine each day will do the trick. As one scientist quoted in the article puts it, “This brings down the dose of resveratrol toward the consumption reality mode.”

And it looks like the benefits go beyond the heart. Low doses of resveratrol apparently give much the same general anti-aging benefits as a restricted calorie diet (a diet with 20-30% fewer calories than the norm).

Let’s see — reduce my food intake by one-fifth or drink a glass of wine every day . . . What to do, what to do . . .

This isn’t new news, but I can’t resist it.

“Personality Predictors of Intelligence Change from Younger to Older Adulthood” (Science Daily):

In the cognitively superior older group, who outperformed both the cognitively comparable older adults and the younger adults on every ability tested, “agreeableness was found to have a contrary relationship with general knowledge suggesting that a disagreeable nature may go hand in hand with better vocabulary and knowledge retention in older age,” said [Thomas] Baker. This result supports previous research that suggests that those who are highly intelligent may be more aloof and independent.

The research study was conducted by Thomas Baker MA, of York University and Jacqueline Bichsel PhD, of Pennsylvania State University, and reported on in 2006.

Hat tips: As I was saying and Time Goes By.

Cathy AJ, who is barely a boomer having come into the world the year that JFK checked out of it (that would be 1963 but if I have to tell you that, you are no kind of boomer), notes that she only meets two of the 25 Signs that You are Getting Old: she has a car with a built-in compass and she can read the newspaper without arm-extenders.

Given her relative youth, I am shocked — shocked, I say — that Cathy meets even these two criteria of emergent decrepitude. I don’t have a compass in my car, though somebody gave me one once. I have it here somewhere . . . . And I can read the paper fine with the arms I have. I just need to take off my glasses and hold the paper against my nose. Maybe a little closer.