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WIRED: Kurzweil plans to live forever
Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.
As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity." Adjustments are made as needed.
"I do actually fine-tune my programming," he said.
The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.
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Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots," that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded from the Internet. We won't even need a heart.
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"I'm not calling Ray a quack, but I am calling his message about immortality in line with the claims of other quacks that are out there." said Thomas Perls, a Boston University aging specialist who studies the genetics of centenarians.
Sherwin Nuland, a bioethics professor at Yale University's School of Medicine, calls Kurzweil a "genius" but also says he's a product of a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with their longevity.
"They've forgotten they're acting on the basic biological fear of death and extinction, and it distorts their rational approach to the human condition," Nuland said.
Kurzweil says his critics often fail to appreciate the exponential nature of technological advance, with knowledge doubling year by year so that amazing progress eventually occurs in short periods.
Even though I think it's likely that we won't see viable immortality tech within my lifetime, is there any reason to suspect that it will never be available or feasible? |
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