X-Message-Number: 18989
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: beyond disease
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 19:05:55 -0700

Thanks, Thomas Donaldson, for clarifying what you were suggesting about
disease.

One thing still intrigues me.  Don't you think that functionally and
practically, what you describe leads to a disease - free condition after
all?  Your remarks remind me more of the dynamics of homeostasis than that
of a static "all or nothing" perspective.

I find it hard to imagine how what goes wrong within very broad parameters
in the body will not be repairable in an ongoing manner.  A missile is off
target most of the time but corrects as it goes.  Cancerous cells arise
constantly in our bodies but generally are stopped through our current
"dumb" immune system.  Heart disease can already be cured with new hearts,
donated, manufactured and soon, grown in a lab.  Yes, tehre are parameters
that are devastating (such as being exposed to a nuclear blast) but I am
discussing disease here, not Doomsday.

Additionally, if we need a good sample of DNA for the nanobots to work from,
seems to me that we have human DNA from Pharoahs at least 6,000 years ago as
well as about 6 billion specimens to choose from living today.  When I
evenutally clone my four cats who have their DNA stored at Cryonics
Institute, I will not be horribly upset when they may not have the same
original coloration in their coats since this evidently comes from the
mother cat bearing the clones (something I do not understand at all yet!).
In the same way, I will not be greatly bothered if my future body fails to
maintain all the same appearances and qualities of this one.  I have already
passed through a lifetime of changes as is!  I suspect that when the time
comes we will have a pretty good generic human DNA foundation to correct
errors from.

In any case it beats the hell out of dying from elephanitiasis!

Practically speaking it still seems quite obvious to me that disease will
die.  Perfection isn't required.  Only enough repair options fast enough to
offset errors and breakdowns.

By the way,  I understand that "clean code" in programming CAN be achieved.
Economics, not computer science, has driven us into the eternal sloppy code
of today's programming morass.  When it becomes clear that the code must be
free of errors, we will see "clean code" built up from the bottom.

I realize you may also be referring to errors in programming design, but
again, what we need only has to work well enough to do the job.  The body
already makes corrections now.  Why not better, more accurate (and faster)
corrections from nanobots later?

I am reminded over and over when I consider these topics of an old science
fiction story (by Asimov?) in which a force field could only be generated
for a brief moment and the efforts to extend it failed consistly.  Then one
fellow realized he only had to repeat the effect like a flickering electric
light bulb creates light to effectively create a relatively impenetrable
force field to hold air inside when in a vacuum and prevent large objects
from breaking in, like missiles.

We don't need perfection.  We only need enough to do the job.

Just my opinion,

George Smith
CI member and Immortalist

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