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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18989