by Michio Kaku
Biogerontology, a new science that seeks to find the secret of the aging process, is being born. Recently, there has been an explosion of activity in this area, and a host of promising genes, proteins, processes, and chemicals are being analyzed, including FOXO3, DNA methylation, mTOR, insulin growth factor, Ras2, acarbose, metformin, alpha-estradiol, et cetera. Each has generated enormous interest among scientists, but results are still preliminary. Time will tell which avenue promises the best results.
Today, the quest for the fountain of youth, a field once populated by mystics, charlatans, and quacks, is now being tackled by the world’s leading scientists. Although a cure for aging does not yet exist, scientists are pursuing many promising avenues of research. Already, they can extend the life span of certain animals, but it remains to be seen if this can be transferred to humans.
Although the pace of research has been incredible, we are still a long way from being able to solve the mystery of aging. Eventually, a way might be found to slow down and even stop the aging process using a combination of several of these avenues. Perhaps the next generation will make the necessary breakthroughs. As Gerald Sussman once lamented, “I don’t think the time is quite right, but it’s close. I’m afraid, unfortunately, that I’m in the last generation to die.”
ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON IMMORTALITY
Adaline may have regretted the gift of immortality, and she’s probably not alone, but many people still want to stop the effects of aging. A trip to the local pharmacy reveals row after row of over-the-counter potions that claim to reverse the aging process. Unfortunately, all of them are the byproduct of the overheated imagination of Madison Avenue marketers trying to sell snake oil to gullible customers. (According to many dermatologists, the one ingredient in all these “anti-aging” potions that actually works is moisturizer.)
I once hosted a BBC TV special in which I went to Central Park and interviewed some random bystanders. I asked, “If I had the fountain of youth in my hand, would you drink from it?” Surprisingly, every person I interviewed said no. Many said it was a normal thing to age and die. It was the way it should be, and dying was part of living. I then went to a nursing home, where many of the patients were suffering from the pain and discomforts of aging. Many were beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s and were forgetting who and where they were. When I asked them if they would drink from the fountain of youth, they all eagerly said, “Yes!”
OVERPOPULATION
What happens if we solve the problem of aging? When and if this happens, then the vast distance to the stars may not seem so daunting. Immortal beings may view interstellar travel in a completely different way than we do. They may view the enormous time required to build starships and send them to the stars as just a small obstacle. In the same way we save up months for a long-awaited vacation, immortal beings may view the centuries necessary to visit the stars as nothing more than an annoyance.
It should be pointed out that the gift of immortality may have an unintended consequence, which is to create a vast overpopulation of the Earth. This may place huge strains on the resources, food, and energy of the planet, leading eventually to blackouts, mass migrations, food riots, and conflicts between nations. So immortality, instead of ushering in an Age of Aquarius, may spark a new wave of world wars.
All this, in turn, may help to accelerate the mass exodus from the Earth, providing a safe haven for pioneers who are tired of an overpopulated and polluted planet. Like Adaline, people might realize that the gift of immortality was actually a curse.
But just how serious is this concern with overpopulation? Will it threaten our very existence?
For most of history, the human population was well under 300 million, but with the coming of the industrial revolution, the world population slowly grew to 1.5 billion by 1900. It is now 7.5 billion and grows by a billion every twelve years or so. The UN estimates that by 2100, it will soar to 11.2 billion. Eventually, we may exceed the carrying capacity of the planet, which could mean food riots and chaos, as Thomas Robert Malthus predicted back in 1798.
In fact, overpopulation is one reason why some people advocate going to the stars. But a closer examination of the issue shows that the growth of the world population, although still rising, is slowing down. The U.N., for example, has revised its predictions downward several times. Many demographers, in fact, predict that the world population will begin to level off and might even stabilize late in the twenty-first century.
To understand all these demographic changes, we have to understand the worldview of a peasant. A farmer in a poor country does a simple calculus: every child makes him richer. Children work in the fields and cost very little to raise. Room and board on a farm are almost free. But when you move to the city, the calculus flips the other way. Every child makes you poorer. Your child goes to school, not the fields. Your child has to be fed from the grocery store, which is expensive. Your kid has to live in an apartment, which costs money. So a peasant, once he becomes more urban, wants two kids, not ten. And when the peasant enters the middle class, he wants to enjoy life a bit and may only have one child.
Even in countries like Bangladesh, which does not have much of an urbanized middle class, the birthrate is slowly falling. This is due to the education of women. Studies of numerous nations have found a distinct pattern: the birthrate falls dramatically as a nation industrializes, urbanizes, and educates young girls.
Other demographers have argued that it is a tale of two worlds. On the one hand, we see a continuing rise in the birthrate in poor countries with low levels of education and a weak economy. On the other hand, we see a leveling off of the birthrate and even contraction in some countries as they develop industry and become more prosperous. In any event, an exploding world population, although still a threat, is not as inevitable or terrifying as previously thought.
Some analysts are concerned that we will shortly exceed our food supply. Others, however, have argued that the food problem is actually an energy problem. If one has enough energy, one can increase productivity and crop production to keep up with demand.
On a number of occasions, I have had the opportunity to interview Lester Brown, one of the world’s leading environmentalists and founder of the famed Worldwatch Institute, a think tank for the Earth. His organization closely monitors the world’s food supply and the state of the planet. He is worried about another factor: Do we have enough food to feed the people of the world as they become middle class consumers? The hundreds of millions of people in China and India who are now entering the middle class watch Western movies and want to emulate that lifestyle, with its wasteful use of resources, large consumption of meat, big houses, fixation on luxury goods, et cetera. He is concerned we may not have enough resources to feed the population as a whole, and certainly would have difficulty feeding those who want to consume a Western diet.
His hope is that as poor nations industrialize, they do not follow the historic path of the West and instead adopt strict environmental laws to conserve resources. Time will tell if the nations of the world can meet this challenge.
So we see that advances in slowing down or stopping the aging process could have a profound effect on space travel. They could create beings who do not see the vast distances to the stars as an obstacle. They may want to embark upon challenges that take many years, such as building and then sailing starships on voyages that may take centuries.
Furthermore, attempts to alter the aging process may exacerbate overpopulation of the Earth, which in turn may accelerate the exodus from the Earth. Colonists to the stars may be pushed to leave the Earth if overpopulation becomes unbearable.
However, it is still too early to tell which of these trends will dominate the next century. But given the rate at which we are now unraveling the aging process, these developments may come sooner than expected.
DIGITAL IMMORTALITY
In addition to biological immortality, there is a second type, called digital immortality, which raises some i
nteresting philosophical questions. In the long run, digital immortality may be the most efficient way to explore the stars. If our fragile biological bodies cannot stand the strain of interstellar travel, there is the possibility of sending our consciousness to the stars instead.
When we try to reconstruct our genealogy, we often encounter a problem. After about three generations, the trail runs cold. The vast majority of our ancestors lived and died without leaving any evidence of their existence other than their offspring.
But today, we leave a huge digital footprint. For example, just by analyzing your credit card transactions, it is possible to tell the countries you visit, the food you like to eat, the clothes you wear, the schools you attended. To this, add your blog posts, diaries, emails, videos, photos, et cetera. With all of this information, it is possible to create a holographic image of you that talks and acts just like you, with your mannerisms and memories.
One day, we might have a Library of Souls. Instead of reading a book on Winston Churchill, we might have a conversation with him. We would talk to a projection with his facial gestures, body movements, and voice inflections. The digital record would have access to his biographical data, his writings, and his opinions on political, religious, and personal matters. In all ways it would feel like talking to the man himself. I would personally enjoy having a conversation with Albert Einstein to discuss the theory of relativity. One day your great-great-great-grandchildren may have a conversation with you. This is one form of digital immortality.
But is this really “you”? It is a machine or simulation that has your mannerisms and biographical details. The soul, some would argue, cannot be reduced to information.
But what happens when we are able to reproduce your brain, neuron for neuron, so that all your memories and feelings are recorded? The next level of digital immortality beyond the Library of Souls is the Human Connectome Project, an ambitious effort to digitize the entire human brain.
As Daniel Hillis, cofounder of Thinking Machines, once said, “I’m as fond of my body as anyone, but if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I’ll take it.”
TWO WAYS TO DIGITIZE THE MIND
There are actually two separate approaches to digitizing the human brain. The first is the Human Brain Project, in which the Swiss are trying to create a computer program that can simulate all of the brain’s basic features using transistors instead of neurons. So far, they have been able to simulate the “thinking process” of a mouse and rabbit for several minutes. The goal of the project is to create a computer that can talk rationally like a normal human being. Its director, Henry Markram, says, “If we build it correctly, it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does.”
So this approach is electronic—it attempts to duplicate the intelligence of the brain with a vast array of transistors with tremendous computing power. But a parallel approach is being pursued in the United States that is biological instead, trying to map out the neural pathways of the brain.
This approach is called the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). Its goal is to unravel the neural structure of the brain itself, cell by cell, and ultimately to map the pathways of every neuron in the brain. Since the human brain contains roughly one hundred billion neurons, each connected to about ten thousand other neurons, it at first seems hopeless to create a road map of every neuron. (Even the relatively simple task of mapping the brain of the mosquito involves producing data that can completely fill a room full of CDs from top to bottom.) But computers and robots have radically reduced the time and effort necessary to complete this tedious, herculean task.
One approach is the “slice and dice approach,” which involves slicing up the brain into thousands of slides and then using microscopes to reconstruct the connections between all the neurons. A much faster approach has recently been proposed by the scientists at Stanford University, who have pioneered a technique called optogenetics. This method involves first isolating a protein called opsin, which is involved in eyesight. When you shine a light on this gene within a neuron, it causes the neuron to fire.
Using genetic engineering, one can implant the gene for opsin into neurons that you want to study. By shining a light on a section of a mouse’s brain, a researcher can cause the neurons involved with a certain muscle activity to fire, and the mouse begins to exhibit a specific activity, such as running around. In this way, one can see the precise neural pathways used to control certain types of behaviors.
For example, this ambitious project may help to unravel the secret of mental illness, which is one of the most debilitating of all human maladies. By mapping the human brain, we might be able to isolate the origin of this affliction. (For example, all of us talk to ourselves silently. When we do, the left brain, which controls language, consults the prefrontal cortex. But in schizophrenics, we now know, the left brain activates without permission from the prefrontal cortex, which is the conscious part of the brain. Since the left brain does not talk to the prefrontal cortex, the schizophrenic thinks the voices in his or her head are real.)
Even with these revolutionary new techniques it still may take several more decades of hard work before scientists have a detailed map of the human brain. But when this is finally achieved, perhaps late in the twenty-first century, would this mean that we can upload consciousness into a computer and send it to the stars?
IS THE SOUL JUST INFORMATION?
If we die and our connectome lives on, then are we in some sense immortal? If our mind can be digitized, then is the soul just information? If we can put all the neural circuits and memories of the brain onto a disk and then upload it into a supercomputer, will the uploaded brain function and act as the real brain? Will it be indistinguishable from the real thing?
Some people find this idea repulsive, because if you upload your mind into a computer, then you will spend an eternity trapped inside a sterile machine. Some think it is a fate worse than dying. There was one episode of Star Trek featuring a superadvanced civilization where the pure consciousness of an alien was kept inside a glowing sphere. Aeons ago, the aliens had given up their physical bodies and lived inside these spheres ever since. The aliens became immortal, but one of these aliens longed to have a body once again, to be able to feel real sensations and passions, even if it meant forcibly taking over someone else’s body.
Although living inside a computer may sound unappealing to some, there is no reason you couldn’t have all the sensation of a living, breathing human being. Although your connectome would reside inside a mainframe computer, it could control a robot that looks identical to you. You feel everything the robot experiences, so that, for all intents and purposes, you have the sensation that you are living inside a real body, potentially even one with superpowers. Everything that the robot sees and feels is relayed back to the mainframe computer and incorporated into your consciousness. So controlling the robot avatar from the mainframe is indistinguishable from your actually being “inside” the avatar.
In this way, you could explore distant planets. Your superhuman avatar will be able to withstand blistering temperatures on sun-scorched planets or the freezing temperatures on distant icy moons. A starship carrying the mainframe that houses your connectome could be sent to a new solar system. As the starship reaches a suitable planet, your avatar could be sent down to explore it, even if the planet has a poisonous atmosphere.
An even more advanced form of uploading your mind into a computer was envisioned by computer scientist Hans Moravec. When I interviewed him, he claimed that his method of uploading the human mind could even be done without losing consciousness.
First you would be placed on a hospital gurney, next to a robot. Then a surgeon would take individual neurons from your brain and create a duplicate of these neurons (made of transistors) inside the robot. A cable would connect these transistorized neurons to your brain. As time goes by, more and more neurons are removed from your brain and duplicated in th
e robot. Because your brain is connected to the robot brain, you are fully conscious even as more and more neurons are replaced by transistors. Eventually, without losing consciousness, your entire brain and all its neurons are replaced by transistors. Once all one hundred billion neurons have been duplicated, the connection between you and the artificial brain is finally cut. When you gaze back at the stretcher, you see your old body, lacking its brain, while your consciousness now exists inside a robot.
But the question remains, Is that really “you”? To most scientists, if a robot can duplicate all of your behavior down to the very last gesture, with all your memories and habits intact, and is indistinguishable from the original person in every way, then they would say that it is “you” for all intents and purposes.
As we’ve seen the distances between stars are so great that it will take several lifetimes to reach even those closest in our galactic neighborhood. So multigenerational travel, life extension, and the search for immortality may all play an essential role in the exploration of our universe.
Beyond the question of immortality lies a larger question: How far should we extend not just our life span, but our human body? Even more possibilities exist if we alter our genetic heritage. Given the rapid advances in BCI (brain-computer interface) and genetic engineering, it may be possible to create enhanced bodies with new skills and potentials. One day, we might enter the “posthuman” era, and this might be the best way to explore the universe.
[Aliens might have] capabilities indistinguishable from telekinesis, ESP, and immortality…they may have powers that seem magical…they will be spiritually advanced creatures. Perhaps they will have solved the riddle of the quantum, and will be able to walk through walls. Um, gee, they sound sort of like angels.
—DAVID GRINSPOON
11 TRANSHUMANISM AND TECHNOLOGY
