[adrianN]

I agree that the claim that lifespan is on an exponential curve is bogus. Modern medicine basically extended extremal lifespan up to the maximum attainable without fixing the underlying causes of aging and then stopped. There is for example some research that shows that the oldest woman's blood was derived from just two stem cells.[1] We currently don't have the technology to fix problems like that

I disagree however that nobody alive today will live "forever". The technology that might allow us to fix aging is on an exponential curve, look for example at the cost of genome sequencing. So the time is ripe for some breakthrough results in aging research that actually address some causes of aging.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25458-blood-of-worlds...

[dahart]

The tech you're talking about can't do anything for the living, it only has potential for the unborn. Either way, there is exactly zero evidence that it's already happening. Kurzweil's claim is pure fantasy.

[adrianN]

This discussion is becoming way to off-topic here. But I was convinced by Aubrey de Grey's arguments, perhaps you will be too. He is easy enough to Google.

[dahart]

So I took your advice and did Google Aubrey, I got his WP page first. It says he's into and wants to fund cryonics. I'm not a a biologist, but that tickles my spidey sense. Any remaining hope I had for cryogenics was firmly buried after listening to this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/m...

The second thing I got was this: http://www2.technologyreview.com/sens/docs/estepetal.pdf

The tl;dr summary is:

However, given the recent successes and highly emotional nature of life extension research, Aubrey de Grey is not the first, nor will he be the last, to promote a hopelessly insufficient but ably camouflaged pipe-dream to the hopeful many. With this in mind, we hope our list provides a general line of demarcation between increasingly sophisticated life extension pretense, and real science and engineering, so that we can focus honestly on the significant challenges before us.