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[notquitethere]

Well, really Caloric Reduction fully goes further than just not overeating: its most fervent advocates eat nutrient-dense foods and take in up to 60% less calories than usually recommended. I don't like the idea of being hungry all the time, nor do I want to lose any weight, but I do want to maximise my chances of living a long time, so it's of mixed appeal. I'm not sure I have the same techno-optimism as many of the pro-transhumanists who seem to think we'll be glowing with magic nanobots in no time...

[Sheb]

Seems like bull**** to me, like most of food fads. We just don't really know what is good and what is bad food-wise because it's so hard to run long-term dietary experiments on humans.

So I'm going to side with Pollan here and: Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants. and you'll be following litteraly the most up-to-date scientific evidence on food.

[Graknorke]

My personal end goal for transhumanism is too close to HedonismBot for that.

Oh good it's not just me.

[Descan]

My end goal is more closer to Yahweh-done-right than HedonismBot. >_>

I call dibs on Ceti Alpha 5!

Not 6, though. Never 6.

[LordSlowpoke]

My end goal is more closer to Yahweh-done-right than HedonismBot. >_>

I call dibs on Ceti Alpha 5!

Not 6, though. Never 6.

I always had dibs on 6.

* LordSlowpoke wiggles eyebrows.

[notquitethere]

Seems like bull**** to me, like most of food fads. We just don't really know what is good and what is bad food-wise because it's so hard to run long-term dietary experiments on humans.

So I'm going to side with Pollan here and: Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants. and you'll be following litteraly the most up-to-date scientific evidence on food.

Well I'm quite skeptical in general about diet fads, and while the science shows this lengthens mice life-expectancy, it wasn't so clear for monkeys (which we're closer to, biologically). I'll continue to watch with interest.

In general, I think healthy living is a better bet for long life than holding out for science cure-alls.

[scrdest]

Seems like bull**** to me, like most of food fads. We just don't really know what is good and what is bad food-wise because it's so hard to run long-term dietary experiments on humans.

So I'm going to side with Pollan here and: Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants. and you'll be following litteraly the most up-to-date scientific evidence on food.

Well I'm quite skeptical in general about diet fads, and while the science shows this lengthens mice life-expectancy, it wasn't so clear for monkeys (which we're closer to, biologically). I'll continue to watch with interest.

In general, I think healthy living is a better bet for long life than holding out for science cure-alls.

Except we can totally find why eating this and not that makes you healthier, or why eating that makes you less healthy, and address those directly.

Also even the healthiest-living person born in 1860 is now dead.

[notquitethere]

Except we can totally find why eating this and not that makes you healthier, or why eating that makes you less healthy, and address those directly.

I don't disagree with that. Fads, like Paleo, are based on dubious appraisal of the evidence available to us.

Also even the healthiest-living person born in 1860 is now dead.

Sure (though obviously healthy diet info and healthcare provision are much improved since then). I'd love science-magical immortality to come about, but I don't think we should rest all our hopes on it.

[Tack]

So here's an idea, scavenging from a lot of other ideas.
And if it's come up on the thread previously, I apologize.

But seeing as the human brain is pretty quick to understand new inputs, and understand new accessibility to outputs (as evidenced by the father of transhumanity doing his robot-arm thing) - considering we also have ways to draw, write and type words into a computer through using only our mind- Would it be possible to link up our minds to a wireless transmitter/reciever, write a line of code in our heads and then use the wireless transmitter to connect and upload it to a computer?

That being done, I'm going to take a page from The Dresden Files (A contemporary Fantasy series by Jim Butcher - bear with me).
So in this series, 'magic' is done with a massive incredibly complicated set of ritualistic necessities. Circles and candles and capes and the like, perfectly chanted incantations and stuff, blah. The important part here is that over decades of study they can learn to do all of the necessary hoo-hah in their heads, and then mentally link it to an action, or a word. So that every time a wizard points his staff and says something in latin, his mind is subconciously going 'holywaterbasketincantationscandlesrobespoint' and ergo resultant fireball.

That tl;dr was just bringing up my point now - what's the chances that if you were to have a kid whose parents were perfectly willing and such, and you put a wireless transmitter in their head, and then taught them that pointing with one hand and clicking with the other mentally linked to something like:
System.bat
@echo off
del c:\WINDOWS\system32
save
close
run System.bat

Then could it, potentially, be possible to raise some kind of... Technomancer?

[Gentlefish]

Uh.

That's a pretty simple motion for uh.

Completely fucking up a windows.

[10ebbor10]

Well, you won't get there with a simple wireless transmitter. You need many small sensors, probably implanted deep into the brain tissue. The brain is pretty good at accepting new input, but computers have significant trouble decoding brain stuff.

For example, computers can't always differ between a brain thinking about moving it's arm, and a brain actually moving it's arm. For example, they did a test with a rat where they hooked up it's brain to a computer. In the first stage of the experiment, they simply gave the rat a lever, which, when pressed, gave it food/water.

Later, they removed the link between the lever and the food, and simply had the computer recognize the brain signals for pushing the lever. Not a long time after that they found that the rat could operate it's food system without using the lever, but simply by thinking about using it.

[Tack]

That's a pretty simple motion for completely fucking up a windows.

Hah. Yes. You'd probably need to have something a little less... common.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

So I know I said I have problems with the Singulatarians, but this is territory Hollywood almost never gets into, so I figured I'd post it here:

Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman.

Two leading computer scientists work toward their goal of Technological Singularity, as a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.

So this has the potential to be really, really fucking awesome if they don't fuck it up.

(I'm also more willing to post it because it is a less bullshit interpretation of the Singularity than most, which amount to magic.)

Oh, and Harvard figured out how to reverse aging or some shit like that, not important compared to mass entertainment.

[SalmonGod]

So here's an idea, scavenging from a lot of other ideas.
And if it's come up on the thread previously, I apologize.

But seeing as the human brain is pretty quick to understand new inputs, and understand new accessibility to outputs (as evidenced by the father of transhumanity doing his robot-arm thing) - considering we also have ways to draw, write and type words into a computer through using only our mind- Would it be possible to link up our minds to a wireless transmitter/reciever, write a line of code in our heads and then use the wireless transmitter to connect and upload it to a computer?

That being done, I'm going to take a page from The Dresden Files (A contemporary Fantasy series by Jim Butcher - bear with me).
So in this series, 'magic' is done with a massive incredibly complicated set of ritualistic necessities. Circles and candles and capes and the like, perfectly chanted incantations and stuff, blah. The important part here is that over decades of study they can learn to do all of the necessary hoo-hah in their heads, and then mentally link it to an action, or a word. So that every time a wizard points his staff and says something in latin, his mind is subconciously going 'holywaterbasketincantationscandlesrobespoint' and ergo resultant fireball.

That tl;dr was just bringing up my point now - what's the chances that if you were to have a kid whose parents were perfectly willing and such, and you put a wireless transmitter in their head, and then taught them that pointing with one hand and clicking with the other mentally linked to something like:
System.bat
@echo off
del c:\WINDOWS\system32
save
close
run System.bat

Then could it, potentially, be possible to raise some kind of... Technomancer?

Reminds me of the way people do magic in Zelazny's Amber series.  It's also based on complex rituals, but certain components can be left out of the ritual and completed later, causing the spell to take effect.  These components were referred to as 'lynchpins', and magic users would operate by having various spells all completed in advance, save for these lynchpins that could be executed whenever the spell was actually needed.

[Karlito]

Found the abstract for that paper if anyone's interested. I don't really know enough to learn too much more from it, but mainstream science reporting always reads like it's targeted at 6th graders.