In case you haven't noticed yet, there is a new hype and it's called sustainable development. The first time I heard about it was a few years ago, my school's theme was "sustainability" which meant that there was a special week about sustainability each year and various courses had the sustainability in their names.

At this very moment the United Nation's Commission on Sustainable Development is holding a huge conference about sustainability in New York. I got the idea for writing this article 3 months ago when I was facing an application form for this conference. I stared at for quite some time and eventually decided not to fill it in. Suddenly I realized that I absolutely hate the idea of sustainable development and that I really did not want to go there, even though a free trip to New York might be awesome.

The goal of sustainable development is to create a global society that has a balanced input and output, it's about not using more energy then you can collect within the same amount of time so that you will never run out. Although sustainability is often associated with green energy it's not just about that, it also about everything else.

Sustainability is also about about sustaining as much as possible, staying the same, no matter what. It's about holding back progress and development, driven by the fear of losing balance.

An example of a sustainable society is Japan in the middle ages, called the Edo-period. It's often used by the sustainability people as a proof that a sustainable society can exist. Well, guess what? THe Edo-period sucked! It was a society that isolated itself from the rest of the world like a big cult, they were obsessed with recycling and in many hundreds of years hardly made any progress. When foreigners were finally allowed to trade with Japan the society quickly became unsustainable and they were off just as bad as when they started it.

A sustainable society needs a static environment, the slightest change could make it unsustainable. The sustainability people argue that things like climate change have human causes and in a sustainable society everything will remain the same. That is a very wrong assumption to make. If history taught is anything it is that things will never stay the same and always turn out to be different than you initially thought.

If we would want a sustainable society we could just as well put the whole of mankind in suspended animation, that would be boring, but sustainable.

But even that would not last forever, because the sun isn't very sustainable itself, it will burn up in 5 billion years. But before that the earth will be fucked up many hundreds of times by huge meteors that would drive many species to extinction over and over again.

You might think it's ridiculous to talk about these massive time scales, I think it is too. But that is exactly what sustainability people use as an argument against nuclear fusion which can be fueled by deuterium from water. We have enough water on Earth for millions of years of fusion power, but the fact that it might run out one day makes it unsustainable, and thus not even worth a look.

Even if we were to consider nuclear fusion as an alternative, it would be way too difficult for humans to do something that billions of dumb stars have been doing since the beginning of the universe and it would take at least 50 years before we could start thinking about it. In reality, experiments have been going on for decades and nuclear fusion seems to be commercially viable within 20 years, long before we run out of fossil fuel.

The purpose of sustainable development is preserving the earth for "future generations" as if in the future humans will not longer be able to take care of themselves. It is more likely to assume that future generations will be smarter and more capable than us in to solving their problems using technology more powerful than we can imagine today. Secondly, I was also planning to be part of the future generations, I don't think many people from my generation will have to die of old age.

But that same generation of young people is being brainwashed right now into thinking that the world is about the end and something has to be done right now to prevent that from happening. The funny thing is, just about every generation had this same thought, a few thousand years ago it was enough to build a pyramid and sacrifice a virgin once in a while to the gods, but this time, the only thing that can save us from oblivion is sustainable development, which means we have to build windmills and solar collectors in every corner of the world in order to save it.

The truth is, we know very little about the complex systems that influence earth's climate. If you want to save the planet, stay open minded about new theories and solutions rather than just repeating what other people have to say about it, they know just as little as everybody else, they're only better at concealing it by being louder.

Every so often I read a sneer about the Middle Ages. Many people believe that if the Middle Ages didn't happen we would be much better off, we would live in a Star Trek like world by now.

The Middle Ages were bad, that's what we learn in school. They are often referred to as the dark ages, a time of chaos, war, oppression, crusades, diseases, poverty, slavery and other bad things that were going on throughout in that Europe for many hundreds of years.

Rather than attempting to describe this really long and complicated period I'll just say that it roughly lasted from the year 500 until 1500, even though it started earlier in some areas and in some rural areas Eastern Europe didn't change much the twentieth(!) century.

About what caused the Middle Ages not much is known. People didn't bother to document much in a time of chaos, and if they did much of the work was lost.

I don't think that there is a single factor to blame. The Middle Ages didn't come in one night, it's a combination of many things coming together in a period of centuries that "caused" the Middle Ages.

The collapse of the Roman empire has often been blamed. The romans were quite advanced for their time, had their empire survived we would be more advanced now. I can't say that we wouldn't, but I wouldn't bet on it. Romans didn't really picture themselves as inventors, artists or explorers. They raised their sons to become conquerers and warriors, they did not consider showing compassion for others to be an admirable quality.

After the peak years of the empire the economy started to shrink, Christianity was eventually made the state religion, but by then there was not much left of the once so great empire.

The empire continued to shrink and grow weaker until it eventually disappeared, just like all other great civilizations that came before. Order slipped into chaos. It became unsafe to travel outside of town, traders stopped traveling and people left the cities to find food in the country. Many of these people found protection by land owners, but had to give up their many of their civil rights and became serfs, farmers in service of a land owner.

Now the Middle Ages had begun. There were a few kingdoms which changed frequently, but most of the time the land owners were in charge of their own tiny state, competing with other nearby land owners for wealth and power.

During this time the Christian church was the only stable institution that had influence throughout the continent and had an important role in preserving literacy, but it's actual power was fairly limited.

The Middle Ages were hard times, with many people competing with each other. This allowed human ingenuity to thrive. Many inventions were done, I haven't been able to find a complete list yet, probably because it would get really long. Here is one incomplete list and many more here.

It weren't just technological inventions, but also in every other field great progress was made. Engineering, medicine, geometry, mathematics were all practiced and improved. Alchemists were trying to find ways to turn lead into gold, laying the foundations for modern chemistry. Explorers from Europe were traveling around the world bringing back even more technology and inventions from the Middle and Far East and eventually discovered another continent now called America in the West.

During the Middle Ages Japan and China were quite advanced, maybe even more than Europe. Why didn't they develop much further? Nobody knows for sure. The most common assumption is that they were both stable empires where people were working efficiently together, and that there was simply no need for them to develop any further.

By the year 1500 book printing allowed knowledge to be shared faster and cheaper than ever before, a huge step forward for mankind. How could we ever survive without it? The name,"Middle Ages" and the idea that it was a bad time. But for the first time ever a civilization could travel around the world and had technologies unlike anything that existed on Earth before. How was this possible? It's because of those "damn" Middle Ages!

The Middle Ages weren't easy times, and many bad things happened and still continue happen. What is important is that the Middle Ages eventually allowed mankind to become what we are today, and we could have done far worse.

Realizing that the Middle Ages was a time of development and progress proves to me that accelerated technological progress (The Law of Acceleration Returns) is really happening right now, and has been going on for many hundreds of years.

Earlier this month I attended to a conference, again. It's sort of a hobby of mine. I went to Brussels, the heart of the European Union for 5 days.

I was in the working group that was titled "The future of Europe" I was in a little group that has the assignment to think about what Europe should look like in 50 years. Which in my opinion is insane. I can't even start to imagine what the Europe will be like in 25 years, and I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on future affairs.

Confusing people is not a good way to make your point, so instead of evangelizing transhumanist ideas I just kept my bullshit-detector on stand by.

This wasn't really needed though. I was pleasantly surprised that during the entire conference nobody came up with any really stupid ideas, everybody just seemed to completely ignore technological advancement and their effect on society. I think it's best for now not to worry about issues that might be in 50 years.

After some days of discussions very little progress was made. We were going around in circles and nobody could agree on anything. I was starting to lose hope.

Then, during the final days some breakthroughs were made. Finally we could agree upon a few things, even though they were very broad and very vague. Less bureaucracy, free education, equal opportunities for everybody and more democracy, aren't very original, but at least we can agree on it.

Luckily nobody even mentioned employment of young people and aging of society as future problems. These are serious problems today and in the near future. I don't think these will be problems in 50 years.

Just like everybody else don't know what society will be like in 50 years, but I do believe these problems can, and will be solved by that time.

Some important people gave speeches throughout the week. I remembered the two most important messages: "small steps" and "determination", with these you can accomplish anything. I think that was good advice.

One of the people on the conference was a guy from Germany. He was into sustainable energy and wanted to fill Europe with wind mills. I asked him about nuclear fusion. He was against it. Why? He didn't believe it would ever work. He came up with some outdated arguments that were based upon the difficulties with experimental reactors. He continued to repeat that nuclear fusion would provide too much power, causing the power grid to over load. He seemed obsessed with wind mills, completely ignoring all the difficulties involved with wind energy yet focussing on the problems of other energy sources. I found it to be quite a pity that such a young intelligent man was so obsessed with a single idea that he lost touch with reality. But at least wind mills are pretty harmless. It could have been far worse if it had been some kind of political ideology or religion.

Most of the other people there were more open minded and had a positive outlook on the future.

After 5 days with very little sleep it was time to say goodbye. I believe that during my life I will meet many of them again. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe in another decade, or in another century. It's already beginning. At each conference that I visited this year there is at least one person that I have met before.

Recently I came across the a website about Starfire. A project from Sun Microsystems that attempted, over a decade ago, to make a movie that would accurately represent the state of technology, and specifically how humans would work with computers in the year 2004, November 17th to be exact.

What is even more interesting is that there is much background information available that explains which thoughts fueled these predictions and why it made sense in 1994.

It's amazing how miserably these people failed at predicting the future in their own field of expertise, only 10 years into the future.

What went differently

The world is not dominated by Sun's computers, instead everybody is using Microsoft Windows. When this movie was made there were already operating systems like Windows 3.1 was and Mac OS which work pretty much the same like today's successors.

The internet did become available for the general public, but for most people it is still painstakingly slow. Some of you will not even bother downloading this movie because of it's file size.

Video conferencing and speech recognition are available, yet immature and therefor not yet widely used.

Reality did exceed this movie in some points. Most notably is the absence of the mobile phone, and today's laptops look much better.

Predicting the future is a tough job. No matter how hard you try, most of the time you'll still be wrong.

Download the movie

Starfire movie: MPEG - 14:08 minutes - 231.4 MB

http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/g.w.m.rauterberg/movies/SUN-Starfire.mpg

Last week I attended to a conference about the future of hydrogen on a local scale, the possibilities and the effects.

The first presentation contained lots of bad scenarios and some good old plain bullshit about global warming. The world could still be saved though, all we had to do was attend to the workshops in the afternoon and come up with a solution that involved hydrogen, then we would all be fine.

The other presentations were less frightening. A quick overview about the current state of the technology, estimated spending on hydrogen research and development, and some insight in public awareness and the perception of hydrogen.

There was a remote controlled scale model of a hydrogen powered car. It had two pressurized hydrogen tanks, and a modified, but still old fashioned combustion engine. A few minutes after the demonstration started it exploded.

The people

You could tell by the people that this was a real future-science conference.

Engineers and scientists with long beards who were talking in formulas and other difficult words expecting everybody else to know what they were talking about.

Students who were under the impression that they knew what they were talking about yet made complete fools out of themselves by asking bold questions which were in fact plain stupid.

Politicians kept restating that they don't understand the technology but still believed that hydrogen was the future.

Business men desperately trying to justify visiting the conference by searching for business opportunities that do not exist yet.

And of course there were journalists who seem to understand it, yet still can't translate the message to anything better than "Hydrogen is the clean fuel of the future for cars."

I was none of the above, yet a bit of everything.

To top it off there was an environmentalist freak, a young guy with a beard and cloths made out of wool. His hair was messy, in the middle was some longer hair, now hanging down, but obviously standing high in the air at other occasions. He did break his stereotype on one point: he knew the science stuff.

Another interesting figure was the Christian fundamentalist. He too did match all the stereotype criteria, except his accent. He didn't grow up in the local Christian community but married somebody who did, his wife insisted that they should live here. Although he had only moved recently he was already deeply embedded into the local community, he became chairman of the local red cross, joined a fundamentalist political party, and was now visiting every conference he could find to build a new social network between studying. Near the ned of the day he was full of new idea's ready to take action and make the hydrogen economy a reality by the end of the week. I admire his passion, but I fear his thoughts.

Ideas

Most people have really strange ideas about the current state of science and the real world.

Options like nuclear power and nuclear fusion were completely ignored, simply because they were not considered to be "durable". Building millions of wind mills,

Only a few of the smart people that were present mentioned methanol a few times. During lunch I discussed oil, which was also completely ignored, with some business guy. You know that black stuff that everybody uses until it gets too expensive.

Near the end of the day some of the proposed ideas had to be put on a time line. One of the few females was shouting years 2006, 2007, and 2008 like she knew what she was talking about. I suspected that she didn't, I later got to talk to her, my suspicions were correct, she didn't know or care about anything the only thing she liked was giving advice to other people.

Yes, it was an interesting experience indeed, let's do it again in 5 years.

We're just beginning to understand what aging is and how it works. And even though we still have a long way to go there is lots of research going on at this very moment, every few weeks we can read about scientific breakthroughs in understanding aging. It is becoming more and more apparent that aging is a condition that can be stopped, or cured as some call it.

Being able to cure aging will change the way we look at life and death, it will change the way we live and die, it will change the world.

And like always, there are lot's and lot's of people who are reluctant of change. And whenever people disagree on something it's time to bring out the arguments and start a good discussion.

However, most arguments that are made against curing aging are seriously flawed. This article attempts to describe and explain the most often made arguments

An absolute must-read for anyone who enjoys arguing about future science with others.

Overpopulation

One of the most often made arguments against the very thought of curing aging is overcrowding. "It is selfish, we have to leave space for the next generation, the world is full enough already." The overcrowding argument is short sighted and based upon the assumption that aging will be cured and nothing else will change in the future.

People will not have as many children as they are having now, in some western countries the birth rate is already negative at this very moment. It is expected that the same thing will happen in the lesser developed countries, once they achieve higher standards of living.

We will be able to produce, and distribute, food and energy in a more efficient way. And even though the space on this planet is limited there is still lot's of it left. And there is no reason why we should stay on earth. And even if it takes hundreds of years to reach an earth-like planet in a different solar system, why not go if you've done everything there is to do on earth already? In suspended animation it will feel like a good night sleep anyway.

I don't want to be old

Most people don't think they would like being old, it's a state of physical discomfort in which you rely on others. The people that never considered the fact that aging can be cured will be quick to say that they don't want to be old. Most people actually have a vague idea about how old they want to become already. They expect themselves to live for like 85 years and find it hard to change their fixed future perspective.

They also have this very wrong idea about that you will be old forever while the opposite is the case; you will be young forever.

Aging starts when your body stops growing, which is just after puberty. Once you become an adult your body starts to decay very slowly for decades to come. When you cure aging, your body will not start aging, you will be young for as long as you want.

Notice that I didn't say you will be young forever, you can still die, in many different ways, in a distant and unknown future everything is possible, you might not even need a body, but these issues are far beyond the scope of this article.

Immortality

Curing aging will not cure all diseases. People will be able to suffer from a uncomfortable, yet non-lethal condition for hundreds of years. Although it seems unlikely that most forms of prolonged physical discomfort will eventually be cured, one concern is the mentally ill. Even though treatments for all kinds of conditions will get better, some people's brains, like psychopath's have a different brain structure, changing that would change the person itself.

Just because we stop aging doesn't mean all people will be good, there will still be people who we consider to be a threat to society, but what to do with them? Lock them up for an eternity, sentence them to death, or artificially change their personality? There are  a lot of options, and none of them is perfect, but neither is the current situation. But these exceptions are certainly not a reason not to cure aging.

No need to be old

Generally speaking humans are a intelligent species. Our large brain allows us survive in environments where we would otherwise not be able to. Unlike other species we don't primarily rely on instinct which is present at birth. In order to be successful we pass down knowledge to our offspring, mainly though language and culture, which is a much more flexible and efficient way of passing down information then waiting for evolution to hard code it in our genes.

The drawback is that this way of passing through knowledge is that we depend on it and that it's flexibility is a weakness. When a human is not treated properly in it's early years it will be fucked up for the rest of it's life. If a child does not learn to speak within the first 2 years, it will never be able to. The chain of generations is incredibly fragile. Should it ever break, all future generations will have to climb up all the way from savagery again. Even though this is very unlikely to happen on a world scale, it's a lot more likely to happen in small isolated communities, if a single generation is not educated well, all future generations will be affected.

Imagine a small group of people colonizing another planet, which can be quite a hostile environment. It might be difficult to survive, which means that there are few resources to be spent on educating the children of the group, or maybe a lot of the adults died in an accident. The children will know everything about surviving on their new planet, but lack much knowledge about anything else. Not knowing what it is like to be human, making them nothing more then a bunch of ill-adapted naked monkeys with a large brain capacity with a lot of unused potential.

What if everybody could live a lot longer? The risk of losing knowledge of humanity would be greatly reduced.

Curing aging is not merely a selfish desire of people who are afraid to die. Any intelligent species would benefit from living longer.

The way it is

Unlike a few decades ago kids don't start working at the age of 6 in the western world anymore, instead they often go to college until they are well past 25 years old. After spending 1/4 of their lives on education, most people spend 2/4 of it on working on a job that they don't particularly like. The majority of people is "lucky" enough to be able to spent another 1/4 of their lives on letting your body and mind degrade until you inevitably die. This is a way of living many people have accepted as being "just the way it is"... But that doesn't make it right!

Surely this way in which we devide our lives will change, it is unpredictable how this will happen, it all depends on various other factors, but there is no reason to assume that

Even though old people cannot do physical labor they do have something to offer, experience and knowledge. That is why many primitive tribes value their elderly so much.

This is changing though, in our modern, fast changing society in which we use mass media to spread knowledge old people have less and less to contribute. We'll still try to keep them alive for as long as possible because we're emotionally attached to them, as if it were a pet. Pets are satisfied with food, shelter and an some attention. Humans are conscious, and also require purpose, some old people find purpose in religion, or trying to have as much fun as possible before they die. Some people don't find purpose, or are unable to achieve their goals because of their aging body. We just keep these people around for our own peace of mind, whether they like it or not.

Aged people will be more useless in the future.

Impossible

Some people ridicule the pure thought of being able to cure aging. They argue that it's a waste of resources, trying to do the impossible. Being skeptical can be a good quality, so is being open minded. Many things that were once deemed to be impossible are now part of every day life.

Not believing that aging can be cured is an act of stupidity when considering all the scientific research.

Most people are not familiar with the latest scientific research. Their entire life they have seen things die of old age, and are convinced that they will do so to.

Many people tend to believe that we are at our technological top, we are so advanced already, things just can't get much better. This is something short sighted people have believed for many centuries and they have always been wrong. There is no reason to not assume that they are still wrong.

There is no easy way to convince these people, some can be educated, but most will only believe it when they see it with their own eyes.

The good thing is that these people do not often very strongly oppose of it. Why oppose of something where you don't believe in?

They often don't want to spend any resources on it, which can be a problem when they control the resources. Even though politicians are notorious for they short sighted narrow mindedness, they tend to listen to their voters and often realize that stimulating science an have big pay offs, and has relatively few risks, for the politician.

Is the whole "I don't believe it" attitude a self-fulfilling prophecy? Only if absolutely everybody would think that curing aging is not possible, and that is not the case.

Even without political support research could continue with private funding, or simply in a different political climate.

Curing aging is absolutely possible. The question is not "if" it will happen, but "when" it will happen.

Pensions

In the current situation people have to work until a certain age and then retire and receive a pension. In countries like France the working people pay the pensions for the elderly, which is causing lot's of problems already, the people born during baby boom after the Second World War are now retiring, there are more old people then young people, and with the declining birth rates this will remain to be a problem in the years to come. Other countries, like the Netherlands have a system in which each working individual saves up his own pension, which he can use after reaching the age of 65. But now people are living longer this age is continuously pushed up higher which results in more people being able to work, and thus in more unemployment. The current system is far from perfect, in fact it has many flaws. It's a huge problem that will only get bigger, especially in Europe, unless something changes.

Some people think that curing aging will make this problem even worse. yes, technically speaking these people would have an old age, but they would still be young and perfectly able to take care of themselves. There would be no longer a need for age related retirement.

Surely laws would need to be changed once people suddenly can live up to indefinitely, but when the need arises laws can be changed in a matter of weeks.

Wealth and power

One of the drawbacks of living longer is that people can eventually become ridiculously powerful and wealthy and use their power to oppress others. But it will not be much unlike the current situation where wealth and power are inherited by the children, and old corporate leaders replaced by young corporate leaders.

There is absolutely no indication that people get greedy or more nasty with age. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Old people are often able to rationalize matters because they have been in similar situations before and are able to see the broader picture. making people live longer could make them friendlier.

Memories

Another argument made against longer life spans is the assumption that you will not be able to remember your entire life. This is certainly the case with a mind that deteriorates with age, but when your body stops aging, so does your brain. Even though the capacity of the long term memory is still unknown, and to us seems unlimited only a limited amount of neurons fit inside the skull, it is safe to assume that there is a limit. But is it a valid argument against longer lives? No. The brain continuously filters out insignificant information, there is lots of useless stuff that you don't even need to know stuck in your head. If the capacity is limited, important memories will simply replace the unimportant ones.

It's unlikely that these memory limits will be a problem in the future, in the present age we are already enhancing our memories with sticky notes, voice recorders, agendas, pictures, alarms and most recently with the aid of computers. More advanced technology that will help us remember things is on the way.

Nature

What is nature? Some people argue that it's everything that wasn't here before mankind. Not taking into account that mankind originated from nature and merely adapted some parts of nature to it's own liking.

Some people think nature is something holy that we should not tamper with. Well guess what, we tampered with nature for millions of years. What else can you do when you live in it? And the fact that we are not extinct yet is a good indication that we are quite successful. Sure, sometimes nature sinks a ship or destroys a city, but that is not really a big deal on a global scale.

Isn't it so that aging is part of nature? Yes, but so is not-aging. Several micro organisms, plants and jellyfish don't don't die from the effects of aging either.

Hw long is a human supposed to live in his natural state anyway? Nobody knows. People in less healthy situations die younger, but by living a healthy life, curing diseases and taking good care of them some people can easily live well past a 100 years.

Aging is just yet another genetical disease, the only remarkable thing is that everybody will eventually has to suffer from it.

Human nature

What is human nature? One could argue that running away naked from tigers and chewing bones of dead animals in Africa with an average life span of 35 years is nature. If you believe that is human nature  I would definitely recommend you do that instead of trying to prevent others from having a better quality of life.

But by taking a better look at long-term history it's obvious that it is human nature to try improve our own quality of life. Curing aging is just another step in the natural development of mankind.

Christians

As with every new technology that will benefit mankind there will be religious fundamentalists standing in line to complain about it. Even though it is obvious that their negative attitude is only the caused by a primal fear change rather then the higher moral standards they think to promote you're still expected to debate with them in a serious way.

But God didn't mean humans to live that long.

Of course, only true argument against this claim is that there is no god, but convincing the people that make this argument of that can prove to be quite difficult. It's easier to prove them wrong on their own turf: the bible.

According to the bible Abraham lived to be 175 years, Noah lived for 950 years and nobody, not even god complained about that. The bible doesn't say that god doesn't want you to live longer. It does condemn suicide. One could argue that choosing to die when one could live longer is some kind of suicide.

If god opposes of it, and is almighty, why doesn't he speak to us himself?

Why would god allow something to happen that he doesn't want? If he wants people to die he could just end their lives in some magical way, just like he did with the tower of Babel, no problem there.

And why would a Christian care? If you disagree with something: don't do it, but don't stop others from doing it. If you are a Christian your goal should be to live like Jesus. Jesus didn't force his believes upon others. He let people make their own decisions about what to do, and what to believe and let god be the judge of that.

When arguing with a Christian it is tempting to give examples of other Christians that agree with you it is generally not a good idea, the Christian will often argue that all the others are not "true" Christians. It's better to use this argument directly against them and say that when you want to oppose others of living longer you are not a true Christian.

Responsiblity

The argument that true Christians shouldn't judge others, counts for other people as well. Who are they to say that others cannot live longer? If you disagree with it: don't do it. That's easy. The harder part is the people who do want to live longer but are not able to. Most people will agree that the cure should be available foe everybody, but once it becomes available it won't be cheap and widely available for everybody, especially not in the first few years. As with avery transition there will be a few bumps. But I think it's worth it.

Conclusion

So what does this all mean? Curing aging will not make you immortal, it will not make world peace, it solves some problems and creates a new ones. The people that oppose of aging often focus only on the drawbacks, failing to see the benefits. It's the same story for each technological innovation: narrow minded people oppose of it using shitty arguments. Let them be wrong and let us not be stopped by them, they are ignorant and simply don't know any better.