I beg to disagree, good sir. The idea of a wise government who leads its citizens to harmonious, healthy, happy and long life looks nice on paper, but it does not work, which was sadly proven more than once, often at cost of many lives. The problem is, you cannot build an enlightened government from non-enlightened people, and non-enlightened people are sadly the only kind on this world.

Apart from this, there is another thing to consider; when you guard your citizens against all bad decisions, they will never learn why they are bad, what the consequences are, and how to think for themselves - you effectively are reducing humans to slightly more clever sheep. This might be even considered a good thing in someone's eyes - it is undoubtedly a matter of taste.

But I think it is more noble to try to learn humans to tell to themselves: "Yes, I could get that Big Mac and wash it down with 44oz of 120%-glucose-fructose-soda, but it might have adverse effects on my health, so I will rather opt for salad. Except maybe for the first weekend in two months because one Big Mac every two months will not cause me any harm, and a life completely devoid of greasy food would be less colorful - less human." Of course, your milleage may vary.

Sir, I have no doubt that you have studied the evolutionary theory diligently, but I think you have still some way to go before you understand it.

Using words "defective" and "weak/strong" when discussing evolution is risky at best and completely misleading at worst. Strictly speaking, there is nothing like defects or weaknesses, only traits which are beneficial or detrimental under the current conditions. If the conditions change, the effect of the same trait (gene, mutation, ...) on the specimen's (or species) fitness can change as well, sometimes drastically.

Under these circumstances, it is more or less impossible to tell which mutation should be discarded as weakening, and which should be preserved (that's why eugenics is self-defeating - in attempt to filter out only "positive" traits, it reduces the pool and concentrates errors).

Certainly we exert lots of effort to preserve human beings that would not survive otherwise, but I don't think it's in vain. When doing this, we are learning how various genes and mutations affect each other, and gain ability to drive the evolution ourselves - which is, I think, the only remaining route if we reject the Nature's way, which is, as you correctly state, very ugly.

Well, things are not *so* bleak. Some cancers really are curable - which means, they can be kicked into remission longer than the remaining patient's life - which can be 5/10/20+ years, or even >80 (some childhood tumors). And we are getting closer to this point for some other cancers.

Alzheimer's is a much tougher nut and yes, we currently don't have neither a cure, nor a treatment, nor any sound idea of what is going on. But we are trying, and with enough persistence, a solution will be found. The disease is not dark magic, it has some biochemical mechanism that can be analyzed and stopped.

Regarding RAMs, you are funny - last 50 years have seen an unprecedented leap in the technology of information storage! Recall all the breakthroughs, the journey from magnetic coils to tapes to cartridges to floppies to CD/DVD to flash disks - from magnetism to optical storage to trapped electrons - and I can assure you that new things like memristors really can do some neat tricks!

The tragedy is that the judge simply decides, somehow, based on his/her own guesstimate, which is affected by everything starting from his/her own beliefs, sexual orientation and paraphilias, childhood fears, adolescent fears, adult fears, up to whether he/she slept well or had a good/bad dinner, and such decision then becomes a precedent.

  (I'd guess that the judge will be especially harsh if he/she him/herself is a paedophile, or has another sexual deviation; because then it will be like a holy war inside his/her own mind, and he/she will feel victorious if the punishment will be as hard as possible.)

This might be true, to an extent, but if you think (as I am afraid) that socialism is the answer, please don't. If you wish to see what completely non-capitalistic governments can do, visit Eastern Europe. It used to be, in a sense, a laboratory of various attempts at socialistic, planned, non-greedy economy. All these failed spectacularly, and caused damage to the very country they were implemented in - the most serious one being in its citizen's heads. It shows that when the government mandates universal equality and fair distribution of goods, people become much more greedy, envious, and lose trust in future. You can trust me in this; I am living in one of these former Socialist labs, and, twenty years after the regime fall, you sense the atmosphere of helplessness and lack of energy literally everywhere, as if the whole country was cursed.

I don't say that hard capitalism is nice; it isn't. But at least you have some chance. Socialism somehow drains all life from everything. (Please pardon me for being melodramatic. It's part of the curse - look at Russia.)

I tend to disagree. We are capable of producing the food, clothing, and everything necessary for housing, but we are not able to transport them where they are needed. A large part of the problem lies in the fact that the target countries have despotic government or are in war, but plain movement of such large amounts of material is also nontrivial and energetically demanding.

As a member of a half-Eastern European nation with an significant portion of ethnic Russians in our territory, I second that.

However, the problem is not in the Russians themselves (I suspect that many of them are here exactly because Russia is not the best place to be, and they would be pretty unhappy if their motherland reached here). What am I personally afraid are our own politicians who have really, really one-track minds. They only think about Russia as a trade partner (I'm not sure why, they are pretty unreliable in payments - maybe they give generous bribes).

I believe that at least in Czech and Slovak Republic, our governments won't recognize Russians as a threat until it will be very, very late. And then they will do exactly the same what they did the last time: they will bow and accept our new vodka-drinking overlords. Mr. Putin does not even need to bother bringing tanks; all he needs to do is kindly ask (and he knows it, ah so very well). "We" will "voluntarily", as a "whole-nation agreement", leave NATO and enter the new, much better Russian Union.

No, I have to disagree. Common Russian people are neither shameless nor primitive. I have friends there; many people are just fine. The problem is that historically, as a nation, the Russian never experienced freedom - not in last two thousand years or so. Russia was always large, strong and feared in military sense but with most people very poor, with a regime opressive both to the outside and to the inside. The nationalism, the feeling of being a strong nation, was pretty much the only positive thought people could grasp to - that and their religion, but the religion was strongly suppressed during the Soviet era.

Russia is a crapsack world to an extent which is hard to imagine (unless you were in North Korea or similar black hole, of course). Its people are just broken and neglected. Which of course makes the whole country more dangerous.

Ah yes, he would. What's worse, his own people will not object. They are used to being treated exactly like that - Russia was always like that. Being hungry, poor and cold, with a Tzar somewhere in far Moscow, and omnipresent propaganda talking something about being a proud, powerful nation, that's the default mode of operation in Russia. A common, poor muzhik from Russian countryside never knew any other way of life.

The backup idea is, in fact, not at all stupid. Although I doubt there is some backup ready for use (if some god has it, it is improbable that he/she will yield it, provided that he/she did not so yet), a kind of a backup can be done as a precaution.

While we are still light years away from a full mind upload (of course, if we were able to do that, Alzheimer's would become just a minor nuisance), we are better and better in storing information about what a person saw, heard, and even felt internally. Provided that there is enough of this data, and we get at least a basic knowledge of how they are stored in the brain, we might be able to restore the mostly destroyed circuitry using e.g. stem cells or whatever magitech will be needed, and adapt it using the stored data to remotely resemble what it used to be.

Of course, there are lots of "ifs" and hard-to-imagine manipulation on subcellullar level, but I would consider it mildly feasible.

I think we all hope in this, regardless of our age. And, unless we destroy ourselves in some nice world war, or unless science will be oficially banned on religious grounds, the cure will be found. Alzheimer's is no magic, there is some underlying cause, and when we find it, we will find a way to block it, although it can be technically challenging.

I personally think (but this is just a guess) that we will have to learn pretty much details of neuronal functions at the lowest biochemical level, and also about glial-neuronal interactions, because so far I tend to think that there might be some subtle glitch in metabolism, something not being cleaned up properly, which leads to disastrous buildup of unusable stuff much, much later. But I repeat, that's just a guess, there might as well be a profound, brutal defect we just did not find yet.

In 30? Probably loss of concentration. Alzheimer's is very rare at your age, and it usually manifests in a different way. A cause for concern would be if you were losing memories or how-tos of usual, routine things, experiencing strange mood swings with bouts of confusion, not recognizing people you regularly meet, or suddenly getting lost in a town you live in for 20 years. And even then, I would suspect epilepsy. (But beware, I am not a MD...)

Even from a strictly economical point of view, this is disputable.

"Normal" Alzheimer's can affect people as young as 40 (there are super-early, genetic-based variants that can hit even earlier, but that's in fact a different disease I think). Such a human still could provide >10 years of work, possibly qualified work, and has a family which will care about him/her, which degrades their work ability greatly (you *won't* be working as well if you haven't slept for a week due to trying to quell Dad's nightmares) - a very significant economic loss.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it does not appear earlier than in 60's, and that the human in that age does nothing to offer to the society, work-wise (gross oversimplification, I know). But he/she has still lots of younger social contacts, which all get depressed and stressed due to this illness. Of course, you could euthanize the affected person. But by this, you are effectively learning your society that "getting ill = getting killed". This means, on one side, that people will focus on covering any disease symptoms and trying to keep at work even when ill, from fear of being euthanized - a net economic loss - and on the other side, medicine research will effectively stop because it's cheaper - and now allowed - to euthanize a patient with any serious (albeit generally curable) disease. Not much good, even not much efficient.

Lastly, the overall people lifespan is still growing. It is possible that in the future, a 50-years old person will be, and feel, as healthy and full of energy as in 25ths. But if Alzheimer's will still be a killer in 60's, you would be losing fully-powered, fully-qualified workforce. Much loss, very bad.

One of my friends is a geneticists (in fact, more of my friends are). She is extremely sensitive, and looks very sad and distressed every time they have to kill a set of lab rats after finishing an experiment - which is exactly what the law requires them to do. They go a long way to ensure that the animal does not feel any pain at all, if possible (by the way, humans in terminal states of certain diseases would beg for such a swift and painless death - and they can't have it, again due to the law).

If they tried to set the lab rats free, or get them home, they would face criminal charges. In European Union, just having a genetically modified rat at home means a criminal charge and a hefty financial penalty (starting around 10000 Euro I believe), and it puts a definitive stop to your scientific career. Setting a GMO rat free into the city sewers or a garden would trigger a large-scale police operation and quite possibly you would be sent into jail as a bio-terrorist.

No, natural mice do not get Alzheimer's. We simulate the disease with various genetic modifications and injections of prions, in hope that the disease we artificially induced is sufficiently similar to Alzheimer's to be a usable model for finding a cure. So far, the results were poor, but we are slowly, constantly advancing, and along with accumulated data from the ill humans, and general knowledge about neuron functions, we will someday find a mechanism, and then a cure.

Yes, it is cruel to the mice. But it is the only way we know of finding a solution. This is not a purposeless torture. We are trying to save people, and these methods really produce useful results. (For example, any time you see a drug with a name ending with -amab or -omab, these are monoclonal antibodies produced from rats or mice, respectively - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...)

This is a common mistake. Some types of cancer are primarily affecting the elderly, but some others peak at childhood, or at early adulthood, and yet others can affect a person regardless of age (glioblastoma is the most common and most feared example).

(Sorry for not providing more examples; I don't remember them from the top of my head and right now I don't have the guts for googling for cancers that kill children).

In addition, you must take into account that lab mice are all from relatively few genetical lines; this is sometimes a plus because they are genetically uniform, but they are also inbred and much more susceptible to various tumors.

Yes, he is definitely afraid of death, like most people. But unlike most people, he not only admits it, but is also actively trying to do something about it. He might be completely wrong in how to do this, but he is at least trying. His research may be completely misguided, but maybe he will find out something useful, perhaps as a side effect. Basic research tends to do this.

Most people, when faced with the prospect of mortality, tend to give up, try to forget about it, some turn to various fairy tales to quell their fear, some do complex mental trickery to convince themselves that death is in fact a great thing we should be glad for it, and some simply start drinking or doing drugs. Kurzweil clearly states that he prefers to live on, and started to make steps against it. I think this is pretty brave and might even prove useful.

(Note: Yes, I believe that there are some people, maybe 0.001% of population, some Yogis or true Buddhists, who really consider death a good thing - something like a finishing line, a closing bracket that makes the whole life complete like a work of art. But the overwhelming majority is just lying to themselves.)