Do you think eventually we'll outsource medicine to computers?

Man, I'm sorry to hear that about your daughter. I never knew.

Still, though, we trust computers in finance and space travel and a hundred other fields to make calculations that are way too complex and variable for any one person to work out with a calculator. We only still rely on doctors instincts and experience so much because:
- We haven't systemetized the data collection in ways that would make automating it more rational
- We haven't developed the software that can implement the sort of things I describe
- Society hasn't come around to accepting these kind of concepts

Honestly, in 1990 did you really imagine the internet economy would come about? I sincerely doubt it. That was just 20 years ago.

Yet you are willing to predict right now what technologies won't be available 99 years from now. Do you realize how absurd your prediction sounds?

 

This is pretty interesting stuff. The medical technology that I was reading about and seemed quite fascinating was using nanotechnology (nanobots) that can be injected into the body to repair cells at the molecular level. Pretty much everything that kills us, that isn't violent (like a gun shot or car accident, etc), is due to damage to the cells...including aging. If we can continually repair cells back to new, we could freeze the aging process, the slow decay of our bodies.

That's pretty impressive and apparently not all that crazy based on what we already know.

 

I've read some articles and watched some programs on nanotechnology, and it always seems so incredibly scifi to me. But there really is just a ton of buzz about it, and not just in medicine. Kind of reminds me a little of the internet in 1996.

 

Actually, you are right in that I never would have imagined how rapidly computers and technology came upon us and some of the things that technology has accomplished.

But I will defend myself in that I simply think the human body is too complex and there is so much scientists don't know (and may never really know) to think computers in and of themselves will be running medicine and nearly eliminating the need for doctors within 100 years. I mean, 100 years ago it was predicted we'd have universal space travel and cities under the sea. Well, those seem far easier than eliminating doctors and we're woefully behind in those areas and probably still won't be doing those things in another 100 years.

 

The difference is demand. There really isn't much market demand for space travel or cities under the sea. They'd be nice, and sure there are some big fans out there of those ideas. But if I have to choose between a nice prime rib dinner or dropping bucks toward one of those, I'm going with the prime rib dinner most of the time.

There is a much higher market demand for extending life by 30, 50 or 100 years. Pretty much everybody on the planet would be a customer for that one.

 

Yeah, I thought about that and was hoping you'd miss it.

 

It's all good. It was an interesting example to think about.

I love thinking about technology and medicine.

 

The other point I'd make about flying cars and underwater cities and tourist space travel is that technology has arguably advanced just as impressively, just not in those particular directions. I think futurists (those who try to predict the future course of human development) are often wrong on the details, but technology does race along at that breakneck pace. A century ago, for example, people's vision of the future was that we'd have zeppelins carrying us from continent to continent. That never materialized, but we found even better solutions.

In fact, I'm very much a believer in the principle that the rate of technological increase is always accelerating. As much as technology has advanced in the last 20 years, it'll advance more in the next 20 years. And even more than that in the following 20 years. Which is why it's hard to use standards like "There's still so much we don't know" and "That system is so complex"...that may be true, but understanding and knowledge don't increase linearly, they increase exponentially.

I found this to be a very interesting book for those who are interested in a pretty reasonable and logical analysis of where nanotech, robotics and genetic engineering might take us, with examples of how the rate of technology is not linear:

http://www.amazon.com/Singularity-N...7889/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296849019&sr=8-1

 

I think initially it will be introduced as a screening type technology that will grow as acceptance of it grows. For a majority of minor issues, you will go visit some sort of technology center where computers and a trained technician do most of the work, but a Doctor will over see everything going on, empowering them to evaluate many patients at once. Then if it is deemed more serious, you will be directed to specialist.

Then if you consider that other technologies, such as regeneration will be implemented and solve many issues. Hell with the research they are doing, you will probably be able to regrow an missing limb or organ in a few years. Many of these technologies will not regrow just organs and limbs, they will regrow components that wear out within organs.

 

Yeah, I've seen a couple of Kurzweil's lectures on Ted.com. The whole idea of the singularity is one of those things that makes my head spin.

The underpinning of it seems to be, "What happens when you invent an artificial intelligence that's smarter than man, and it is set on the course to invent a machine that's even more smart than itself?" You could wind up with these rapidly escalating intelligent machines that pretty quickly outpace the level of thinking of anything we could even imagine. Stephen Hawking wouldn't look like an average person or even an idiot to such an intelligence, but like how we view chickens or mice. At that point modern MD's may seem like nothing better than overpriced witchdoctors.

Kurzweil thinks that in 30 or 40 years we'll have the technology to live for eternity. Assuming we don't all blow ourselves up first.

I haven't drunk the Kool Aid on that one, but it's hard for me to present an argument against it.

 

Yeah, that's where I am too. The idea of essentially turning as much of the universe as we can access into computational power is both brilliant and feels insane.

He also nicely resolves sci-fi fear of "How do we prevent super-intelligent AI from enslaving us?" question. We become those super-smart AI, slowly augmenting/replacing our wetware brains with the AI that we develop.

As crazy as some of these things seem, when you consider how far humanity has come in the last 1000 years...what will we have done in 10,000 more years? Or in a million years? Always assuming we haven't blown ourselves up by then and we have developed some way to at least deflect asteroids off a collision course with Earth.

 

Let's see... According to Spain, the chances this asteroid (1999 RQ36 ) might strike the earth in the year 2182 is about 1:1000. That's 71 years away. And we're going to spend $440,000,000,000.00 at this time to try and shatter it with high-thrust plasma impactor probes.

Gee, I dunno, seems a bit far fetched to me. Of course, none of that $440,000,000,000.00 will be wasted or used as pork.

Perhaps we should wait until, say, 2170 or 2175 and then see what the chances are. Or maybe the Russians or Chinese will take care of it for us and we won't have to spend a dime. Or maybe we should do this jointly thru the UN and spend a lot less. I mean, $440,000,000,000.00 seems like a lot to spend at this time when we have a few minor budget problems.

 

I think computers can eventually handle medicine, but at what cost? They already get too many viruses as is!

 

I love it when somebody actually takes the Onion's absurdity seriously, and then argues against the common sense logic its parodying. It's one of the Internet's great joys.