Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

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lichtrausch
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Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:46 pm

With most AI experts thinking superintelligence is just over the horizon, and given that superintelligence will likely enable radical life extension (think of going to a clinic every few years for a rejuvenation therapy that would let you indefinitely maintain the health of a 25 year old or whatever), I thought it would be fun to imagine how this new situation would affect our language learning goals.

I have mostly limited myself to learning only one language per major language family, and ignored all other language families entirely. With a radically extended lifespan, I would aim to learn to read every language with a non-trivial literary output.

How about you?
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:17 pm

How about a different scenario? The benefits of super-intelligence, such as radical life extension, are never realized owing to global warming, mass migration, overpopulation, depletion of the Earth’s resources, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The promised Utopia is thwarted and the technology is used instead to fulfill George Orwell’s vision of 1984. There’ll be only one language to learn: Newspeak. :mrgreen:
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Aug 02, 2019 12:15 am

I always like to think that if they discovered immortality during my lifetime I would learn hundreds, even thousands of languages. And plenty of other useful things too.

But I bet I would actually just get nothing done because I'd have infinite time and I could always get something done later. And then all of the sudden, bam! Heat death of the universe.
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby lavengro » Fri Aug 02, 2019 12:33 am

My bet is that even with practice over an infinite time period, my French pronunciation would still suck....
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby rdearman » Fri Aug 02, 2019 4:34 pm

Given your scenario of benign super-intelligence, I would simply ask it to insert a chip in my brain which allows automatic translation (think universal translator) and I'd stop learning languages, or maths for that matter and spend my time doing more creative things.
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby IronMike » Fri Aug 02, 2019 4:54 pm

If this "radical life extension" thing is really just over the horizon, I doubt it'll be applicable to my 52-year-old-butt. But if so, I would fight hard to ensure my kids (16-24 yrs old now) get the treatment, or at least their future kids do.
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby golyplot » Sat Aug 03, 2019 2:21 pm

I don't really get why you think AI will "likely" lead to radical life extension. It's not a magic genie that grants all our wishes regardless of plausibility.

A. Doing X is really hard and we're not even sure if it's possible. B. Oh that's easy. We'll just ask a computer to figure it out for us.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Aug 22, 2019 10:28 pm

golyplot wrote:I don't really get why you think AI will "likely" lead to radical life extension. It's not a magic genie that grants all our wishes regardless of plausibility.

It's become increasingly clear over the past couple decades that radical life extension is entirely plausible. Biologically immortal life forms like turritopsis dohrnii (the immortal jellyfish) have been found. Experiments on fellow mammals (mice) have successfully doubled their lifespan (and healthspan). Researchers have illuminated the different types of aging damage, and extensive research and development efforts are now underway to target these various types of damage. Here's some more detailed information from one of the leaders in the field (who runs a lab at Harvard Medical School) for anyone interested:

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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:00 am

Yeah, no. Not quite like that.

Unless your cells are able to transdifferentiate and then form polyps, the whole hype around "immortal" jellyfish is irrelevant to human evolution. We will not have any life extension coming from those jellyfish. Studies around cell rejuvenation are all about different cell and organ processes ... but that's an entirely different subject.

What you are talking about seem to be some sort of transhumanism.

Why will languages even exist when we are immortal spheres of pure thought blinking in and out of the material world?
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Re: Radical Life Extension and Language Learning

Postby rdearman » Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:49 am

zenmonkey wrote:Why will languages even exist when we are immortal spheres of pure thought blinking in and out of the material world?

Most of the people I deal with would have an immortal sphere of thought about the size of a nanobot. If the size of the sphere is based on original thoughts, then a large percentage of them wouldn't exist.
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