Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [April 1 2022]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Thoughts on longevity research and its feasibility? Does computational irreducibility have practical implications for the difficulty of solving this complex biological problem? Also, do you ever get sad about the shortness of the current human lifespan causing us to miss out on the (potentially unimaginable) future opportunities for understanding the universe? - Do you think a multi-computational approach to medicine will detect disease first by observing visual systems or chemical systems or otherwise? - ​Is this discussion of mortality curves related to the survivorship function? - ​Would there be any justification for pursuing eternal life for humans, if feasible? - Aging might be the condition that makes the most sense to study economically, in terms of the money spent by health systems on related problems overall. - According to Michael Graziano, immortality will be achieved by uploading human consciousness into computers. - The discussion today reminded me of this post I saw where it asked if you could live for 150 years but you had to upload your brain to the metaverse and give up your real body, would you? - Would you upload your brain? - Yes, but uploading a copy of your brain into a computer means there are two of you, and computational irreducibility means that the two are different from each other! - Is bureaucratic inefficiency analogous to aging in biological systems? That the system over time grinds to a halt and dies due to build up of systematic inefficiencies? Can we apply life extension to institutions?