A Google Engineer Who's Right About Everything Says We're 8 Years from Achieving Human Immortality

Source - A former Google engineer has made a stark realization that humans will achieve immortality in eight years - and 86 percent of his 147 predictions have been correct.

Ray Kurzweil spoke with the YouTube channel Adagio, discussing the expansion in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics, which he believes will lead to age-reversing 'nanobots.' 

These tiny robots will repair damaged cells and tissues that deteriorate as the body ages and make us immune to diseases like cancer. ...

Now the former Google engineer believes technology is set to become so powerful it will help humans live forever, in what is known as the singularity. 

Singularity is a theoretical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution, LifeBoat reports.

Impossible as this idea sounds, who are any of us to question Ray Kurzweil's judgment here? Ask yourself if you've ever been right about 86 percent of anything in your life. Doing things at that level for a single day and you're just 14 percent away from Reaganing. Nap Lajoie has the highest single season batting average in MLB history at .426, which is less than half of Kurzweil's .860. 

Let's look at this this way: Suppose one of the guys making picks on Barstool had his on 86% of his picks through the first four rounds? Would you listen to his Final Four picks before jumping on the Sportsbook this weekend? And even though I feel like "nanobots" is right up there with "quantum" as one of those Sci-Fi buzzwords we use to explain anything that seems impossible, is it any less plausible than Miami, UConn, San Diego St. and Florida Atlantic? I think not. 

But like anything Sci-Fi that sounds really desirable, it's worth pausing to think it all the way through. To play out all the ramifications and decide if it's really what we want. Don't get me wrong. Little machines that will eat the cancer right out of someone you love is an absolute pure good. In my WEEI days I got to visit Dana-Farber in preparation for the Jimmy Fund Radiothon. And no one could possible walk through there and meet those families and not want to fill the air with immortality nanobots like glitter at a sorority party. 

And let's not limit the desire to sick children. The answer to the question "Who the hell wants live to be 100?" is always, "A 99-year-old." But if every piece of fiction ever created where someone is playing god is correct - and I'm suggesting they are - there are always unintended consequences to these things. 

Yes, I truly believe that the world will be better off if 100 percent of the population that is me keeps on living. I'd say most people feel the same way about their own selves. But are we really going to apply this to everybody? I mean, what about the douchebags? Are we going to keep them around forever too? What about assholes? People who argue politics and religion on Facebook? That guy who parked across the lines because his new, cherry pickup is more important than your right to get a space? The person who microwaves leftover fish at work? The guy who talks to you from the next stall when you're trying to drop a deuce in peace? Do you really want to be dealing with them until the heat death of the universe? 

Not to mention what this will do to the time-honored tradition of waiting for insufferable old relatives to die so you can get the money they didn't get around to spending. Is estate planning just going to go away? What about Golddigging? How are ugly, rich old men supposed to get laid by younger social-climbing women once they realize that life savings is going to go to keeping the immortal old geezer alive? Then you're dealing with the Multiplier Effect of what this will do to funeral homes, crematories, cemeteries. They'll have to trick out all those hearses in order to convert them into party buses for bachelorette parties. 

Then again, there's the Celebrity Death industry, which will be put out of business for good. No more office Death Pools. No In Memoriam segments at the awards shows. The people on the network newscasts who produce the pretaped death segments will be out of work:

No special commemorative People magazines with Betty White on the cover. We wouldn't even have been celebrating her longevity and saying what a national treasure she was. She'd just have been another old bag cheating death thanks to modern tech. Worst of all, the UK will probably go under without the tourist revenue coming in to honor their latest dead Royal. We'll just have that jug-eared creep as King for time immemorial.

I heard once that if you're on the waiting list for Packers season tickets is so long that, at the current rate of attrition, the name at the bottom won't get seats for another hundred years. Under Kurweil's plan, the first name on the list won't ever see theirs either. It'll just be the same 78,350 sitting in the same seats for eternity. And depending on how these nanobots work, possibly watching the same players. That doesn't sound like paradise to me; it sounds like the ironic ending of an especially grim Twilight Zone. A cautionary tale that teaches you to be careful what you wish for. 

So yeah, thanks Google exec. But no thanks. Keep me alive all you want, just long as I still look 50 when I'm 10,000,050. Just don't forget there are people the rest of us don't want to keep around any longer than we have to.