[ExI] Future Bodies

[Ben]

Anders quoth:

"If humans decide to maintain a building it can last indefinitely."

Yes.  I'd like to paraphrase that:
If humans decide to maintain their bodies they can last indefinitely. 
(with a little rearrangement to make that possible).

I'm of the opinion that human bodies should be more like cars (not in 
form, but conceptually).  Nobody expects to have to take a chainsaw to 
the bonnet when they need to change their battery.  Cars are designed to 
be opened up and worked on with no harm to the superstructure.  We 
should be the same.  Evolution dictates differently, but we're all about 
transcending evolution, aren't we?

Things like Aubrey de Grey's SENS are a step in the right direction, but 
don't go far enough, imo.  We need to be bolder, and take the 
'engineering' concept much further.  Rather than just figuring out how 
to keep the body the same, but lasting longer, I reckon the way forward 
is to redesign the body to make it easy to replace faulty parts, improve 
it, actually realise the ideal of morphological freedom, and eliminate 
the scourge of unchosen physiology.  And make major surgery a LOT less 
ouchy.  And quicker.

I don't really see much value in learning to simply shore up the kludges 
that evolution has landed us with (backwards eyes with lenses made of 
*protein*, ffs!, a skeleton virtually guaranteed to give us back 
problems after a few decades, that bloody stupid laryngeal nerve, a 
thymus that curls up and dies after a few short years, etc., etc...).  
Imagine what any half-decent engineer would come up with if asked to 
design a body for an intelligent, self-aware, curious, fun-loving 
being.  I doubt it would resemble our current vessels all that much.  It 
certainly wouldn't go all wrinkly, painful and stupid after a few 
decades.  And it would be *easy to maintain*, dammit!

My thinking on this is still at a fairly early stage.  Comments, 
constructive criticism, etc., all welcome.  (don't bother if you're 
going to say things like "Nature knows best", "Don't mess with god's 
plan", etc.  Because,  you know, nature actually does a pretty shitty 
job (just good enough to have kids, then you're in the bin!), and there 
is no god).

Ben Zaiboc