This talk took place at the Conference Center Golden Gate Room at Fort Mason Center, San Francisco.

Description by Stewart Brand:

Our germline cells (eggs and sperm) are already immortal. What if the rest of the cells of our body could acquire the same ability? Tissue by tissue, one degenerative disease after another, it could gradually happen in the course of one or two human generations. When it does happen, what we mean by “generation” changes completely.

Thanks to Proposition 71, which funds embryonic stem cell research, California is now the frontier of the key technology for rejuvenating human cells, tissues, and organs; for not just treating but curing lethal diseases. MICHAEL WEST, founder of Geron and Advanced Cell Technology, has been in the thick of regenerative biomedicine since the early ’90s.

As soon as normal human life spans begin to increase beyond 100 years, on purpose, everything we think and do will change.

Will it really happen? If so, how soon?

Michael West has been in the thick of cures for human aging since his work on telomerase and the founding of Geron in the 1990s. Now, as chair and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, he is a leader in the use of embryonic stem cells and cloning for the regeneration of aging tissue and organs. He is author of “The Immortal Cell: One Scientist’s Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging.”

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With the Republican control of the House and Senate, there is no scenario in which a Democrat can become President by August 2005 (the two-year horizon of my original Bet). Looking at the two arguments, Eno’s is persuasive in detail, mine clearly wrong.

The morning after the election I wrote Eno my summary of what happened and the prospects…

Dear Brian,

You win, we lose. My country is in a bad way and getting worse. Exit polls said that Bush supporters voted for his “moral values.” For “strong and wrong versus weak and right,” as Bill Clinton has put it.

Bin Laden won. He tried against all odds to set in motion a religious war, and he succeeded. The US majority WANTS a religious war of good against evil. Irrationality rules here, and as a result a very cynical Republican party rules— Presidency, Senate, House, judiciary, governorships, and state legislatures. They own America and are running it at a profit.

The unreported divide: educated Americans voted strongly for Kerry, the uneducated for Bush.

Kerry and the Democrats did everything as right as could be. They couldn’t have fielded a stronger candidate, nor worked harder individually to get out the huge vote. Bush’s war in Iraq went as badly as it possibly could, yet he was not held accountable.

Now I can only hope for your scenario to play out—Bush has to suffer the consequences of his own incompetence. But it will be a bleak four years. Irrationality feeds on failure. As things get worse, it just tries harder, gets shriller. I hate the prospect.

The turmoil will be good for the arts perhaps. We may see a revival of the religious left.

Economic wars can end; ideological wars can end. Religious wars go on and on. Long term I can imagine a new Enlightenment coming out of all this, and I will work for that.

–Stewart

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The Red Sox have won the Series and with it falls Mike Elliot’s argument around the speed of globalization vs. the Red Sox pitching depth.  Below is the write up in the New York Times.

Hey, Cliff Clavin, This Time Sam Malone’s the Smart One
By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER
The New York Times

Published: November 1, 2004

here once was a time when one of the (im)potent symbols of the luckless Red Sox Nation spent his time at a bar called Cheers. Sam “Mayday” Malone, a fictional former Boston pitcher ruined by drink, tended the bar he owned, chased his waitress, and probably placed some bets on his old team.

Now Ted Danson, the actor who portrayed Sam Malone, is making Red Sox fans proud for a different reason: as a result of Boston’s World Series victory last week, Mr. Danson won the first bet ever decided at Long Bets (longbets.org), an online prediction site that focuses on scores that may not be settled for 45 years, if ever.

The Web site, which is popular among the Silicon Valley digerati, is a spinoff from the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, whose aim is to foster long-term thinking and stimulate discussion about the future. Members make predictions, typically about topics like immigration or artificial intelligence, and other members challenge them, accompanied by a minimum wager of $200. Unlike most betting parlors, however, these contest are rarely about sports. Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Bets Foundation, said all the predictions had “some social or scientific value.”

The Red Sox bet slipped in because Michael Elliot, the editor of Time Asia, argued that the United States soccer team would win the World Cup before the Red Sox won the World Series. In an argument posted on the site, he said his larger point was that immigration and technology would improve the quality of American soccer, but that the curse of the Bambino was “one of those mystical truths that are beyond the reach of human intervention.”

Mr. Danson’s counter was also scientific. “Statistically, scoring goals is harder than hitting a home run and in the World Cup you have the whole WORLD against you,” he wrote. In baseball, he argued, “the Red Sox only really have to beat the Yankees.”

Mr. Danson, who was not available to comment, now gets to donate $2,000 (they each bet $1,000, but winners receive bragging rights but no cash, according to the site’s rules), plus interest accumulated since the wager was made in February 2002, to a charity of his choice. Mr. Elliot, a self-described Yankee fan, said in an e-mail response, “I feel sorta proud to be the first to have lost, actually!”

If Chicago Cubs fans are so inclined, there is now room for a bet on which century that team will end its World Series winless streak.

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