I Wanna Be Immortal

[Cognisant]

(video removed by popular demand)

"So how you gonna do it?"

The question is both philosophical and technical, before you can even start figuring out how you're going to achieve immortality you need to figure out what immortality is, what does it mean to not die, what is death, what is life?

Please don't link to earlier threads where this has been discussed, it can be beneficial to start a conversation all over again.

 

[ElderToadstool]

Did you really open a discussion about eternal life with a Nickelback video?

 

[giaduck]

^^ I second that!

 

[walfin]

Even if I had biological immortality I'd probably off myself sooner or later.

Then again I think immortality would make people a lot more responsible.

 

[Cognisant]

Did you really open a discussion about eternal life with a Nickelback video?

^^ I second that!

Fine, fine, *flips them off while linking*

YouTube - Pornophonique - I want to be a machine HIGH QUALITY with lyrics

Alternative enough?

 

[ElderToadstool]

In all seriousness I don't think that a single body could remain alive for over say two hundred years. However, if we developed a method of transferring consciousness to organic or mechanical bodies which can be continually tended to and repaired when necessary I think that some approximation of immortality might be possible.

Although in my opinion the only thing worse than eternal death would be eternal life.

 

[typus]

In all seriousness I don't think that a single body could remain alive for over say two hundred years. However, if we developed a method of transferring consciousness to organic or mechanical bodies which can be continually tended to and repaired when necessary I think that some approximation of immortality might be possible.

Although in my opinion the only think worse than eternal death would be eternal life.

Living two hundred years would be nuddin', scanning a consciousness without losing too much on the other hand...

 

[Black Rose]

YouTube - Forever young: Secret of eternal life revealed by Russian science?

 

[warryer]

Become a symbol.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Although in my opinion the only thing worse than eternal death would be eternal life.

I agree, it is torture, a hell of sorts, in its self.

 

[James Black]

I've been thinking ever since that link someone posted about being able to back our minds up on harddrives by 2050. I'm not sure, but I think they're selling it wrong. Is being able to back your mind up truly immortality? I think my memories and personality are different entities from my consciousness, and if my mind was copied to another body, I don't think my consciousness would follow. I think this is a more religious/spiritual debate, though---what is a consciousness?

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I think it's totally possible the essence, spirit or soul of a human could be engraved in the brain. It's kind of similar to how every person is born with a different fingerprint, well every person could have been born with a different brain.

 

[giaduck]

I think immortality would suck if i were only my consciousness on a machine. I like eating and watching movies, bicycle rides and playing with my toddler. As a machine I don't think I could do much more than sit there and...think. I see the looming possibility of going mad.

 

[jhb]

I thought immortality was my deepest dream, and death my deepest fear. But my real desire is freedom. Freedom from constraint, freedom the limitations of the human body, freedom from time, freedom from this lousy little planet (not that there is anything wrong with it, but there's probably several entire universes out there, and not getting a chance to explore more than this (planet), bothers me.) and so on.

Also, body, mind and soul. For me the taught of a soul or spirit independent from my mind, which I consider the true me, is ... disturbing. I don't think it exists, and if I did, I would try to kill it, or at least control it. Having a soul separate from my conscious mind reminds me to much of possession. Maybe my spirit is my emotions, they always felt separate from me. Anyways, a supernatural spirit can not exist, per my chosen definition of supernatural as beyond natural, and my chosen definition of natural as simply everything that exists.

My body I think of as I think of computer hardware, expendable, a vessel. I like to think of my mind as information, evolving, changing software code, that, hopefully, can be copied and moved. If this is the case, as I hope it is, the possibilities are endless.

One could divide one's conscious mind over multiple bodies, all networked together, or split up into multiple entities, maybe to explore the stars while one simultaneously live back on Earth, later to merge all the instances of oneself into one being again, if all of them actually want to, of course. Imagine being betrayed by oneself! I don't know what others think, but that is my imagined paradise (No, not betraying myself, am i being unclear? I imagine I am). How to accomplish this in real life? I have no idea.

But i keep dreaming, as humanity have dreamt of flying in ages past (Isn't flight also a form of freedom? I hope to someday acquire a private pilot's license) only to finally succeed after thousands of years of dreaming. I think we only need knowledge, knowledge and more knowledge about how exactly the human brain functions, so we can replicate it, improve it, and read and copy it's contents.

The philosophical issues are interesting, although, ultimately I simply don't care. I simply want to be free. For those thinking immortality would be some kind of hell, you always have the option of suicide, at least as I imagine it.

The practical issues. How are one supposed to know what technologies will come during the next few thousand years? It is just as foolish, if not more so, to say that immortality will never be as possible as it is to say it might, one day. (Hopefully before the universe ends.) I just wish it would be possible within fifty years, so that I would be able to experience it, thought I know the chances are slim, especially since these issues doesn't get the attention they deserve, but i will keep on dreaming.

Also, robots and computers are fucking awesome, and I want to be one.
(Although not a mindless drone, as that smiley seems to be.)

(Communicating would also be so much simpler if one could simply upload and download thoughts to one another.)

 

[muzza]

The surivival of the human race was only possible with death. Species need to alter their dna through the cycle life to adapt to a changing environment and survive - evolution.

If scientists manage to isolate and remove the "ageing gene", you can stop growing old yes, but dont you find this idea abit repulsive? All your family and friends growing old without you. The world moving as you stay still.

And, I dont think you could ever take humans consciousness and place it in a machine. The idea of isolation something that is and, hopefully, will always be, abstract, seems impossible.

My best hope is that I dont die of cancer or any of the other many horrible diseases out there.

I just wanna live a long mostly enjoyable life till I see one of these guys,



Or, more probably, this:

____________________

 

[Anthile]

The surivival of the human race was only possible with death.

If scientists manage to isolate and remove the "ageing gene", you can stop growing old yes, but dont you find this idea abit repulsive? All your family and friends growing old without you. The world moving as you stay still.

I find the idea of a single "aging gene" highly dubious. I always detest it when scientists throw around terms like this. Same with the 'god particle'. Like it really means what it says. Okay, it's mostly the media but come on.

 

[Cognisant]

Imagine being betrayed by oneself!

I do, all the time.
Trying to out double-think myself is fun, not particularly sane, but still fun.

dont you find this idea abit repulsive? All your family and friends growing old without you. The world moving as you stay still.

People with such a mindset shouldn't be given the option of immortality, the only reason you're "staying still" is because you're stuck in the past with the (dead or otherwise gone) friends & family you're unable to let go of. Y'know those people who go to bars night after night to drink and reminisce about their “glory days”, imo they're already dead, just ghosts that have yet to find their place in oblivion.

And, I dont think you could ever take humans consciousness and place it in a machine. The idea of isolation something that is and, hopefully, will always be, abstract, seems impossible.

Not directly, the brain is the physical manifestation of consciousness, the mind is the brain, it's not like a computer with separate hardware and software, the brain's "software" is the functioning of the neurons themselves. To escape death (because the brain can't be kept alive forever) one needs to somehow die without dying, i.e. transfer their consciousness from one medium to another without loosing continuity, which is a really hard technical hurdle.

 

[James Black]

To escape death (because the brain can't be kept alive forever) one needs to somehow die without dying, i.e. transfer their consciousness from one medium to another without loosing continuity, which is a really hard technical hurdle.

This is the thought process I've been considering. I like the idea of my mind surviving the ages, but it is my consciousness that is more important to me. Why? Because the moment that dies, it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if my memories and personalities live on: it won't be me. I won't miraculously come back from the blackness of nonexistence to take the mind/body I was uploaded to. It'll be another consciousness with my memories and personality. It'll be, essentially, a waste. A failed attempt at prolonging my life that would only result in a clone of me.



Edit: also, I would probably opt for a shared consciousness before a transfer of consciousness. I'm not sure you could properly test if a transfer worked with 100% certainty. I mean, the second body wouldn't necessarily know if it was the same consciousness or a clone of the first made last minute, would it? To the second consciousness, it would be the same. It would think it was the first.

 

[muzza]

I find the idea of a single "aging gene" highly dubious.

Well, at first glance it does seem rather silly, like time travel or magic, though infact it is much more simple and scientific.

If you trace humans back to when they were small organisms, the process of ageing was necessary to survive. The old organisms needed discarding as sustaining them was no longer worthwhile, and new ones with improved, adapted genetics needed to be born. So when given the choice, an ageing gene was the obvious pick when considering the long term survivability.

Since then million years have passed, and we continue to age because thats what we've always done. But when it comes down to it, this is all due to a bit of stuff in our brain whose function is to tell everything to age.

Testing all this out is another thing. For one, it would take years to get results on humans. For now we must be content studying good old mice (see Animekitty's post)

People with such a mindset shouldn't be given the option of immortality

People with such a mindset should be the only ones given the option of immortality, so we can say no and not abuse it
I mean who decides who of us are allowed to be immortal?

 

[jhb]

Natural selection in today's western society? It is only getting easier to survive, and it is not exactly getting harder. It is my belief that natural evolution works far to slow to keep up with today's constantly changing world. We need to take evolution in our own hands.

I am aware that the structure of the brain itself is part of the mind. It is my hope that we somehow will be able to copy and replicate this structure, maybe as some kind of virtual machine.

Who should decide who becomes immortal? The individual itself of course. It is not the kind of decision anybody else could take. If one doesn't want to live forever? Fine, then don't. However if the technology existed, then who would have the right to stop me?

And, seriously, I do not want immortality to be doing the same old things as I've always done.

 

[Oblivious]

If immortality, or any sort of life extension treatment, should be developed, it might go a way to solving the aging population problem we are having in many of the developed nations. However, we would then have to implement more stringent birth control measures to ensure we do not reach a Malthusian disaster.

If immortality becomes widespread, I would foresee each nation eventually having a limit on its total population size that would be tied to its economic standing and carrying capacity.

 

[Anthile]

If you have immortality technology and you don't give it to everyone - does that count as murder?

 

[Words]

You mean: is the "key" to immortality a "medicine"? Is death a disease?

Personally, I seek immortality for materialistic purposes...

I think Population would be a "no problem" in an era of "immortality"-level technological advancement. Increase supply, Infinite Energy etc etc. Humanity could populate infinitely.


"How to do it?"

Science, of course. How? Dunno.

"How to do it?"

Death, of course. There is immortality after death. Existence is eternal. Energy does not vanish.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I am aware that the structure of the brain itself is part of the mind. It is my hope that we somehow will be able to copy and replicate this structure, maybe as some kind of virtual machine.

Do you really want something so unethical to be available to unregulated institutions?

If you have immortality technology and you don't give it to everyone - does that count as murder?

What about this: Everyone who lives dies, so in a sense giving birth to a life is essentially creating their death.

 

[Oblivious]

If you have immortality technology and you don't give it to everyone - does that count as murder?

That's an interesting question, one that has implications for medical ethics.

I guess that even today, medical procedures cost money, and so too would any immortality treatment. Many people today go without medical treatment simply because they cannot afford it; its expensive. That's why universal healthcare in the UK is such a big thing, and why the democrats in the US have pushed so hard for it. There is some merit to the idea that basic healthcare should be sponsored by the government.

However, we can't blame the doctors for not treating patients for free. They paid for their expensive education and are entitled to a salary that befits their academic accomplishments. Hospitals are also limited in resources and are either for profit or not. In any case, medical treatment has always been costly. I would see an immortality treatment being exceptionally costly.

If immortality becomes widespread, I would foresee each nation eventually having a limit on its total population size that would be tied to its economic standing and carrying capacity.

I just noticed I opened up a huge can of worms by suggesting that governments should have control over a very personal choice about whether or not people can have a baby. This would likely only become pressing to implement if resources required to sustain a population are clearly becoming stretched. I am no expert, but there are musings I have heard here and there that our food economy is not sustainable at all, and that our current abundance is just a borrowed one.

More about food economy:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4212613816403909417#

 

[Auburn]

*sneaks in for two minutes*

I just wanted to say something pertaining to the "would the new me really be 'Me'" issue.

The way I'd personally go about this - and preserve my integrity to Self - is by something similar to James Cameron's version of transcendence in Avatar. In the movie the audience is taken through a journey in which the protagonist starts to identify more with his new body than his old body - and then the old world starts to become a dream while the dream becomes the reality. And at the end of the movie, when the complete transfer is made to the new body, it feels completely legitimate to the audience. No loss of identity is percieved, or at least, I didn't think there was. >> It all happened very naturally.

Similarly, before the complete transfer is made to the new body, I'd link the new body to my organic brain and control it remotely. I would control it by will just as I control my current body, while my original body stays laying down somewhere connected to wires.

I would grow accustomed to it for a few weeks and wait until I mentally, emotionally and physiologically reached the hurdle where I "claim" this new body as my own - where I identify it as the legitimate Me. I need to not only rationally understand that my identity wouldn't be lost in the process* - but tangibly feel it.

I would then, in my cybernetic form, while connected to my organic consciousness, press the button myself that disconnects and destroys my organic mind. So essentially, the organic mind itself would be consenting to a self-destruct, suicide, and deciding to pass on itself to this new form. Rebirth.


* = (because I am, after all, only chemical clockwork - having no literal Soul - thus there really isn't any Me to be lost anyhow. it's just an updating to a more efficient clockwork)

 

[jhb]

Do you really want something so unethical to be available to unregulated institutions?

Yes.

Regarding overpopulation, is not the optimal population of Earth supposed to be something like five million people? I think overpopulation is going to be a real issue sooner or later anyway. Hopefully we will be able to colonize other planets. After all, if one is immortal, a thousand year long space flight in hibernation should not be much of an issue?

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Hopefully we will be able to colonize other planets. After all, if one is immortal, a thousand year long space flight in hibernation should not be much of an issue?

Ahh I forgot about space exploration. I'd definitely take on the job of journeying to new planets...

 

[James Black]

More important than inter-space colonization, I'll be glad when travelling from planet to planet or system to system is a mere few hours or days--- At the very least, if we find a way to have information travel fast. Its ironic that our civilization has grown to such technological heights that we can share information across different sides of the planet in seconds: even though before, we'd have to travel and carry information by hand, I wonder how we'll handle having to go back to that while we colonize space.

 

[EditorOne]

Do we need to keep living to be immortal? And is being dead the same as being gone? A great many folks believe that so long as you are remembered, you aren't gone, you're still part of their life. That's maybe a quontum foam kind of twist, but consider: Is Socrates gone, or is he still a force every time his thinking is applied, let alone when his name is specifically brought up? I've found this idea, that you're not really gone until you're forgotten, quite present and quite articulated in the rural and small-town south of America, interestingly enough.

That was in respect to the second part of the original question, "What is" immortality.

Meanwhile, on the staying alive forever part, there was a mildly interesting show in the past year or so, I think it ws called Amsterdam or New Amsterdam, about this issue. A fellow granted immortality for an act of mercy in the 1600s in New York now has to deal with some of the very issues raised here, including women he becomes involved with growing old while he remains in his early 30s, having a son who is old enough to be his father, and having to explain why he knows things about the city nobody else knows. He is a police detective, and one of the twists, as I recall, is that he never really denies he's immortal but that possibility never suggests itself to anyone even when it's left as the only explanation possible for some of the stuff he knows and does. "Highlander" dealt with some of the same issues, with the caveat that the immortals tried to camouflage their immortality to some extent to avoid others all questing to be the last man standing.
I'd not mind immortality so long as I had curiosity. I plan to live as long as possible just to see how things turn out.

 

[snafupants]

If you have immortality technology and you don't give it to everyone - does that count as murder?

yes, allowing gods breath to run its course is murder; life is a devils gift.

 

[phial]

I want to be immortal because I wish to possess all knowledge.


Reminds me of The Last Question by Issac Asimov.

 

[gruesomebrat]

Regarding overpopulation, is not the optimal population of Earth supposed to be something like five million people? I think overpopulation is going to be a real issue sooner or later anyway. Hopefully we will be able to colonize other planets. After all, if one is immortal, a thousand year long space flight in hibernation should not be much of an issue?

Hmm, OK, first things first... I hope the green text was supposed to be 5 billion people. Otherwise, we are already approaching 14 times the optimal population.

The red text raises a very good point though. If immortality becomes a possibility, I think the first people who should get it should be space colonists. This will allow them to not only get to their destination alive, but also start to build the colony up.

I've noticed two potential issues regarding immortality haven't come up yet, though? As things stand, women only have a finite number of eggs. Would immortality change that, or would women be sterile for eternity after hitting menopause at roughly the same time? If that were the case, then birth control becomes somewhat less of a concern, but the human race still grows at the same rate we are now.

Second, will an immortal's baby be immortal? If so, we have the problem mentioned by Oblivious; that being that our resources may not be able to sustain us. If not, we run into a worse problem: immortal dictators. Let's face it. You leave you home planet, to go colonize another planet. After traveling 250 light years from home, you arrive at your destination, and work to introduce some semblance of civilization to it. Are you really going to let one of your offspring take control of your colony from you, when he's going to die within 75 years anyway? I think not.

 

[EvilScientist Trainee]

I remember reading a text (probably on cracked.com) which mentioned that eternal life would suck because of the notion of passing time.

For instance, when you were 6 years old, your school break seemed to last forever. But when you turn 20, the same time that used to be your school break passes too fast. That happens because, let's say, an year, for a 6 year old kid is the same as 1/6th of its life. But to a 20 year old, it's 1/20th of their life.

When you live forever, time just seems to pass faster and faster. Soon, people who lived with you, for example, your gf/wife, just became like someone you hooked up at a party. As it passes, people would eventually become just bubbles, living and dying faster that you'd mind.

So, that makes me feel like immortality is quite bad, indeed.

 

[Puffy]

Do you think immortals would lose human status if they attained eternal life?

 

[Cognisant]

When you live forever, time just seems to pass faster and faster. Soon, people who lived with you, for example, your gf/wife, just became like someone you hooked up at a party. As it passes, people would eventually become just bubbles, living and dying faster that you'd mind.

So, that makes me feel like immortality is quite bad, indeed.

Good sir, you wholly underestimate my misanthropy.
I for one think that would be awesome.

For instance, when you were 6 years old, your school break seemed to last forever. But when you turn 20, the same time that used to be your school break passes too fast. That happens because, let's say, an year, for a 6 year old kid is the same as 1/6th of its life. But to a 20 year old, it's 1/20th of their life.

Actually it's to do with rate of learning, time passes slowly for the six year old because everything is new and novel to them, but as time passes and the same experiences are had again and again one simply stops remembering them, for example what did you have for dinner three nights ago? Now of course the idea that time is passing slower or faster is complete nonsense, it's just the perception of time passing that changes, as one makes fewer and fewer memories one's past will seem upon reflection to be speeding up, in principle it's like having fewer frames in an animation.

Although if people have become so mundane to you that you’ve simply stopped remembering them… we that’s somewhat telling isn’t it? Let’s make sex the example, if you’ve only ever had sex once you’re never going to forget the person you had it with, but if you have sex many times then you’re only going to remember the times it was in some way meaningful or remarkable, or recent.

@-Puffy
Would they want human status?

 

[Jesse]

Eternal Life is kind of my worst nightmare, unless I could end it after lots of years.

 

[Cognisant]

Eternal Life is kind of my worst nightmare

Yet day by day you continue living... ?

At what point does the "good thing" of living a long life become the "bad thing" of having eternal life, unless of course you believe in an afterlife, or maybe you're just having a sour grapes reaction (you can't have it so you tell yourself you don't want it).

 

[Jesse]

If this life continued on and on it wouldn't mean anything. In don't think there's an afterlife but I think death is something everyone experiences and it would be a shame if I miss it. About 2500 years is about the point I think will death is preferable. I can think of many ways eternal life would have a down side. Getting buried alive stuff like that. I just think eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

 

[Cognisant]

In don't think there's an afterlife but I think death is something everyone experiences and it would be a shame if I miss it.

...you want to experience death
Tell me how does one experience the cessation of experience?

I can think of many ways eternal life would have a down side. Getting buried alive stuff like that.

Rest assured this thread was never about eternal life by magical means.

 

[Jesse]

You don't, but unlike you I don't fear it. Sorry about not reading the opening post. I suppose humanity could achieve a near eternal life after solving the age problem. Relatively soon I suppose, maybe in the next 500 years, what with cloning taking care of the biological side and finding out how the brain works figuring out the rest of it. Within our life time cryogenics would advance far enough. There you go, eternal life! Achievement unlocked. Eternal life is unbroken consciousness (I wonder if cryogenics would break the conscious?). Any other response is invalid as it's not the same. I suppose I would define eternal life as doing the exact same thing I'm doing now but forever which is why the brain in the jar argument wouldn't work as I don't consider that life.

 

[EvilScientist Trainee]

Good sir, you wholly underestimate my misanthropy.
I for one think that would be awesome.


Actually it's to do with rate of learning, time passes slowly for the six year old because everything is new and novel to them, but as time passes and the same experiences are had again and again one simply stops remembering them, for example what did you have for dinner three nights ago? Now of course the idea that time is passing slower or faster is complete nonsense, it's just the perception of time passing that changes, as one makes fewer and fewer memories one's past will seem upon reflection to be speeding up, in principle it's like having fewer frames in an animation.

Although if people have become so mundane to you that you’ve simply stopped remembering them… we that’s somewhat telling isn’t it? Let’s make sex the example, if you’ve only ever had sex once you’re never going to forget the person you had it with, but if you have sex many times then you’re only going to remember the times it was in some way meaningful or remarkable, or recent.

Good points. Eternal Life would be more interesting if contact with humans was reduced to a certain point. If I had eternity to pursue my intellectual interests, then it'd be a good thing.

Also, you're right about the memories. The math on that line of thought is easy for me to be carried with, but your explanations also seems to fit the truth. If a memory is remarkable enough, it shall be probably longlasting.

But one way or another, wouldn't the notion of time be changed? Whether it is a sixth of a person life or it is at 30 frames per year. When you got old, these rates will change nevertheless, thus giving a notion os speeding up.

And I apologize for understimating your misanthropy.

 

[Cognisant]

You don't, but unlike you I don't fear it.

Do I now?
I suppose, yes, in the sense that I don't want to die, but this fear isn't the fear of the unknown, I know quite well what death is, nor is this the irrational fear of negative association (the process of dying hurts, so it must be a bad thing), I understand quite well that beyond death there is no suffering, none at all, much unlike life. No, you see my fear (if you can call it that) of death is simply a side effect of enjoying life, it is because I love living that death is undesirable to me, it would be the loss of everything I have in live, and I am not the least bit ashamed about fearing that.

Consider if you will the possibility of being "backed up" like a computer hard drive, if you die and are restored from the backup have you really escaped death, well no, but then who are you, what are you? Considering who we are is merely a concept, and what we are is in constant transition, death is actually quite moot, because we are in effect constantly dying, so then does it really matter if the restored you isn't, well, you?
I wonder about this a lot.

 

[Jesse]

Cognisant me and you have different world views. If we had a back up it wouldn't work the same as the speed of our brain is different than the speed of computers which would create different thought patterns. Maybe if there was a biological copy of our brain and we transfered our mind somehow we would come out the same but this is all so far into the realm of hypothetical it's moot.