Immortality
- Started
- Last post
- 52 Responses
- Crouwel0
it's weird to think that some small percentage of nters will die before they reach my age
Rand
(Jul 18 07, 09:20)i think you mean that only a very small percentage of NT'ers could even become that old.
- Crouwel0
insert youtube link
- Nairn0
*decides to kill Rand earlier than planned.
- ribit0
The principle of this is easy.... Its more likely the brain (and why not the whole body?) will be duplicated/grown as a biological/computer hybrid.. so what you have is a total duplicate that doesnt age...
then you just set it to 'record' mode... so as you go about your life in your 'original' body, the copy (should I say 'backup'?) is kept as closely 'synched' as possible with the 'live' original...
and then if you get run over by a bus or whatever... they simply power up your clone, and off you go again (maybe minus a few hours of missing backups)...and they of course keep a few duplicates..so it doesn't matter if the new 'you' also gets run over by a bus on the way out of the clinic...
its easy... (apart from the cloning bit)
- version30
long term investing means everyone will be rich and overpopulation will cause the young to kill off the old.
it's not the natural order, i doubt it would work.
"ghost in the shell" anyone?
- Nairn0
the whole backup premise is flawed in that it's a cosmetic elastoplast for the benefit of peripheral society - not the individual who dies suddenly and tragically.
if I die in some future deathmatch (instaGibbed by some lurking cretin, no doubt) and society invigorates a new physical host with my knowledge and character - no matter how effective and accurate it does this, it won't be me. It will be a facsimile of me. This new creature might well become me and be seen by friends to be me - but it won't be me. I died. And here I lie, rotting.
So what's the point?
- mikotondria20
People who have lost limbs can be fitted with prosthetics that can be controlled using equipment that responds to the part of the brain involved in movement intention, therefore in theory we could replace the whole of the body with a machine similarly wired to the brain..
Of course we could very well have 'bodies' that are far more capable and powerful than our standard organic issue.. Nerve cells can be integrated with, and eventually replaced by silicon alternatives..If this just happened one by one, you wouldnt be aware of it - eventually you really will be non-organic..
With everyones concious control piped into the net, we will, when the next cometry impact occurs be able to exist underground, in a series of massively parallel computer complexes, able to engineer remotely at the surface, using robotic instruments to maintain power supply, repair faults etc.. Our internal world would be almost indistinguishable from the matrix, as we waited out the 10's of 1000's of years of inhospitability above ground.. Similarly, this will give us the real capability to extend life indefinately for interstellar travel, although by then we will be able to travel as quantumly holographic packages of light itself, which can be read and downloaded by any decently advanced civilisaztion...
Take enough mushrooms, look up and to the right in your mind's eye and eventually you can see all this taking place..
- Nairn0
Have you written that here before, mikotondria2, or am I paddling in deja vu?
- TR-8080
Cogito ergo sum
- mikotondria20
hey nairn, I probably have written bits of it before, it's something thats been quite clear to me for a long time.
Get me drunk enough and I'll hammer on and on about it, eventually annoying those unlucky enough to listen to a point that ironically, threatens my own immortality.
When gfx and 3d apps are a little more powerful and easier to use, on better machines, I'll illustrate the idea, including the marvellous spectacles of humanity and the rest of nature in perfect sustainable harmony, a mile thick on the surface of the earth, hyperdimensional commune with supraintelligent alien civilizations of this universe and others, and the then equivalent of the iPhone, which inexplicably has a very unreliable subspace network and only 200 txt messages for 1million future dollars.
- emokid0
From the dawn of time we came, moving silently down through the centuries. Living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering, when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you... until now.
- Sickman0
hopefully by the time someone could engineer such a computer the world would be interesting enough to want to live forever.
- Boz0
if I die in some future deathmatch (instaGibbed by some lurking cretin, no doubt) and society invigorates a new physical host with my knowledge and character - no matter how effective and accurate it does this, it won't be me. It will be a facsimile of me. This new creature might well become me and be seen by friends to be me - but it won't be me. I died. And here I lie, rotting.
So what's the point?
Nairn
(Jul 18 07, 10:11)Well now exactly, this is the question. What makes a man a human being? A live individual? Is it your memories? Your consciousness of your own existence? You physical body?
Some believe that if you transfer memories and prexisting consciousness you essentially transfered the soul, meaning that it would be still YOU, just not in a physical body of your previous self.
Now, having this in mind, we can with almost 100% certainty say that no machine can become a replacement for a human no matter how much data we transfer as it lacks emotions and reasoning, but, on the other hand, a newly born baby (artifically created through a donor, most likely yourself), filled with memories and experiences from your previous physical body would create a pretty close replica of yourself. You genetic material would be in it, your eseential characteristics but also including all your experience and memories.
This wouldn't be necessary cloning, but a natural way of prolonging one's existence in another body that is pretty much a piece of you to being with.
- ribit0
A perfect copy of you must BE you.... or what particular qualities do you think the perfect copy - which has all your physical characteristics and ALL your experiences (apart from the bit where you went under the bus) -would not have?
- flavorful0
I wish I had the knowledge of growing up before I grew up ... I would have started reading Machiavelli in 2nd grade as opposed to 4th and saved myself 2 whole years of being blind.
Things I am going to tell my kid:
"You like sports? Well pick one and put all your talents towards it if you want to pursue it later in life, otherwise you are just going to be moderately good compared to your full potential if given the time to achieve it. Which is pointless. Unless you want to be well-rounded and meet new people and such."
"Use everyone, and smile in their face."
"Don't eat the yellow snow."
- mikotondria20
Discussions on the nature of personal consciousness, as have been externalized by our collective urge to develop technology, eventually lead to questions on the nature of self - it is a uniquely human concept, brought about by the dichotomous maps of the world produced by language-based internal models of ourselves.
Ultimately, there is only one 'I' in the universe - that which looks through your eyes looks through mine, however locally modulated by mental process into the grand, ultimate illusion of many 'people', and 'things'.
We will need a thorough mathematical understanding of this, from studying the singular quantum states of the super conductive aspects of our own nervous systems before we can successfully engineer off board 'mind meld' technologies, and explore the infinite, ancient, and highly and strangely populated hyperspaces that underly everything we currently perceive as 'real'.
- ribit0
what he said...
- skelly_b0
It is primarily Western idea mind and body are separate things. Last I checked the brain is just one of many organs that make up an individual. Western thought leads us to point to our heads when asked where "I" exists, while other cultures would point to their heart. My point being all of you including your experiences, memories, and current environment make you an individual. Soon one of those changes, as all of them will you are esentially someone else entirely.
- Boz0
I don't think I would mind if they "transplanted" my memories, experiences and all brain info to another physical body. As long as I maintain conciousness about my existence and I can remember everything that happened prior to the physical body change.
I am pretty sure that this technology will be possible in not so distant future, however one thing I don't know how you might transfer, is for example talent. I mean talent is not really related to memories or experiences, it just exists in some and not in others. Design for example, I mean you learn and watch a million artistic pieces, yet you will not become talented.
I'm not sure about this.
- GreedoLives0
What purpose would saving human consciousnesses serve? If you keep their personalities, it'll be just as likely they'll be bored, annoyed, cranky and lazy as they were in real life. They might not get along with others. Whats the value of keeping a consciousness around, since it's pretty easy to create new life? Why deny yourself the ultimate mystery of death?
If you had a giant computer filled with a billion minds, what's the use if noone ever looks at them, like an external harddrive filled with crap 'just in case'? If you erase a mind, on purpose, or by accident, is it murder?