Weird Science: When we become immortal

[MrPopo]

For one thing: what makes humans so special as to deserve INFINITE LIFE while every other creature dies?

Simple; we have developed a way to do so.

But we haven't. I'm thinking more of comments like

I think it's our eventual destiny, living forever.

There is no material basis for the notion that human can, should, or ever theoretically might live forever.

There's a huge difference between can and should. Obviously for a lifeform such as ourselves there isn't anything on the horizon that promises we might conquer the gradual degradation of the body. Your original comment was entirely on the should, and that's what I responded to.

[samsonlonghair]

Clones are a biological construct. With our minds in a computer network, bodies become optional. We could sit comfortably in an artificial world, or we could use cameras and microphones to observe any facet of the universe.

Multiple copies of our minds could exist on the network at once. There must be a way to reconcile these copies back into one, otherwise we would indeed become distinctly different individuals.

We could, perhaps, construct a body to copy our conscious back into. This body need not be an identical clone to our original body. Strictly speaking, it need not be human. It could be a robot body, or any manner of biological construct. Your great great grandchildren may have the opportunity to copy their consciousness into an artificially created whale who can dive under the ice of the arctic circle or a robot in the farthest-flung interstellar satellite. When the whale breaches the surface or the satellite re-establishes contact with the earth, your great great grandchildren can copy their consciousness back into the network.

[MrPopo]

This dips into the realm of "what is consciousness and self?" Pulling from JT's other thread, as computing power increases and we do more research into modeling of the brain we likely will see the development of artificial consciousness which will give us a chance to more concretely answer those questions.

[samsonlonghair]

There will come a time when science completely understands every aspect of how human thought works. It probably won't happen in our lifetime, but it will happen eventually. Once science gets there, your great great grandchildren can have their conscious copied into computer networks. Then we can expand human thought. We can increase the speed at which humans think. We can improve human logic. We can perfect human memory.

It'll be a new era in humanity.

[Ivo]

I had a somewhat long post here but it got rolled back.

So much for immortality through leaving written words behind!

[J T]

I did read it before it evaporated, Ivo.

And you will always live on in our hearts.

[samsonlonghair]

So much for immortality through leaving written words behind!

Hey, it worked for Gilgamesh.

[Fragems]

*Would your life lose value without the threat of death?
Yes and no. Like with everything there are positives and negatives about every decision we make. People will always want something until they actually have it.


*Would you get lazy knowing you always had more time?
I myself am already lazy as I'll ever be . I am content with life I don't need more of anything. Sure I have plenty of wants and desires, but I also have the free will to ignore them. I'm totally fine with just observing the world and doing the best I can to influence it in a positive way around me during the span of time I have on the earth. The only reason I continue to advance* is for the benefit of those around me.

Advance*= Seek more money/power/resources then I need to survive. Not talking about suicide, giving up on life, or etc. that undoubtedly some people will automatically imagine .

*Obviously, population control will be a huge problem: how do you decide between letting old people continue living and letting new babies be born? Who gets to live? Will only the wealthy be immortal since they already have all the power and can control much of how this plays out so that it works in their favor?

1. How do you decide between letting old people continue living and letting new babies be born?
You don't period. We could ever attain an maintain such a level of control without destroying ourselves and/or our humanity. To create such a system of evaluation you would basically create the ultimate conflict point. Naturally war would erupt and nature would take its course we would eventually kill each other off or evolve further. Who is to say the next generation could even be considered human anyways would they be born mortal and how would living in a world without natural death cause them to develop.

2. Will only the wealthy be immortal since they already have all the power and can control much of how this plays out so that it works in their favor?
Depends on the method of application I think initially it will be restricted to the Wealthy and Powerful who deem themselves "Worthy/Necessary". However like any other resource on earth trying to limit it in the first place just leads to other people wanting it more resulting in the inevitable release of it to the masses. Either anarchist/revolutionaries would disperse it rapidly transmit it(engineered virus or something along those lines), or through corruption/greed it would slowly trickle down into society. Once everyone attains it the value of life would no longer be calculated in terms of time/power and so everything would devolve into a power struggle. Society would basically take on a pyramid structure with those on the bottom not being able to secure enough food/resources to survive pretty much this already happens it would just continue to scale upwards as the population expands.



*How would religions make sense of this when they spend so much time focusing on preparation for the after life, reincarnation, or just plain acceptance of death?
Being immortal doesn't completely rule out death and the idea of heaven/hell isn't going anywhere trust me. Organized religion is like politics anyways it's about building an exclusive community in which most cases a hierarchy of power develops anyways.

Mini rant about religion

If I were to put a define my view of religion it would basically be I like religion I believe in a higher power and I am thankful to be in existence. Plus it's everyone's right to try and figure out their purpose/meaning in life and belief/faith in something beyond your understanding isn't necessarily a negative thing.

On the other hand I can't stand organized religion. Basically I see it as a power system created around the idea of trying to define/create a god and what is acceptable(good) and unacceptable(evil) in society. Which doesn't sound so bad until it eventually leads to segregation when man inevitably tries to figure who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. When you start try to force logic on concepts which are beyond your level of understanding things don't usually turn out to great.

*What would immortality do to our cultural meaning of suicide? Currently, you can't have a doctor assisted suicide unless you prove you are mentally healthy enough to make that decision and only have 6-months left to live. Would we still tell people they need to be mentally healthy to die by suicide peacefully, or would we insist that mentally unhealthy people go on living indefinitely until we know they are of sound mind to kill themselves?
Suicide is suicide trying to reason it out doesn't work. If someone wants to take their life there isn't much stopping them. Most people who "attempt" suicide don't actually want to die and so I find assisted suicide very troubling. Self preservation is one of our most base instincts and while it is possible to be over ruled putting a label on when that is right and wrong is difficult.

In my opinion assisted suicide is something that shouldn't even exist, but in a world where assisted living, more like assisted survival(ventilators, drugs, etc. that keep you alive but there isn't really quality of life), exists their will always be such an issue. Which brings about another issue what about birth what would be the effects.

Would children be born immortal, would they be able to develop properly, or would they simply stuck in the early stages of life forever or for an extremely extended period of time?


*What happens when you've lived long enough to know pretty much everyone else who is alive?
Not going to happen period. There will always be something else to discover if we were to achieve knowledge of anything and everything we would possibly even cease to exist in our current form. As I stated before controlling life is pretty much impossible it would pretty much destroy us or lead to mass chaos in the long run if we did try to limit or eliminate birth in mass. So the likelihood that we could stop birth from occurring is very unlikely.


*What does it mean for evolution if we stop procreating and dying? Will we stop evolving? Is this an ideal end state, or do we continue to explore new ways of changing and adapting our genetic code as a species?



We will keep evolving until we either evolve past our current form or die out nothing we can do will prevent that. If we were to "create" immortality it in itself would just be a form of evolution as a species. We wouldn't necessarily be human after such a large modification and who knows how it would affect the generations that were to follow.

If we did achieve immortality there are plenty of other "imperfections" which I'm sure people would continue to try and "solve" as time goes on. That's humans for you trying to take nature into their own hands and corrupting(i mean adapting) the environment to their will .


Is there a point about talking about this?
Not really . Progression/evolution is something you can only slow down or speed up there is no stopping it . Life strives on conflict and extrapolation.

[Pulsar_t]

On a recent TED podcast there was this brain scientist who had a stroke and had essentially a mental reset of sorts. That would be nice, because experience perpetually weighs us down. A pill to get rid of psychological baggage would be sweet, especially since people are getting to live longer. SSRIs are garbage.