Never Let Me Go

[peter]

Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker short listed novel, Never Let Me Go tells the story of a dystopian alternative present [in fact a few decades past] in which, as a result of DNA and cloning advances, disease is a thing of the past and lifespans have been raised to 100 years and over. The price paid for this bennefit is the raising of 'clone' children in closed environments, whose sole purpose for existance is to provide the donor organs for transplants as and whwn they are needed. It is accepted that these individuals will die after two or three such donations, but this is deemed an acceptable price to pay for the erradication of disease and early death. Told from the view point of three such cloned adolescents, who desparately seek a reprieve from the inevitable fate of their kind by attempting to prove to their overseers that they are in love, the film focuses the mind sharply on where the cell biology work of Watson and Crick et al would have led, had ethical considerations been 'left at the door' in those early formative years [and where it could still go if left to it's own devices].

I haven't read the book and so have no answer to the usual criticism that the film has attracted, that it pales in comparrison to the written work, but find it interesting that one critic on Rotten Tomatoes said that it [the film] captures the feel of the book almost perfectly and that this will be it's problem. I found it a haunting film to watch, and one whose impact only surfaces in the hours and days after viewing. It has the feel of banal evil that science without ethics could/would be capable of - and for this reason alone I think it worth viewing.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The book's entire premise--using clones for organs--is made moot by the fact that in the future we will either grow organs directly from stem cells, negating the need for clones, presuming we aren't somehow 3-d printing organs. I can't see that as a possibility because layering the proteins to build the cells is too risky. Even building the organs by placing individual cells is too risky--something may go wrong and a rogue cell is introduced/created.

Now...if we can design sufficiently advanced AI then we could simulate a personality and thus "download" someone's emotional/intellectual mindset and memories, making them effectively immortal. If we combine the virtual personality with an anthropomorphic android then the we could attain the verisimilitude of the actual person.

[peter]

Strangely I am having a somewhat similar 'conversation' elsewhere re the end of TLD where I cannot accept that the re-created world is the same world as the one that was destroyed by the Worm. I cannot accept that my 'immortality' can ever be achieved via downloading my thoughts onto a silicon base be it in a virtual setting or indeed in an android that interacts with the world as I do now. It's the discontinuity that I cannot overcome. I am the same 'me' as the 'me' of tomorrow because we have continuity. I would never allow myself to be 'teleported' anywhere if/when such a thing arrives because the 'me' that leaves the teleporter in New Zealand is not me at all. It is a Doppelganger, as indeed is the virtual 'me' that is downloaded. In this life for me at least, continuity is all.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Based on the rate at which cells refresh and replace themselves you aren't the same "you" that you were 10 years ago--it is highly unlikely that any individual cell you have in you right now existed 10 years ago. Brain cells might be the only exception but I could be mistaken.

From a certain point of view, the only part of you which makes you "you" is your brain--everything else is incidental. If your brain could be removed and kept alive in a nutrient bath you would still be "you" but the lack of sensory input would be maddening for a while--you would most likely fall into a deep sleep state until sensory input could be restored in some manner.

[peter]

I did reconsider my previous response and came up with the following analogy. If we consider a book [the leaves of paper with the words printed on each side], it could be copied and printed again [not 'the same' book]; it could be forged to a degree where it was impossible to distuinguish it from the original [still not the same book but a 'doppelganger' of the type above] or - a tecnique could be developed where the actual text could be lifted from the very pages and transferred across to new pages of higher quality, greater longevity, whatever. In the last case I think we could agree that to all intents and purpouses the we still have the same book, allbeit on a new background. Now a process of transfer that was able to achieve a transfer of brain activity comparable with that degree of continuity might [and I still say might] just be definable as the continuation of 'the same individual' and thus a degree of so called immortality may be achieved, but anything less than this and I would not buy it. I think to achieve this it would not be a case of 'downloading' our brain activity but rather one of 'uploading' a new substrate' to replace the existing flesh and blood one while still leaving the same elecrtical activity active and in situ. Not exactly easy stuff!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I think to achieve this it would not be a case of 'downloading' our brain activity but rather one of 'uploading' a new substrate' to replace the existing flesh and blood one while still leaving the same elecrtical activity active and in situ. Not exactly easy stuff!

This is probably more likely and more probable than actually uploading our memories into some sort of computer database. Still....if I could get a USB slot wired into my brain right now I would do it. First I would back up all my current knowledge onto one stick, then I would get a second stick, load it with 10x as much information, and upload all that into my brain. My wife rolls her eyes when I say things like that.

[peter]

Now I wonder why that is!