Will we defeat death and live forever?

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Will we defeat death and live forever?

Post by peter »

Now in this thread, I don't want to get so much into the ethical/moral issues around this - ie, whether we should defeat death or not, whether it would be a good thing for humanity if we did, who would get to do it etc - but rather on the actual possibility of our actually doing so. How it might be approached etc.

It seems to me that there any attempt to defeat death has to be a two pronged affair. There is firstly the possibility of the 'uploading' approach; the taking of your mental content and downloading it into a virtual world in which you survive, well, forever - or until there is a power-cut. This approach involves the eschewing of your body altogether and has the advantage that you get to choose what new form your virtual incarnation will take. For a while you might stick with the honed beauty of a magazine model, but ultimately might move into a sort of Elohim like fluidity where having an actual body of any kind is so 'yesterday'. The problem I have with the upload model of living forever is that how do you know that it is you. Yes, when you get there you believe it is you, but from down here, are you prepared to take it on trust that it actually is you? It's like stepping into the "beam me up Scotty" transporter of Star Trek. What if when you get out you find yourself still at your starting point and Scotty says, "Oops, sorry about that - forgot to break you down at this end. Don't worry, you arrived at your destination okay, but we can't have two of you wandering around so just step back into the transporter so that we can disintegrate you at this end would you...." Well I think the upload solution to living forever has exactly the same kind of continuity problems as this.

The other way in which we might live forever is via the medical route. In this model we get so good at a range of different medical techniques that we can actually stick with our own body and simply never die. We use a combination of cloned and harvested body parts, pharmaceutical preparations and genetic engineering, to simply never experience the catastrophic sequence of events that we know by the simple term of death. We understand this sequence so well that we simply don't let it happen. The don't allow our bodies to age, we replace parts as necessary, we keep ourselves alive indefinitely in a piecemeal fashion while eons pass.

This latter process overcomes the problem of continuity that the upload method founders upon, but does have problems of its own. Not thinking about the 'where will we all live' thing here, so much as the problems that cloning is already seeming to throw up, when longevity is attempted to be achieved this way. I'm not sure, but I believe that researchers have found that in some way the nuclear content of cells seems to know its own age, the number of multiplications it has undergone, and be reluctant to keep on doing the same old trick indefinitely. Cells, if I have it correctly, of cloned individuals seem to behave at the age of the parent organism so that the tissue of the cloned body seems not to be as a young newly born, but rather as if it were born pre-aged or degenerate in some other way.

And what of the mind? There isn't much point in living forever if by the age of one hundred and fifty you are a dribbling geriatric who can't even recognize what day of the week it is; no, any living forever worth it's salt has to retain your youthful vigour or be nothing. What we want is the wisdom of age combined with the excitement of youth all in the one package.

Now none of the problems in the medical route to immortality seem to me to be impossible to overcome. When we understand the aging process at the genetic level well enough to overcome it, we will. Asexual reproduction, or organisms that reproduce in this way are effectively immortal - it is only with sexual reproduction that death enters the picture - and so the nuclear material must have this capability built in as it were, and we simply have to harness it. Also the idea that the attainment of immortality has to be via one route or the other is flawed in itself. If living forever is actually ever achieved, it will most likely be via some combination of the uploading and medical routes that it will be done so.

But anyways, what do you guys think. Is it a realistic possibility (David Deutsch seemed to think so, and he's a clever guy)? What's absolutely a given is that somewhere, in some place, one of these tech billionaires or the like will not be satisfied that he or she has to give it all up when they've only just dipped their toe into the water (as it were), and will be working full tilt to see if they can't escape from the pursuing clutches of Old Father Time, so what are their chances? Can we do it, and if so, how close are we? Don't tell me I missed out on eternity by a few mere decades - that just wouldn't be fair!
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Post by samrw3 »

I imagine either scenario has some possibilities. Truthfully I found both scenarios creepy.

A downloaded version of humanity - creepy. Also what could generate enough power supply to make sure that type of survival is endurable? Plus how would it be tamperproof so some advanced hacker could alter the components of humanity or kill off downloaded versions? I also suspect it would be ultimate rich/poor access and abilities.

A medical regeneration - creepy. This one poses a population control problem - if a significant amount of humanity could achieve this then the world would have to seriously deal with population control. Also this would have rich/poor access.
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Post by peter »

Creepy for sure Sam, but science does all manner of creepy stuff. For sure if immortality (or its near equivalent) is achieved it will be reserved for the rich - but if I had to bet I'd put money on it happening. Once we have conquered all disease and illness, then the only way to go for medical research will be in the direction of bodily and mental enhancement, and increased longevity will be an intrinsic part of this.

I think the real question is not if it will be done, but rather when; how far away is it? My betting - someone alive today will defeat death and live forever. You may have passed them in the street already.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

DC Comics' Vandal Savage kept track of his descendants so he knew which were the best genetic matches to take organs from.

I'm just a big downer on this...

I don't suspect we're going to achieve anything significant medically. That's just a wait-and-see, but I don't think we'll see anything.

I think the uploading idea has huge problems. First, its possibility. How do you take consciousness out of the brain, and put it into an entirely different medium? I do not believe the mind can be removed from the brain.

Second, even if it is possible, would a mind from a brain continue to think like it did when it was in a brain? If a mind needs a medium in which it resides and thinks, surely the nature of the medium is important to the nature of the mind. I would be surprised if a flesh & blood mind could be fooled by a virtual world. It would know the world was wrong, more surely than everyone plugged into the Matrix did. Many knew something was wrong, but even Neo only had a glimpse of it before they unplugged him. I don't know if this hypothetical mind would realize it was in an electronic medium simply because it is, itself, of that medium. But I think the contradiction of the way it operated compared with the rules of the virtual reality would be insurmountable. I don't know what would happen to the mind. It might just give up all pretense of the virtual reality, and become something else. Because, really, a mind in an electronic medium is something else. It wouldn't be something like a voice over the speaker, talking about the big game last night, or cherishing the smile on a child's face, Etc. It might hang on to those things briefly. But it would soon be racing in entirely new directions, presumably at a trillion times the speed it did when it was in a human brain. I think soon enough it would have nothing to do with us, absorbed in whatever that medium has to offer. It would be learning an entirely different reality. It would no longer be dealing with what to eat, or health, or colors or sounds, or gravity, or hot and cold, or anything whatsoever that was absolutely vital to its previous existence. It would be learning an entirely new existence, and it would change into something unrecognizable, either to us or itself.

Not to say I wouldn't do it! :lol:
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Post by peter »

Well there's a question in itself Fist. Why would the uploaded mind not be aware of its uploaded state? In order for it to be truly the individual that it was uploaded from, there would have to be continuity of memory - and this in itself would include memory of being in the pre-uploaded state. That would seem to me to be a fundamental. The progression into the new medium - and realising the possibilities that come with living therein - would not to me seem a problem, no more than say having a thinking reasoning mind does now over our former pre-conscious state in our evolutionary past. It's all about continuity.

And I am more 'positive' than you on the biological science/medical front. We are already down the track on our understanding of most of the fundamental things needed to hugely extend longevity; organ and limb regrowth/regeneration, cloning, genetic engineering and manipulation, gerontology - and with the far less sharing scientific environment that prevails today than latterly, who can say what has been achieved deep in the bowels of 'secret science' that we have not been told about. Life-span is already extended far beyond that of former times simply by virtue of the advent of modern medicine, and with our ever developing knowledge in this area, plus that of the former ones I mention, the sky really is the limit.

As to whether I'd do it? I'm in my mid sixties and feeling pretty frikkin' worn out already; not sure eternity would be much use to me without some serious running repairs first!

;)
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Post by Fist and Faith »

You're right. I was thinking more along the lines of The Matrix, we're people were not aware of the nature of their reality. No reason to think along those lines, though. But my main point is that a human mind in an electronic medium, or any medium other than the human brain, would not be recognizable as human. But it doesn't matter, because you can't remove the human mind from the brain, and put it into something else.

And yes, Star Trek transporters are killing the original, and creating a new one that is not aware it is not the original.
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Post by wayfriend »

Fist and Faith wrote:And yes, Star Trek transporters are killing the original, and creating a new one that is not aware it is not the original.
I kind of figured that out all on my own one day, and it was a bit mind-blowing.

I had read this obscure sci-fi book Wall Around a Star. And in that story, the originals did not die. The premise was that the transporter created copies that you would beam into dangerous, no return situations far, far away.

So this story did a really good job of bothering me, although it wasn't intended to I am sure. A guy would step into a transporter, then bleep-bloop all done, and he would say "Phew. I am glad I am not that copy going to that dangerous place." Except it turned out he WAS the copy that DID get sent to the dangerous place.

Or rather, he ALSO was the copy. And he ALSO was the original.

Thinking about what it means if you could be copied has a lot of disturbing implications. (There is ALWAYS a version of you that wakes up and says "Crap, I'm the copy.") The more you think about it, the weirder it gets.

It seems like digitizing consciousness is opening a rats nest of existential crises like that.

Although I am far more worried about being irredeemably enslaved or not entirely in control of my thoughts and memories.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Yeah, it's crazy. As Peter says in the op. What's the difference between what happens on Star Trek, and creating a copy, then killing the original at any point after the copy exists?
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
peter wrote:[…]

I think the real question is not if it will be done, but rather when; how far away is it? My betting - someone alive today will defeat death and live forever. You may have passed them in the street already.
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Post by peter »

But you're never really cheating death are you - no more than death is cheated every day n every hospital in the world. You are simply pushing it back - and back - and back.......

I think one of the problems is that as one's brain aged, the existence you moved forward into would get increasingly meaningless. Your mind would, I think, begin to actively reject life, to view continued existence as a curse rather than a boon. It would go into a downward spiral toward that thing which we have striven so hard to overcome.

Ultimately we would come to the realisation that death is nature's gift to us, not it's curse.
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Post by aTOMiC »

I suspect that at some point medical technology will advance to a point that humans will be able to regenerate every part of the body making them virtually immortal so long as there are resources to sustain them. If this regeneration is concentrated in the form of a vaccine I would hope that the powers that be would distribute it equitably to the population at large, with one requirement: you get the vaccine as long as you agree to have a device installed in your body that makes it impossible for you to generate offspring without a doctor's assistance. No accidental births. In a world with limited resources leaving proceation to chance would be disasterous.
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Post by wayfriend »

peter wrote:Ultimately we would come to the realisation that death is nature's gift to us, not it's curse.
In [i]The Silmarillion[/i], J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Iluvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.
---
aTOMiC wrote:You get the vaccine as long as you agree to have a device installed in your body that makes it impossible for you to generate offspring without a doctor's assistance.
Yow. Children are one of life's greatest blessings. I would hate to see it denied or held hostage to politics.

Maybe death is the price we pay to have children.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Maybe children are what drive us to the grave.
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Post by aTOMiC »

wayfriend wrote:
peter wrote:Ultimately we would come to the realisation that death is nature's gift to us, not it's curse.
In [i]The Silmarillion[/i], J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Iluvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.
---
aTOMiC wrote:You get the vaccine as long as you agree to have a device installed in your body that makes it impossible for you to generate offspring without a doctor's assistance.
Yow. Children are one of life's greatest blessings. I would hate to see it denied or held hostage to politics.
Well I'm not really referring to our present day world but a future world advanced enough technologically and has matured societally so that population barriers are commonplace as a matter of logical common sense given the resources available. Lower animals and viruses populate out of control without regard to the consequences. Human beings have the potential to act thoughtfully although currently we seldom do.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Looking forward to the world maturing societally. :)
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Post by wayfriend »

I understand just what you mean, aTOMic. I am just now too cynical to continue to imagine the future world will be benevolent, or even rational.

And I often wonder if it will even be better than now.
(Possibly that's old geezer talk. I am getting older.)

For example, I cannot imagine anyone would build enough compute power to host billions of human consciousnesses just out of pure kindness. Or develop a "vaccine" that grants immortality without extracting as much of a price for it as the market will bear. I cannot even believe billions of people would even be tolerated if we ever reach a state where human labor isn't necessary.

You make a fair point. There's nothing wrong with imagining what it might be.
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Post by Zarathustra »

Of course we'll solve the death problem. It's just a technical issue. Technical problems can be solved.

We don't have to rely upon benevolence. No one ever suggested such a thing. People already create servers to host billions of our "memories" (e.g. pictures). And computer storage is only increasing. These servers don't exist out of benevolence. Storage is cheap.

But the computer issue is a red herring. That's not the kind of immortality people want. I don't give a damn if you can load my consciousness on a computer. I want my consciousness right here, right now. A computer program isn't me.

I don't think we'll have to worry about whether humans will be tolerated just because they don't have jobs. We have millions of unemployed people right now that no one bothers to murder. This is just silly.

There is plenty of space in the solar system for many hundreds of billions of humans. We'll be fine. If you don't want to be immortal, then I'll take your spot. No problem.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+
Zarathustra wrote:Of course we'll solve the death problem. It's just a technical issue. Technical problems can be solved.

[…]
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Post by peter »

Sorry - but I think the idea that any form of 'immortality' (that was body orientated rather than simply a number-crunched facsimile in a computer) would be equitably distributed is for the birds. Similarly, if the ability to procreate were to be limited by some means device in those who elected to avail themselves of perpetual longevity, this in itself would rapidly morph into a selection process of who was and was not allowed to have offspring, and the ability to pay to either satisfy or circumvent the conditions, would become the norm.

Growth of numbers would, as we exend our reach throughout the solar-system and beyond, be driven by the need for 'bodies' to populate the newly acquired territory and would be controlled up or down accordingly. The human condition for the mass numbers, such as they existed, would be one of being farmed for no purpose other than their ability to consume (while simultaneously being satisfied with their enslavement by virtue of provision of gadgetry and drugs) in a vicious cycle of ' more territory - more numbers - more breeding - more consumption - more territory...... and so on. Much, in fact, as it pretty much is today.
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Post by Zarathustra »

peter wrote:Sorry - but I think the idea that any form of 'immortality' (that was body orientated rather than simply a number-crunched facsimile in a computer) would be equitably distributed is for the birds.
Maybe. There will likely always be some kind of division between the Haves and Have Nots. But why assume that immortality would be expensive? I can go get flu shots and Covid shots for free. Those extend the lives of people who would otherwise die from those diseases. Likewise, many of the reasons why life expectancy has risen so dramatically in the last century are due to cheap fixes like antibiotics, vaccines, and greater access to hospitals during child birth. We already see counterparts of this idea reaching the masses. It's like luxury features on high end cars: eventually they trickle down to a Nissan Sentra or Toyota Corolla. Remember when a wide screen HDTV was $10,000? Technology keeps getting cheaper.
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