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That consciousness won't be "You", it'd be some poorly digitized copy. You at best with a severe multiple lobotomy. I've always found it ironic that after science essentially did away with the midieval notion of dualism, the Transhumanists seem hell bent on bringing it back. Human consciousness is essentially an analog function. It could not survive being reduced down to a digital state any more than you can freeze an ocean wave.Everything dies... even the universe itself. It's the one equalizer.
As long as the sense of self-identify survives, I would consider it still me.
Regardless of how many copies I make. Each copy would consider itself to still be me.
Yes, even the universe dies. I want to watch.
Something along the lines of The Days of Solomon Gursky would be ideal.
The Martian Trillogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson, has a very interesting take on immortality tech:
Eventually, people back on Earth find out about it and start demanding the treatment is made available to them as well. However, since it's so expensive, only some people get access to it, which starts causing quite a few social conflicts. At some point, the governments get pressured to provide the treatment as part of the public system, but only some developed countries have the technical and economical capacity to do so.
This results in some countries having full immortality coverage, while in others only the wealthiest people get to have it, and even those need to travel to other countries to get it.
This creates a pretty extreme social issue across the planet, with international companies getting business deals with 3rd-world countries in exchange for providing some access to the immortality treatment.
What's worse, as the timeline advances (the books cover a couple of centuries in total), people who have been taking the immortality treatment start experiencing memory issues. As they find out, as humans started living longer, the brain adapted with them to extend its memory capabilities. But with people suddenly switching from 70-90 years lifespans to well over 200, the brain had been unable to adapt for more capacity and instead adapted in the fastest way it could: Reassigning space.
So the older people got, the less they remembered about their earlier lifes. What's worse, this was not just limited to memories, but to skill, emotiotional responses, knowledge, and the like, so eventually people began suffering from severe personality disorders as their brains deleted their older selfs and their current selfs started conflicting with them.
All in all, a pretty thorough and insightful series of ideas regarding the matter.
The Martian Trillogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson, has a very interesting take on immortality tech:
It sounds like she ripped off Jack Vance's 1956 novel To Live Forever, put it on Mars, and expanded it to a trilogy, adding in the memory stuff to keep it from getting stale.
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I have no expectations of living past the next minute. I just count each one that I do as a success and then wait for the next.
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The Martian Trillogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson, has a very interesting take on immortality tech:It sounds like she ripped off Jack Vance's 1956 novel To Live Forever, put it on Mars, and expanded it to a trilogy, adding in the memory stuff to keep it from getting stale.
"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships" (aka Gulliver's Travels) covered immortal humans whose memory and intellectual capacity could not handle extended lifespan. It was caused by continued aging but still it's not a new idea.
Also it is not unreasonable hypothesis that unaugmented human brain might be unable to handle the extended lifespan.
The Martian Trillogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson, has a very interesting take on immortality tech:It sounds like she ripped off Jack Vance's 1956 novel To Live Forever, put it on Mars, and expanded it to a trilogy, adding in the memory stuff to keep it from getting stale.
Nah, the immortality stuff really is a minor element of the books (which really is about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, from the very early begginings until the whole thing turns into a massive political battledome).
It's an excellent trillogy of hard sci-fi.
Nah, the immortality stuff really is a minor element of the books (which really is about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, from the very early begginings until the whole thing turns into a massive political battledome).
It's an excellent trillogy of hard sci-fi.
Now you've got me convinced to look for it, next time I'm in Half-Price Books. Thanks!
A Yellow Dingo thread accomplished something? Be still my heart!
But not too still... It is supposed to move after all.
Now you've got me convinced to look for it, next time I'm in Half-Price Books. Thanks!Nah, the immortality stuff really is a minor element of the books (which really is about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, from the very early begginings until the whole thing turns into a massive political battledome).
It's an excellent trillogy of hard sci-fi.
Word of warning: some people found the first book a bit boring/unfocused.
I'm often surprised that I've lasted this long.
I died 8 years ago. My current state can go on indefinitely... But maybe you wouldn't call it living. >:)
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If only Augustin had been a futurist, I'd have been born on Titan and we'd be making serious plans to begin colonizing other galaxies before the end of the century.
Seriously, though--How much absolute awesomeness do you have to see round every corner, every day, that simply didn't exist 20 years ago--that people never believed possible 20 years ago?
In far less than a century computing power has gone from tonnes and rooms of wiring and tubing to bits of silicon smaller than the nail of my five year old's pinkie.
Yes, I have a relatively reasonable hope for significant life extension well before I should need to worry about any of it.
That really does depend...
What seems pretty clear to me is that extremely long life spans are within reach of humans at this point.
- There is good reason to believe we are on the very edge of treatments which over come what appears to be that genetic cause of aging. Telomere hacks, and several drug therapies all look set to basically make the collapse of accurate cell replication which appears to be responsible for aging, a thing of the past.
- We appear to be on the verge of multiple convergent cancer cures.
- we in the early stages of organ printing from stem cells
As such. It is conceivable, that life spans in the hundreds of years may well be available people already born.
But I have this funny feeling that, even if these things all come to pass in my life time, I will not be able to afford them. Only if the technologies pass out of patent, within my life will I get much of a look in ;)
Regarding ImmortalityMy family lives past their 100s. I expect to make it to my 90s in the very least.
I will be in my 90s in the 2060s...either my consciousness will be uploaded to something, or I will go through rejuve therapy. I'm actually serious.
I do not plan to die. Ever.
Give we are already increasing mouse lifespans by a quarter with a single gene hack, I can but look at such a comment and giggle.
[citation needed]
And just a tad too late to edit that post so have to edit this one instead. Dudemeister, what exactly is the "Beep Test"? Not familiar with that terminology.
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Everything...except me. Also, plenty of BCI researchers would disagree with your analog brain. If you agree that 'you' can be quantitized (I follow the school of physicalism, so I agree that this is so), then 'you' can be moved between systems.My family lives past their 100s. I expect to make it to my 90s in the very least.
I will be in my 90s in the 2060s...either my consciousness will be uploaded to something, or I will go through rejuve therapy. I'm actually serious.
I do not plan to die. Ever.
That consciousness won't be "You", it'd be some poorly digitized copy. You at best with a severe multiple lobotomy. I've always found it ironic that after science essentially did away with the midieval notion of dualism, the Transhumanists seem hell bent on bringing it back. Human consciousness is essentially an analog function. It could not survive being reduced down to a digital state any more than you can freeze an ocean wave.
Everything dies... even the universe itself. It's the one equalizer.
Whether or not this is im/possible aside, I think you're deluding yourself if you think this technology - should it become possible - will be made available to anyone without immense wealth or sociopolitical clout, or whose mind carries enough specialized or rare knowledge, information, or skill to be considered "worth saving" without either of the first two prerequisites.
I'm fairly confident almost no one on this forum qualifies.
That depends how we make it.
With enough humans working together to fund this, through collaborative effort, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that we could develop the technology, and place it into the public domain.
[citation needed]
For which specific claim?
[citation needed]For which specific claim?
All of them
With enough humans working together to fund this, through collaborative effort, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that we could develop the technology, and place it into the public domain.
I think this is naively optimistic at best.
The men in my family have all lived into their 90s as far back as I have records, so with my luck I'll be the exception to the rule. Otherwise, projections look pretty good.
(Although, having seen what they get reduced to in the end, I'm not sure I'd want to live that long.)
No petition?
Okay.
Telomere hacks:
Bruno Bernardes de Jesus, Elsa Vera, Kerstin Schneeberger, Agueda M Tejera, Eduard Ayuso, Fatima Bosch, Maria A. Blasco. Telomerase gene therapy in adult and old mice delays ageing and increases longevity without increasing cancer. EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2012 (in press) DOI: 10.1002/emmm.201200245 (This is also the mouse lifespan by a quarter, claim was a simplification, but roughly accruate.)
Speak for yourself,sir. I intend to live forever"
(Riker to Picard, Star Trek.....may be a slight misquote but that was the gist)
With enough humans working together to fund this, through collaborative effort, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that we could develop the technology, and place it into the public domain.I think this is naively optimistic at best.
I think your malignantly Pessimistic at best, but since when did name calling get us anywhere? Not forgetting that you openned with a [citation needed].
I think your malignantly Pessimistic at best, but since when did name calling get us anywhere?With enough humans working together to fund this, through collaborative effort, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that we could develop the technology, and place it into the public domain.I think this is naively optimistic at best.
Welp. That escalated quickly. Time for this thread to go away.
Welp. That escalated quickly. Time for this thread to go away.I think your malignantly Pessimistic at best, but since when did name calling get us anywhere?With enough humans working together to fund this, through collaborative effort, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that we could develop the technology, and place it into the public domain.I think this is naively optimistic at best.
Escalated?
Dude. You came out of nowhere with an ad hominim, without even an attempt to justify your position. And me making a joke about it is escalation?
Mice are not humans. Sadly, sometimes. It is not as simple as that. Look at it this way: The oldest humans on Earth approach 120 with some regularity. These are the women that are furthest away on the standard deviation curve for age related to genetics. Otherwise put: With women, the maximum result you can get from normal human genetics is less than 120 years. Note that these women do not in any way age more slowly, what is increased is their "insanely old" age category. Likewise, these women do not die prematurely from accidents, cancer, CVD or the like. By the same token, then, eliminating causes of death doesn't give you much more than this either.
The final part is far more complex: Printed organs. Yes, assume we can make new organs for peanuts. Everyone who needs a new liver gets it. Even so... I suspect you would not consider printing a new BRAIN to be useful. The brain is WHO WE ARE. A brain transplant operation is in reality a BODY TRANSPLANT operation. So, yes, with printed organs, you could gain a few years... but when the brain stops working, you die just the same.
All in all: Your suggested changes could give us a few years more, on average. Decrepit years. And nowhere near the "hundreds of years" suggested, but realistically to a maximum of perhaps 120.
That said...
Nanotechnology is still a poorly defined field. In theory, it could be possible to replace each neuron and glia cell, reading the functionality of the cell, before it dies. If this is done gradually, you could quite possibly retain your consciousness in a well-defined, repairable, artificial brain once the replacement process is complete. With that, you could then create any number of virtual copies of said brain. What is unknown is how well it would learn new things, adapt and change - all functions that are necessary for having a functioning brain. It is also worth noting that any previously-occurring brain damage will also be replicated.
Mice are not humans. Sadly, sometimes. It is not as simple as that. Look at it this way: The oldest humans on Earth approach 120 with some regularity. These are the women that are furthest away on the standard deviation curve for age related to genetics. Otherwise put: With women, the maximum result you can get from normal human genetics is less than 120 years. Note that these women do not in any way age more slowly, what is increased is their "insanely old" age category. Likewise, these women do not die prematurely from accidents, cancer, CVD or the like. By the same token, then, eliminating causes of death doesn't give you much more than this either.
The final part is far more complex: Printed organs. Yes, assume we can make new organs for peanuts. Everyone who needs a new liver gets it. Even so... I suspect you would not consider printing a new BRAIN to be useful. The brain is WHO WE ARE. A brain transplant operation is in reality a BODY TRANSPLANT operation. So, yes, with printed organs, you could gain a few years... but when the brain stops working, you die just the same.
All in all: Your suggested changes could give us a few years more, on average. Decrepit years. And nowhere near the "hundreds of years" suggested, but realistically to a maximum of perhaps 120.
That said...
Nanotechnology is still a poorly defined field. In theory, it could be possible to replace each neuron and glia cell, reading the functionality of the cell, before it dies. If this is done gradually, you could quite possibly retain your consciousness in a well-defined, repairable, artificial brain once the replacement process is complete. With that, you could then create any number of virtual copies of said brain. What is unknown is how well it would learn new things, adapt and change - all functions that are necessary for having a functioning brain. It is also worth noting that any previously-occurring brain damage will also be replicated.
Drug treatments for senescence
No mice are not humans.
Your right, but the things we are learning in mice demonstrate conclusively that relatively complex organism can in principle have their life spans markedly increased by relatively simple drug and gene therapies.
It is also worth noting that the reason we are looking at telomere hacks in mice is that we already suspected that telemeres performs the same function in humans, and predicted it to be a useful appeach to fighting senescence in humans.
living tissue can already be printed in labs
I think that is all of my specific claims loosely covered.
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I suppose I'll live at least a couple hundred years.
My family is long-lived, and we have no health issues. I myself manage to stay somewhat fit despite my work schedule. So I expect to live long enough to see the technological singularity occur, and after the first wave of failed tests, plan on transplanting my conciousness into a computer brain.
Probably while living in Mars.
Speaking of which, has anyone else applied for the Mars One colony?
It is also worth noting that most test populations of mice are clones - in the sense that because of inbreeding, they share the same genome. This means that while you can sometimes get a pretty strong reaction for one drug in that population, a genetically extremely diverse human population will not have even close to that effect. The study you linked to claimed 10% and 18% increased life span, depending on sex. It certainly is interesting, and not nothing, but an increase of the same size for humans, lowered severely due to genetic diversity, would amount to a few years - or at the level where any real effect is uncertain.
I say it again: Sure, there may be a market for age treatments, but for most people, it will be a choice of paying a lot for a few more years at the retirement home, not for staying young and healthy forever. I am aware that if you put blastocysts through gene therapy, you could acheive more, but that is opening another can of worms entirely, and those of us who still live are screwed just the same.
The brain is WHO WE ARE. A brain transplant operation is in reality a BODY TRANSPLANT operation. So, yes, with printed organs, you could gain a few years... but when the brain stops working, you die just the same.
We don't have a lot in common. While printing a WHOLE brain, based upon my genetics, it seems within the realms of possiblity, that, should an area of my brain become cancerous, then brain, replacement brain tissue could in principle be transplanted in, to replace diseased sections. With specific enough brain scanning and printing, that tissue could be have consistent neural pathways with the tissue it was replacing.
But even if someone copied your brain, I am sure you don't believe that brain would use your consciousness?
Read up on the clone paradox. If you want eternal life, you need YOUR consciousness to live on. If someone makes an exact copy of you, all that does is make SOMEONE ELSE have a consciousness like yours. Which, you know, doesn't help you live forever at all. The kicker is that your consciousness is trapped in your brain, and though making a copy might be possible, it still won't be more than a copy.
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If your consciousness--or personal understanding of self-identity--is exactly copied to a point of unconsciousness, and then transferred into a new platform, which picks up at exactly the same point, you can perceptively have the same consciousness experience, no different than going to sleep at night, or dozing off, and then later waking up. The hard problem--not so hard.
This assumes a physicalist approach to consciousness.
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The Buddhists believe there is no sharp boundary between "you" and everything else; only a gradation. In a pithier but less descriptive manner, "self" is an illusion. This discussion makes it seem that maybe they have it right.
Try this, then. Someone makes a copy of you and you are still alive and awake. Would you share that copy's consciousness? If something happened to your copy, would you feel it? At what distance would this link function? How would it be mediated? If not, why not?
So a copy retaining consciousness would not help you live forever?
Otherwise put: With women, the maximum result you can get from normal human genetics is less than 120 years. Note that these women do not in any way age more slowly, what is increased is their "insanely old" age category.
This is partly true and partly not true.
When someone lives that long they aren't just avoiding accidents and disease, they also tend to be in better health in general. Their bodies are in better shape. Their bodies are deteriorating at a slower rate than the rest of us, their brains tend to stay sharper for longer.
This isn't to say that if we extend human life to 200 years that a 100 y/o will be similar to a 50 y/o from a century prior. Basically we're going to slow the process of aging, but the rate of slowing is going to be proportional to the deterioration process, which accelerates with age. 100 will be more like 75, 150 will be like 90 and 200 will be like 110.
Part of it is understanding of what the aging process is. As the body lives, the cells reproduce, copying the genetic code to each new copy. Sometimes mistakes happen, and it's not just in the DNA, but the RNA, which is actually much more susceptible to error. RNA is responsible for triggering various sections of the DNA code, one of which is responsible for looking for errors in the DNA and RNA codes. Everyone has that section of DNA, but it's less active in some humans. The people for whom it's more active live longer, because their body maintains it's genetic code more cleanly throughout their lives (this also affects their chances of developing cancer).
Anti-aging medicine is looking at ways to promote and enhance the activities by these sections of our genetic code. The odds are that it'll probably cure/prevent most cancers and extend lifespan by however much we can manipulate it.
We will eventually blow past 120 years. We need only improve the bodies ability to maintain itself. Again, it's not going to make 100 y/o's feel like they're 20, but it will significantly reduce the effects of aging.
I think Larry Niven talked to an actuary, who figured out that given some form of medically feasible immortality, you have about 500 years before a tree branch or some other death by misadventure scenario sends you to your dirt nap.
I don't think I could possibly live to 70. I'm closer to my dirt nap than I am to my high school graduation.