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Immortality

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  • #31
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    You had a goblin grandma and there are shots for it?!?
    I had two of the most painful shots they had - second only to the rabies series, so the nurse told my Momma. I cried for over an hour - those things are rough on a five year old.
    "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

    "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

    My Personal Blog

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    • #32
      I'm going to attempt to respond to everything I missed.

      Originally posted by Irate Canadian View Post
      Anti-Aging Genetic Engineering -cool
      Regenerative Medicine - cool
      Cryonics - not really immortality.
      Nanomedicine - this is cool
      Artificial Intelligence - don't think this will have your consciousness along with it
      Digital Immortality - cool, but not sure how feasible
      Cyborgization - If we get this far, maybe.
      I actually expect Cyborgization will come with and/or prior to Digital Immortality.


      Originally posted by Irate Canadian View Post
      Even if we do manage to get one of these working, the Universe is at some point coming to a end....
      Sure, but we could have a few billion years of life before that happens.


      Originally posted by Irate Canadian View Post
      Probably, but we need someway to cheapen construction of the things. We may also need to place the passengers in cryogenics for now, mainly to keep them from aging...
      This is what I think about cryogenics as well. Short of achieving propulsion methods that move at significant fractions of the speed of light, space travel is going to be slow and boring.


      Originally posted by Irate Canadian View Post
      Depends... we're still pretty far off from doing Mind -> Tech Transfers...
      We are. I don't know how soon any of these things will happen, if ever.
      I'm not here anymore.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by JimL View Post
        Well by your definitions none of them are necessarily absolutely immortal, they could all be destroyed. But, discounting that fact, I would definitely opt for the Nanomedicine option. All though I might add, for all we know we could already be simulated intelligences without realizing it!
        Originally posted by Truthseeker View Post
        I think Stephen Petranek said that true immortality is a statistical impossibility. One living for hundreds of years will very likely eventually die in an accident or be at-least manslaughtered. 300 years, he cited as a likely median lifespan.
        Originally posted by Christianbookworm View Post
        That's why you would need invulnerability with the immortality. Or specify the type. And make sure your superpowers don't have a weakness.
        Originally posted by Cerealman View Post
        In the end isn't none of this "immortality? If the universe does come to an end, isn't this just extension of "life" for a really LONG time? This reminds me of the gods that are "immortal" until they die kinda thing.
        I think it's important to differentiate between immortality and invulnerability, though it should be noted that these two terms aren't always considered distinct. I think for the purposes of this thread, we could simply define immortality as 'not dying of natural causes, including age'. Invulnerability requires different technology, perhaps something akin to Personal Protection Fields (PPFs) or the like. For example, John Ringo has a series of sci-fi books where everyone has PPFs. There is a select group (almost a cult) that specializes in murder, particularly because it's so incredibly difficult to pull off in that setting. You effectively have to convince the target to lower their PPFs. Even so, some of these options could potentially survive death or be much closer to true invulnerability, particularly if we can backup and transfer consciousness. You'd face other threats, perhaps, like data corruption and forced deletion, but most forms of death could be greatly diminished and/or eliminated.

        Let's save the death of the universe (if it actually works that way) for after we've survived another billion years (we've got trillions before that happens).
        I'm not here anymore.

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        • #34
          Originally posted by phank View Post
          Under the wide and starry sky
          Dig the grave and let me lie.
          Glad did I live and gladly die,
          And I laid me down with a will.

          This be the verse you grave for me;
          "Here he lies where he longed to be,
          Home is the sailor, home from sea,
          And the hunter home from the hill."
          Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
          Kinda like a Tolkien Elve...

          BTW, I don't want to be immortal in this life.

          K54
          I seriously considered having "I don't want to be immortal" as one of the options. Tbh, I'm not sure I want to be immortal, either. I might not mind living for a few hundred years, but it would depend on what the world looks like. Working for another three hundred years is not a worthwhile tradeoff.
          I'm not here anymore.

          Comment


          • #35
            Your last post makes me think of an episode of Jackie Chan adventures. A bad guy had two of the talismans, immortality, and invulnerability. He thought that it was redundant, so traded the invulnerability one. I wish I could find the clip of what happened afterwards.

            ETA: Carrik, you posted again right before I did.

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            • #36
              Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
              Simply uploading your consciousness would not give you immortality or even extended life. All it would give you would be a copy of your consciousness who would get to live on without you. I'll wait for the real thing.
              This is where the human/transhuman/posthuman aspect comes into play. There is a very real argument that humans can't live forever because mortality is a core aspect of what it means to be human. That said, I'm not sure I'd agree that an uploaded consciousness wouldn't be immortality. The thought experiments and questions around cyborgization, for example, ask questions like "how much of your body can you replace before it stops being your body". The only consistent answer, afaict, is that your body is your body because it's part of whatever whole your consciousness encompasses. You're no less 'you' minus a limb (or use of four limbs, or with a new limb) than you are with it. In that sense, 'you' and 'your consciousness' are identical. As long as your consciousness continues to exist, so do you. There could be some interesting discussions about how this works, though. Perhaps we should differentiate between uploading your consciousness and transferring it. Simply uploading it would make a copy and get Sam his Prestige option.
              I'm not here anymore.

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Sam View Post
                I did not understand the difference between AI, digital, and cyborg. Whatever lets me download into the vehicle of my choice and store many, many qubits of data.
                I think you could simplify it into three states respectively: a physical, mechanical body run by a human brain (perhaps identical copy of your brain?), a non-physical, mechanical mind without a body (insofar as data is non-physical), and a physical, human-machine hybrid. I think Digital Immortality would meet your preference of downloading into any vehicle of your choice, though specific vehicles might have data storage limitations. Wouldn't that be interesting?


                Originally posted by Sam View Post
                Also, I did not see a "The Prestige" option.
                In high school, my sister started attending a youth group at a local church. She thought it was lots of fun and invited me along, thinking that I would also enjoy it. I didn't. I never went back. I explained to my sister she saw it too. There was a guy there that looked reasonably like me (same skin/hair/eye/build/height), dating the girl I would be interested in, telling the jokes I would be telling, wearing the same style of clothes I'd be wearing. An actual Prestige option scares me.
                I'm not here anymore.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
                  Your last post makes me think of an episode of Jackie Chan adventures. A bad guy had two of the talismans, immortality, and invulnerability. He thought that it was redundant, so traded the invulnerability one. I wish I could find the clip of what happened afterwards.



                  Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
                  ETA: Carrik, you posted again right before I did.
                  Sorry. I had a lot to respond to.
                  I'm not here anymore.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    FWIW, I realize that most Christians are going to go with "Let me die and go to heaven". I was trying to keep this non-contentious, so I purposefully left that out. For the sake of argument, if heaven wasn't an option, would you choose one of these options?

                    Does anyone have a different form that's not listed which they'd prefer?
                    I'm not here anymore.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                      That aimed at the character, or me?

                      Sorry. I had a lot to respond to.
                      No problem. Just thought I might need to clarify now that it was two posts instead of the most recent.

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                      • #41
                        None of these options will result in Clancy Brown coming after me with a sword to take my head off, right?
                        "When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers…. The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly…. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar."

                        — Alfred North Whitehead

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                        • #42
                          I do know I wouldn't want any option that even temporarily had me in a state like "The Brain that Wouldn't Die!".




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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
                            That aimed at the character, or me?
                            The character. May your enemies always be stupid.


                            Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
                            No problem. Just thought I might need to clarify now that it was two posts instead of the most recent.
                            I'm not here anymore.

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                            • #44
                              Just as an aside, according to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics we may already be immortal, at least in a certain sense. Each of the many worlds contains an exact copy of each of us, accepting that experiences of each copy, which are each independently determined by the schrodinger equation, all differ. Of course, the continued existence of those other copies of us wouldn't do much for us should we die.

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                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                                This is where the human/transhuman/posthuman aspect comes into play. There is a very real argument that humans can't live forever because mortality is a core aspect of what it means to be human. That said, I'm not sure I'd agree that an uploaded consciousness wouldn't be immortality. The thought experiments and questions around cyborgization, for example, ask questions like "how much of your body can you replace before it stops being your body". The only consistent answer, afaict, is that your body is your body because it's part of whatever whole your consciousness encompasses. You're no less 'you' minus a limb (or use of four limbs, or with a new limb) than you are with it. In that sense, 'you' and 'your consciousness' are identical. As long as your consciousness continues to exist, so do you. There could be some interesting discussions about how this works, though. Perhaps we should differentiate between uploading your consciousness and transferring it. Simply uploading it would make a copy and get Sam his Prestige option.

                                I think there are two different arguments here. Jed isn't talking about replacing parts but making a Xerox. The former you might make that argument; the later, er, not so much.
                                "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                                "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                                My Personal Blog

                                My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                                Quill Sword

                                Comment

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