I don't know. We clearly won't be defeating death in our lifetimes (and frankly, I'm not sure I would want to live forever stuck in my 80 year old body).
Not only is death necessary for new generations, it kind of gives meaning to the time we do have.
So… I'm open to the idea that we should know how to care for the dying instead of merely prolonging their misery. Everyone reading these words will die one day. Better get used to it!
You don't need to look too far for examples. Even on this very site, there are quite a few people who want to make a huge difference with their lives in one way or another before they're 30 or 40. Because they know they probably won't have another shot at it later on. What would that number be if they had an infinite number? Many wouldn't probably ever get around to try.
How many people try to make a difference in the world, fail (because it is hard) and then capitulate into working a salaried job managing database queries for MegaCorp...because it is safe and they have a family to feed.
If you knew you would live until 300 and remained reasonably "young/healthy" during that time you probably wouldn't start a family as soon.
Right at the higher levels of human achievement, I believe that it is curiosity and inquisition that drive us. Certainly impending death can focus people, but I do not believe it delivers the spark that lights ingenuity.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” - Steve Jobs
A few months ago, this was one of the biggest quotes around the internet. For a lot of people, death is a catalyst to do something that matters. In the biography, Jobs talks a lot about how he's in a hurry because he feels like he's going to die young.
No it doesn't. The death of young children, or victims of accidents or violent crimes for instance, doesn't force them to chose anything. The notion that you have limited time, might make you want to prioritize. You can hardly speak for anyone else, or what makes them choose anything.
I have a limited time on earth, yet I chose to spend it with you. Cuddling on this couch. Watching a movie. I think by the finite nature of our existence it imparts a little bit of significance to any sacrifice we might make to our own utilitarian maximizing.
Well, you didn't convince me there. We humans are lazy by nature. And you are spending time with him/her cuddling on your couch because your life is not in immanent danger. In other words, you are not assuming you will die tonight, but rather that you will go sleep, like any other night, and wake up next day (although one day you will be mistaken, but then it won't matter anymore).
Have there been an earthquake or your place would be ate alive by fire, you would be running away like crazy and the last thing on your mind would be to cuddle on your couch.
Further there is not much you can do to postpone the judgment. Sure you can break up with your loved one and lock yourself in a library for 10 years, grasp some wisdom, perhaps invest money or built a company, sell it ten years later for half a billion $ and invest all your money strictly into life-extension projects, but by now most likely you know the probability of achieving all this is so small, that you would rather cuddle on your couch just for a little bit longer.
nobody is going to be stuck in their 80 years old body.
this is the extremely short version/recipe to leave forever:
1. clone yourself. work with this guy who is very close to succeed [1]
2. once your clone is 25 years old and therefore stop growing, undergo a brain translation. Now, before you start laughing look here: [2] This is Dr. White [3] undergoing successful monkey brain transplantation in... seventies! I think 40 years later technology got much more advanced.
So the result would be your 80 years old brain (assume it was still quite healthy) in 100% matching DNA body of 25 year old. IF you don't get brain cancer, or other brain disease, you have another 50, 80 years to go. Now, going further only certain parts of the brain makes up for your identity. Most likely only memory. Fast forward another 40 years in the future, knowing how to connect broken nerves again why not cut only small part of your brain that is you therefore transplanting only your identity and limiting size of your old body in the new one.
Now, you can call me a conspiracy theorist, but if to overcome problems here is just a matter of time (by that I mean more time == less money + less engineers working on the problem. less time to resolve problem == more money to throw at the research + more engineers working on it), then I believe it is fairly plausible that elites like Rothschild family having billions of dollars for their disposition already have these technology available. Just ask yourself -- if you already have trillions in the bank, and building another successful company or buying another factory is boring to you AND the same time the only thing you are sure of is that one day you are gonna die, then it is obvious you will spend all your resources to "postpone the judgment".
* I didnt want to go into the obvious legal issues here: cloning humans, "stealing" someones body, putting another "human" in 80 years old body therefore shorting their life, etc.
There are no implications to flights of fantasy, there is no soul, the body is a complex biological machine and there's no reason we can't either learn to prevent the machine from breaking or learn to grow another for spare parts.
Actually, I agree with you. It's just that "soul" is the name I give to that complex biological machine.
And I think it's only fair. Though the word "soul" is mostly used in conjunction with dualistic assumptions, it has a deeper meaning that is fairly independent of dualism: Your soul is whatever makes you who you are. Your soul is what really matters about you. Whether the soul is separate from the body and survives it is another question.
I also have a specific reason to use that word: its emotional impact. For instance, one reason I think we should stop death is because it means the destruction of the soul. Even a devout Christian would understand my concerns (and go on to reassure me, but that's another story).
Religion isn't hijacking the word, it's their word, you seem to be the one hijacking it. You can't take your own personal definition of word and expect to communicate well. That we're even having this discussion proves that. Worse, you admit to using the word for its emotional impact and seem proud that deceiving a Christian by using it would work, this utterly intellectually dishonest.
Okay, I am the one who hijack the word[1]. But I don't think this is deception. I use the greater emotional impact because it is the one that actually match reality. I would say "destruction of the soul" to a Christian because only that would convey the right idea. If I say "death", the guy would think about going somewhere else instead of true death. That would be deception (or at least miscommunication).
For the same reason, I don't like to say "passed away", "gone", or "departed". Plain "died" is more accurate.
Reasonable response, so let me explain further; it's deceptive because that's not what most people mean by should and by using the word you're giving them a false impression of what you're trying to say. The fact is you're not going to go into this explanation of what you mean by soul in every conversation and many of those people wouldn't grok the implications of what you're saying on their own beliefs; you said soul, and then a bunch of nerdy babble, and they'll just remember you said soul and they agree with that part.
Imagine that every time you say soul, nearly everyone hears "immortal soul", because that's basically the truth. Find a better word to communicate what you really think, soul is not that word. The truth is what you're describing is "mind", not soul. It may be pretty to redefine a word, or take a different personal meaning, but it does not aid communication, it hampers it and deceives those who aren't willing to dig deeper into a discussion.
Nevertheless, how do I talk about true death to a believer in immortal souls? The best path I found so far is something like "imagine that your soul is actually destroyed when you die". It focuses directly on what I want to talk about: true death, the real deal, not some half-death with an escape hatch.
The advantage with this approach is that it emphasises the common ground between monotheists and transhumanists: true death is simply not acceptable. Therefore if it is a problem, and we have any chance of fixing it, then we must take that chance.
It also avoids some problems: If I say we don't have (immortal) souls, then he may soon draw conclusions I'm totally not about (worst case, he could think I'm a nihilist). If I avoid the word "soul" altogether, he could think I'm afraid of the afterlife.
People who believe in immortal souls don't believe in true death, you can't talk to them about it anymore than you can get them to imagine there's no god; they can't, it's just outside their worldview. These are people that can't be reasoned with because these beliefs aren't based on reason. Adapting their language but meaning different things by the words doesn't help you communicate, it only feels that way, because they're agreeing based on what they think those words mean, not with what you mean by them.
It is one thing to not believe something, and another to not even being able to do counter-factual reasoning. I don't believe in the afterlife, but I can sure imagine it. I've read enough stories about that.
Conversely, one could believe in the afterlife, and be able to imagine a world without it at the same time. Or a world where there is an afterlife, but where souls can actually be destroyed, or dissipated into the aether. I can recall at least 2 such stories: the anime Bleach, and The Night's Dawn Trilogy novel. I'm sure there are other examples.
Now, I reckon I can't help someone who can't even play the "what if" game.
Would you feel different if the cloned body (or body parts) were grown in a fashion such that it was never intelligent or aware? Such as without a full brain or even without a head? Would it then be a soul?
Thats why I didnt want to mention that or answer to loup. I didnt not wanted to end up with religion debate on whether there is God and Soul, and if Soul can be transferred etc. This was pure speculation on how to live forever. That is, if you could live happily ever after knowing you tricked your twin-brother/sister and gave him falling apart body with a 5 years life-expectancy.
We are getting really into science fiction now. Perhaps if you could somehow monitor and capture every single signal sent from human brain to its body from the moment brain formed itself (I know there is a flaw here...), then if you could record that transmission for 25 years, perhaps (Im really in year 2350 now, I think) you could program a computer that would re-play that transmission into a growing body (to mimic brain) and as a result at age 25 had a healthy body without human brain. This, I think, would cut-off all skeptics that believe Soul is attached to mind, not body itself.
Maybe I shouldn't have use the word "soul". My vision is, we do not have souls, we are souls. Body + Brain = Soul, so to speak. Death is when that soul is irrevocably destroyed (meaning, even the information required to reconstruct it is lost forever).
So, while convoluted, your solution sounds like it is acceptable. Be careful however to play a record of a past life, instead of, say, actually simulating a brain in a silicon chip, Gunm style. Because that simulation would most certainly be a soul as well (I don't believe in philosophical zombies).
I really don't give a shit if my ego continues to survive forever. I only care about this particular instantiation because under my (to be frank, likely to be flawed) interpretation this is the only "I" I ever perceive.
This gets more complicated because we don't have any guarantees on the continuity of consciousness as it is (when you awoke this morning, are you still the "same" person?)… but barring any more cogent arguments I'm gonna stick to it.
I think I rather be uploaded to a virtual reality environment with the ability to download to humanoid robots almost identical to the human body such that the difference in perception is almost negligible.
The robots should be identical to the human body at least skin deep. Our skin could be a synthetic material very close to the real thing. We will need none of the organs that currently keep us alive.
thats very interesting. I dont know what you mean by "rather be uploaded" (I guess you mean your conscious, which sounds just too much of a science-fiction to me since AFAIK we dont exactly know what makes us us and makes us aware we are we) but you made me think about other possibility: instead of stealing someones 100% matching DNAs body, why not to transplant your brain into the machine? Of course this is is still pure science fiction but if we could overcome all difficulties, I could see a robot body totally controlled by your brain. It would be some sort of control-by-wire thing. Your brain sends a signal to lift an arm, computer attached to it recognizes it and replace it with gauged signal that is being sent to your arm. If we could only know how to mimic signals that lets us see or hear or smell ([1] for example) we could have a fully working mechanical body. Then the only risk of dying would be brain injury or disease; nothing else could kill you.
ok hang on: second though: I am not sure if I would gave up on a please of fng for an eternity without it :)
edit: so it boils down to question: how long can brain live, given we provide it perfect conditions (lets say: pure perfectly controlled air, all the vitamins it needs in regulated doses, etc etc)
I was thinking more around the lines of converting the brain connections to software i.e. Scanning the brain and creating a software representation of it. Then put it in a brain simulator (This is a very simplistic example, it will be far more complicated than this). If we can do this then we should be able to replicate everything else, touch, smell, taste. Essentially we would become an artificial intelligent being with the potential to live forever.
How would you propose we do this? Suppose we could scan the state of your brain exactly and transfer it to a simulation on a computer. How would we now transfer your consciousness to the simulation? It seems to me that rather than making you live forever you've made a clone of you live forever. This relates to a basic unsolved question: how does consciousness work?
I honestly have no idea. I believe we will figure it out eventually.
The clone will be you, and you will be the clone. It will be like going to sleep and waking up in the virtual reality environment. From the clones perspective it will feel like the original you since it has all the memories of the original up to the point before you went to sleep. You just have to make sure that the original you is destroyed if and only if the virtual you is created successfully and with no corruptions. Otherwise there might be problems between the real you and the clone.
Side note: I believe there was an episode in Star Trek where something like this would happen. Star Trek made a treaty with an alien race to allow them to visit their planet via teleportation over huge distances. The thing is that they would not really teleport the person but rather they would create an exact clone at the destination and destroy the original.
> It will be like going to sleep and waking up in the virtual reality environment.
The question is: who will be waking up?
Basically the same issue is with a hypothetical teleporter. To teleport you from here to somewhere else we scan all the atoms in your body and digitize that information. Now we send the data over the internet to another place on earth. We rebuild you there. At the same moment that we use a defibrillator to put life into the new you, we shoot the old you in the head with a gun.
So you'd step into such a teleporter?
I haven't seen a convincing answer to these questions of consciousness/soul/identity. Perhaps there really is no difference between going to sleep and dying, it's just that in the former instance the old body is reused for new identity. Perhaps there is no persistent identity at all; in every moment in time there is a single separate identity. Perhaps time itself is an illusion: perhaps the universe is just one single snapshot in time. There are so many possibilities and I have no idea how one would even start to formulate a testable hypothesis. Does anyone have a recommendation for reading more about this topic?
An identical copy of you. If it is not identical then it wouldn't be you.
>>So you'd step into such a teleporter?
If the new me is identical to the old me I think I would. The new me is not supposed to notice anything different other than I woke up in a different place. The old me should never wake up once the new me has woken up.
>> consciousness/soul/identity
Being able to create an identical you assumes that you are your brain and nothing else.
> If the new me is identical to the old me I think I would. The new me is not supposed to notice anything different other than I woke up in a different place. The old me should never wake up once the new me has woken up.
As far as I can see stepping in such a teleporter basically amounts to suicide. Whatever is happening in another part of the Earth doesn't change a thing from the perspective of the guy getting shot.
So suppose we change the story a bit: we don't create a new copy of you, but we still shoot the old you. For you (the old you) this isn't any different than the previous story. Would you still go for this?
>>As far as I can see stepping in such a teleporter basically amounts to suicide. Whatever is happening in another part of the Earth doesn't change a thing from the perspective of the guy getting shot.
This is true if you include your sense of self as your entire body. However, I think I will have to decide that my sense of self is my memories stored in my brain. If you look at it from that perspective than as long as my memories, and everything else at the sub-conscious level, is persisted across any medium then I'm still alive. The body then becomes a vessel. However, I think I will still like to have my body so I might as well replicate that also.
Of course, I think this is a choice people will have to make themselves since it is true that the original you dies, as you state. The original body of yourself dies, but not your memories. I guess you could think of your memories as your soul. As long as those are alive, you are alive.
>>So suppose we change the story a bit: we don't create a new copy of you, but we still shoot the old you. For you (the old you) this isn't any different than the previous story. Would you still go for this?<<
Of course not. Why would anybody do that? I'm not sure what is the point you are trying to make here. Notice that in this case not only has my body died, but also my memories. So as far as the universe is concerned I'm truly dead.
If for whatever reason a new me cannot be created than I expect the original me to be woken up. The old me must only be terminated if the new me is created successfully.
this is all fascinating, BUT this is not "teleporting" per say. I would rather think true teleporting will be backing you into some small ball and shooting you trough a pipe fast enough so you end up on the other side of Earth in 10 seconds. What you saying here is creating a digital-copy and "reprinting" in a different place after sending via internet :) Yes, the copy of you would be created but your conscious wouldnt "skip" or "travel" to the new body because... why? you still here! Killing source wouldnt make your mind switching to the new body because that body is just a DNA copy of you. What would happen is the "perfect" copy of you would be created somewhere else in space. From that nano-second on, there would be two of "you" but both would think different from a first neuron connected in your brains. I think that would be no different than having twin-brother that thinks similar to you (or in our example: exactly the same) but of course your clone within a time would be gathering different experience from environment and the more time pass the more different conclusion would be drawn between you and "him".
Its still incredibly amazing question: what IS conscious. where is it stored and how can it be transferred. what will happen if you make a copy of it? can you make a copy?
come to think: perhaps teleporting is not possible at all. otherwise, why, if you believe in such, why would there be some info popping up here and there about UFO seeing. IF they would have technology to travel in space and live in planets we dont even see here, they would have use teleportation long time ago, instead of using just a plain dumb saucer :)
>Perhaps there is no persistent identity at all; in every moment in time there is a single separate identity.
That view is known as perdurantism (opposed to endurantism).
> Perhaps time itself is an illusion: perhaps the universe is just one single snapshot in time.
Not sure what you mean here, but if you're assuming determinism then you're scientifically wrong (which is to say that there's now a scientific answer to what was historically a philosophical conundrum). The universe is indeterministic. This is more because of entropy ("determinism is fundamentally a denial of the arrow of time") than chaos theory (which is still deterministic). Ilya Prigonine is notable for emphasizing this worldview as a third departure from Newton, first two being quantum mechanics and general relativity.
> Does anyone have a recommendation for reading more about this topic?
Not necessarily. Look at the problems in the world. How many of them are because we've forgotten history? Every time I read something new in history I'm struck by how this has all happened before and we're making the exact same mistakes again. I would submit that if we lived forever, we would be colonizing planets by now.
Not only is death necessary for new generations, it kind of gives meaning to the time we do have.
So… I'm open to the idea that we should know how to care for the dying instead of merely prolonging their misery. Everyone reading these words will die one day. Better get used to it!