Thread: Immortality 2045 Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
Just saw this news story, realized it had been kicking around for a couple of months and thought, "We didn't have a Purg thread on that did we?" (As a Host, I will now be eternally shamed if someone shows me that we did, and will plead that I was on vacation at the time).

So, a Russian "mogul" (fancy word for a rich guy?) has put together a team of scientists to pursue the goal of human immortality (human brains transplanted into artificial bodies) by 2045. Some questions come to mind:

Science people: Is this remotely possible, or it is completely nuts (at least on the timeline he has laid out with the technology available today)?

Religious people: Is this "playing God"? Would it be wrong or sinful in some way to remove the certainty of death?

People people: Is this creepy or exciting? Would you want to live forever as a brain downloaded into a robotic or holographic avatar?

[ 06. October 2012, 11:44: Message edited by: Trudy Scrumptious ]
 
Posted by PerkyEars (# 9577) on :
 
Transplanting a living brain into an artificial body seems fiendishly difficult, but theoretically plausible. Keeping the brain alive is probably as big a challenge as hooking it up to a robot.

Artificial brains are not even theoretically plausible at the moment, since we don't have the first idea how the human brain generates a mind. It would take a huge amount of progress, comparable to the gap between understanding animal breeding and understanding how to cut and paste DNA.

It doesn't remove the certainty of death. Machines don't last for ever, neither do the civilisations that maintain them. I expect if it happened then 1000 years later there would be just a few left - survivors of wars, revolutions, famines, earthquakes, vengeful relations and lab power cuts. Sounds like a nice basis for a sci-fi story.

I might go for it, but I'd consider it life-extension rather than immortality. It's not wrong, it's just probably quite futile.

[ 06. October 2012, 11:25: Message edited by: PerkyEars ]
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:

Science people: Is this remotely possible, or it is completely nuts (at least on the timeline he has laid out with the technology available today).
Transplanting living conscious brains into artificial bodies? Remotely possible but not on any timescale we need worry about.

Uploading human minds into some super-computer? Probably not technologically possible, at least not with any technology we can envisage now. And if you could do it the uploaded person wouldn't be you, it would be someone else who shared some of your memories. You would still be your body just as you were before, and still die in the normal way. (Possibly quite quickly if the method of reading your brain was at all invasive) But its not on the cards in 30 or 40 years. We still have almost no firm knowledge about how brains encode thoughts and memories and we still have no real idea how to build computers that could do what human brains do. I've been following this since the 1960s. Back then the fans of this idea put that kind of AI fifteen years in the future. Forty years later, its still fifteen years in the future. Alongside commercial fusion power, undersea colonies, and cheap synthetic food.

Keeping people alive for longer than we live now? Of course that's possible. We're doing it now. And we're getting better at it faster than most people realise. Do we have indefinite lifespan in the near future? Probably not. But barring the complete breakdown of civilisation it will come. Do we have renewed youth? Nowhere near, but its probably possible and if it is it will come. And you don't have to have it invented in your expected lifespan to benefit from it - all you have to do is live long enough to benefit from the next incremental step that keeps you alive long enough... The first people who will live into their third century are probably already alive. Its at least possible that some of us may be among them. In that case we don't need to invent rejuvenation in 2045 to benefit from it. 2095 might do. Or even 2450 if you can handle an old age lasting three centuries.

quote:

Religious people: Is this "playing God"? Would it be wrong or sinful in some way to remove the certainty of death?
No, its just ordinary medicine done better. Its a good idea. Christians ought to welcome it. And it doesn't remove the certainty of death. Some people already live longer than others. Is it sinful to heal them if they get sick?
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by PerkyEars:

Sounds like a nice basis for a sci-fi story.
It is. I've read hundreds of them. Well, at least a hundred. If I didn't have to go and watch a football match I could give you a reading list [Biased]
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
It might be possible, but given that no one actually understands what conciousness is, let alone if it is even the type of thing you can transfer, you would have to classify this as wishful thinking - like cryogenics. Of course, there will always be those who think that the final piece of their great advancement is just around the corner, or the next one, or the one after that ...

As an aside, even if this did happen it technically would not be immortality. Your conciousness can still cease to be, at least as far as we understand it.
 
Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :
 
No, thank you. I won't take this, nor will I take the Singularity.

Who puts the book down at the cliffhanger ending and never finishes reading it? Not I.

When an adventure becomes indefinite, it is no longer an adventure, but a plod. I am not afraid of the adventure of this life ending. Mostly 'cause, to quote the words of the prophet Dumbledore, "To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I'm not really sure what exactly consciousness is either, and whatever it is, I seriously doubt if it's limited to our brains. Even if you could transplant my brain to someone else's body, I don't think it would be me.

When it comes to immortality, I believe much more in stopping certain aging processes in our body: stopping loose radicals etc. Maybe we couldn't achieve immortality in this way, but I believe that we could lenghten our live spans to, say, 200 years. I wouldn't mind about that.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
These days, it is quite possible to replace all 4 limbs with artificial alternatives. It is just about possible to produce an artificial heart.

Most of the other organs are fundamentally about food processing and conversion to energy. If food and oxygen could be supplied to the blood, and CO2 removed, there seems no reason for this not to be practical.

Whether it can be achieved successfully, I doubt, because the risks are too great. It would require moving a head (not just a brain) while the patient is still just alive. I cannot see that this would be acceptable, given that the chances are high of failure.
 
Posted by Alicïa (# 7668) on :
 
I don't think it's playing God or is particularly creepy. I find it quite easy to imagine that one day it might be possible, but what will they be able to do about Alzheimers and other mind degenerative illnesses that increase in likelihood as we get older.
 
Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :
 
This is most interesting. I have come to believe that just about ANYTHING is now possible. I am almost certain that this will be - but not as some have remarked, within the time frame suggested.

It is not 'playing God' or rather it is, but we do that all that time. It just might be that the Holy Spirit works through our own time, giving a lie to the distinction so often made between the sacred and the secular.

In precis: Yes, it will probably happen - but not so crudely as in the article. No, nothing wrong with it religiously.
 
Posted by The Rogue (# 2275) on :
 
One of my earliest Science Fiction (ish) stories was "The Trouble With Lichen" by John Wyndham. Although the story was about long life rather than immortality the point was well made that feeding the increased population would be an issue. If brains are being transplanted into machines then the resources required wouldn't be food so much as power and metal and at the moment these are not renewable. So we would need research into renewable energy and metal/plastic in tandem with the research in the OP. No doubt other research would be required to keep such a civilisation going in the ways it differs from ours.

And would there be any babies?
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
The best SFF story on aging/immortality is one part of Gullivers travels by Jonathan Swift. In one place, there are a few cursed people who are born immortal. The problem is that they are not permanently young, and simply get older and crankier as they age.

The problem is that this is largely the mind attitude, and so replacing the body will not really help this. People whose minds are 150 YO will be unbearable to live with. The other problem, as someone alluded to above, is that the mind tends to degenerate as well as the body. So even completely transplanting a brain into a totally fresh body will not help with mental deterioration.

There is the wider issue of what immortality actually means? What is the essence of a person that needs to continue? For me, one important part of this is their legacy - what they leave behind, what others remember of them, even before they die.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I think people get more themselves as they age--more concentrated, you might say. Unless dementia or something steps in, of course.

THis means that the saintly get saintlier, the kind get kinder, and the bastards get bastardier.

So if you were going to lengthen life spans by any significant amount, you'd probably want to take the effect on personality into account when interviewing candidates. Some people, death can't come too early.
 
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
Trouble is the bastards will push themselves to the front of the line by hook or crook anyway. They always do. [Disappointed]
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
So, what happens if my mind has been uploaded into the immortality machine, but some hacker comes along and figures out a way to program the machine so that I experience nothing but pain and/or general unpleasantness for ever and ever?

Because, you just know that if this technology ever gets off the ground, there's gonna be some resistance groups trying to throw in SNAFUs every step of the way. Especially if it's viewed as something only available to the rich.
 
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
My primary reaction -- it's sad.

I grew up on science fiction that "worshiped" the brain; in book after book they were so focused on the brain that they saw the body's sole function is supporting the brain. Food, for example, was reduced to a pill you could swallow, taking care of the body's nutrition needs with minimal distraction from intellectualism.

Can you imagine never smelling coffee, tasting a steak or a shrimp with red sauce, or a soup, or a pastry, or chocolate! That was the goal, eliminate all that messy nonsense, in book after book it was just a pill for a meal, no relaxing in front of a warm fire, lick from a devoted dog, admiring a sunset, sex.

I don't know if the dreamers in the OP envision a body that can feel, smell, hear music, or just think. If the artificial body is an unfeeling machine, can you really imagine life with sensuality?
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
So, what happens if my mind has been uploaded into the immortality machine, but some hacker comes along and figures out a way to program the machine so that I experience nothing but pain and/or general unpleasantness for ever and ever?
That's sort-of the subject of Iain Banks's recent novel Surface Detail, which is at least partly about the moral and political and religious consequences of having backup copies of people's minds living in computer-generated virtual worlds. Worth a read. (Well, all his books are worth a read)
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
re: bastards being at the front of the queue. Richard Morgan's seminal Altered Carbon (he won the Philip K Dick award with it*) has two interesting innovations.

Firstly, the cortical stack which backs up your memories allows interstellar travel. Download from one body, send the information via ftl wormhole tech, upload into a new body at the new location.

Secondly, the Roman Catholic Church is dead against the technology, and has declared anyone who uses it is outside of the church, and therefore redemption.

It is also cheap. What isn't cheap is buying the body for uploading. Hence the rise of a class of rich, immortal bastards.

(*all the best people have [Biased] )
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
quote:
I don't know if the dreamers in the OP envision a body that can feel, smell, hear music, or just think. If the artificial body is an unfeeling machine, can you really imagine life with sensuality?
I don't read fiction anymore, hence no science-fiction(though I thank everyone for the references), but I did read Tuck Everlasting(*) back in the day. The thing that sturck me the most was Mr. Tuck's speech(delivered by William Hurt in the movie) about how an immortal life, without death, aging, or physical breakdown, "can't be called living".

(*) SPOILER About a family who become immortal after drinking from a magical pond.
 
Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
I find the idea horrible. As I'm now in mid-life and slowing down a bit, and acquiring the odd ache or pain, the idea of replacing my body has some appeal.

But minds, or brains for those who consider the brain the mind, acquire bumps and bruises of their own. 20 years ago, I could remember details of my childhood that now grow fuzzy and dim. On the other hand, I recall details of assorted humiliating cock-ups I'd really prefer to forget.

What is the use of a mind that lives forever if it can't remember and make intelligent use of all acquired useful experience, while at the same time being unable to off-load all the embarrasing rubbish (to say nothing of trauma)?

Nope, not a good idea.
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
I don't know if the dreamers in the OP envision a body that can feel, smell, hear music, or just think. If the artificial body is an unfeeling machine, can you really imagine life with sensuality?
I don't read fiction anymore, hence no science-fiction(though I thank everyone for the references), but I did read Tuck Everlasting(*) back in the day. The thing that sturck me the most was Mr. Tuck's speech(delivered by William Hurt in the movie) about how an immortal life, without death, aging, or physical breakdown, "can't be called living".

(*) SPOILER About a family who become immortal after drinking from a magical pond.
That book ALWAYS makes me cry.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Sounds like the person who wants to do this is someone who saw the "I, Mudd" episode of the original Star Trek, and took entirely the wrong lessons from it.

[ 08. October 2012, 09:19: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I don't read fiction anymore...
[Confused] Whyever not?

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
The thing that sturck me the most was Mr. Tuck's speech(delivered by William Hurt in the movie) about how an immortal life, without death, aging, or physical breakdown, "can't be called living".
The "sour grapes" reaction. As aging and sickness and death are inevitable we invent reasons they are somehow neccessary or spiritually enobleing. People used to say that about the pains of childbirth before Queen Victoria said "stuff all that and give me the anaesthetic".

I bet if there were a real chance of a medical procedure that could mitigate or even reverse the pains of aging, almost everyone would happily take it. Yes there are severely depressed and suicidal people around. But most would rather live in health than die in pain.

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:

What is the use of a mind that lives forever if it can't remember and make intelligent use of all acquired useful experience, while at the same time being unable to off-load all the embarrasing rubbish (to say nothing of trauma)?
Presumably if we ever do manage to work out how to do it, we'll have fixed the common dementias and wasting diseases as well. So we'd expect to have memories about as good, or as bad, as the ones we have now. Which seems fine to me.

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
re: bastards being at the front of the queue. Richard Morgan's seminal Altered Carbon[...]It is also cheap. What isn't cheap is buying the body for uploading. Hence the rise of a class of rich, immortal bastards.
Joe Haldeman's Long Habit of Living has a class of super-rich long-lived exploiters as well, IIRC.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
quote:
The "sour grapes" reaction. As aging and sickness and death are inevitable we invent reasons they are somehow neccessary or spiritually enobleing. People used to say that about the pains of childbirth before Queen Victoria said "stuff all that and give me the anaesthetic".

I bet if there were a real chance of a medical procedure that could mitigate or even reverse the pains of aging, almost everyone would happily take it. Yes there are severely depressed and suicidal people around. But most would rather live in health than die in pain.
Yeah, I've thought about that, and it would be a tough call, between death and immortality. But this thought-experiment kinda settles it for me...

Suppose that tomorrow, a reputable wizard put an immortality pill in front of you. Not only would it keep you alive forever, it would somehow guarantee you a relatively painless and comfortable existence. The only catch is that its effects are irreversible. Once you take it, there's no going back, you will never taste death.

I don't think I would want to take the pill. I wonder how many of us honestly would?

And for the record, I am someone who REALLY dislikes the idea of dying. Ideally, I'd wish for an immortality pill with reversible effects, or one that allows you to come and go from consciousness at your leisure. But between dying and irrevocable immortality, I still have to say I'd go for the former.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I don't read fiction anymore...
[Confused] Whyever not?

I dunno. It just doesn't hold my interest the way non-fiction does. Maybe because something about my imagination makes it difficult to form a clear picture about what I'm supposed to be visualizing when the writer describes a scene.

I majored in English Lit at university, but even then, I preferred reading easays and poems to prose fiction. I do love movies, so I get my fill of "other people's imagined universes" that way.
 
Posted by Dal Segno (# 14673) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
...human brains transplanted into artificial bodies...
The human body is much more robust than almost any machine.

The human body is self-repairing, finds its own energy sources (food and air), can last for decades in good condition, and is cheap to produce [Biased]

By contrast, almost every complex machine we have in the lab has broken down within five years.

One alternative, explored in a couple of Lois McMaster Bujold's books, is to clone the human and then transplant the brain from the old version to the new version. If you do the transplant when the clone is 18, then you get another 40-50 years of life before you have to repeat. In the books, the process is "dangerous and likely to be fatal to the old brain". It is, of course, certainly fatal to the new brain.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
"Would you want to live forever as a brain downloaded into a robotic or holographic avatar?"

I wouldn't.

If everyone could do it, where would the planet accommodate them all?

If only an elite few - then I wouldn't want to be part of the 'privileged'. Life would be miserable without contemporary friends and family imo.

There is more to life than being alive.

[ 09. October 2012, 06:11: Message edited by: Boogie ]
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I'm going to make a confession. I wouldn't mind if the human life span were around 200 years (the 'normal' way, without brain transplants), with a healthy life until 180 of course. I would have plenty of things to do to fill that time.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dal Segno:

One alternative, explored in a couple of Lois McMaster Bujold's books, is to clone the human and then transplant the brain from the old version to the new version.
Its almost certainly technically easier to keep your original body going.
 
Posted by The Revolutionist (# 4578) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
The "sour grapes" reaction. As aging and sickness and death are inevitable we invent reasons they are somehow neccessary or spiritually enobleing. People used to say that about the pains of childbirth before Queen Victoria said "stuff all that and give me the anaesthetic".

I bet if there were a real chance of a medical procedure that could mitigate or even reverse the pains of aging, almost everyone would happily take it. Yes there are severely depressed and suicidal people around. But most would rather live in health than die in pain.
Yeah, I've thought about that, and it would be a tough call, between death and immortality. But this thought-experiment kinda settles it for me...

Suppose that tomorrow, a reputable wizard put an immortality pill in front of you. Not only would it keep you alive forever, it would somehow guarantee you a relatively painless and comfortable existence. The only catch is that its effects are irreversible. Once you take it, there's no going back, you will never taste death.

I don't think I would want to take the pill. I wonder how many of us honestly would?

And for the record, I am someone who REALLY dislikes the idea of dying. Ideally, I'd wish for an immortality pill with reversible effects, or one that allows you to come and go from consciousness at your leisure. But between dying and irrevocable immortality, I still have to say I'd go for the former.
I can't imagine we'd ever have the technology to make us actually unable to die, like in Torchwood: Miracle Day. If that were the case, I'd run a mile.

But a pill that prevents ageing and dying of old age... I'd take it. The only reason I wouldn't take it would be if it wasn't widely available. I wouldn't want to stay young while friends and family grew old and died. I think most people would take it, if the option was actually available.

Having my consciousness uploaded to a computer, or transferred to a clone... I'm not sure. I don't know whether I agree with Ken that this wouldn't be you, just a copy of you.

What's important about us is not the specific physical "stuff" we're made of - that changes all the time. On a molecular and cellular level, we're a "shape in the waterfall", because the component elements are always changing. Our "soul" isn't tied to any particular atoms, but to an arrangement of them, which changes over time. I'm open to the possibility that this arrangement could be successfully reproduced so that although physically distinct, it would be the same person.

Philosophically, I'm inclined to think of the soul as being like a particularly complex idea (hence its immortality, because you can't kill ideas!) Ideas exist independently of minds, but need minds to be able to change and develop. But if I communicate an idea, it's the same idea regardless of the physical substrata embodying it, whether in a book (where it's static) or a brain (where it's active). So too the soul - if you could successfully communicate or reproduce the contents of the mind in a different medium, it would still be the soul.

I wouldn't want a mechanical or virtual body (though a replacement cloned physical body might be handy - always good to have a spare!), but I'm not sure we can rule out philosophically that it might be possible to do this.
 


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