tar

SwansonT, So back to the OP. Which do you think will happen first, being able to spruce up your DNA to renew your body to a younger state, or being able to transfer your mind to a supercomputer? Regards, TAR

Or more nightmarish is the thought that you would just be inserted in some virtual Matrix world, where the possibilities are limitless, but it is because you are just experiencing a virtual world that someone else is projecting. Like the life of a drug addict. Feeling on top of the world, victorious and undefeatable while lying penniless in the gutter in your own filth, or in this case your brain sitting in a jar bathed in just the right combination of chemicals to keep you dreaming forever, never subject to the waking world at all. DrP, Well you are right. The "cure for death is living" is not really an answer. It was more a suggestion that we defeat death every time we wake up in the morning, and to view this as a constant victory...for as long as it lasts. A final victory is not possible in this scenario, only a continuing victory, another day of life. Regards, TAR So, I would say, in answer to the thread question, that we are an eternity away from immortality. or more than a googleplus years Unless you allow children to count for an extension of one's own consciousness, or if you allow that continued species survival counts as immortality, in which case we have already achieved the immortal victory. (for now)

DrP, Well the cure for death is living. That we are so fragile and fleeting is the problem...but that might also be why living is so valuable. Why we fight to survive. Without the fight and the constant victories, it might not be pleasant and rewarding. And you still would like to know you had the power and control enough to pull the plug, should you wish to lose the only thing you have, which is life and consciousness. So I might take the cure as well, if it is some Jellyfish ointment that helps to regenerate cells or something that reduces the aging process and allows for extended living, but forever seems excessive a goal, and forsaking ones body for a different vessel seems not only not possible, but not likely to be pleasant. How do we bypass wars and accidents and power outages and such, anyway. Or remove the politics and money from the equation? For instance, would you take the cure if your test tube had a position on the outside of the rack and not if you were surrounded by and trapped between a bunch of others? Or would it make a difference to you if your mate chose the tube next to you, or chose not to buy a tube at all? Regards, TAR Or the more likely issue, would you take the bargain basement cure, or the one with some added bells and whistles for an additional price? Even in immortality there will be rooms with a view and ones looking at the dumpsters, I would guess. And there might be a wait for bandwidth. You can experience a view from the position of your choice, but the best views might have a wait involved and you can only see the thing when it is your turn...or something. The waking world still has to fit together and cause and effect are still in play and doing this thing or taking that course will still result in the closing out of other possibilities.

Thorham, I am not religious either and do not believe in either the heaven and hell system or the reincarnation system, but I do hold out to the idea that there is still "something" after death. Like perhaps returning to the "force". I was using he word "heaven" to stand for what-ever-it-is that is waiting on the other side of the rainbow bridge...the lost loved ones, the eternal peace, the end of struggle and strife, the final victory. I am thinking that death will be much like it was for me before I was born. Don't know what that is, but it is generally a good thing, a bigger thing, a more unified thing, in my imagination. Not as separate as being alive is. Of course I would expect to lose the advantages of being separate and a point of focus, to a more non-specific type of consciousness, but I expect something. What ever this might be would be forfeited should one find a way to not die. And what if one, who was immortal, missed something about the way they were when they were young, or had a body, like I miss the feeling on the skin on the outside lower front of my knees? Or if one became "ready" to die? Regards, TAR Plus, Thorham, You speak of hurtling any technological barrier, with ease and perfection, but you know that things are rarely as perfect in execution as they are on the drawing board, and there are always unintended consequences and engineering trade-offs and bugs in the system that have to be worked out in the next revision. Do you want to be immortal v1.01 or would you be willing to risk it and wait for immortal v6.18? And how much are you willing to lose, of how life is for you now, for how it would be when pheromones and endorphins no longer were in play, and instead the results of the decisions of some panel of designers that were guessing at what would be a perfect way to be forever? And oh, what if you didn't like coexisting with somebody else, like a mass murderer or a Jehovah's witness? Wouldn't they be immortal too, and how would you rid yourself of them? (oh, just remembered, a Jehovah's witness would not submit to the technological process, so we are OK on that score.) Regards, TAR

Thorham, Well, are we going with DNA design, or are we going for finding a way to transfer consciousness to another vessel? I am thinking it might be hard to change DNA midstream. That is, can you have a body consisting of cells with different DNA in them? When a structure like skin would repair itself how would it know which version of cell to use? The one impervious to cosmic rays or the one that is sensitive to the touch of a butterfly? Regards, TAR That, along with your hopes for a continuation of the consciousness after the body dies, gives at least two arguments against immortality. One, who wants to live forever if you can't feel a butterfly lite on your wrist, and two, who would want to be bound forever to mortal coils and forsake heaven? just an aside on technology replacing original equipment...I had my knees replaced and some nerves were sacrificed. The outside front lower right of my right knee and the outside front lower left of my left knee have lost some significant amount of feeling. Like half numb. if the technology of immortality would leave you numb to life, would that be any fun?

Thorham, What kind of evolution is there to go from the bodies we have now to bodies that can eat super nova for breakfast in a thousand years...without any natural selection involved, since you don't have survival of the fittest or the birth of mutated offspring, you have current bodies living forever, with technical enhancements. Perhaps you are placing your consciousness into a super computer, with replaceable strong supernova resistant shells, but this would not be "our" bodies. It would be our consciousness transferred to another house. This I think demands that one believe in the ghost in the machine way of looking at consciousness. That there is a soul not immediately defined by the body and brain and heart. I don't think that is the way it goes. Without your body brain and heart you would not be you. You would be that other thing, that machine, with the machine's capabilities and limitations. Regards, TAR

Thorham, But best case situation with fantastic technology would still be subject to the death of the Sun, meteors, gamma rays from super nova, etc. Eternal is quite a big goal. Bigger than even the projected lifetime of the universe. And if reliant on technology, you would be dependent on your society and a "keeper" to keep your tube warm and in proper order. I think there are too many political and emotional roadblocks to ever make it to eternity. Regards, TAR plus regardless of the real world barriers, you never could "make it" to eternity...by definition

Thorham, What would you consider immortal? If a pattern persists, and does not die, then that pattern is immortal. Where it is not immortality at all, is expecting the "I" to persist. Which is what I suggested to fredreload as something not possible or even desired. Regards, TAR Thorham, At all? Regards, TAR

dimreepr, "Please suggest a way an ill-defined problem can be learned." I suppose you meant to ask me how one could learn from others how the solution to an ill-defined problem can be arrived at? I gave some examples. I also asked you to give me the context of a problem to where I could show you we can learn from others how to go about solving the thing. Regards, TAR

Dimreeper, Give me the context of the problem, and I can give you a suggestion as to how you might go about deconstructing the situation and solving the components. The most intelligent man I ever knew was a Dr. Wolfgang Zucker, a philosophy professor at the small defunct college I attended. He would solve integral calculus problems for relaxation and amusement like others might do crossword puzzles. I am sure he would not have been able to do those problems without others, especially Leibniz. Regards, TAR (and he would solve those problems WHILE he was discussing deep philosophical topics, sitting around his house with students and friends.) Dimreeper, I actually was an expert troubleshooter and problem solver for my company, concerning fax machines, printers, wideformat copiers, color copiers, digital duplicators, and scanners. I could solve problems the best trained techs were having trouble with. But it was because I knew what the machines were designed to do, and how they accomplished the task. I had a simple rule, if the machine was not working right, it had to be something. Either something was not designed correctly, or something had failed or some environmental condition or some individual's actions were preventing it from working. It had to be something. Regards, TAR (or the salesman promised the machine would do something it was not designed to do} So basically, if you have an ill-defined problem without any expected solutions, or path to solution or goal or whatever, you look for an analog, something similar, and that might give you a way forward. And you use your experience, or the experience of others in similar situations to find the solution. You learn from the past.

Dimreeper, I do not think I am confusing intelligence and learning. I think I am pointing out the relationship between thinking and language. And as such, the development of the language, within which to have the thought, is of utmost importance. There are various components of intelligence, in terms of memory power, and computational ability, and abstract thinking, and the speed and sureness with which one can make analogies, and comparisons and look at things from multiple perspectives and the like, but the babe raised in the woods does not know nearly as much as the one raised around the university. No matter how much grey matter she was born with. Regards, TAR Dimreeper, How about new problems are often solved by recalling the lessons learned while solving the last problem. That is one of the standard tenets of project management. Regards, TAR and take math for instance someone can have an abstract thought, using the math that was developed though countless propositions and trials and assumptions, by herself, but can not claim to have done it on her own

another thought I woman I worked with on a technical hotline once said in response to someone that remarked at how she always knew the answer, that it was not knowing the answer that was as important as knowing where and how to find the answer. Regards, TAR

I disagree dimreepr. You couldn't even talk if you did not have parents that taught you. The symbols we "think" with are a language. A language taught to us by others, developed by others and refined and documented by others. A babe raised in the woods by wolves, would not be as intelligent as the babe raised by a Harvard professor dad and a research scientist mom. Regards, TAR

dimreeper, My initial point, was in agreement with Phi, that none of us are very smart by ourselves, and that we need quite a support group, both currently and historically, to "be intelligent". I didn't move any goal posts, from there. Regards, TAR

dimreeper, I get it. But in terms of intelligence, the intelligence embodied in the car is available to the driver, and in terms of computer programs and many of the scientific procedures going on today there are pieces of technology and processes that are "used" without understanding of how to make it happen. Like the fax machine, you could use the ink or toner, without understanding CMYK color balance, or what plant to harvest, or mineral to mine, to find a certain pigment. Regards, TAR we are standing on the shoulders of giants when we look at google Earth

fredreload, Saw on the internet yesterday an Indonesian man who claims to be 145 years old...says he is "ready" to die. There seems to me to be a natural unwinding of capabilities and such, that happens as you age. I have a 90 year old dad, that can not drive or ride a lawnmower after some brain surgery. There are complexities involved with living. Reward chemicals and pheromones and driving sexual needs and such that make immortality a tricky question. As in, what capabilities will you have? For instance, if you could live another hundred years, as long as you were in a test tube, with no joy possible from moving around and having a game of catch with your great grand kids, is it really an accomplishment. The biggest question though, is the amount of money and time and energy and such it would take to make "you" immortal. Why you, and not the Indonesian guy? How would we choose who to make immortal, and why would that process work any more smoothly then the competition for resources we currently have. Someone said to me the other day that one reason for dying is to make room for the next life. Do we really want or need 8 billion immortals? Or to make the choice about which 1000 get to be such. Or if the technology allowed everybody to be immortal, would we then not have kids? Who would play ball? Regards TAR

dimreepr, I know plenty of people that drive cars, without understanding the internal workings of a combustion engine. You are suggesting you know how to climb unto someone's shoulders, and non-scientists don't have a clue. Somewhat pretentious of you. Regards, TAR

Fredreload,. DNA immortality is already reality. It is called children. Digital immortality is already achieved, as well in the abilities we have to copy and store code and info. However, as in the case of the child, the "I" does not transfer, and this would be the case with the digital copy of you as well. Regards, TAR so I think we are about as close to immortality as we are going to get...already

Thread, I think that Phi has alluded to the crux of the matter in suggesting that we (scientists and non) are standing on the shoulders of giants. That is "our" intelligence is not only what we individually know, but what those around us know, and more importantly, what those before us knew. I used to support the service of fax machines at the manufacturer level and had the thought one day, of how long would it take someone with no civilization behind them to make a fax machine. Alone with no material science, no information on where to find the metal, how to get it out of the ground and forged, no petroleum, no plastics, no command of energy, tools and processes and such, even for the basics. Not even close to designing lasers and microprocessors or stepper motors. Or the communication system to get the pixels sensed in Chicago to New York and a second fax machine... So the pretentiousness, related to the OP, that was deflected from the knowledgeable scientist to the anti-vaccer blogger in the article, I think has more to do with assuming that because you know or feel something, it is you and you alone that knows or feels the thing, without the proper credit going to the work of unnumbered scientists and practitioners that had to have come before you. That is, scientists are pretentious if they think because they know a formula and someone else does not know that formula, that they thought up the formula or that it is somehow theirs, and does not belong as well, to the person that does not know the formula. Brilliant people often leave their work to others, for the benefit of others, and whether you are a scientist or not, and whether the topic is science or childcare, the findings of one of us, shared with the world, are indeed the property of all of us. Regards, TAR

I sometimes confuse alt republicans and neo conservatives, by using big words.

Mordred, . Thanks for that. I almost understood. Like a compression and rarefaction wave moving through the matter. How do you symbolize the intersection of two or more impulses though? Regards, TAR

Strange, We are also bias to our time scale and size scale. We are not immediately concerned with the drift of the continents, nor conscious of sound waves with wavelengths as long as an AU. Nor do we "feel" the iinformation that causes Brownian motion. "Inform" is a biased word that is anthropomorphic at its base. How do we get the form, that is out there, in? Regards, TAR

Strange, But you are bias as a human to our 5 senses. All our equipment accentuates and refines the abilities we already have developed. Our sight brought us in contact with the EM spectrum and we enhanced that sense though magnifying glass and radio telescope. We can develop senses that "see" magnetic fields, and will probably extend our senses to include the sensing of arrangements that are implicit through aligning various senses and figuring out there is an arrangement out there, like gravity fields. StringJunky is limiting the ability of the early hot/dense universe to exchange information, to after photons flew. He is taking "looks like" very literally and limiting it to electromagnetic waves, which is somewhat human sense biased. If looks like is a metaphor, then it should be extended to information that can be gleaned, or shared or felt by any means, not limited to the eye or its enhancements. Regards, TAR

or perhaps a being from that time could search the archives for a picture from the Hubble

Strange, Well perhaps irrelevant to you, but central to me. How can you see without involving your eyes? The human, and all life, and all arrangements of matter are so, partially because of the environment they are in. Plants grow toward the Sun, because the Sun is there. If the universe is expanding, to where wavelengths of light are getting longer and longer, then those long wavelengths will be what is hitting items in 600 million years. If radio waves are the only waves coming in from the rest of the univer se, in 600 billion years, then a conscious being at that point will be conscious of that fact through either evolution or technology. If the waves are of very long duration and so little energy as to be not visible to a current day human, there is no reason to suggest that beings of that future epoch will not be long lived enough and sensitive enough, or smart enough to receive and store the signal. Perhaps our "eyes" will be like huge radio telescope receivers, and we will sense distant galaxies like we today sense the CMB. Regards, TAR