Is immortality just an illusion ?

[empleat]

If i think about it, i read on Quora: that after age 20, we lose 1 gram of brain mass per year. Given, maybe only hope to live forever: would be replacing some of neurons with artificial ones and slowly replace whole brain like this. Until your brain is slowly remade with artificial neurons. Because problem with transferring consciousness directly into a computer may be - that your brain dies and information is only copied. Than you would die and only your copy would live inside a computer! There is no proof information is immaterial and can be transferred like this. Going with former method, even so i think you would be just a copy of a copy. Here is why i think that:

Because even in a living brain, neurons constantly die and being replaced. Memories are part of your personality, without them - you wouldn't be you. We lose some memories permanently, or at least they are lost to a consciousness. And even if we retain them, your neurons die and being replaced. So they are stored in different neurons.. you are just a copy of a copy. Even it doesn't feel that way, because we don't lose all cells at once. Or cells, that are part of immediate consciousness. There is no temporal death, like i would be dead for 30 seconds and voila now my brain is restored and i continue experiencing the world. But fact is we are probably copy of a copy, that cells that were processing a consciousness 10 years ago, some of them may be gone and you are just a copy of a copy.

Psychologically: it sucks imagining working hard towards immortality, only for you to die and your copy continues to live on. Because we are motivated only by pain and pleasure - (negative and positive emotions) and with survival instinct, after all we are survivors. That's how we evolved/survived and even evolution has no goal, we are motivated to survive and feel negative emotions when thinking about death. So we want to live forever and because terror management theory, at least we need to deal somehow with death, to leave something behind etc. Even there is no logical reason and it doesn't matter, after you die: you won't care if you were homeless, or famous...

So even we wouldn't die and replaced our brain gradually with an artificial neurons and than maybe transferred our minds into a computer. It wouldn't be really us, even for all intends and purposes we would be, lets say 100% human like, but in an artificial form. For sake of preserving consciousness: even we wouldn't experience death and had continuous experience, because delays of replacing parts of our brain would be so small to be conceivable and wouldn't affect everything at once. We would technically still die and be just copies. Question is does that really matter ? If we are already copies of ourselves... And we can't tell a difference. And unless we die and will be copied to a computer, do we really care ?

Even some futurists etc. claim we may achieve immortality by a year 2045, some neurologists and scientists doubt that and say: it won't be maybe possible hundreds of years yet. Even technology is improving exponentially and if we make human like - intelligent ai and improve performance of computers drastically. Who knows really... because it is very complex. Not to mention, even if you were successfully transferred into a computer: your mind would have to be backed up in case of catastrophe. Or you would eventually die, so even after that you would become a copy of a copy! But still if you lived like 10 thousand of years, it would feel like forever.

Thing is: imagine working whole life towards that goal and than not being able to achieve it... Today times are too boring, we can't even travel to other planets and galaxies and beyond, if we ever will... And small minority of them is habitable and rest are just wastelands, even we could terraform it eventually. And it feels we are alone, are there other species out there to meet ? People that are going to Mars not gonna have great lives, it will be amazing much much later... And free will is illusion, everything is predetermined, or random. Even there are other viewpoints and philosophies. Given human experience, i don't think there is a free will. It feels pointless to live without free will! Life is pretty depressing.

Except maybe: if universe is cyclical and we are reliving same lives over and over, that would be immortality, even pretty depressing one. Or new universe is born and we live other lives - much better one! But that's not kinda of immortality, i am not talking of.

Edited June 18, 2020 by empleat