Immortality?

[Nevermore]

I would never, ever consider immortality. Have you ever read the book Tuck Everlasting? Immortality would suck. There would be nothing left to do, to strive for, to acomplish. Life would become pointless. You would beg and pray for death every day. You would beg for the bordom to end. Your life would become an awfull, swirling hell, devoid of any hope or happiness. Immortality would be infinatly worse than Hell.

[deltanova]

i agree with nevermore, the thought of watching everybody you love die, indeed if you could become immortal and then shut it off whenever you want, i would consider it, i would do everthing in the world that i would ever want to do, become wiser and more intelligent, be able to do more than enough to help educate the worlds children, ect ect, immortality is a very useful tool if you use it for the right reasons, you shouldnt get bored with life.

 

(i dont think i would ever get bored, theres so much to do)

[Edward]

Immortality would be infinatly worse than Hell.

Well in hell u r immortal. I would be immortal. Just avoid life in prison. lol.

But think of all things u can do but if ut u got to avoid being thrown into space

i think that infinite bordom would happen

[Illuminatus]

Immortality is possible:

 

I believe that physical immortality is possible through a variety of medical techniques, probably utilizing nanotechnology. But it would need constant maintenance, so the 'floating bored in space' scenario is impossible. However, I am more concerned with the affects that immortality would have on the world.

 

Immortality’s affects on the world:

 

As long as civil society has existed their have been rich people and poor people. Some having many million times the wealth and power of others. But with modern democracy, the rich have less power over the poor than they used to. But if immortality was put into the picture, only the extremely powerful could afford it.(Because obviously there aren't enough resources to sustain immortality in large populations) This would change the way the world worked. All of the immortal rich would lead the world and the poor mortals would become little more than slaves. Imagine a tyrannical dictator, such as Stalin or Saddam, who thought nothing of his people and oppressed all beneath him. Now imagine a tyrannical dictator who is immortal and cannot be overthrown because he has been setting up methods of defense for centuries. The general population would become slaves, who would be forced to obey whatever laws were set, even if no one thought them just. Is that the kind of life you wish for our descendants?

 

Immortal tyrants inevitable:

 

If immortality becomes possible, do you think that there is way that the above scenario will not occur? Perhaps we will have good immortal world-leaders in the beginning. But they will eventually be overthrown in time. Unless, of course, they oppress the population. But by doing that they would become tyrants anyway. Leaders would come and go until one eventually clings to his power so hard that he stays in place and oppresses the population. Just like a pipe flowing until a large enough piece of grime clogs it. As long as people have some power they can remove their leader, but not if the leader takes away all of their power, oppressing them.

 

My reaction:

 

If I had the technology and the wealth to gain immortality not only would I not use it, I would use all of that technology and wealth and try with every fiber in my body to destroy it. Mortality is the only way human civilization can retain its stability.

 

 

Thank you for reading my thoughts on this. If you can think of any way physical immortality can co-exist with stable human society I would be interested in hearing your rebuttal.

 

- Illuminatus

[noz92]

Well, eventually all of the mortals would die out, and all that would be left is immortals. So eventually, everybody would be immortal, unnfortunatly, what if the immortals reproduce. The world would be too crowded.

 

But, then again, planetary exploration would be a lot esier. You would never have to worry about a planet not being habbitable.

[Kygron]

But if immortality was put into the picture, only the extremely powerful could afford it.(Because obviously there aren't enough resources to sustain immortality in large populations)

 

I think the simplest form of immortality is if the aging process was ended at adulthood. That might take considerable resources, or it might only take a simple "anti-ageing-pill" twice a day.

 

Now imagine a tyrannical dictator who is immortal and cannot be overthrown because he has been setting up methods of defense for centuries. The general population would become slaves, who would be forced to obey whatever laws were set, even if no one thought them just.

 

To me this sounds like a line of kings. "Immortality" being that the king teaches his son everything, and the son eventually becomes the next king and repeats the process. I'm sure your senario has in this case happened in the past. But think about now. There are far fewer powerfull kings in the world. Empires crumble, no matter how many defences are in place.

 

Just like a pipe flowing until a large enough piece of grime clogs it.

 

And what happens next? Do you think that people will continue using that pipe? No, they'll get a plumber to fix it! Or, perhaps pressure will build up behind the grime and eventually force it out. A clogged pipe is useless and will be discarded or replaced.

 

If I had the technology and the wealth to gain immortality not only would I not use it, I would use all of that technology and wealth and try with every fiber in my body to destroy it.

 

And once you're dead the next person will come along and re-make it. You end up proloonging the inevitable and the knowledge of why you did it dies with you.

 

. [i']Mortality is the only way human civilization can retain its stability.[/i]

 

Except that the stability you talk about I call growth and change, and the decline you talk about I call stability. An immortal leader opressing immortal followers for all eternity is STABLE! Mortal leaders being overthrown year in and year out by citizens who want better is not stable, it's CHANGE.

 

Can you now tell me that you want stability? You want to live out your boring life doing the same job because you're being opressed? I don't. I'll welcome change.

 

Change can come from mortality, but it can also come from personal growth. An immortal will have plenty of time to change as time passes, correct their faults, become the person they've always wanted to be, and then repeat that process many times. Change can also come from knowledge and technology. Both of these would bennefit from immortal beings, as long as there are people willing to accept new ideas.

 

 

I'll agree that sudden immortality would have a major impact on human society, but not that negative effects are bound to continue forever. Eventually ways will be discovered to deal with it and peacefull growth can take over. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but since people will be immortal, eventually they'll remember the good times and the past troubles will be an old fading memory.

[mcoy]

I would DEFINITELY want to be an immortal, provided my body will be retained to its fertile and healthy state without ageing. Being an immortal also means (in my opinion) being invinsible, which simply means that the person cannot be hurt in any way in any time, bieng like a god. In which case i'd prefer only a couple of individuals to be imortal on earth coz if everybody's immortal, then everything would start to screw up.

[PiLoT]

my position is simple: there are too many $%@# who chose "absolutely" and i can't imagine an eternity with them

[mustang292]

I think I would like to, but with the option of ending it if I wanted to.

[Hades]

immortality.... in essence, i am everything. i would have infinite time; the knowledge i accrue would become seemingly endless, although not completely.

but this would also require my loved ones to pass on. With the price of living forever, i could choose the perfect person to spend her life with, never feeling that i need to expedite my life choice on who to be with. and after all this time making a choice, i would fall in love with them, and they would eventually die. This could happen infinitely and each time i would be as affected because love is an emotion that doesn't grow weary. sounds like so much freakin fun. id like to live until 500... yeah.

[Sorcerer]

Immortality is possible:

 

I believe that physical immortality is possible through a variety of medical techniques' date=' probably utilizing nanotechnology. But it would need constant maintenance, so the 'floating bored in space' scenario is impossible. However, I am more concerned with the affects that immortality would have on the world.

 

[b']Immortality’s affects on the world:[/b]

 

As long as civil society has existed their have been rich people and poor people. Some having many million times the wealth and power of others. But with modern democracy, the rich have less power over the poor than they used to. But if immortality was put into the picture, only the extremely powerful could afford it.(Because obviously there aren't enough resources to sustain immortality in large populations) This would change the way the world worked. All of the immortal rich would lead the world and the poor mortals would become little more than slaves. Imagine a tyrannical dictator, such as Stalin or Saddam, who thought nothing of his people and oppressed all beneath him. Now imagine a tyrannical dictator who is immortal and cannot be overthrown because he has been setting up methods of defense for centuries. The general population would become slaves, who would be forced to obey whatever laws were set, even if no one thought them just. Is that the kind of life you wish for our descendants?

 

Immortal tyrants inevitable:

 

If immortality becomes possible, do you think that there is way that the above scenario will not occur? Perhaps we will have good immortal world-leaders in the beginning. But they will eventually be overthrown in time. Unless, of course, they oppress the population. But by doing that they would become tyrants anyway. Leaders would come and go until one eventually clings to his power so hard that he stays in place and oppresses the population. Just like a pipe flowing until a large enough piece of grime clogs it. As long as people have some power they can remove their leader, but not if the leader takes away all of their power, oppressing them.

 

My reaction:

 

If I had the technology and the wealth to gain immortality not only would I not use it, I would use all of that technology and wealth and try with every fiber in my body to destroy it. Mortality is the only way human civilization can retain its stability.

 

 

Thank you for reading my thoughts on this. If you can think of any way physical immortality can co-exist with stable human society I would be interested in hearing your rebuttal.

 

- Illuminatus

 

Perhaps a way around the immortal dictator scenario would be altruistic anarchy or utopian communism, but hey you are correct, very few people are as egalatarian as that, perhaps wisdomed gained through immortality could show them the "light".

[spamonkey8]

As long as I've got a way out, I'm ok for as long as I can take it. And as long as a certain someone in my life can get it too. And my dog... But that's it! maybe my cat...

[TheGeek]

I went with unsure becuase the answer would depend on what kind of life i am living. If i am heppy and all that stuff then i would live forever otherwise if i feel like i an not happy and i am in pain then no, i would not live forever.

[Jonsy123]

Basically you need to understand that there is no such thing as "immortality". Even after we'll finish dealing with aging, people will still continue to die from accidents. On the very long run, the death probablity will be 100%.

 

The poll should have been phrased differently: "Do you want to age and get sick ?".

 

If you, your family and friends will be given the option to not age anymore, go back (or stay) at any age you want, until the accident will occur, I think most people on the planet would have taken it, even if it means they have to give up children.

 

Imo, there is nothing natural about death. It served its "purpose" well, and got us from a single celled organism, to what we are today. We don't need it anymore. Future generations are not more important than the current generation, or the past generation.

 

Living extremely long life spans is just a matter of time. Even if we do nothing to accelarate it, it will probably happen within 100 years. The thing many people don't know, is that if we do decide to do something about it, we could reach "escape velocity" already within 30 years from now. It just a matter of how much people will want it, and how much will they donate and push to make it happen.

 

As of now, there is only one strategy to combat aging (SENS - Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence). The scientist behind it, believes it might produce a 30 year life extension, within 25 years from now. This might be enough to totally abolish death by aging, because during the 30 extra years you will get, the life elongation technique will improve too, so the second generation of the treatment, will give you another 50 years of life extension, before you "finished" the first 30, and so on. By this, you we will reach an "escape velocity" from aging.

 

The 25 years estimate is based on the following - 10 years in order to make it work for mice (proof of concept), then, 15 years to convert it to humans. In terms of technology tools, it will need accurate gene therapy (meaning the ability to insert/delete specific genes to/from specific places, without any random side effect, like we get today). Second, it relies on the availabilty of engineered stem cells for some of our tissues (not necessarily embryonic) with no immuno-compatibility problems. For me, this is the main selling point of the strategy - there is no need for Sci-Fi NanoBots etc. Ala Ray Kurzweil's ideas. The tools needed are very down to earth imo.

 

This scientist is getting very little help from the Bio-gerontologists society (the scientists who deals with aging), because they do not believe that anything could be done to radically extend life, and so are researching aging in the same way that astronomers study distant galaxies, i.e. only to improve our knowledge, and nothing more. This is why they refuse to participate in a debate regarding this scientist's theory, those of them who did comment, simply said "it is too simple to work", yet could not think of a single scientific reason to explain why. Things might change in this front, because there is a $20,000 USD bounty (given by this scientist and MIT's "Technology Review" journal), for any scientist who will succeed to refute the Sens theory, and offer a scientific explanation why it does not correctly describe how to defeat aging (the refutal will be assessed by a panel of judges).

 

If you want some information about his work, you can check here:

http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/

[JPQuiceno]

From the looks of it he meant Immoratilty as, living for ever. Not, "Zeus" immortality.

[Jonsy123]

Maybe so, but many of the peope immediately think of "Zeus" immortality, when they are faced with the question of whether they want to "live forever".

 

And anyway, again, the question should not be phrased even as "do you want to live longer", because just living longer is not enough, nobody want to live longer as an old man, with diseases, discomforts and old-age limitations.

 

What I think most people want, is to not age. Ask your parents if they like aging.

 

Once we'll defeat aging, living longer will be a side effect.

 

To tell the truth, I prefer to not age, and then to get executed at age 80, rather then age, and die sick from a natural cause (Alzheimer, Cancer, etc) at age 80.

[Daecon]

Maybe it's just the Über-pessimistic depressive side of me, but what's the point of living if you're not going to live forever?

[YT2095]

in a heartbeat!

 

besides all this "you`ll get bored" or "You`ll see your family die" etc....

 

you`ll see people that you love die anyway even in this short life, you Won`t get to see all the generations that may follow tho! as for being bored, the universe is a HUGE place, I somehow doubt it

[Daecon]

I could finally finish that book I've been meaning to write for the last several thousand decades...

 

Tha birthday-cake-candle industry would never go out of business!

[Jonsy123]

Maybe it's just the Über-pessimistic depressive side of me, but what's the point of living if you're not going to live forever?

Well, once you no longer age, you can always maintain the illusion that who knows, and you might never die. As long as you'll live, it will work, so you could live your life as if you have infinite time in front of you. Once you'll be dead, the illusion will collapse, but you won't be here to notice it.

 

We can't live in such an illusion today, because we see the signs of death (aging) every day in the mirror, getting stronger and stronger...

 

Some of you might be saying that you'll never be able to buy into an illusion.

 

Let me give you a possible example of a very powerful illusion we all share today: Continuum of consciousness:

We all believe that the person we are today, is the exact same person we were a year ago, meaning, we not only physically look similar to the person we were a year ago, and not only share his memories, but, most importantly, we also share the same consciousness as him.

 

Saying all that, you can do a simple thought experiment, to see why we don't necessarily experience continuum of consciousness during our lives, but rather shift consciousness, periodically :

 

Let's assume that in the distant future, when nanotechnology will be extremely mature, we will have the ability to create molecular replica of any object we wish. Let's assume you will live in that distant future, and decide to create a molecular replica of yourself (or only of you brain, since we are primarily interested with it, when discussing consciousness).

 

So, after you create this replica, let's say that at the first few seconds, you are really similar to that replica at the molecular level (after a short while, you'll start to diverge).

 

The molecular replica might be sure that he is you for a moment, because he has all your memories and appearance. Saying that, I'm sure you will disagree with him. He might be 100% identical, but still, both you and the replica, experience the world through a different consciousness. You don't see the world through his eyes, but through yours, so he can't be you.

 

Now let's think about it for a moment, why aren't you experiencing the world through his eyes ?, why is your consciousness still unique in comparison to his ?, the same type of atoms are ordered at the exact same pattern in your brain and his, but it doesn't cut it (even if the patterns are just 99.99% identical, and not 100%, it doesn't matter for the sake of the argument, and you'll later see why).

 

Logical Conclusion: your consciousness uniqueness is not dictated by the certain atom orderings (patterns) in your brain, rather it must be dictated by the identity of the atoms themeselves, meaning, each atom in the universe can not be at two different places at the same time, and this *guarantees* that every single one of us, will experience unique consciousness.

 

After we established that you and your replica experience different consciousness, and not the same one, because you have different atoms in your brain, let's move to the next step:

 

Our brain cells, like any other cells in our body, are experiencing *dynamic equilibrium*, meaning, even if they retain a similar pattern during our entire life (which is true for brain cells - we are born with almost all the brain cells that we die with), still, since they are at a dynamic equilibrium with their surrounding, the atoms that construct them, will change, that's the meaning of a dynamic equilibrium.

 

Taking that into consideration, in 1 year from now, almost none of the atoms in your brain, that you currently have, will remain, they will all be replaced with different ones, but the pattern will be maintained (dynamic equilibrium). So, in one year from now, you will actually be a molecular replica of the person you were a year ago (and not even such a great replica, definitely less accurate than the real nanotech replica was). You will be constructed from a very similar atoms pattern to the one of last year, but not using the same atoms.

 

Logical conclusion: we don't retain the same consciousness from last year. We keep carrying a unique consciousness, but it's not the same one as last year.

 

Who of us wants to live in a world where we know our consciousness isn't maintained during out lifetime ?, it's like being killed and replaced every year by a replica. What kind of a life is that ?.

 

Saying that, I'm sure that even if this is the case, most people will continue living their life, and buy into the illusion of consciousness continuum. That's our nature.

[Jonsy123]

Being loyal to science, I must say that the argument I was making - that the atoms in brain cells are constantly being replaced by different ones - is not entirely correct. There is one known exception, DNA.

 

The DNA molecules in brain cells, are not replaced. The atoms that build these DNA molecules, were all taken from the blood we recieved in our mother's womb.

 

This fact allows carbon 14 dating to be a valid way to check someones age, by taking a sample of his brain.

 

Saying that, I didn't mention it when I made the argument, because DNA is very unlikely to be a molecule which assigns each and every one of us, his unique consciousness.

[Daecon]

So' date=' after you create this replica, let's say that at the first few seconds, you are really similar to that replica at the molecular level (after a short while, you'll start to diverge).

 

The molecular replica might be sure that he is you for a moment, because he has all your memories and appearance. Saying that, I'm sure you will disagree with him. He might be 100% identical, but still, both you and the replica, experience the world through a different consciousness. You don't see the world through his eyes, but through yours, so he can't be you.

 

Now let's think about it for a moment, why aren't you experiencing the world through his eyes ?, why is your consciousness still unique in comparison to his ?, the same type of atoms are ordered at the exact same pattern in your brain and his, but it doesn't cut it (even if the patterns are just 99.99% identical, and not 100%, it doesn't matter for the sake of the argument, and you'll later see why).[/quote']

 

Is it possible that those two brains could exhibit a collective consiousness... or have been watching Star Trek for too long?

[Jonsy123]

You mean ala "Borg" ?, very unlikely .

 

Seriousness aside,

 

The "collective" of the Borg wasn't a collective of identical brains, on the contrary, each brain brought its uniqueness into the collective.

 

I think that a different episode of Star-Trek is much more relevant to the discussion: the episode where Riker found out that another Riker exists, in a jungle of one of the stars. It appears that he once had a mission there, and when he was beamed out of that star, due to an accident, he materialized both on the enterprise, and on that star. The creators of Star-Trek didn't give the two Rikers a collective consciousness. How can one argue with such sound evidence ?.

[Daecon]

Hehe, point taken.

 

Although... what about "twin studies"? Maybe that could reveal some insights...

[Jonsy123]

All of the Paranormal twin studies I've read, which tried to reveal if twins have shared consciousness to some faint point, are disappointing, or can not be reproduced.

 

For example:

"A study by British parapsychologist Susan Blackmore found that when twins were separated in different rooms and asked to draw whatever came into their minds, they often drew the same things. When one was asked to draw an object and transmit that to the other twin, who then was asked to draw what she telepathically received, the results were disappointing. Blackmore concluded that when twins seem to be clairvoyant, it's simply because their thought patterns are so similar.".

 

I agree that the existence of evidence of even tiny traces of shared consciousness between identical twins, probably could have been used as a strong argument in favor of consciousness continuum during our life, but as to date, there is none.