Immortality

[OhayJosh]

We die because our cells die. But it's a little more complicated than that. Though our cells replace themselves over and over again for 70-odd years, they can't do so forever.

 

See, inside each cell are 'telomeres, 'at the end of our chromosomes these contain genetic information that continuously gets clipped away when each new cell divides, over and over again.

 

Telomeres start out long enough to handle a great many scissor snips. But eventually, they run out of length, the information they held is lost and the cells cannot divide anymore - death.

 

This is the age of science and progression, scientists now have a great understanding of why and how we die - something our ancestors didn't have- an advantage.

 

These scientists, in all their brilliance are working on how to extend the lives of human beings, and with our unending journey through knowledge and new understanding they do believe that someday very very soon they will double the average lifespan. And within that doubled lifespan, double it once more. And again, and again, until we figure out a permanent solution.

 

"Impossible!" is what most people would cry out. But that kind of thinking is the opposite of how scientists and inventors think. Thankfully, they have their own brains to use and I have an open mind for them.

 

I do believe that one day humans can conquer death, given that God -if he exists- hasn't a problem with it. And a lot of scientists in the field of advanced medicine and nano-technology will tell you that that time of conquering death is within our own lifespans.

 

If you are under the age of 40, you may very well see breakthroughs in medicine that will allow you to live hundreds, possibly even thousands of years. Now I'm not getting my hopes up for that, but it's very convincing news from people who would know about it.

 

But what do you guys think? Are they jumping the gun?

I think we could possibly reach that time in our lives. I'll explain more a bit further down. But first, some people might think "well why would you want to live forever, wouldn't you get bored and want to die?"

 

I have an answer for that. And it involves the Snowball Effect. If you don't know what that is go ahead and Google it for a full explanation, I'll give you a quick brief though.

 

Let's say I start rolling a snowball down a hill about the size of my fist and I timed it for 5 seconds. Within that first five seconds the snowball has gained 5 pounds.

 

Now let's say I allow the snow ball to continue rolling down the hill for an hour, I come back and stop it and it's obviously very very big now. I want to time it for 5 seconds rolling down the hill again. Obviously it's going to pick up MUCH MUCH MUCH more snow due to the increased surface area of the snowball.

 

That's the snowball effect and science works very much the same way, the more we learn the faster we progress.

 

In the future we will have tools and inventions at our disposal that you cannot even dream of or even comprehend at this time, we can expand into the universe, explore freely, these incomprehensible wonders will never stop coming. The question then would not be why would you want to live forever but rather why would you NOT want to live forever?

 

As for getting there in our own life span, scientists in the field of artificial intelligence believe that within the next 25 to 50 years we will reach a point when robots become smarter than humans, their intelligence will explode like the Snowball Effect. This is called the Singularity. The difference between robots and humans is robots are precise and rarely mistakes, they do not need to rest or be paid they are not unfair or opinionated, progression will be built into their very being. Perhaps they will figure things out long before we can. They will multiply like the Snowball Effect, they will quickly outnumber us and at that point hopefully they will not murder us but rather implement and share their god-like powers with us.

[Delta1212]

A few points. Senescence, that is the process of aging, is quite a bit more complex than just "telomeres" and we don't have quite the in depth understanding of it that you seem to think we do. We know more than we did in the past, but we're a far cry from being experts.

 

Additionally, there is likely a limit to how advanced our technology can get. The things that are physically possible for us to do are finite and it's entirely possible that we may never figure out some things that are possible simply because they are exceptionally difficult to figure out. The difficulty is that we have no real idea where the hard or soft caps on human ability lie or how close to them we are.

 

And lastly, robots are precise, unbiased and without opinion in large part because they are currently very dumb. That's not an intrinsic property of robots. That's a property of robots that we have built. We don't know what a truly intelligent AI would look like. That's going to depend on what we build it to be like, and it's very possible that with the way our more advanced AIs are currently developed, there may be elements to how really advanced ones turn out that are not entirely within our control or fully predictable. It's also not a problem to intentionally program one to be an emotional mess if that's what you really wanted. Artificial intelligence is going to depend heavily on what it was built to do rather than being anything like the robots you tend to see in science fiction.

[Logic and Theory]

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.livescience.com/53178-hydra-may-live-forever.html?client=ms-android-att-aio-us

 

There are some examples of life that have beat the odds and can live for very extended lifespans. This can only happen if they don't due of other natural causes, but still some species have the ability to regenerate cells without shortening their telomeres. Other species like specific types of sponges live longer by reducing their metabolism. Some animals retain a high number of stem cells effectively replacing old cells with short telomeres with new cells.

Understanding some of the very things that determine life span in living things is an exciting topic. However, I think developing a. human application for successfully providing immortality is very far off if not impossible. Our evolution by natural selection is greatly diminished by our ability to survive with technology. Instead of natural selection choosing who is most fit to survive, we rely on reducing and doctors to prolong our life.

 

There are a vast amount of subjects related to this topic. I feel I've began to ramble a bit.So, to sum things up, I believe we are very far away from a biological immortality.

[fredreload]

Hmm, as much as I would like to achieve biological immortality. Well there are still quite a lot of genes we aren't sure what it's doing. When this gene expression is turned on or off. And to observe these things we need a good resolution microscope so we can examine them in vitro.

 

P.S. I'd wish it comes sooner too, but it just seems there are some limitations

Edited September 29, 2016 by fredreload