Future Long Life, "Immortality" and Family Dynamics

[Umbran]

If everyone in your town is related to you - you're one big happy family - you're going to have a few mutants, and a few family feuds. Otherwise, you'll be just like any other community of 2000 people.

Yah. There is a bit of a fiction that "blood relation" means a whole lot beyond your nuclear family. It doesn't - level of genetic similarity falls off *quickly*, and then your relations are governed largely like they are with any non-related human - by the details of interaction, not by blood relation. "One big happy family" only happens if the people within it are, in fact, nice. How often do you get a group of 2000 nice people together in one place, much less have them all live together permanently? The fiction that family = happy seems to do more harm than good, honestly.

And, as has been noted, long lifespan gives us a resource problem. If it doesn't come with a post-scarcity culture (one in which food and energy resources are so cheap and common as to be negligible issues) then population growth becomes a massive problem. We are overburdening the planet as it is. Imagine how ugly it gets if nobody ever died to make room for new people.

 

[delericho]

That being said, if the super rich are the ones who can pay for clones, they'll lobby heavily to make sure their clones are considered the same individual.

Actually, I'm inclined to think they'll lobby for the opposite, at least until the point of death. Consider - if you and your clone are the same individual, then he has the right to clear out your bank accounts and leave you with nothing. And if he commits a crime, you can (and likely will) get punished.

(I did, briefly, consider the possibility that a clone might be considered property, at least until the death of the principal, but I suspect that would fall to a challenge on human rights grounds almost instantly. Though it opens all sorts of interesting Cyberpunk scenarios...)

 

[Morrus]

Are we talking clones as in growing them? The closest analogy would be you child then, surely? Or are we talking instantly formed adult clones with memories?

 

[Kramodlog]

Actually, I'm inclined to think they'll lobby for the opposite, at least until the point of death.

More nuanced. Thanks.

Consider - if you and your clone are the same individual, then he has the right to clear out your bank accounts and leave you with nothing. And if he commits a crime, you can (and likely will) get punished.

(I did, briefly, consider the possibility that a clone might be considered property, at least until the death of the principal, but I suspect that would fall to a challenge on human rights grounds almost instantly. Though it opens all sorts of interesting Cyberpunk scenarios...)

Well, an original could argue that it is the owner of the genetic material, so the clone is property. That would mean clones could be kept on "ice" to give organs when needed.

 

[Kramodlog]

Are we talking clones as in growing them? The closest analogy would be you child then, surely? Or are we talking instantly formed adult clones with memories?

Both have different out comes. If it is grown like a child, well, it won't share memories with the original, so it is another individual.

If we go full sci-fi (why not, we are talking cloning), scientists could find a way to speed growth so that you always have a 20 years old body of yourself ready. If that body is grown rapidly in a some sort of incubator, its brain will be a blank slate. Thus comes the science-fiction of neuroplasty and the possibility of copying someone's brain structure.

 

[Kramodlog]

That seems less plausible than Morrus' exact duplicate teleporter.

This picture assumes a sort of static picture of the brain - that once it is wired up, it is set, and the wiring is what matters. But, brains retain some level of plasticity for your entire life. The rate at which you rewire it drops over time, but within our current lifespans, it never completely stops. So, unless that copy and rewiring happens at the moment of death, the clone won't have the same brain structure as the original.

If we are talking legality, a number of days between the last scan and death could be decided arbitrarely. Say three days. Or five. Someone very rich could have a scan while sleeping, in the morning or have implants in the brain taking regular scans.

In addition, significant portions of your brain chemistry are dependent on development as you age, rather than on the state of interconnection at the current moment. This can lead to differences in attitudes and behavior, even with the exact same memory.

"If we can perfectly duplicate a human," questions are thus a little shaky.

Interesting. It is still your genes and your brain structure. Is more needed to be "someone".

Now, if you go to an example of artificial intelligence that has been granted personhood, where the corpus is a machine, and the mind is a program, such that copy to a known level of fidelity is plausible, then we have issues

Or people "downloading" their mind into computers. Are they still people? The same as the orignal?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Families might get bigger, but the relationships you can maintain won't really become more. Unless maybe you got also more time per day. Or other changes were made to us.

I guess overpopulation and incest might become bigger problems, especially if we age very gracefully (or not at all). You might not even know the person you just met is your great-great-great-grand-daughter because her grand-parents moved to a different country... Though maybe such a distant relationship would also no longer be relevant.

Overpopulation could only be reduced in effect if we can find more space to live (and farm) on, or if we stop having children for the most part. Which of course would mean families wouldn't grow very big any more.

Of course, if we're "supernaturally" immortal and can't actually die from anything, things would get really weird...

That seems less plausible than Morrus' exact duplicate teleporter.

This picture assumes a sort of static picture of the brain - that once it is wired up, it is set, and the wiring is what matters. But, brains retain some level of plasticity for your entire life. The rate at which you rewire it drops over time, but within our current lifespans, it never completely stops. So, unless that copy and rewiring happens at the moment of death, the clone won't have the same brain structure as the original. In addition, significant portions of your brain chemistry are dependent on development as you age, rather than on the state of interconnection at the current moment. This can lead to differences in attitudes and behavior, even with the exact same memory.

"If we can perfectly duplicate a human," questions are thus a little shaky.

Now, if you go to an example of artificial intelligence that has been granted personhood, where the corpus is a machine, and the mind is a program, such that copy to a known level of fidelity is plausible, then we have issues

Though I in turn question that a machine that is sufficiently intelligent that we can't distinguish it from human intelligence will still be "copyable" like that. Sure ,if we can run it on a contempory computer, probably it can, but is that actually feasible? But what if the artificial intellect actually is also dependent on specific hardware? Maybe it requires a quantum computer, or organic tissue, and then copying it would be as hard as copying a human.


When it comes to humans - is copying the brain really sufficient? Our brain chemistry is affected by the chemistry of our our entire body, like testosterone or adrenaline and all the other hormones we have, and many of them are not produced in the brain. A cloned body would not neccessarily have the exact same characteristics. Genetics aren't everything.

On the other hand - the brain is also constantly changing,as is the rest of our body - but we still feel a continuity of our self. (Heck, even after a discontinuity like sleep or unconciousness we still think we are who we ...were.)

 

[delericho]

Well, an original could argue that it is the owner of the genetic material, so the clone is property.

Do parents share ownership of their children? Since they could argue that they each own half of the genetic material, so...

As I said, I'm pretty sure we won't go down that road, but may of course be wrong about that.

That would mean clones could be kept on "ice" to give organs when needed.

I wouldn't be surprised if we develop the ability to grow individual cloned organs (or at least some key ones) long before we can clone an entire person.

Interesting. It is still your genes and your brain structure. Is more needed to be "someone".

Our personalities are significantly influenced by chemical factors. This is most obviously seen when under the influence of alcohol or similar, of course, but things like hormonal balance is also key.

So if, for example, a habitual smoker were cloned and the brain scan transferred, the resulting person would then have a mismatch - he'd still have the psychological addiction to smoking in place, while the physiological addiction to nicotine is missing.

(And, of course, despite "The 6th Day", a cloned Arnie wouldn't automatically get his muscle mass, which is of course significantly the result of training over the course of years.)

Assuming a 60-year-old mind could handle the shock of being transferred into a 20-year-old body with the relative storm of hormones that that entails, could we really consider it the same person when their behaviour changes due to those hormones?

 

[Umbran]

Do parents share ownership of their children?

I agree with this point. At least, in the US, it isn't "ownership" - we don't allow ownership of people. And since we are talking legalities, the difference matters. Parents share "guardianship", which includes a set of rights and responsibilities to the child. Guardianship terminates when the kid reaches their legal majority. The parent's control of that genetic material, and the property belonging to the child clearly ends when the kid reaches adulthood.

I would think the simplest and most obvious model is to treat the clone as an offspring. If you want to leave your stuff to the clone, you make a will.

Our personalities are significantly influenced by chemical factors. This is most obviously seen when under the influence of alcohol or similar, of course, but things like hormonal balance is also key.

Consider things like PTSD, which is a permanent change to the brain produced by extended or extreme stress. This isn't just in the form of "connections" but also in the chemistry of the brain, such that how we produce and/or use neurotransmitters is altered by events in our lives. Merely copying the neural connections will not transfer such.

So, the "brain scan" needs to get not just the neural connections, but detailed chemical state as well - which is again looking a lot like Morrus' transporter.

 

[Ryujin]

I'm also wondering if things like the brain's convolutions aren't a result of data input, environment, and stresses in the same way that it's chemistry can also be. That would mean that, contrary to SciFi convention, copying an actual brain pattern may well be impossible. But I'm no neurologist