[OT] Wanna be immortal? (for real)

[Gwarthkam]

Zappo: hehe are you sure he wasn't kidding?

 

[Ulrick]

This is facinating stuff.

We go from kinda poking fun at a guy with rings to an ethical and scientific debate. Cool.

Ulrick

 

[Zappo]

Zappo: hehe are you sure he wasn't kidding?

Pretty sure. The quotes I made are paraphrased - it was 3 years ago. But the tone was serious.

 

[Hikaru]

Hikaru: "nanobots" that does what you say are not in the immediate future, cloning specific tissues and bodyparts from stem-cells can be done within 2-3 years.

Hm. From what I've read, it is closer to 25 years for specific parts (like a liver or a hair). We already know how to clone a whole body, but for moral reasons we still don't dare to do it with a human being to use the "corpse" as spare parts. After all, the brain would be cloned too.

Meepo has it right, Zappo at least as I understand it. There is a line of thinking that cancer cells do offer a potential path to immortality, since they are cells in which the "clock" has been turned off and they can keep reproducing and replacing themselves indefinitely.

Cancer leading to immortality. Now that would be ironic. Though maybe no more than vaccination (= protection from a virus by injection of this virus (weakened, of course)).

Frankly there are a lot of downsides to immortality, even if only from a societal view point. Just imagine a world where people who's view points were formed hundreds or thousands of years ago. Now add to that the people who are ruling, are in charge because they had amassed a dominant position in wealth or power and never had to give it up because they died.

It could indeed be heaven as well as hell on earth. Something it would open to is space colonisation, though: not only so we can go on reproducing, but above all because the rich, who will not invest in space today because they know they wouldn't see any result from it before they reach the grave, would do so if immortal.

Anyway, I can tolerate a world where Bill Gates is immortal as long as I get to be immortal, too. Which makes me think: immortality is good as long as it's for everyone who wants it. I suspect that if a way to immortality is ever found, it will be extraordinarily costly. That would relegate it to rich and powerful people, and that is very, very bad.

No, immortality would be costly at first, but soon enough not so. Think about the evolution of computers, in that respect. Does it mean that it will become available to everyone, just as computers are today? Hey, that's another problem, but more on the social than on the technical side. Even if you could pay for immortality, the men in power may not let everyone access it. The costs may be voluntarily exagerated. Now, would this lead to a revolution? There are several science-fiction stories revolving around such a problem.

BTW, to make backups of a person's mind, on a theorical level, you don't need to understand it. I can make a backup of my hard disk, but that doesn't mean I know how Windows works (actually, I don't even really know how my HD works - not to the point of being able to build one).

But the person who created the HD knows how it works. So yes, here, you need to understand to create the technology, even if not to make use of it.

I would probably settle for a robotic body if nothing better is available.

Same here, if only because better would certainly become available later on. Or maybe we could all live in robotic bodies to "work" and spend or real lives in a shared (or not) dream (perfect virtual reality).

Gwarthkam had a point in that longevity has nothing to do with our genetic programming. Reproductive viability is key. When you no longer contribute to the reproduction of your genes, it's in their best interests to arrange "exit- stage right" for you so you're not a drain on the resources of your offspring.

We begin deteriorating in our early twenties, looong before the end of our "reproductive viability."

there's a theory that a given system can only understand systems less complicated than itself. Therefore, we will never truly understand the workings of our own brains. Therefore we will not be able to replicate them.

We can clone life, that we still don't understand. On yet another level, if we can improve ourselves (thanks to nanotechnology, for instance, if we learn how to use it to make the information in the brain circulate better), the ancient "us" become a system less complicated than the new.

Pretty sure. The quotes I made are paraphrased - it was 3 years ago. But the tone was serious.

If he was serious, why refusing to sell him the wands? Because he was not worthy? Am I worthy? Would you sell me the wands? Can I have a rebate if I buy both a wand of frost AND a wand of fear?

Originally posted by javapadawan
The picture on the site shows one ring on each hand...
But I'm pretty sure immortality bonuses don't stack...
[/B]

They do, but that's a special rule: you become able to travel in time.

 

[bloodymage]

on immortality

 

[Zappo]

"Worthy"? Nah, I was just out of stock. Besides, I can't sell magical wands to the USA, because of laws regulating the import of magical items.

Anyway, screw the guy who sells rings of immortality. I can sell ya Ioun Stones of immortality - more fashionable and they leave your ring fingers free. They cost double, on account of not using any slot, though.

All products are provided 'as-is', with no warranty whatsoever. I decline any responsibility for malfunctioning and/or cursed items.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

We begin deteriorating in our early twenties, looong before the end of our "reproductive viability."

We can clone life, that we still don't understand. On yet another level, if we can improve ourselves (thanks to nanotechnology, for instance, if we learn how to use it to make the information in the brain circulate better), the ancient "us" become a system less complicated than the new.

We begin deteriorating in our twenties, but until the advent of society and medicine, we died between 25 and 35. So the idea stands. People forget that evolution is no longer acting on us as individuals, so the standard rules get skewed quite a bit. The vast majority of other animals die shortly after female reproductive senescence. (btw- we also used to go into puberty much earlier and fewer oocytes survived. Therefore, human females were probably reproductively incapable by 35) There's also a certain amount of evidence that puberty is responsible for the onset of many of the "aging processes", not to mention that androgens and estrogens are implicated in many, MANY cancers. So, the most effective way of extending the lifespan is to delay puberty. Which we've been doing a bit at a time for a few thousand years now. Of course, it's becoming earlier and earlier again thanks to estrogen mimics in industrial plastics and certain chemicals (DDT, for example). (OT- You want to avoid breast cancer? Stop microwaving your food in plastic containers.)

There's a big difference between cloning life and reproducing a SPECIFIC brain. Millions of cells in your body and cloning themselves right now (and thereby bringing down the wrath of the religious right, you despicable heathen you)

Nanotech won't be able to "improve" our brains' ability to process information until we figure out how that processing takes place. And we're a LONG way from figuring that out. We may be able to improve transmission speed between nuclei, or something like that But knowing how little we know about the processing within a given structure, I'd be wary of manipulating it. We don't even know what the salient factors are. It would be a total shot in the dark.

 

[VoodooGroves]

Ah see, there's where you're wrong...two rings DO stack.

The reason is obscured in their documentation, but accurate.

The first ring they send you has a "farfetched" immortality bonus ability. The second has a "dubious" immortality bonus ability.

Two separate types, so they stack.

If, incidentally, you obtain a third item (cause you can't wear more than 2 rings) that had an additional bonus type, you'd be quite the immortal.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

... the "mind" might be occupying a much larger portion of the body than the brain, cases like adopted traits through organ transplants would indicate this (don't know much about this).

On a spiritual level, it's debatable. Biologically speaking, mind and memory are, as far as we can tell, confined to the nervous system. Memory, in the usual sense, is confined completely to the brain, but motor memory and that kind of thing seems to be "learned" at the motor ganglion level (spinal cord).

The microtubule idea is a good one. And if it's correct, it may be possible to replicate it. But even assuming it's partially right, if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a very dynamic system that will not be intuitive. Information stored in the changes rather than in a static form, or something like that.

There's another evolutionary problem, besides altruism, that makes the whole subject even more muddy and that's the "benefit" gained from fitness through adaptability. It could be argued that short generations could be an asset to a population since it makes adaption through evolution faster and thus more resilient to changes in the environment. The problem with this viewpoint is that there's really no immediate benefit for the individual who is carrying this "potential" and though it might benefit the population in the long run, it's bound to be a genetic trait that would be ruined by any mutation yielding longer reproductive age to an individual. Fitness through potential that doesn't help the individual right here and now is very "risky", and if the potential is costly in any way it is not likely to be succesfull in an evolutionary perspective.

Actually, fitness through potential is exactly how WE work. The most successful critters on earth are bacteria, algae, etc. They reproduce FAST with short generation times, etc. But there is essentially no variation between individuals, and environmental assaults tend to kill 90-99% of the population. But the survivors refill the niche FAST. Sexual reproduction and multicellularity tend to give individuals with widely varying characteristics within the same species. An environmental assault (ice age, volcano, drought, flood, meteor, global warming, etc) will kill species that are very specified to their environment, but species which can be generalists will take a big population hit, but survive. That's why mammals survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs, while much more adaptable than lesser reptiles and amphibians, could not cope with the decreased temperatures, while mammals just packed on a little extra fur and fat, which they could dump once it warmed up again.