Immortality
Time for a new, somewhat philosophical discussion thread! I've been throwing these ideas around for a while, and recent Doctor Who episodes and a conversation I had with Bruce made me want to get other opinions on it.
Immortality. I'm not talking about the afterlife, I'm talking about immortality right here on Earth. A lot of common thought seems to cast human immortality as a negative thing, while uplifting our mortality as the better circumstance.
But would immortality really be all that bad? To live forever, to see the developments, positive and negative, that humanity makes over time. To gain a greater understanding of the human race, and the long-term flow of events... what would happen to such a person? How would living that long affect that person?
And if you were offered immortality, would you take it? Would there be any terms or conditions you would need in place before you accepted it? What would your circumstances be?
Immortality. I'm not talking about the afterlife, I'm talking about immortality right here on Earth. A lot of common thought seems to cast human immortality as a negative thing, while uplifting our mortality as the better circumstance.
But would immortality really be all that bad? To live forever, to see the developments, positive and negative, that humanity makes over time. To gain a greater understanding of the human race, and the long-term flow of events... what would happen to such a person? How would living that long affect that person?
And if you were offered immortality, would you take it? Would there be any terms or conditions you would need in place before you accepted it? What would your circumstances be?
Comments
And QueenQuinlin, that's one of my conditions.. I have to be able to end it, though for different reasons... I would want to have an escape clause just in case the pain of living for that long got too great, or I felt myself turning into a cold, murderous monster. Like I said, I don't know what the effects of living that long are, and those might be the effects.
Oh right, well directly after the birth of the second child both parents would immediately die.
I don't want to be a crusty old immortal dude.
So does this kinda act as an escape clause? So people can choose death when they want it by reproducing?
Just bring a shitload of video games I suppose.
I shall piggyback your idea.
The parents die as soon as the kids reach 35. 35 probably isn't that old for an immortal anyway.
Edit: I thought about the parents living for a while after birth, however that would means we have three nearly complete generations living as well as the people without kids, that would be bad juju.
What if the consciousness of a human were downloaded onto a computer? Obviously it wouldn't be exactly immortality, because the person would die, but do you think it would be possible to live on in a virtual world, like in a particular Doctor Who episode (or like Matrix without the slavery aspect)?
Remind me not to let YOU have a position of power Graham, or however your name is spelled.
Anyways, I'm off to my violin lesson.
I'll just download my consciousness to a secured server with a few offsite backups and avoid the horrible dystopian superkid society altogether.
Not an exact quote, but accurate in essence.
Foxnews?
Whereas in the world suggested above, we'd have adults without the benefit of past generations to raise them correctly, to teach them language and culture and what is right and wrong. We'd have people with million year-old bodies and minds of children, or more likely, minds of savage uneducated wildmen. Civilization would collapse. I just hope my Matrix servers are up and running before this plan goes into effect.
But I am serious about downloading my consciousness. Existing as pure data would be eternal life without an aging body. Sure, you can say that our bodies simply won't age, but everything ages. All machines eventually stop working, and the human body is a particularly complex machine. Being digital would obviate the need for swapping out of physical parts. With good redundant incremental backups, even a data corruption wouldn't be the end of me. Of course, this would probably necessitate someone (or something) corporeal to keep tabs on things.
Whoever suggested that we wouldn't need to eat or drink or rest is being silly. Nothing works without energy, and your immortal cells wouldn't be able to maintain themselves without an influx of matter to build new cells.
So here's my question to you, then, Mario.... would we actually transfer onto a computer, from our perspective, or would it be a brand new digital copy with the memories of old times? Perhaps even by downloading our consciousness we would blink out of existence to be replaced by a computer program that is a perfect copy, which would kinda defeat the purpose... but how would you ever be able to tell? Even with that technology, I think the transfer from mind to computer would still remain an unsettling mystery. Death would still have it's laugh at our expense.
If I had to pick a side, I'd say that there's probably no such thing as a soul. If there were, and if it existed in such a way as to be impossible to define or directly observe, there'd be no point in worrying about it anyway. We can only deal with what we can interact with in some manner. Of course, if you're worried about copying souls, you can just kill the body upon transfer. I wouldn't need it anymore, and I'm assuming the trip is one-way in any case. You can act like I'm another person if it makes you more comfortable I guess, but if I think I'm Mario and have all of Mario's memories, then I probably am Mario.
Many people argue that immortality would ultimately be a curse, because you would outlive everyone around you, and you would constantly be reminded of how alone you are. Falling in love would become more and more difficult, as finding a new love would seem nothing more to you as just another blip on the long eternal span that is your life.
So, conditions:
1. A friend or a love to have immortality with. That way you can have company as I mentioned above.
2. A way out. I forget the specific name for this kind of immortality, but it's not necessarily immortality, just a really long longevity. You don't age, you don't get sick, and normal wounds, like a gunshot, car accident injuries, etc, don't affect you as much, as your body can regenerate those. But, losing your head, melting in a vat of lava, or anything that would permanently separate enough of your body from your brain or brain processes, would kill you. Regeneration is assumed, because if the body can live for centuries and longer, then it has to be constantly regenerating cells anyway.
3. You have to stop aging at whatever point you accept your immortality. This is where I'd say any age in the 20s is probably fine. You look old enough for people to at least take you somewhat seriously, but young enough that you still feel young, even if you aren't.
I would argue that under these conditions, immortality would be great. You could see the rise and fall of civilizations, nations, and governments around the world. You could truly see and experience everything the world has to offer, and you would no longer be constrained by time, giving you as much freedom to read every book, play every game, and learn every piece of information you've ever wanted.
Okay, I must shower and go to work now.
I realize I'm sounding very contrary when it comes to the immortality argument, but these are real concerns I'm having. The human body and brain are designed for a finite existence, so magically rendering someone immortal just seems fraught with problems. Maybe I'm just being a pragmatist.
And even if you did make yourself immortal, it wouldn't be eternal. Eventually, the Sun is going to go red dwarf and fry the planet's surface. And if you make it past there somehow, one way or another, the Universe is going to destroy itself, and then it's the end for everyone and everything. Maybe this sounds pessimistic, but it's the way things are. In a sense, I'm grateful to be alive at this moment in the history of the Universe, a time when the Earth is in a livable condition. We are defined by our finite existences, and I appreciate that the course of my life has a definable beginning and end. My death doesn't even have to be the end, as my contributions to the continuation of the species may long outlast my limited lifespan.
Anyway, yeah, you can get real technical and pretty much destroy any 'magical immortality' argument. But it's still interesting to see where your boundaries are, and what you would need in order to live forever. Serephel pretty much just summed up my conditions (though I would hate to be buried alive along those rules... *shudder*).
And yes, Mario, I too believe that there probably is no soul, that we are just the sum of the processes in our brain that build over our lifetime. In that case, then, our sensory perception (plus mental processing) is basically what allows us to be conscious of ourselves. But what if all electrical processing shut off, even for the smallest of timespans? Even if that was copied, would it seem, to our consciousnesses, like we woke up from a deep sleep, or anesthesia? Would one consciousness end and another be reborn? I suppose, as you say, it wouldn't matter much... the new consciousness would wake up with all of our memories and emotions, and even if the true self has vanished into oblivion, that true self won't be conscious, and won't be able to care.
Might I make a literary suggestion based on our conversation? I highly recommend reading "The Coffin" by Phil Hester. Even though the subject matter isn't exactly what we're talking about, the questions it raises are the same as we are raising here.
This is starting to get really really complicated, because you have to start wondering what oblivion feels like.