Ah, so you're curious as to how you would perceive the digital transfer? Without knowing the procedure involved I couldn't say for certain, but I'd wager that the original body would have to be shut off (killed) to even access the brain deeply enough to obtain its data. We don't have the fancy back-of-the-neck Matrix plug for data streams, after all. So you'd experience death (hopefully after severe anesthetizing to avoid unpleasant pain), then wake up again. Kinda scary maybe, but on the other hand, how cool would it be to have a first-person sensation of death and regain consciousness afterward? I'm guessing, much cooler than straight-up boring immortality.
Another point in favor of digital immortality is that a digital world can be changed and reshaped. Sure you could do the Matrix recreation of the world, but how about being able to fly like Superman? How about shaping the very fabric of reality around you? These sound like much more fun ways to pass eternity.
Fun side point: some have pondered that the reason we've never contacted other civilizations is that they became so advanced as to plug themselves into digital universes and never bothered to find anyone else.
............ that's..... a totally awesome and frightening theorem, Mario. But I can totally see that. Why stick to boring reality when you can support a nearly limitless population and bend reality to your whims? But the other question is, would there necessarily have to be people on the outside? People not plugged in?
You know, along these lines, what about plugging a consciousness into a computer and then attaching that computer to some form of locomotive robot? Do you think that it's possible to recreate the physical senses? Hook up cameras to work as eyes? Olfactory sensors? Microphones? In that case, we could eventually just make machine bodies for ourselves. Then we could alternate between true reality and our own digital reality at will, and still be able to control our population from the outside.
As you said, a system's sun will only last for so long, and after a while a digitized population might have to move on to a different system to avoid being fried and to find new sources of energy.
So I feel like there will always have to be a physical component to safeguard and fuel the massive digital world.
EDIT: Oh, and also, yes, that's the part I'm concerned with, but I don't know if it would actually work like that. Think of your life as a blue thread, and your death is the end of that thread. Perhaps when you digitize your mind, you're not adding on an infinite amount of blue string, you're starting a new blue string. The string is identical in every way... but it's not the same. The life that you hoped to prolong indefinitely has already been snuffed out, only to be replaced. I'm just curious how that would work.... whatever. I feel like I've gotten locked in a loop of conjecture, and there's no way out. I guess I'll just say that that gap between death and life would probably always be unknown to us.
I don't know, I just can't wrap my mind around the digital upload of your consciousness. The entire point of me being immortal would be to experience everything that the world has to offer. Sure, uploaded into a computer, you could potentially just have information uploaded with you, but that's not any fun to me. It's not the destination I am interested in, it's the journey.
As for the brain being a finite space... I don't know. As we forget things that we have not thought of for a long time, that could just be a result of inactivity. Often the data is still there, but your brain has just forgotten how to get to it, and a keyword, string of keywords, or an image is sometimes all you need to get it back.
I've found this with my study of different languages over the last ten years or so. Like, I haven't studied Spanish in about six years, maybe more, but I did study it for four years. During that time I acquired hundreds and hundreds of vocabulary words, of which I could only possibly recite a very small percentage. But I've been doing some research on Spain lately for work, and I've come across several Spanish words that I had completely forgotten.
As an ironic and very convenient true story from yesterday, let's take the Spanish word "forget", olvidar. Now, two days ago, if you held a gun to my head and asked me how to say forget in Spanish, I would have died. I would not be able to tell you no matter what. But yesterday while working, I happened across the word "olvidar." And it instantly came back to me, as my brain remembered how to get to that data it had long forgotten how to find.
I think that regenerating brain matter has nothing to do with infinite memory of every minutae. It's been years since I took any psychology class, so maybe Adam can spot me on this one, but there is that one part of your brain that dedicates memories to long term, and it typically chooses not to remember certain pieces of data, because that would just be too much work to handle. I don't remember how many tiles there are on the ceiling in my office, even though I'm fairly certain I've seen the entire ceiling before. A regenerative mind wouldn't make any difference.
On the note of practicality, how much computer space so you think it would take to contain ALL of your memories, an A.I or program intelligent enough to interpret them, it's interpretations of them (personality), and a blank slate A.I. (if you will) capable of taking the interpretations and act on them (the copy of yourself).
Edit: Also remember that if this technology existed there would be others who would want to use it, how many people do you think would, assuming that the memory retrieval only has a certain success rate since the person has to be killed. Also, how long would the memories stay in the brain before they dispersed, how long would that take? How much room would all those people take up.
Edit: You'll also need an infinite or nearly infinite amount of room for future memories (that just sounds odd... "future memories") of your own and others. The alternative of course is to live in a sort of stasis, because you don't have enough room to store the memories they aren't saved. This could be used if you're bored with the current times, you just partition the space allotted for you so that you can't access it and then either have some one reverse it later or set a timer or some kind to revert to the settings you had five seconds before you pressed ok on the settings, not revert those memories, just settings (so you don't get woken up and press ok again).
I will give my argument from the original conversation we had from this: Humans, when it comes down to it, are not the most resilient species mentally. People can be driven mad by traumatic experiences, no doubt due to our higher cognitive abilities over other animals and thus our ability to understand between good and bad, etc.
So imagine, living forever, seeing everyone you love die, most of the time in horrible ways. It's bad enough for humans to have to go through this a few times in our average life time, but living with the knowledge that everyone you ever get close to will die and you'll have to suffer with that would be horrible.
Couple this with the viciousness of our species, which commits genocide, rapes children, displays pure sadisticness unheard of in the rest of the animal world, made even worse by the fact that we should know better. If the 21st century and beyond are just as bad for atrocities as the 20th was, someone living through all that, seeing all that cruelty, well I don't think they'd survive mentally.
That's why I think immortality is something that should be seen as a curse not as something great as we can avoid the unknown of death or triumph over the natural design.
Remember that it doesn't have to be only you who can be immortal, if it was some sort of bio-mechanics then (nanobots?) then people might stop reproducing as much, there will also be fewer deaths (seriously man) and in the next few years there will be hardly any children at all (if the aging process is stopped at some point after childhood). There goes the atrocities including children. If it's bio-mechanics, especially nanobots, then the chances of needing those pesky bodily functions is low, that means scientific progress and law enforcement is very high. Fewer atrocities still. Also if we are all immortal wars are pretty pointless, there will be no end to them, people aren't dumb enough to bother. No more wars now. In addition to that after a while many of the people will have gotten wise and intelligent enough to stop the pointless law breaking (or at least I would imagine they would.) That's pretty much world peace if you ask me.
You know, along these lines, what about plugging a consciousness into a computer and then attaching that computer to some form of locomotive robot? Do you think that it's possible to recreate the physical senses? Hook up cameras to work as eyes? Olfactory sensors? Microphones? In that case, we could eventually just make machine bodies for ourselves. Then we could alternate between true reality and our own digital reality at will, and still be able to control our population from the outside.
That would be novel, but once you can make an entire universe virtually, what's the point in worrying about the "real" thing? It's an old philosophical argument that if we were in a world that wasn't real, but we couldn't discern it from the real thing, then it basically is the real thing.
I hate to keep bringing it up, but the Matrix fits this pretty well. Sure, it was a prison, but what difference would that make if you didn't perceive it as a prison? People were able to live out their lives mostly without ever knowing there were evil machines controlling every aspect of their world. Our hypothetical situation is a vast improvement by comparison, as we entered the world by choice, and are not necessarily bound to simulations of real-world restrictions. If we were reasonably assured of the safety of the physical aspect of our being (the mighty servers), what incentive would we have to explore that other limited old-fashioned universe? We'd be gods!
If you had to die to get in there as you said Mario then the chances of whatever procedures they use to extract your memories and download them must fail a certain percentage of times. I'd imagine that percentage would be very high. Many people would be unwilling to take the risk, besides, what if you had been in the virtual world for a very long time, perhaps since birth, wouldn't you want to experience the old times in their proper glory? or even experience them first hand at all! I bet not even the super servers could make a virtual world the same as the real one.
But that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. Technology will continue to improve, possibly indefinitely. It's conceivable that we could eventually simulate the real world on a computer, at which point there would be no discernible differences at all.
In theory, medical technology will also continue to improve. If you can envision nanobots that can make you live forever, you also have to accept medical procedures with 100% success rates. Besides, we need to kill the body anyway so no one gets bent out of shape for having two of themselves running around.
I think such a system is unfeasible. Yes, computers are getting faster and such, but this is a machine that would need to create, flawlessly:
Weather patterns
Physics rules
The universe
The various natural cycles
Animal behaviours
etc.
Things we don't know all the details about, so before a computer could be made like that, we'd need to literally know everything about everything and that will never happen. There are always mysteries, they're just outside of our ability to comprehend.
One problem I have is that as a computer, it would have to work off of past experiences, be they yours or downloaded to you of a massive database of all experiences. It would be impossible for a computer to cope. Worst case, the entire experience would be deleted. It can be put into today’s terms as a corrupted file. You can't use it, so you delete it. So if something entirely new happened, for an unknown reason, it would never exist simply because our new brains couldn't understand something new. If you think about it, most progress for our species would halt.
You seriously think there are aspects of the Universe that we can never understand? And that weather and animal instincts are among them? Not really sure how to respond to that. But even if you think these things are unsolvable, such things could probably be approximated to the point where we wouldn't notice the difference.
Also, anyone raised in this virtual world would probably accept everything without question because it's all they know.
Also, many aspects of the real Universe would probably be altered to make our virtual lives more comfortable. Weather would be controlled and possibly personalized to each person's tastes at any given moment. And if you really want accurate animals, you could just download them too.
In fact, a system that is able to store the entire consciousness of a living being would also be able to replicate said consciousness, so you could easily populate the world with fake animals and humans that behaved exactly like the real things.
But most importantly, the fact that we can't conceive of such a system being possible doesn't mean it isn't possible and will never be possible. Our current technology would be completely incomprehensible to an ancient human; it would probably look a lot like magic to them. So it stands to reason that a future society's technological capabilities would look equally magical to us.
But I stand by the fact that humans are imperfect and therefore the things we create are imperfect. So once the entire human race follows Mario into the computer, some cable is unplugged, and all the humans "die".
Wait to go Mario.
And if you don't believe me about human imperfect-ness, remember the Titanic? It was unsinkable, until it sank that is.
While I understand your train of thought, Queen, it's far too dichotomous. You're only considering the two extremes. Yes, humans are imperfect, but it's not like everything we touch explodes into uselessness. Of course there would be problems. It's likely that occasionally consciousnesses would be lost. But things would probably still run, and run modestly well. So something comes unplugged. That's why you make backups. By understanding that we make mistakes, or that chance can take a turn for the worse, you can prepare for such an event.
That would be novel, but once you can make an entire universe virtually, what's the point in worrying about the "real" thing? It's an old philosophical argument that if we were in a world that wasn't real, but we couldn't discern it from the real thing, then it basically is the real thing.
I was referring more to the upkeep of the required physical structures. There would have to be some physical structures that would need maintenance, right?
Before we all go into the computer we would just have to create robots complex enough to make repairs as delicately as needed whether they're run by A.I or remote, as our knowledge progresses we can use said knowledge to upgrade said robots with our other robots, or have our old robots make newer, better ones.
So, let me get this straight, we would be transplanted into a computers database, and we are entirely there? With all our faults?
If yes:
And if someone seeking to unbalance the database learns how to hack it? What if they completely destroy things? I think there are too many ways this could go wrong, I'm all for the nano-bots the repair our system while we frolic around the real earth.
If no:
Then we are not being transplanted in our entirety, and therefore not the conscience that we once had on earth. Meep.
But I stand by the fact that humans are imperfect and therefore the things we create are imperfect. So once the entire human race follows Mario into the computer, some cable is unplugged, and all the humans "die".
Wait to go Mario.
And if you don't believe me about human imperfect-ness, remember the Titanic? It was unsinkable, until it sank that is.
When the Titanic sank, did we stop building ships? Of course not! We made them lighter, faster, more efficient, and built numerous systems to overcome the old design's shortcomings. I can only assume a virtual universe would be tested extensively in public beta before rolling out the retail version. Do you think the fact that initial efforts may fall short of perfection is reason enough to not proceed?
The problem I have with Mario's digital life is that in his scenario, the me that I am is dead. The computer me is a copy. It thinks it's me. From its perspective it gets what Mario is talking about, but the real original me doesn't. That's what illithid was going on about. You do this and you will never know how it worked because the you that exists now is gone. Got it? If you watch Stargate, you get presented with the idea of children that have all the memories of their parents when they are born. It'd be a lot like that.
I'm also a believer in spirits. I am of the opinion that there IS something like a soul. I don't think that changes matters any though. It doesn't play into my thinking here.
As far as plain old magical type immortality ignoring the challenges involved, It would be fine and cool with a proper escape clause, but really would totally stink otherwise. Honestly I think a person would just get tired of it after a while. Seeing all the neat new things wouldn't seem so special. All you'd get is an infuriating build-up of old nostolgic memories and unless you can magically reverse time while your at it to live the past again there's nothing you could do about it. Furthermore, time would be the bane of your existence even more than if you were mortal for another reason. You CAN'T keep up on all the video games/books/whatever. Your bandwidth for input is vastly out paced by the shear volume of output the world produces. Trying to see it all will drive you mad(der). There will be a perpetual, ever-growing pile of things you want to look at or do, but being immortal, you'd be too damned hesitant to throw out most of it because there's always the possiblility you could get to it "someday".
On the other hand, people often retire and get hopelessly bored with life as it is. Maybe all that stuff you want to do only seems interesting because you can't do it for whatever reason. But that was my first point again.
Also, if we could die, I don't think we'd be as inclined to work as hard as we do to achieve the things we achieve. Progress would slow dramatically if everyone was immortal. If it was only you or a select few, then the non-immortals would constantly want to harass you about it if they knew you were immortal.
The problem I have with Mario's digital life is that in his scenario, the me that I am is dead. The computer me is a copy. It thinks it's me. From its perspective it gets what Mario is talking about, but the real original me doesn't. That's what illithid was going on about. You do this and you will never know how it worked because the you that exists now is gone. Got it? If you watch Stargate, you get presented with the idea of children that have all the memories of their parents when they are born. It'd be a lot like that.
I'm also a believer in spirits. I am of the opinion that there IS something like a soul. I don't think that changes matters any though. It doesn't play into my thinking here.
If there is such a thing as a soul, if it is a real and tangible aspect of a living being, then it can probably be replicated artificially (as it stands, we can create artificial body parts like limbs and hearts, and development is underway to create artificial blood cells, so why shouldn't we be able to replicate other sophisticated components like brains as technology improves?). If we can replicate it, and if we have a technology to download a person's consciousness into digital form, it stands to reason that we can also download whatever constitutes a soul. Even if the soul has to exist on some metaphysical level unattainable by human understanding, I still feel there's a way to transfer it intact across mediums (more on that below).
Of course, you may feel that what defines you as who you are includes your physical body in some way, which would mean you wouldn't think it possible to separate body and mind without destroying the individual made up of the two. Personally, I don't believe this to be the case. We can replace severed limbs with robotic implements, or install a mechanical heart, but we are still considered to be the same person. Clearly we are not the sum of our parts; no one thinks that a person dies or becomes someone else just because they have donated organs.
The exception to this is the brain (and the soul organ, of course, assuming they aren't one and the same). Without the brain, our bodies can no longer function, and we are considered "brain dead". I would contend, then, that the brain is the only necessary component to define a person as a specific individual. With sufficient technology, all other body parts could be replaced, and it would still be the same person. Now let's take this same individual (call him Phil) and transplant his brain wholesale to a waiting complete body (don't ask me where I dug it up, I don't want to make you an accessory after the fact). Phil's body, now lacking a brain, would quickly perish, but Phil's brain was successfully placed in a new body that survived this crazy-ass procedure. Would the body containing the Phil-brain not, in fact, be Phil?
Now we go back to my scenario, where a technology exists that can make an exact digital copy of a person's brain. Since Phil's body dies in the process of extracting and converting his consciousness (that is, everything stored in the brain, soul included), this would seem to precisely match the brain transplant scenario. To better assuage your concerns, let's say the transfer process is instantaneous; that is to say, there is no moment where Phil's consciousness exists in neither his old body nor the computer (a situation unfeasible at best in the brain transplant scenario), and there is no moment where his consciousness exists in both places at once. Might the soul, then, follow the consciousness during its digital conversion? Would the digital version of Phil not be Phil?
I have a different opinion than the consensus on physical immortality. Say, some metaphysical life form offered me immortality without any way out of it, no fall-back clause. Would I accept? You bet your ass I would! I would be the type to make a rash decision like that. But more importantly, the way I see it, if you have a way out of it, then where's the fun in the challenge of searching for a way out? I just don't see the fun in being immortal when you know that you can end it at any time. It'd just be that you're extending your life, not being immortal. In fact, it completely ruined the definition of immortality! I understand the complications, and how much things will suck without a way out, but really, that's just what makes the whole idea fun, knowing that there's no way back from where you are.
RCS: An easy escape clause would still suck, and that's what I mentioned earlier. Losing your head would be an example of what I would support, because it's not so easy. Although if you could end it by snapping your fingers and saying "BLARG IM DED" then that kind of sucks too. There should be a little danger to keep things interesting. But you should at least not have to worry about dying from cancer or something like that.
X: You have some really good points, many of which I can't deny. The build of old nostalgia is sometimes a problem I deal with now, and I'm not even halfway through my twenties. After a couple centuries, that would certainly be harder to deal with. The amount of output the world produces is vast compared to what we can handle, but that's why we put some restrictions. For example, I don't intend on reading romance novels or playing anything with the name Madden in the title. That is already a great amount of activity time I'm actively choosing not to engage in.
But one of the reasons why we don't have the time to dedicate to leisurely activities is because we have school or work. If we didn't have to deal with it, then that would leave us much more time to do everything we want to do.
If I were immortal, I would work for many years to build up a base savings account. I would then invest my earnings into a wide and varied portfolio, using strategic hedge investments to keep my portfolio afloat during crisis. I'd then build it up into a huge investment firm, keeping involved in it only as long as I can hide my age from people. After that it would serve as a money laundering front for me, with phantom and under-the-table payments going to me every month, with my secret known only to a select few people of power and trust within the firm. Multiple legal identities of mine could hold the majority of stock to keep myself in power.
After this, I'd hopefully have enough money every month in legitimate and shadow earnings that I don't actually have to work. Boom, I'm free to do whatever immortal people do. Travel, learn more languages, become good at Starcraft, etc.
You seriously think there are aspects of the Universe that we can never understand? And that weather and animal instincts are among them?
You misunderstood me: Yes, we know about these things, but weather is incredibly unpredictable for the most part, you expect it to do one thing and it does another.
As for animal instincts, what I mean by that is, for example, why do cats run away from its owners to die? Why do dogs know when an earthquake is coming? That sort of stuff, while not super important it is if you want this world to be accurate.
I understand you entirely. These are indeed difficult systems to calculate, but I don't understand why you seem to think they will always be beyond comprehension. Assuming the human race has enough time, I think we will eventually solve any and all mysteries of the Universe. Weather, though extremely complex, is still a closed system, and there's no reason to think we can never ascertain the ins and outs of such a system.
And like I said, we could probably approximate them to the point of being unable to tell them apart from the legitimate article.
I wouldn't consider it lazy, I would consider it a necessary flaw of the design. You probably could never PERFECTLY nail down the physics of the universe, but as Mario said, it could probably be close enough that we could never tell. For example, as far as weather goes, the system could generate rain and snow and all that based on meteorological principles, and it would rain and snow just about as much as it does now, and along the same patterns. So what if a tiny little miniscule unknown law is violated, and we get rain on Tuesday, where, in real life, we would have gotten rain on Wednesday? It's just not a huge deal.
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Another point in favor of digital immortality is that a digital world can be changed and reshaped. Sure you could do the Matrix recreation of the world, but how about being able to fly like Superman? How about shaping the very fabric of reality around you? These sound like much more fun ways to pass eternity.
Fun side point: some have pondered that the reason we've never contacted other civilizations is that they became so advanced as to plug themselves into digital universes and never bothered to find anyone else.
You know, along these lines, what about plugging a consciousness into a computer and then attaching that computer to some form of locomotive robot? Do you think that it's possible to recreate the physical senses? Hook up cameras to work as eyes? Olfactory sensors? Microphones? In that case, we could eventually just make machine bodies for ourselves. Then we could alternate between true reality and our own digital reality at will, and still be able to control our population from the outside.
As you said, a system's sun will only last for so long, and after a while a digitized population might have to move on to a different system to avoid being fried and to find new sources of energy.
So I feel like there will always have to be a physical component to safeguard and fuel the massive digital world.
EDIT: Oh, and also, yes, that's the part I'm concerned with, but I don't know if it would actually work like that. Think of your life as a blue thread, and your death is the end of that thread. Perhaps when you digitize your mind, you're not adding on an infinite amount of blue string, you're starting a new blue string. The string is identical in every way... but it's not the same. The life that you hoped to prolong indefinitely has already been snuffed out, only to be replaced. I'm just curious how that would work.... whatever. I feel like I've gotten locked in a loop of conjecture, and there's no way out. I guess I'll just say that that gap between death and life would probably always be unknown to us.
As for the brain being a finite space... I don't know. As we forget things that we have not thought of for a long time, that could just be a result of inactivity. Often the data is still there, but your brain has just forgotten how to get to it, and a keyword, string of keywords, or an image is sometimes all you need to get it back.
I've found this with my study of different languages over the last ten years or so. Like, I haven't studied Spanish in about six years, maybe more, but I did study it for four years. During that time I acquired hundreds and hundreds of vocabulary words, of which I could only possibly recite a very small percentage. But I've been doing some research on Spain lately for work, and I've come across several Spanish words that I had completely forgotten.
As an ironic and very convenient true story from yesterday, let's take the Spanish word "forget", olvidar. Now, two days ago, if you held a gun to my head and asked me how to say forget in Spanish, I would have died. I would not be able to tell you no matter what. But yesterday while working, I happened across the word "olvidar." And it instantly came back to me, as my brain remembered how to get to that data it had long forgotten how to find.
I think that regenerating brain matter has nothing to do with infinite memory of every minutae. It's been years since I took any psychology class, so maybe Adam can spot me on this one, but there is that one part of your brain that dedicates memories to long term, and it typically chooses not to remember certain pieces of data, because that would just be too much work to handle. I don't remember how many tiles there are on the ceiling in my office, even though I'm fairly certain I've seen the entire ceiling before. A regenerative mind wouldn't make any difference.
Edit: Also remember that if this technology existed there would be others who would want to use it, how many people do you think would, assuming that the memory retrieval only has a certain success rate since the person has to be killed. Also, how long would the memories stay in the brain before they dispersed, how long would that take? How much room would all those people take up.
Edit: You'll also need an infinite or nearly infinite amount of room for future memories (that just sounds odd... "future memories") of your own and others. The alternative of course is to live in a sort of stasis, because you don't have enough room to store the memories they aren't saved. This could be used if you're bored with the current times, you just partition the space allotted for you so that you can't access it and then either have some one reverse it later or set a timer or some kind to revert to the settings you had five seconds before you pressed ok on the settings, not revert those memories, just settings (so you don't get woken up and press ok again).
So imagine, living forever, seeing everyone you love die, most of the time in horrible ways. It's bad enough for humans to have to go through this a few times in our average life time, but living with the knowledge that everyone you ever get close to will die and you'll have to suffer with that would be horrible.
Couple this with the viciousness of our species, which commits genocide, rapes children, displays pure sadisticness unheard of in the rest of the animal world, made even worse by the fact that we should know better. If the 21st century and beyond are just as bad for atrocities as the 20th was, someone living through all that, seeing all that cruelty, well I don't think they'd survive mentally.
That's why I think immortality is something that should be seen as a curse not as something great as we can avoid the unknown of death or triumph over the natural design.
That would be novel, but once you can make an entire universe virtually, what's the point in worrying about the "real" thing? It's an old philosophical argument that if we were in a world that wasn't real, but we couldn't discern it from the real thing, then it basically is the real thing.
I hate to keep bringing it up, but the Matrix fits this pretty well. Sure, it was a prison, but what difference would that make if you didn't perceive it as a prison? People were able to live out their lives mostly without ever knowing there were evil machines controlling every aspect of their world. Our hypothetical situation is a vast improvement by comparison, as we entered the world by choice, and are not necessarily bound to simulations of real-world restrictions. If we were reasonably assured of the safety of the physical aspect of our being (the mighty servers), what incentive would we have to explore that other limited old-fashioned universe? We'd be gods!
In theory, medical technology will also continue to improve. If you can envision nanobots that can make you live forever, you also have to accept medical procedures with 100% success rates. Besides, we need to kill the body anyway so no one gets bent out of shape for having two of themselves running around.
Weather patterns
Physics rules
The universe
The various natural cycles
Animal behaviours
etc.
Things we don't know all the details about, so before a computer could be made like that, we'd need to literally know everything about everything and that will never happen. There are always mysteries, they're just outside of our ability to comprehend.
Also, anyone raised in this virtual world would probably accept everything without question because it's all they know.
Also, many aspects of the real Universe would probably be altered to make our virtual lives more comfortable. Weather would be controlled and possibly personalized to each person's tastes at any given moment. And if you really want accurate animals, you could just download them too.
In fact, a system that is able to store the entire consciousness of a living being would also be able to replicate said consciousness, so you could easily populate the world with fake animals and humans that behaved exactly like the real things.
But most importantly, the fact that we can't conceive of such a system being possible doesn't mean it isn't possible and will never be possible. Our current technology would be completely incomprehensible to an ancient human; it would probably look a lot like magic to them. So it stands to reason that a future society's technological capabilities would look equally magical to us.
Wait to go Mario.
And if you don't believe me about human imperfect-ness, remember the Titanic? It was unsinkable, until it sank that is.
I was referring more to the upkeep of the required physical structures. There would have to be some physical structures that would need maintenance, right?
If yes:
And if someone seeking to unbalance the database learns how to hack it? What if they completely destroy things? I think there are too many ways this could go wrong, I'm all for the nano-bots the repair our system while we frolic around the real earth.
If no:
Then we are not being transplanted in our entirety, and therefore not the conscience that we once had on earth. Meep.
And now my posts are getting progressively shorter!
When the Titanic sank, did we stop building ships? Of course not! We made them lighter, faster, more efficient, and built numerous systems to overcome the old design's shortcomings. I can only assume a virtual universe would be tested extensively in public beta before rolling out the retail version. Do you think the fact that initial efforts may fall short of perfection is reason enough to not proceed?
I'm also a believer in spirits. I am of the opinion that there IS something like a soul. I don't think that changes matters any though. It doesn't play into my thinking here.
As far as plain old magical type immortality ignoring the challenges involved, It would be fine and cool with a proper escape clause, but really would totally stink otherwise. Honestly I think a person would just get tired of it after a while. Seeing all the neat new things wouldn't seem so special. All you'd get is an infuriating build-up of old nostolgic memories and unless you can magically reverse time while your at it to live the past again there's nothing you could do about it. Furthermore, time would be the bane of your existence even more than if you were mortal for another reason. You CAN'T keep up on all the video games/books/whatever. Your bandwidth for input is vastly out paced by the shear volume of output the world produces. Trying to see it all will drive you mad(der). There will be a perpetual, ever-growing pile of things you want to look at or do, but being immortal, you'd be too damned hesitant to throw out most of it because there's always the possiblility you could get to it "someday".
On the other hand, people often retire and get hopelessly bored with life as it is. Maybe all that stuff you want to do only seems interesting because you can't do it for whatever reason. But that was my first point again.
Also, if we could die, I don't think we'd be as inclined to work as hard as we do to achieve the things we achieve. Progress would slow dramatically if everyone was immortal. If it was only you or a select few, then the non-immortals would constantly want to harass you about it if they knew you were immortal.
If there is such a thing as a soul, if it is a real and tangible aspect of a living being, then it can probably be replicated artificially (as it stands, we can create artificial body parts like limbs and hearts, and development is underway to create artificial blood cells, so why shouldn't we be able to replicate other sophisticated components like brains as technology improves?). If we can replicate it, and if we have a technology to download a person's consciousness into digital form, it stands to reason that we can also download whatever constitutes a soul. Even if the soul has to exist on some metaphysical level unattainable by human understanding, I still feel there's a way to transfer it intact across mediums (more on that below).
Of course, you may feel that what defines you as who you are includes your physical body in some way, which would mean you wouldn't think it possible to separate body and mind without destroying the individual made up of the two. Personally, I don't believe this to be the case. We can replace severed limbs with robotic implements, or install a mechanical heart, but we are still considered to be the same person. Clearly we are not the sum of our parts; no one thinks that a person dies or becomes someone else just because they have donated organs.
The exception to this is the brain (and the soul organ, of course, assuming they aren't one and the same). Without the brain, our bodies can no longer function, and we are considered "brain dead". I would contend, then, that the brain is the only necessary component to define a person as a specific individual. With sufficient technology, all other body parts could be replaced, and it would still be the same person. Now let's take this same individual (call him Phil) and transplant his brain wholesale to a waiting complete body (don't ask me where I dug it up, I don't want to make you an accessory after the fact). Phil's body, now lacking a brain, would quickly perish, but Phil's brain was successfully placed in a new body that survived this crazy-ass procedure. Would the body containing the Phil-brain not, in fact, be Phil?
Now we go back to my scenario, where a technology exists that can make an exact digital copy of a person's brain. Since Phil's body dies in the process of extracting and converting his consciousness (that is, everything stored in the brain, soul included), this would seem to precisely match the brain transplant scenario. To better assuage your concerns, let's say the transfer process is instantaneous; that is to say, there is no moment where Phil's consciousness exists in neither his old body nor the computer (a situation unfeasible at best in the brain transplant scenario), and there is no moment where his consciousness exists in both places at once. Might the soul, then, follow the consciousness during its digital conversion? Would the digital version of Phil not be Phil?
X: You have some really good points, many of which I can't deny. The build of old nostalgia is sometimes a problem I deal with now, and I'm not even halfway through my twenties. After a couple centuries, that would certainly be harder to deal with. The amount of output the world produces is vast compared to what we can handle, but that's why we put some restrictions. For example, I don't intend on reading romance novels or playing anything with the name Madden in the title. That is already a great amount of activity time I'm actively choosing not to engage in.
But one of the reasons why we don't have the time to dedicate to leisurely activities is because we have school or work. If we didn't have to deal with it, then that would leave us much more time to do everything we want to do.
If I were immortal, I would work for many years to build up a base savings account. I would then invest my earnings into a wide and varied portfolio, using strategic hedge investments to keep my portfolio afloat during crisis. I'd then build it up into a huge investment firm, keeping involved in it only as long as I can hide my age from people. After that it would serve as a money laundering front for me, with phantom and under-the-table payments going to me every month, with my secret known only to a select few people of power and trust within the firm. Multiple legal identities of mine could hold the majority of stock to keep myself in power.
After this, I'd hopefully have enough money every month in legitimate and shadow earnings that I don't actually have to work. Boom, I'm free to do whatever immortal people do. Travel, learn more languages, become good at Starcraft, etc.
You misunderstood me: Yes, we know about these things, but weather is incredibly unpredictable for the most part, you expect it to do one thing and it does another.
As for animal instincts, what I mean by that is, for example, why do cats run away from its owners to die? Why do dogs know when an earthquake is coming? That sort of stuff, while not super important it is if you want this world to be accurate.
And like I said, we could probably approximate them to the point of being unable to tell them apart from the legitimate article.