While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer, reports Tristan Quinn. "Within the next 30 years," promises Dmitry Itskov, "I am going to make sure that we can all live forever."
It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35-year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful to humanity. "I'm 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it," he says. It is a breathtaking ambition, but could it actually be done? Itskov doesn't have too much time to find out.
"If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years," he laments. Death is inevitable - currently at least - because as we get older the cells that make up our bodies lose their ability to repair themselves, making us vulnerable to cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions that kill about two-thirds of us.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771
Horizon: The Immortalist, produced and directed by Tristan Quinn, will be shown on BBC 2 at 20:00 on Wednesday 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on the BBC iPlayer
Dmitry Itskov, Founder of 2045 Initiative
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:07PM
Mind uploading implies you leave your finely aged body behind, if that's your concern.
Depending on the amount of continuity between your meaty and digital existence, you could say that you're dying anyway, and mind uploading is a path to the afterlife.
That's why biological anti-aging should be pursued first. Is the digital "you" really you?
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:15PM
No, it isn't. That's why this is pretty much useless if you truly want to live forever. Making a copy of your mind won't stop your original body and consciousness from dying.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:25PM
It could be useful for other things, like low resource interstellar travel with no oxygen or deep freeze necessary.
You could also copy your mind and enslave yourself into being your own digital assistant! What could possibly go wrong?
Finally, you could take the plunge, copy your mind, and kill off your body. It's not like your consciousness would jump from body to computer, but if it is acting exactly like you than it might fool other people.
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(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:40PM
How can you be so certain? We don't know what "life" exactly is. Imagine parts of you brain failing - may be first the part to control the heartbeat and breathing. If you replace these basic functions by a cybernetic implant, is that still living? If you start incorporating other cybernetic elements into your brain, at which point do you stop "living"? I think, consciousness is a continuous process, not necessarily dependant on the exact underlying hardware. We wouldn't know, because the new existence would act like the wet-ware did before, so even if it is just emulating consciousness, begging to stay powered on, we wouldn't know for sure.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:52PM
How can you be so certain?
If you cloned an exact duplicate of yourself which looked exactly like you and had the same memories, there would be no reason to think the clone could not act independently of you, given that it has a separate body. If you then destroyed the original, then following that line of reasoning, there is also no reason to think that you haven't just ended someone's consciousness. We don't fully understand consciousness, true, but there is no reason to believe it is magic.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:30PM
It makes you wonder what would happen if you removed, swapped and reattached the left brain hemispheres from the original and the twin. Depending on the true nature of consciousness, it might swap the conscious viewpoints, have no affect on them, destroy them, make each consciousness somehow be shared across two bodies (seems unlikely), or even give rise to four consciousnesses. In fact there's no way of knowing that there aren't multiple conscious first persons existing in each human brain, perhaps in a similar way to the way in which your past and future selves exist but are distinct from your present self, or similar to parallel experiences in the many worlds hypothesis.
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:33PM
Argh s/affect/effect/
Clicking Submit just keeps refreshing a Preview of this Comment. Is this an invisible Lameness Filter or what? There's no message.
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:41PM
You get the message if you scroll up to the top. There you'll find something about a 2 minute wait between posts.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:40PM
Ah thanks. I had a good look but for some reason I didn't notice that!
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:10PM
In fact there's no way of knowing that there aren't multiple conscious first persons existing in each human brain
Actually there is a way of knowing, and the answer is affirmative at least for some definitions of consciousness. There are two independent (though not entirely equal) consciousnesses in your brain--right now. This has been experimentally verified with split-brain patients. Sam Harris talks about this in a few chapters of his book Waking Up. I recommend it. For an even weirder exploration of this idea try Julian Jaynes's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Although I'd almost classify that as speculative medical-fiction. His ideas are pretty far out there and not widely accepted.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:45PM
Experiments with split-brain patients can only prove that split-brain patients have two independent consciousnesses. They cannot prove that there are also two consciousnesses without the split. It might be exactly the split that breaks the consciousness into two independent ones.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:05PM
Indeed and we still don't know how many consciousnesses there would be after a successful reattachment.
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:16AM
Consider those with full fledged mental illness such as Multiple Personality Disorder.
When it's full blown the brain is literally running the consciousness of the multiples as easily as it's running the native personality.
"Whatever you was in the goo, was not the true you." (no idea where but a quote from some scifi I read as a child).
Just like different programs and even operating systems running on the same physical computer.
Possibly brain death can be given a coredump style function?
gdb acidandy.core
bt
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:17PM
Exactly. A million times this. I honestly don't know why people keep overlooking this fact. The whole computer copy of your brain thing is more analogous to cloning an identical twin of yourself, teaching them your memories and then them acting as your character, then you die. OK, that's not the best analogy (if anything the twin has a lot more in common with you, biologically) but it's about as much use.
Worse it's doubtful anyone could ever prove that any given brain upload technology actually works. Even if you performed it on yourself to validate it, you'd never know whether it had worked and you had become a computer copy or whether you had only ever been the newly created computer copy and the original consciousness unfortunately died.
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:01PM
You take what you can get. The Russian millionaire is trying to make the most out of a bad situation (certain death). Biological anti-aging and reversal of aging would be more ideal than mind uploading since there is no copy-original problem involved.
There has been no successful mind upload. By the time hardware has advanced enough to make such an attempt possible, what's to say a non-destructive method of scanning the brain won't be possible?
Why do we even need to destroy the original? We can have more fun with this concept. How about networking your biological brain to several copies of your "mind upload". Use anti-aging therapy to keep the meatspace body alive. The results could be far more interesting than the unimaginative "mind upload as the last chance to avoid death" scenario.
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(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:33PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:56PM
No successful upload has been done. This talk of a "destructive process" doesn't take into account advanced scanning technologies that don't exist yet. We could end up with some kind of neutrino scan that is entirely non-destructive.
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(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:01PM
Then this will never work. You cannot sign a waiver that allows someone else to kill you. You're barely allowed to kill yourself and only in a few locations, let alone have another person slice your brain into pieces while you're still alive.
(Score: 1) by U on Thursday March 17 2016, @09:05AM
Make the system entirely automated and have the subject push the button to commence the process.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:55PM
That didn't work for Kevorkian [wikipedia.org] so I doubt it would work here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:53PM
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:10PM
I suspect this too. The consciousness is unique to the specific instance of space-time. Because the instant that a perfect copy is made, differences in entropy over space will make the brains differ. And if not, it most likely will be like a super twin not yourself.
So there may be a perfect copy but not a transfer. And if the simulation isn't good enough. You might become a total psychotic. No limbic response = psychopath.
Simulations is also hard because it supposedly requires 36.8×10^15 instructions per second for real-time performance. However another researcher estimates that every neuron would need 10^15 instructions per second. Thus a requirement of 36.8×10^30 instructions per second. Not many computers can handle that. If there's any sufficient software to do it at all and scanning procedures exist.
But the Chinese Tianhe-2 at 33.86×10^15 at least has brain simulation within theoretical reach if the simpler model is feasible!
Current brains simulation paradigm seems to be assume that with enough computational capability a human brain simulation is possible. But if it's a mix of room temperature quantum phenomena and computational capability. Then any plain computational simulation will most likely fail hard. Photosynthesis is already observed to use quantum phenomena to work. So nature has harnessed this while humans have not.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:39PM
Indeed - most ideas to "upload" the mind are, in principle at least, non-destructive to the original brain. Even if it works perfectly, you're not transferring your consciousness, you're copying it. It seems to me that having a potentially immortal mind-twin would bring most people precious little comfort as they lay dying as their freshly-minted twin watches on. Might be nice for their surviving friends and family (or not - what are the long term implications for inheritance, wealth concentration, etc.?), but if you can afford such a procedure in the first place, then the impact of your death on them is probably not your greatest concern when facing your death.
On the other hand, digital immortality is the only form that's actually sustainable. We're rapidly overtaxing the supporting capacity of the planet even with everybody dying after less than a century - achieving population stability with widespread biological immortality would require a near-total moratorium on new births. No more babies. No more children. Do you really think you could convince the young to give up the foremost biological imperative in exchange for immortality? Maybe mandatory sterilization in exchange for immortality, with those who already have children being permanently denied immortality? It might work, but I'd hate to think of the society it would birth.
Digital immorality though - there's potentially plenty of resources on Earth to support that for some time, and digital beings would be far better suited to colonizing the solar system as well. Still leaves some serious sociological questions to be addressed, not to mention all the normal AI questions as to whether these digital beings would have any long-term loyalty to the species that spawned them. But at least it would be physically sustainable for quite a while.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:58PM
No, the idea is not "copying". The idea is that at some point people will exist directly connected to "internet" 100% of the time with their processing capacity say 99.9999999% on the net. The old body will be in storage somewhere. Is that body still exists? Who cares? Especially if one can have 1000 perfect bodies attached and they are still under 1% of total sensory capacity. Will there be a personality split? It's a question, but probably not.
That's the idea.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:36PM
Mind is not consciousness. Mind is an abstraction and cannot experience anything. Consciousness is the experience of existence (movement etc) and the mind is part of what the consciousness experiences. Copying a mind does not copy the physical consciousness.
Until they can figure out how to isolate the physical substance of consciousness and transfer that then a copy of the mind portion of a being is only that. It could be a useful tool for others but the original/actual person will still be completely in their original body and die with it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:12PM
My body is not my concern at all. Very seriously, my greatest fear possible is immortality with the rest of you. I'm looking forward to death myself. It's the one great adventure afforded to us all, and afterwards, I won't be here. I'll be somewhere else, where it seems intrinsically impossible for any being left here to deal with me, and for me to deal with them from the other side. It's important to me, and provides me comfort, knowing that this will all stop someday.
Immortality in Utopia is always nice. Immortality with the rest of you in our Dystopia? Not so much. I don't want to live forever. Not with all of you the way you are now. Certainly not here under these fucking conditions. No thank you. I'd be the one walking around with a sign that says, "Can't self-terminate. Will you press the delete button for me?".
Immortality just sounds nice on paper, but it isn't something you can actually live with. Would you be so enthused with your immortality at 895 years old, working a minimum wage job, minimum benefits, 3rd class citizen rights, while watching the bejeweled 1% gods above you in Elysium? Would you even be the same person at 895 years old? This shit only sounds good to the young, fit, and delusional. I'm not fit for immortality as a member of the slave class with no medical or benefits. How could you deal with an immortal 1%? Dystopia is a massive understatement about that world, and the 1% would value life even less then they do now, which is about zero anyways. Yay! I'm immortal and stuck in a world of massive inequality!
Let's try to solve the problems that prevent us from living with each other now, before we figure out how to all live together forever. Immortality isn't going to stop us from killing each other, or at least attempting to do so. We absolutely suck at living with each other now. Adding immortality to it is the epitome of foolishness. If it's accomplished in such a way that we have super bodies capable of amazing repairs, prepare for long protracted war. One of the things that keeps us from fighting are the risks of fighting itself. Remove the risks, and we only have our intellectually based moral and ethical frameworks keeping us from each others throats. In other words, immortality may kill us.
The best question you could ask people is if they wish to be immortal, but *exactly* as they are now. Forever. I honestly don't think you would have a majority of takers. The celebrities may say yes, WallStreet leeches may say yes, but the poor sob with a non-union job? Maybe not.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @07:34PM
Yeah, sorry. I don't see death as a "great adventure". I see it as a likely termination of any semblance of self. I will be hanging onto life even if I'm 100,000 years old.
Obviously there are economic issues to work out. But it's pretty certain that if the issues aren't addressed, I'll be killed in some global civil war anyway.
There is an obvious reason to choose immortality. If every "utopian" aspect of the scenario works out, you get to explore the universe. You haven't seen a septillionth of what is out there. One slower-than-light spaceship with a self-sustaining environment onboard, and your immortalness, and you can explore indefinitely. Boredom could be solved in any number of ways, including VR or stasis between destinations.
I wouldn't even mind living as an immortal hobo for a protracted period of time, with even worse circumstances than the minimum wage job you outlined. If it comes down to protracted war instead of utopia, I guess I'll have fun participating in that until I get blown up or diseased. If child soldiers can have fun doing it, so shall I.
Since you clearly disagree with immortality, and others will too, I have no objection to your suicide or refusal of anti-aging treatment in these scenarios. Note that medically assisted suicide becomes legal in California on June 9th (probably relevant to a number of old Californian SoylentNews readers). You go on your "adventure", I'll go on mine.
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(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:13PM
What's wrong with the termination of any semblance of self? Is the ego even designed or suitable for immortality? That's really a philosophical discussion as I truly see myself as an immortal being already. Just one with an infinite number of faces, over a spiraling space-time, that all happened in a single moment :) This one little ego speaking with your one little ego isn't that big of deal in the face of the infinite existence out there. I'm more than EdIII, which is just a pseudonym anyways, that is also more than himself too. My "adventure" with death, isn't. I never said I believed in death as oblivion.
100,000 years old? You sound like Gollum being both tortured and loved by his "precious". That's what I don't wish for. Turning into a desperate creature willing to do anything for further life. Infinite life is a curse if it is life continued in fear.
The understatement of the millennium. However, it's not economic, but human. We have extremely serious issues to work out, that make it a minor miracle we're not in global civil war this second. I think this is the worst situation that humanity has ever faced. In my own estimation, there may have been more humanity in how we treated each other in the Dark Ages. What we're systematically doing to ourselves now is the very very worst of Feudalism fueled by greed and narcissism.
Yeah. Global civil war is on the way.
Wishful thinking to the extreme. Will 1,000 years probably provide us to technology to do what you speak? Yes. Will the "Utopian" aspects work out? No.
It's far more likely that I'm an immortal slave no longer allowed to see the Sun in a form of debt prison at 18,000 ft under the ground. In order to get to the ground that the transport lands on that takes you to the Universe Explorer, I would need social status changed from "slave" to "human". How much money does it cost? Does everybody get the ride on the Universe Explorer?
The real journey is the one in which we develop those "Utopian" aspects of ourselves, something wholly missing from us now.
Exactly. We both see as the curse it most likely is. You still fear death, so you will do everything to survive. Completely normal actually. I've become so disillusioned with life, that infinite amounts of it are a pure curse. I'm unwilling to become an animal to survive in the horrid future you describe. The need for society to just "put me down" would become inevitable. I don't wish for such a curse, and will choose the quiet dignity of simply fading away back into star dust.
God be with you on your journey.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:32AM
God be with you on your journey.
I'm willing to bet religion (or lack thereof) is a key component in how you (and a lot of other people) feel about this. You probably feel that "we were designed to live this way" and maybe "there is something waiting for me in the afterlife anyway".
I personally would be happy to not have to age, but not so much for exploration. There's simply not enough time in one lifetime to learn and create all the things I'd like to be able to, which seems to be an ever growing list.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday March 17 2016, @05:15AM
Yes, I do. I very much do. The human experience just isn't one an ego can live with indefinitely. You've heard the saying that the worst thing in life is not getting what you want, and the 2nd worst thing is to get what you want? That's what ego is. Never satisfied with the now. Always keeping emotional attachments to the past, and then creating more about the future. How does an ego deal with the infinite?
Yeah, we probably don't need to worry about that till somebody is a 1,000 years old, but can we be sure? Humanity has never been tested like that. The oldest person might have lived to 130 for all we now, and they did it with a terribly aged body at the end. I don't think any of us can actually say what it will be like to be in a 25 year old body, but then also have lived for 500 years. In movies and literature we often see these beings as either extremely beneficent and wise, or driven mad over time.
Spiritually, I already live convinced that I'm an immortal being. The catch is, as another poster put it, is that I will do it in an infinite number of lives that have no knowledge of each other, moderated by a "spiritual hypervisor". In other words, reincarnation. I do believe that I'm afforded the opportunity at death to go exploring the universe. Not only that, I get to do it not as EdIII, not as a human being, but something else without the same limitations as a human body.
Maybe there is something in the afterlife? Quite possibly. Will it be better than here? That's probably a certainty. I partly suspect that where we are now, is actually hell. All of us are in hell, and the purpose of life here is to understand the true value of heaven. It may be possible that we already in the afterlife being punished, as I find it sincerely hard to not view my life here as a punishment for some mortal sin elsewhere. I honestly wonder sometimes how I offended God so fucking much he sent me here.
In any case, heaven on Earth is actually possible, since we all have free will. We can all decide to be better to each other and live in Utopia. It's an actual decision we can make. Now we'll argue in a billion practicalities that it cannot be made, but logically, the decision is still there! The fact we consistently refuse to make the decision on a group basis is the primary reason I just want to die. I personally refuse to spend eternity with the rest of you. On the whole, you all fucking suck something awful, which makes the individual joy I get in dealing with a few people at a time all that much more sad and painful.
You're right. It's a pretty shitty fucking deal we all get right now. Not enough life, and surrounded by hell on Earth. However, the hell part isn't changing at all. By all rights, the whole planet is probably dead in a few hundred years. That's overblown of course, with the truth being that human civilization will simply end. Good riddance.
While I do believe in the afterlife, that doesn't affect my decision regarding immortality. I *might* choose to be an immortal you know. Just for a couple hundred thousand years, or till I get bored being EdIII. My issue, and why I won't choose immortality, is that it doesn't come with the option to be free from the rest of you. Freedom for me literally only comes with death.
We all might be immortal one day, but I won't be among you. I know the world will not get better in my lifetime, but only worse. Only if I had hope for our future, would I have the impetus to live longer than normal. Human civilization qualifies to have the cord pulled.
As it stands now, death is the greatest mercy we're afforded, and I for one am very grateful to the Universe that I get to look forward to it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Thursday March 17 2016, @05:52AM
Thanks for sharing. In many ways, I can understand that view point.
The "never satisfied with the now" bit can be a positive and a negative though. If the goal is to look inwards and improve ourselves, or to improve the world in selfless ways, it would be a very positive thing. Unfortunately I think it's more common to see people unsatisfied with social status and personal assets, which simply isn't sustainable and needs to change if there is to be any hope for humanity.
In some cases, life is Hell. Usually, it is caused as a result of someone with power and influence over you. If we have such people live forever with the same power and influence, things would probably only get worse than they are today. You would also have problems such as never-ending copyright - if the author desired that.
I guess ultimately I'd rather Death be on my terms, if and when I decide there isn't any point to living any more, and nothing more to be done. I can't imagine ever wanting to die today, but I reserve the right to change my view at some point. Uploading my mind to a computer would presumably facilitate such a goal.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @03:19PM
Maybe there is something in the afterlife? Quite possibly. Will it be better than here? That's probably a certainty. I partly suspect that where we are now, is actually hell. All of us are in hell, and the purpose of life here is to understand the true value of heaven. It may be possible that we already in the afterlife being punished, as I find it sincerely hard to not view my life here as a punishment for some mortal sin elsewhere. I honestly wonder sometimes how I offended God so fucking much he sent me here.
Not much of a punishment, is it? Even if I were to buy into your mental outlook, the answer is obvious. God made something imperfect. So things will be imperfect. Not a point to getting worked up over it.
Further, I think imperfection would be baked in to anything God created, else he would be copying himself which would be impossible to do in a reality where only one perfect being can exist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:58PM
What's wrong with the termination of any semblance of self? Is the ego even designed or suitable for immortality? That's really a philosophical discussion as I truly see myself as an immortal being already. Just one with an infinite number of faces, over a spiraling space-time, that all happened in a single moment :) This one little ego speaking with your one little ego isn't that big of deal in the face of the infinite existence out there. I'm more than EdIII, which is just a pseudonym anyways, that is also more than himself too. My "adventure" with death, isn't. I never said I believed in death as oblivion.
I deem it wrong. And if ego is not "suitable" for immortality, then I'll have plenty of time to find what is, or alternately, find ways to end my existence. And your beliefs in death don't mean a thing to me.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:20PM
If you have time on your side then you also have way more opportunities to figure out how to break free.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:53PM
The solution to be free is simple. Kill the 1%. However, I don't want to do that. Immortality in a possible Utopia just isn't worth the karmic debt I believe I would face. Deep down, I don't believe in immortality anyways. I might best push off the fires of hell for a million years, maybe a billion if really lucky, but the odds are simply not in my favor for infinite existence. Infinite existence still seems like a curse, even in a Utopia, too.
We don't need immortality, or we already have it. Immortality is the fact we are a species in this together. I see our immortality as a function of our gestalt being; All humans together make an immortal entity. Our children are our immortality, and the solution to be free and immortal is simply loving each other more. As new age and sappy as that might sound, it's still nonetheless true.
Breaking free? You can't. This planet is effectively getting smaller all the time, and the influence and power of the 1% ever increasing. Distance between somebody and the 1% is directly proportional to their effective levels of freedom. There are simply some human beings that are intolerable to live with, and only be removing your interaction do you succeed in finding peace.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:03AM
Immortality is the fact we are a species in this together.
That's worthless to me as an individual, so who cares.
All humans together make an immortal entity.
The human race is far from immortal.
Our children are our immortality
They're certainly not *my* immortality, unless I can take over their bodies somehow. Not that I would want to do that anyway. Also, if you were not referring to children making the species "immortal", plenty of people don't have or want children.
As new age and sappy as that might sound, it's still nonetheless true.
No, it's just new age nonsense. Love won't make me literally immortal. Besides, I thought you didn't want to be immortal?
Distance between somebody and the 1% is directly proportional to their effective levels of freedom.
That doesn't mean it will continue. A few hundred years ago, we had slavery in the US, but it ended eventually. also, women couldn't vote, we had Jim Crow laws, and all sorts of other nonsense that we overcame. Improvement isn't impossible.
and only be removing your interaction do you succeed in finding peace.
You can't decide what does and doesn't help others find peace.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday March 17 2016, @05:47AM
You're the person that needs to die then. The reason this planet sucks so fucking much, is that you in particular are on it. Along with millions of worthless sacks of shit who think like you do. Flamebait? Hardly. Deathbait, and I'm serious.
If you refuse to see yourself as part of a greater whole, then you're the problem. It's your narcisissm that refuses to see our human civilization as a group effort, and therefore, IT ISN'T.
So just fucking die sooner please so the rest of that are still alive do live life committed to the rest of us, and that we really are all in this together. I for one, sure as fuck, don't want to be on the same planet as an asshole like yourself. After all, the only thing that matters is what affects you positively as an individual correct?
No, that's an assumption. The SUN is far from immortal and will one day die in a spectacular fashion. Humanity may well have moved to Sirius if we can manage it. About the only concession you will get out of me is the heat death of the universe, and even then, that just means that NOTHING is immortal.
There's some semantics for you :)
We've already stipulated that other people's well being means precisely dick to you. I'm not surprised that don't care about the children or our collective progeny.
No, you're just being a fucking dick with poor reading comprehension. I never said love would make us immortal, only that love could provide the foundation for it. Something I don't feel the need to explain further, since you made your spectacular level of narcissism quite clear. What could you understand about love, if you can't understand we are in all in this together?
Through treating each other better, you know with love, that will literally put you in Heaven on Earth, depending on your level of commitment. Which I realize for you, that everyone else being happy, prosperous, and immortal might not be your heaven.
Your snark aside, I stated that I was ALREADY immortal. What I also stated was that I was completely unwilling to enjoy biological immortality in my current human body while also being forced to enjoy it alongside the rest of you. Slight difference there.
My immortality comes in many ways, all of them I'm sure new age nonsense to you. However, what's not new age nonsense, is the idea we live forever through our children. That's an idea you will find throughout literature throughout history. It's something we've long decided to tell ourselves to deal with death. So you can call me a new age moron if I talk about certain kinds of reincarnation and whatnot, but otherwise? Dude, these are ancient fucking concepts.
You're correct. Things will improve for the 1% because only their interests are represented. Also, the slavery deal? You conveniently forget it took civil war for it to end. In other words, a lot of 1%'ers will die before improvement comes.
Improvement is not possible now, because that's how much the 1% improved it for themselves. This system we have now is terminal, and cannot be changed from the outside. It can only die and be replaced with a newer or modified system. That always occurs through bloodshed. So don't begrudge me my biological death, when to enjoy immortality it requires me to kill quite a number of people before I can spend my life in peace with the rest of you. If you actually converted me over to your side, I would just start killing people in a very discriminating and quiet manner. Why not? I'm immortal and the only person that matters is me. Therefore, for my convenience, I will kill a great many of you. Thankfully, I do believe otherwise, which is why I don't have a problem dying. It's ok to die.
The 1% are laughing their asses off at that statement. Yeah, they can, and often do, decide what can and can't help others find peace. Even literally. Much of the 1% has been involved with wars of conquest. I'm pretty sure they've been doing a brisk business in fucking up other's peace for quite some time now.
In other words, ask a Syrian if he feels others cannot influence his sense of peace in the world.
P.S - Please remember that part about dying sooner than the rest of us. I have no animosity towards you (truly), but we are all much better off in your kind just dies in a fire. It's because I know that probably won't happen, that I'm content and grateful I get to die and get away from you guaranteed. I have no interests in eternity with beings that will only live for themselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2016, @03:54PM
You're the person that needs to die then. The reason this planet sucks so fucking much, is that you in particular are on it. Along with millions of worthless sacks of shit who think like you do. Flamebait? Hardly. Deathbait, and I'm serious.
If you refuse to see yourself as part of a greater whole, then you're the problem. It's your narcisissm that refuses to see our human civilization as a group effort, and therefore, IT ISN'T.
So just fucking die sooner please so the rest of that are still alive do live life committed to the rest of us, and that we really are all in this together. I for one, sure as fuck, don't want to be on the same planet as an asshole like yourself. After all, the only thing that matters is what affects you positively as an individual correct?
Why should I listen to someone with such a poisonous outlook on life? First, you rant about killing the "1%" and now, someone has disagreed with you and should die. There is an obvious solution here.
Change your beliefs, bleed yourself of this poison. If I want to kick around for 100,000 years and you don't, it's no matter to either of us. If I'm not into continuing the homo sapiens thing, what is it to you? If you believe in an afterlife and I don't, so what? My flaws are not so dire that you should be so concerned about them as to want them stamped out forever.
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:02PM
I'm not normally much of an optimist, but the idea with biological immortality is that you'd have a lot more time (hopefully) to improve the dystopia, or at least work your way to living in Elysium. Just for starters, think about the magic of compound interest: save up money long enough in an interest-bearing account and eventually you'll be rich. Yeah, it sucks having to spend a century living in squalor, but if you aren't aging, then as long as you survive that maybe you can get to a better place and enjoy life. Someone who's mortal, living in some 3rd-world hellhole like Syria, with a life expectancy of 50 years or so has no such hope.
Now, as for the dying part, biological immortality doesn't mean you won't die. It just means you won't age. Step out in front of a speeding bus and you'll still be dead. So you could still die at 30 if you're unlucky or do something stupid. Or you might live to 900 and then a piano falls on your head. So I have idea what you're talking about when you talk about the risks of fighting: if you're immortal, you have a practically infinite lifespan, so if you get yourself killed in a war, you're losing potentially thousands of years of enjoyable life, whereas today if you're 50 and you get killed in combat, you probably only had 2-4 decades of life left (and a good chunk of that carried a high risk of dementia and/or feebleness and other age-related conditions which make life miserable). No one is talking about being invincible, we're talking about biological immortality, which is something entirely possible according to our understanding of physics and science, whereas invincibility is not and is something out of a Superman comic book.
The best question you could ask people is if they wish to be immortal, but *exactly* as they are now.
That's a pointless and stupid hypothetical question. Everything changes; no one's life stays the same. The poor sop with a non-union job, if he lives long enough, can get an education and a better job, "marry up", start a commune, who knows; there's an infinite number of ways he could improve his lifestyle, but many of them require time, and having both time (from no longer aging) and youth (by being able to reverse the aging process and return us to having 25-year-old bodies) would open up all kinds of opportunities. Of course, with everyone having access to this technology, that means being young and pretty would no longer be such a valuable asset, but it wouldn't hurt, and it'd keep our society from expending so many resources on age-related problems: diseases, nursing homes, etc., plus we'd have an ever-expanding economy with the death rate falling so much, as long as people didn't stop having kids altogether (not likely). We might have some resource problems because of the expanding population, but we'd also be able to work on things like building better and more liveable megacities, building orbital habitats like Elysium, etc. There's really plenty of room for all of us if we can figure out how to manage land better and grow food more efficiently (like with vertical farming, or perhaps with farms in orbital stations).
Of course, humans being what they are, there's always the chance that our immortal future will look like the movie "Dredd". But if you look at human society globally over the past millennia, our standard of living is much better now than it ever has been, on average. Yes, much of the world still lives in grinding poverty, but a good chunk enjoys a nice life in developed nations; 1000 years ago, or even 500 years ago, this wasn't the case: a few nobles had a decent life as long as they didn't get an infection or something, and everyone else suffered miserably. Now, much of the population of any given western nation has a more luxurious life than King Henry VIII (who lived with a horrible and painful leg infection for a long time until it eventually killed him). Better technology only promises to improve this.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:12AM
So the trick to having freedom is to become one of the oppressors? I don't want to live in Elysium. I want Elysium to *not exist at all*, or more specifically, for Elysium to exist *for all equally*.
Improve the Dystopia? Unfortunately, that only occurs by killing the 1%, or erasing their death lock on political capture. My bet is that the two options will have to become one and the same. Meaning, the 1% will not give up their power and control without death first.
Stipulated. There are many forms of immortality, and they may influence how we feel about death and risk taking differently.
Uhh, what about the shut-in? The mentally ill? The people literally trapped in their own minds? There are some physical/mental use cases where you would need to address healing before you could address immortality. I'm one of them. Until I can live in a body that isn't racked with pain and disease, I'm not choosing immortality.
I'm not choosing immortality anyways, because there are *not* an infinite numbers of ways I can improve my lifestyle. You're forgetting about all the other people here that wish for me to *not* have that lifestyle. Again, you propose that I can "beat them by joining them". Which again, I will point out my refusal to accept membership into the oppressors. I cannot live out an infinite existence in high standards of living, when I know that in order to attain that standard of living, another immortal being lives in squalor for centuries. It is enough that I must suffer the knowledge of how horribly millions upon millions suffer in this world just so that I can enjoy being a slave in America. If I actually were a member of the 1%, I would most likely want immortality as well. Better than roasting in hell.
What, did he pay his dues or something? In order to live in Elysium, serve 1,000 years a slave?
Irrelevant minutiae. What needs to be done is get rid of the 1% which uses engineered inefficiency and political and regulatory capture to ensure that 99% of the wealth is in the hands of 60 people. Not 6,000. Not 60,000, but 60 out of over 300 million people have 99% of the wealth. I think I identified a resource problem ;)
Our immediate future is starting to look like the movie "Dredd". We're already under mass surveillance with much of our civil rights disappearing. Cops are *already* murdering us in the street as de facto "Street Judges". We *already* have the 1% living high above us separated from the filth at ground level.
Better technology only promises to improve this? Bullshit.
It will improve it like Cable TV was supposed to improve television by getting rid of commercials. Totally co-opted by marketers and slimy MBAs to just make more money instead.
It will improve like our health care right? The currently wholly unaffordable health care. The health care that most go without. In the country where hundreds of people died last year because they couldn't see a dentist.
Only one thing continues to "improve" on this planet. The wealth of the 1%. All you've basically argued is that I should give immortality a chance by giving the system a chance to work. If only I worked the system huh?
I don't think so. The system can go fuck itself. I'll take death, because you can't fool me that the other option is actually cake. It isn't cake, but indefinite indentured servitude to the 1%. No thank you, death instead, I need the check at my table please........
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 17 2016, @02:43PM
Oh, good grief, this is just plain stupid.
I don't want to live in Elysium. I want Elysium to *not exist at all*,
I'm using the term "Elysium" simply to refer to orbital habitats. That should have been plainly obvious.
Until I can live in a body that isn't racked with pain and disease, I'm not choosing immortality.
I'm sorry if this is terribly rude, but this is a really stupid comment. You really think that when we figure out how to reverse the aging process and return people to 25-year-old bodies, that we won't also figure out how to deal with simple diseases? Holy crap, talk about missing the forest for the trees.
You're forgetting about all the other people here that wish for me to *not* have that lifestyle.
What is this, some kind of conspiracy theory crap about how a bunch of people are out to get you?
It will improve like our health care right? The currently wholly unaffordable health care. The health care that most go without. In the country where hundreds of people died last year because they couldn't see a dentist.
Only one thing continues to "improve" on this planet.
Well if you leave the US borders sometime, you'd see that healthcare systems actually work pretty well in other nations, despite your rantings about "the 1%". They also don't have the level of income inequality the US does.
Maybe you should stop assuming that the US == the whole human race.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday March 17 2016, @09:51PM
Not in the context of our conversation it isn't. We're specifically speaking about income inequality, and you bring up fancy orbital homes I might aspire towards living in one day. Why should I assume Elysium just means "orbital habitat", and not "orbital habitat for the rich" given our context?
I disagree. That wasn't obvious at all, especially with you referencing something explicitly from a Dystopian movie that has all the elements that we're speaking about. It's in fact the very worst example of what we're speaking about.
Kind of strange you expected me to get just orbital habitat and none of the other quite pertinent references....
Ohhh, so it's free? We get that "single-payer" medical system that Bernie is talking about the same time? I don't give a fuck what we've figured out. It doesn't apply to me, since I can't afford it. Go try selling your idea of medical paradise to a 3rd world child living in garbage.
I could only obtain immortality by also obtaining massive debt, and therefore indentured servitude. Unless immortality also comes with a heaping helping of maturity, compassion, and togetherness, the chances of the average person obtaining immortality for any purposes beyond obtaining cattle for the now permanent economic meat grinder are about zero.
Conspiracy Theory? Theory? Really? Theory?
The 1% are not a theory, and economic injustice combined with massive income inequality isn't something that just happened. It took a long time, with a lot of corrupt politicians, and a lot of corrupt laws. Likewise, it wasn't just one incident of government malfeasance and betrayal, but lists of them.
Citizens United is not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy. Big difference. Yes, the people at the top of that conspiracy are wholly uninterested in any kind of equality with me whatsoever. They don't wish for to have any political equality, evidenced by their corrupt lobbyists and political capture. Likewise, they don't wish for any kind of economic equality, as that might free me from being a continually producing resource for them. Like the pregnant lady who can't get more than 29 hours because the CEO of Staples doesn't want to pay the 4.5 million for the neonatal(?) care program that would take effect at 30 hours. He meanwhile is making 55 million himself over 4 years. It's not a conspiracy theory that he was out get to the pregnant lady. He DID get the pregnant lady, since she had insufficient medical coverage, and basic material deprivation. Tell me, that wasn't by design, and your a fool. He admitted as much, and his actions against her were a political commentary/stunt so he could oppose Obamacare.
Greed and narcissism really aren't theories, but sad facts of our country, and indeed world. You can deny the massive income inequality, injustice, and complete lack of representation in government for the "average joe", but the boiling-over anger in my country would show you're full of it. I can spend all day, every day, this entire year, just posting articles to you speaking of the levels of government malfeasance and corruption. If it's a conspiracy theory, it's a really fucking popular one with articles about it every single day.
Theory my butt. The 1% are narcissistic uncaring assholes that are constantly trying to increase income inequality in whatever ways possible. Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, but Three times is enemy action.
You may have a point here. The medical is better nearly everywhere else on the planet than it is in my country. We're a superpower that is simultaneously near the bottom of the "third world countries" WRT to our levels of medical care, and pretty much levels of humanity as well. Other countries may care more about their citizens. That is possible.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday March 18 2016, @03:43PM
Look, I'm sorry if the Elysium comment was confusing. I only used it because it's about the only popular sci-fi example of orbital habitats I could think of, and I believe you had already mentioned it by name before so I reused it.
As for the immortality stuff, I really don't know what you're ranting about there. I was talking about things from a technical perspective. If we have the technology to stop the aging process and even reverse it (meaning a very high understanding of the mechanics of aging and all associated bodily processes and the ability to change and fine-tune these things), then we are automatically going to also have the ability to eliminate pretty much all diseases that are related: Parkinson's, cancer, etc. To say otherwise is like saying someone can figure out how to build a start-of-the-2016-art car and not figure out how to make run-flat tires.
For Bernie's single-payer system, they already have this system in a bunch of developed nations like Canada and UK. The US is not really a developed nation; it only pretends to be. And as long as people don't vote for Bernie, they're going to continue to not have the kind of healthcare systems that people in developed nations enjoy. None of the other political candidates will work to give you such a system. Hillary has specifically said she has no intentions of working towards single-payer; she's too interested in helping her buddies in the insurance companies.
As for the 1%, they're not "out to get you". Yes, they work in their own self-interest and are greedy, but that doesn't mean they are trying to hurt you personally. Generally, they're a bunch of twats who believe in trickle-down economics and think that'll actually make everyone better off even though it's been proven not to work.
And no, medical care is not better everywhere else in the world. In developed nations, yes, in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the middle east, Latin America, etc., definitely not.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:58PM
Don't worry, immortality will be for the 1% only, anyway. So no, you'll not be immortal on a minimum wage job. You'll not be able to afford immortality with a minimum wage job.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:57PM
In the US, student loans are a debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Once a like legal status is brought about for immortality costs, everyone will be able to finance it. It'll just take forever to pay off.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:50PM
Exactly. Immortality..... but as a slave.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:12PM
This actually reminds me of the video game SOMA http://somagame.com/info.html [somagame.com]
which tackles exactly the same questions over if you is really you when copied
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:15PM
Is the digital "you" really you?
Is the biological? Prove to me that your life (or, ad absurdum, the entire universe) didn't start when you woke up this morning. You can't. Intuition and parsimony make it the most likely explanation, but there's no way to verify that you're the same person who went to bed last night. It's the transporter paradox again.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:06AM
I have a reasonable level of confidence that my life didn't start when I woke up this morning. I have no such confidence about my consciousness magically transferring to a digital copy of my mind. Basic logic would seem to preclude this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:57AM
Prove to me that your life (or, ad absurdum, the entire universe) didn't start when you woke up this morning.
Perhaps we die almost every time we sleep?
So if it turns out there's a Creator and we all try to accuse the Creator of great evil, killing millions or billions, he can just turn around and say, what's the big deal, the truth is billions of you die every night and you bunch seemed quite happy to do so.
And anyway "The Customer wanted it that way".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:28PM
> Mind uploading implies you leave your finely aged body behind, if that's your concern.
Putting the same old mind into a new body is unlikely to cure what Stephen Colbert calls [latenightfeud.com] "explosive ennui."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:33PM
That's somebody else's problem. Solutions include fucking figuring out something to do, or suicide.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:41PM
If a lack of imagination is your biggest crisis, then you have it great.
Anti-aging, biological immortality, substrate independence, whatever, it's all about giving people options (maybe rich people, maybe everybody). If you can't handle being immortal, you can do the ultimate privilege check (nobody has achieved anti-aging/biological immortality in human history) and end your life. Since death is essentially irreversible, having the option of being immortal, at least temporarily, is better than not having the option at all.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:56PM
Honestly, I feel like a digital me would be more me than the biological one. Or at least it would be more of the me that I want to be.
Poor nutrition and disease and environmental factors can all alter mental state pretty significantly. A digital mind can be simulated as though it's always living in a perfectly healthy body that never breaks down.
*I* am not a lazy sack of shit...I'm just frequently malnourished... ;)
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday March 16 2016, @10:57PM
Mind uploading implies you leave your finely aged body behind
At best you would be making a copy of your mind. You would not be leaving anything "behind", and the digital mind would not be you, it would be a copy of you.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:13PM
Didn't say that brah, just saying that:
If this is some concern about being stuck in an aged body (in the case of indefinite but not youthful life), then it's not necessarily important.
As for your point, happy as can be supercentenarians prove you wrong.
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(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:23PM
Yes and those happy as can be supercentenarians are not worried about death, which is my point (and it's also why they can be so cheerful on the verge of death). You grow out of being afraid of your mortality. Which is why I said that only the young want to live forever. As you mature you accept that death is a part of life, even welcome as the world moves on and bears no resemblance to the world you grew up in. Psychologists have done a lot of work in this field [all-things-aging.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:11AM
That's subjective. Some people still don't want to die. It has little to do with arbitrary definitions of "maturity" and more to do with differences of values. If someone wants to die, alright. If someone doesn't, and we have the option of immortality, alright.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:53AM
Life is subjective. Still there are things we can use as guides. Here's what Erikson [wikipedia.org] has to say about the final stage of life (not including the transcendance stage he added as he himself reached advanced old age):
"Erikson felt that much of life is preparing for the middle adulthood stage and the last stage is recovering from it. Perhaps that is because as older adults we can often look back on our lives with happiness and are content, feeling fulfilled with a deep sense that life has meaning and we've made a contribution to life, a feeling Erikson calls integrity. Our strength comes from a wisdom that the world is very large and we now have a detached concern for the whole of life, accepting death as the completion of life. On the other hand, some adults may reach this stage and despair at their experiences and perceived failures. They may fear death as they struggle to find a purpose to their lives, wondering "Was the trip worth it?" Alternatively, they may feel they have all the answers (not unlike going back to adolescence) and end with a strong dogmatism that only their view has been correct.
The significant relationship is with all of mankind—"my-kind.""
It's not me being subjective, its what psychologists have to say about the matter. While psychology is in no way a hard, factual science, better minds than mine have thought about the issue and come up with what I said.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:16AM
Death is not a part of life. It is the termination of life.
Am I afraid of death, sure. But the idea that we ought to accept death, and that death is natural is just false. It's not just a lie told by some philosophers and ethicists. It's peddled by the media in the form of pro-death propaganda morality tales.
I'm sure we can find plenty of old people scared to death of death. Just because some of them have accepted death doesn't mean that it's somehow the moral position. It just means that they have no choice, and they are making the best out of a bad situation.
If anti-aging and age reversal therapy becomes available and cheap, would you refuse it? It's not like it will necessarily prevent you from dying, since there are car crashes, shootings, gamma ray bursts, and the heat death of the universe. But would you refuse anti-aging treatment knowing that aging is damage and disease that can be cured?
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:01PM
I assert that if it can update your Facebook page, then it's really you.
At least for the great majority of the westernized world this hold true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford