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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday March 16 2016, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the ghost-in-the-machine dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:23PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Wednesday March 16 2016, @11:23PM (#319321)

    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].

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:11AM (#319346)

    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

      by Dunbal (3515) on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:53AM (#319357)

      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

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:16AM (#319349) Journal

    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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