eh, i'm only interested if in the future there is a cure for death.
if so, then freeze my ass. i hate, and am terrified by, the notion of ceasing to be. there is so much that i want to do, and i really really like being alive.
You could always hedge your bets on quantum immortality.
AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
edited September 2011
Just stop the DNA strings from fraying when DNA replication occurs, and figure out a way to halt, reverse or compensate for the chemical processes that cause aging and the deterioration of the body.
Frankly, I can't see how the neurological activity and electrical pattern in the brain could be preserved (or replicated) and then stored - who we "can be" at any one time is based on a unique pattern of neurons in the entire brain, and what we when do from there consists of a comically complicated patter of electrical activity.
The basis of 'humanhood' is a unique maze that would take a massive amount of data to describe, and then the activity inside of this maze would also have to be simulated, and the resulting effect of this activity on the maze would have to be accounted for as well. So it's possible to 'run' existence as a program, but I can't even picture how much storage and processing capacity this would require.
Much easier to use the fields of medicine and science to just hinder natural aging.
As for effective freezing - as in a crapshoot that doesn't doom me into becoming an inert popsicle, but might not ever lead to me being resuscitated in a desirable way, I would consider it unless my relatives at the time would be pained from me not really dying in a definite way. Hope is painful, and not knowing whether a parent will ever return or stay dead can't be fun.
How far are off from being able to scan a brain to the cellular level (or ideally a whole body). You wouldn't need to model the person's thoughts or keep them occupied in a virtual world (though you could if you had the technology, I just think that's a huge step off from a high definition brain scan), just use it as a map or instruction booklet at the other end. T
hat seems a more useful version than cryogenics as it'd keep working when you had been restored as well whilst also a lot easier to store.
The other thing I've wondered about is whether or not the Cyrogenics facilities also do any insurance type deals, though they're closer to loans or savings. You set up an account to pay them for storing your head/pattern and to also invest the money, and after a set number of years (or when the technology comes out to re-sleeve you) you come out and claim the interest. Once you've got the tech, it's then literally Life Insurance but then you've not got the extreme culture shock and lack of useful abilities that the first guys have to come to terms with.
Why are we all talking about death like it's a bad thing? People need to die. It's bad enough that they're inflicted on us now; I don't want the Glenn Becks, Terry Goodkinds and Flavor Flavs/George Lopezes living forever in a future where they can spout terrible things, write terribly and be terrible respectively for all eternity.
Why would you want to scan them like that? A duplicate of me wouldn't be me, regardless of what you did for it.
Lets not go down this path, it would still be as much 'you' as you would be on leaving the clinic. There's really no definition or concept of 'you' that makes any sense at all, let alone one that compares a potentially brain damaged, dethawed head against an electronic copy put into a new body.
Tastyfish on
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
Why would you want to scan them like that? A duplicate of me wouldn't be me, regardless of what you did for it.
Lets not go down this path, it would still be as much 'you' as you would be on leaving the clinic. There's really no definition or concept of 'you' that makes any sense at all, let alone one that compares a potentially brain damaged, dethawed head against an electronic copy put into a new body.
A copy is a copy and a clone is a clone, but it'll never be 'you' that occupies a new body. Science really need finds a way to transplant our brains and stop them from aging.
I'm with Elitistb on this one; I don't really care so much if my brain patterns survive, I want this specific brain to do so. It would be difficult to convince me to use a Star Trek transporter.
I don't understand the concern about the rich freezing themselves and not contributing to the present; it is currently illegal to do so anyway -- you have to wait until you're "dead". Unless there is some country that has cryonics with laxer laws than I am aware of.
Why would you want to scan them like that? A duplicate of me wouldn't be me, regardless of what you did for it.
Lets not go down this path, it would still be as much 'you' as you would be on leaving the clinic. There's really no definition or concept of 'you' that makes any sense at all, let alone one that compares a potentially brain damaged, dethawed head against an electronic copy put into a new body.
A copy is a copy and a clone is a clone, but it'll never be 'you' that occupies a new body. Science really need finds a way to transplant our brains and stop them from aging.
It's not a copy any more than the one who walked in there is a copy, "you" don't exist as a static or constant thing anyway - you're constantly being copied and updated as it is. If you did it simultaneously, neither of you would know which of you it was who walked in - how is this different from just allowing 10 years to pass and then being a completely person made of entirely new atoms anyway? You are defining "you" almost in the same way as we trying to point to when the DNA of one species has evolved into another one. The new "you" has branched off from the old one, not been added alongside, as there is no definable difference between the two of you.
I don't think there's anything that science can do without embracing this fact to stop brains aging, it's more than just mechanical failure (although if it was, would you be happy with a chip simulating neurons in your head, acting as more brain space, being implanted into a new brain - how much continuity is needed?).
Course the solution to both would be to be a kind of Hive mind, resleeve and clone yourself before you die and include some shared space (or perhaps even just open the shared connection whilst you sleep). Then you can repeat this constantly, with it being impossible to tell where one person starts and the other ends, even after the original has died long ago. But now we're just in science fiction, but still one I'd like to read about and perhaps live in. I could live with being Tastyfish Prime.
If I recall correctly, there is limited success with a suspended animation "gas" that essentially quickly replaces or ties up all the free oxygen in your body.
If you know your cell biology, this will prohibit any metabolic action, of which apoptosis (programmed cell death) is one of.
Everything halts, but nothing "dies", and if it is done in sterile conditions nothing decays. Right now the problems are getting rapid gas perfusion on large animals (works on mice, not on pigs).
I think it is some hydroflouric gas? I can't remember.
Anyway the point is that if I have control of myself until near the end of my life (assuming I don't snuff it in an accident) I would totally "suspend" myself if the tech has progressed far enough and nothing else can grant something close to immortality.
I'd do it just to see how the future plays out regardless of how it functions in practice. as long as I have enough cognitive functions left to see what is going on and how society got to where it is I am all for it. My biggest pet peeve about dying is that I wont find out anything about the future.
But I probably wont freeze myself when it comes down to it.
We're not doing the "Is a clone/teleported person/exact replica/whatever really YOU?" dance in here. It's off-topic and will derail the shit out of this thread.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
We're not doing the "Is a clone/teleported person/exact replica/whatever really YOU?" dance in here. It's off-topic and will derail the shit out of this thread.
No discussion on alternative life-extension methods to freezing or we can assume that they are for the sake of future discussions?
For instance, any kind of stasis would certainly open up long distance space travel and that could be an environment that would allow you to work off your debt and also to acclimatise to a future world. Uploaded humans wouldn't be the best people to send to start with, but would certainly make it easier to boost populations on a world that's been slightly colonised. If you can make it past the first few years and send a message back, then we can send the people who weren't ready for carving a new life out of the bare rock but are needed in a larger society without generations passing.
How people would respond to waking up a new world I don't know. Favourable to start with once you've got over the shock, I'd guess, especially if you've been exposed to the full culture shock of a future city.
The book Old Man's War deals with this issue to a degree.
Spoilered because, at least initially, the system being unknown is a plot point in the book's opening chapters;
Humanity has taken to the stars, and found hundreds of other species competing for the same terrain, many of which have similar biologies, and thus similar needs for their colonies. So wars are constantly errupting, with ground changing hands left and right. Human technology (with a little help) progresses to the point of being on par with most of the others, but one on one a human soldier (even a fit young one) will often get their shit wrecked by an average soldier of many if not most other species.
Eventually what the powers in charge do is create genetically and technologically advanced bodies that aren't quite clones, but that use the person's base DNA as a template, and grow that person a new body (I think the process is eventually sped up to take around 18 months).
They then only take people at the age of 75, who sign up at 65 and are never told what will happen, just that they're going to be soldiers for at least 5 years, and if they survive they'll be permitted to join a colony, but can never return to Earth.
The procedure then uses a machine to transfer to intellect, consciousness and, well, the person's being, as it were, into this new body, and the old one is discarded.
It's purely sci-fi, but that idea seemed to resonate with this issue presented above; rather than moving our brain into a new body or a machine, what if we could actually grow a new brain and move the consciousness itself into it.
Anyway, it removes some of the "is a clone me or just a copy of me" by sort of 'updating the hardware and moving over the software' take on things.
Also, I really enjoyed those books.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Yes, because I would love to see what a post-singularity society really looks like.
But knowing my luck, I'd wake up to find something akin to 'Idiocracy'.
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I'd rather not asymptotically approach death for eternity
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Frankly, I can't see how the neurological activity and electrical pattern in the brain could be preserved (or replicated) and then stored - who we "can be" at any one time is based on a unique pattern of neurons in the entire brain, and what we when do from there consists of a comically complicated patter of electrical activity.
The basis of 'humanhood' is a unique maze that would take a massive amount of data to describe, and then the activity inside of this maze would also have to be simulated, and the resulting effect of this activity on the maze would have to be accounted for as well. So it's possible to 'run' existence as a program, but I can't even picture how much storage and processing capacity this would require.
Much easier to use the fields of medicine and science to just hinder natural aging.
As for effective freezing - as in a crapshoot that doesn't doom me into becoming an inert popsicle, but might not ever lead to me being resuscitated in a desirable way, I would consider it unless my relatives at the time would be pained from me not really dying in a definite way. Hope is painful, and not knowing whether a parent will ever return or stay dead can't be fun.
hat seems a more useful version than cryogenics as it'd keep working when you had been restored as well whilst also a lot easier to store.
The other thing I've wondered about is whether or not the Cyrogenics facilities also do any insurance type deals, though they're closer to loans or savings. You set up an account to pay them for storing your head/pattern and to also invest the money, and after a set number of years (or when the technology comes out to re-sleeve you) you come out and claim the interest. Once you've got the tech, it's then literally Life Insurance but then you've not got the extreme culture shock and lack of useful abilities that the first guys have to come to terms with.
Lets not go down this path, it would still be as much 'you' as you would be on leaving the clinic. There's really no definition or concept of 'you' that makes any sense at all, let alone one that compares a potentially brain damaged, dethawed head against an electronic copy put into a new body.
A copy is a copy and a clone is a clone, but it'll never be 'you' that occupies a new body. Science really need finds a way to transplant our brains and stop them from aging.
I don't understand the concern about the rich freezing themselves and not contributing to the present; it is currently illegal to do so anyway -- you have to wait until you're "dead". Unless there is some country that has cryonics with laxer laws than I am aware of.
It's not a copy any more than the one who walked in there is a copy, "you" don't exist as a static or constant thing anyway - you're constantly being copied and updated as it is. If you did it simultaneously, neither of you would know which of you it was who walked in - how is this different from just allowing 10 years to pass and then being a completely person made of entirely new atoms anyway? You are defining "you" almost in the same way as we trying to point to when the DNA of one species has evolved into another one. The new "you" has branched off from the old one, not been added alongside, as there is no definable difference between the two of you.
I don't think there's anything that science can do without embracing this fact to stop brains aging, it's more than just mechanical failure (although if it was, would you be happy with a chip simulating neurons in your head, acting as more brain space, being implanted into a new brain - how much continuity is needed?).
Course the solution to both would be to be a kind of Hive mind, resleeve and clone yourself before you die and include some shared space (or perhaps even just open the shared connection whilst you sleep). Then you can repeat this constantly, with it being impossible to tell where one person starts and the other ends, even after the original has died long ago. But now we're just in science fiction, but still one I'd like to read about and perhaps live in. I could live with being Tastyfish Prime.
That's the one
But I probably wont freeze myself when it comes down to it.
For instance, any kind of stasis would certainly open up long distance space travel and that could be an environment that would allow you to work off your debt and also to acclimatise to a future world. Uploaded humans wouldn't be the best people to send to start with, but would certainly make it easier to boost populations on a world that's been slightly colonised. If you can make it past the first few years and send a message back, then we can send the people who weren't ready for carving a new life out of the bare rock but are needed in a larger society without generations passing.
How people would respond to waking up a new world I don't know. Favourable to start with once you've got over the shock, I'd guess, especially if you've been exposed to the full culture shock of a future city.
Spoilered because, at least initially, the system being unknown is a plot point in the book's opening chapters;
Eventually what the powers in charge do is create genetically and technologically advanced bodies that aren't quite clones, but that use the person's base DNA as a template, and grow that person a new body (I think the process is eventually sped up to take around 18 months).
They then only take people at the age of 75, who sign up at 65 and are never told what will happen, just that they're going to be soldiers for at least 5 years, and if they survive they'll be permitted to join a colony, but can never return to Earth.
The procedure then uses a machine to transfer to intellect, consciousness and, well, the person's being, as it were, into this new body, and the old one is discarded.
It's purely sci-fi, but that idea seemed to resonate with this issue presented above; rather than moving our brain into a new body or a machine, what if we could actually grow a new brain and move the consciousness itself into it.
Anyway, it removes some of the "is a clone me or just a copy of me" by sort of 'updating the hardware and moving over the software' take on things.
Also, I really enjoyed those books.
But knowing my luck, I'd wake up to find something akin to 'Idiocracy'.