It is my hope that anyone who gains "immortality" is quickly assassinated. Death is not something one should be able to run from for very long.
You really think that humanity is going to selflessly and democratically release this technology for all or even most? You really think that the tycoons of today and tomorrow are going to let an opportunity to "live forever" pass them by? When they can continue to hustle and rule their empires towards perpetuity?
There is going to be an class imbalance, and it will be big, because the formerly cliched topics of life and death are the very focus here: the poor will die, and the rich will live on. It will start fires that will grow out of control in ways we have never seen before. Think of the environmental implications -- you think environmental destruction is bad now, wait until the planet ossifies under a parasitic species seemingly incapable of self-destruction, short of the kind of end-of-the-world scenarios that science fiction portrays.
When I look around, I see an infinite universe. Vertical farming, solar, fission, fusion, astroid belt mining... The list goes on. If there's a glass ceiling it's not in sight or maybe it's after we strip the solar system. If I ask myself what the meaning of life is, it seems to me that we are it. Yees - We should use our resources efficiently but we shouldn't be afraid to see where this thing goes.
Also, people said that about the internet, electricity, whatever. 'Only the rich are going to have it, why would they givee it to the poor?' Cause competition creates pressure to lower costs and sell more people on immortality. However, that argument falls apart if some nuclear powered government monopolizes the technology for the reasons you said above.
You are missing the point. And no, you don’t want immortality, not really. You just think that.
The true immortality requires indestructibility, because otherwise you are likely to perish in an accident within a couple of hundred years. But being indestructible is even worse (imagine yourself stuck somewhere for a thousand years).
I'm not sure what consciousness is. I think of it as a transient emergent configuration of neural systems, like waves in an ocean, but I could be wrong.
Are you sure the you that wakes up in the morning is the same you that went to bed? Are you even the same person, moment to moment?
Weights change. Membrane polarizations are in flux. Microtubules, just one component in a deep sea of biochemical complexity, are dynamical.
> The true immortality
These are just words.
Evolution found genes as a solution. That's what your kids are. Humans have done even more with recorded words. I'd like to think that one day we can do the same with thoughts and minds themselves.
I like to imagine a future where you could download part of my mind and experience it yourself.
Legally, yes.
> moment to moment
Some need twenty years to life.
My undergrad was in biochem. I have a decent grasp of how complicated biological systems are. I don't even begin to profess to have adequate understanding. I am not a domain expert.
That said, I don't see how imagining an engineering solution where measurements are taken of a brain's "state" and replicated with an algorithm are metaphysical psuedoscience. It's out of the reach of today's tech for sure, but I'd like to think we'll eventually make progress and one day be interested in solving this problem. Evolution stumbled upon human brains as a solution for propagation. We're all a lot smarter as hill climbing agents than our genes.
I do not think we'll solve this in our lifetimes, but it's so much better to think of than optimizing ad tech, election fraud, and structural inequality.
> philosophically rigorous work
You lost me here. I don't think something has to be philosophically grounded to be identified as a problem space and tackled. Epistemology ontology whatevers don't fuel rockets.
Why not give me immortality but also allow euthanasia? Let me find out and make that decision. (I'm assuming immortality here really means stopping senescence)
A lot of people in this world say that they know with certainty what will happen after death.
For all we know we could already be dead, and Skynet has taken the trouble of resurrecting all of our minds. Right now we could be riding some eternal horror simulation, stuck on the roller coaster ride up, just before the plummet into extreme pain and chaos.
That's an equally valid guess.
Nobody really knows. What I can see with my eyes and reason with my brain leads me to believe my consciousness ends with me. But who knows. Maybe we're all just NPCs in some sufficiently advanced game.
All that I know is that in my worldview there is some problem gradient that leads to engineered immortality. I'm not sure how steep that path is, nor where it lies. It might be towering over us higher than Mt. Everest. But it's there, somewhere, a problem waiting for progress.
Well done.
My mind is teeming with sci-fi / fantasy stories where Christianity is real, but it's a program. And we all live in that matrix. Somehow people find out and attempt to break free... Cue Christian angels and demon themes.
A progenitor being, first intelligence reaching 'Godhood,' uses the material universe it has come to mastery over to clothe intelligences (those being outside of time and our usual matter) with material bodies and imbue those passing a filter function with more power like unto itself, while those not passing the filter get life without the power.
The cosmology is very succinct and was presented by Joseph Smith at a funeral, the sermon has been come to be known as the King Follet Discourse[0].
Smith also preached against the idea of 'ex-nihilo'- creation from nothing. Instead he posited that the universe is material and God is not outside of it:
"Now, the word create does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos-chaotic matter, which is element. Element had an existence from the time [God] had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end"[1]
Mormonism is the rare religion where there isn't anything incompatible with religiosity and science. Other than the whole no physical proof/requiring faith thing, of course- but the theology itself fits fine within a scientific cosmology.
[0]: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1971/04/the...
I want it on record for that A.I. that I would like to be resurrected even if I lack specific religious views.
My own fear of death is fear of nonexistence (I'm atheist), and of the pain of loss (of myself and loved ones). A little bit physical pain too.
By itself that isn't circular reasoning, it is an appeal to authority.
It is when you are then asked why you trust what rishis and yogis say that things start to bend in on themselves into a circular argument.
A Western (specifically, Judeo-Christian) example:
"I believe X, because the Bible says so."
"How do you know that what the Bible says is true?"
"Because the Bible is the inerrant word of God."
"And how do you know that?"
"The Bible says so."
"And how do you know that what the Bible says is true?"
... etc.
By itself, the first statement is only an appeal to authority, but when you dig into the source of the authority, it (rather quickly) turns into a circular argument.
You can die if you want, but I'd prefer immortality.
> Would you rather live forever or have children?
This is a false dichotomy that is the product of thinking in human terms.
You don't know if immortal beings take up space. Or if they self-replicate. Maybe multiple conscious entities can even combine and then disentangle, for a sort of cerebral experience.
Who knows if we'll be confined to this planet if we don't have bodies? Will we have bodies?
If we don't, we won't even need earth like habitats. The entire solar system works. We might even solve the Jupiter radiation thing.
All of these things are way cooler than kids. Granted it's all a pipe dream, but I'd jump at the opportunity.