Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older?

Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by w1ntermute on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @04:21AM (#2806507)

I'd say there's little value in trying to fix what's broken to the core. Research should focus on ways to extract one's consciousness from the body and place it in an artificially designed shell (a Ghost in the Shell, one might say).

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by wazoox on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @09:49AM (#2807277)

I'd argue that the common view that our mind is somehow independent from our body is probably wrong, and a judeo-christian falsity. Our mind is a real-time, continuous creation of our brain AND our whole body. I don't think that a brain in a vat could be anything but either a vegetable or a psychopath; and that the "ghost in the shell" (or the mind dump neuromancer-style) is anything more than a pleasant, impossible fiction, similar with faster-than-light travel.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by joshuacc on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @10:11AM (#2807374)

I realize these aren't direct responses, but here are a couple of interesting historical points.

1. Mind/body dualism also arose in pagan Greece (Plato being the clearest example).

2. When most people think of dualism today, they are thinking of Cartesian dualism where the mind and body have a very tenuous connection indeed. But that is a relatively recent idea. Within the Christian tradition, something like Hylemorphic dualism[1], which maintains a very tight connection between mind and body, long predated it. (Probably due in part to belief in the Resurrection of the Body.)

[1] http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/ld/Philos/dso/papers/Hylem...

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by tokenadult on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @10:22AM (#2807415)

I'd argue that the common view that our mind is somehow independent from our body is probably wrong, and a judeo-christian falsity

Historically, the idea was present in Greece, certainly in the writings of Plato, before Christianity. The ancient Hebraic idea, reflected in early Christian writings, was much more that the mind and body were intimately linked. But Platonic dualism taking over in Christianity is an example of one meme outcompeting another.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by drzaiusapelord on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @04:37PM (#2809385)

Well put. I often make this argument. Just imagine all the hormones and processes that must happen outside the head just to keep you sane or at the very least conscious and remotely functional.

The brain upload hypothesis seems a bit naive. I could see a synthetic body hypothesis. Imagine if we could reproduce all these organs via some method and move the brain or the head to a new host. But turning this stuff into software? Very implausible

Longevity research is probably the way to go. I imagine that's the first baby step in creating synthetic hosts anyway.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by w1ntermute on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @10:02AM (#2807336)

If you can create a medium compatible with the human brain, it may be possible to hold our consciousnesses in it.

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by broot on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @04:28AM (#2806524)

But W1ntermute, wont William Gibson be mad that you're cheating on Neuromancer with Ghost in the Shell?

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Re:Why aren't the oldest living people getting any older? by sixtofour on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @12:40PM (#2808175)

I know little about either side of the argument, but it seems to me that we'd have more chance of success (however small) extending the life of a complex body that supports a mysteriously complex brain and intellect, than to ever hope that we can extract consciousness at all, much less have it operate anywhere near its current level without its supporting body.

How much consciousness is in the physical body, and not just the brain but the rest of the body? Do we really know?

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