There’s no possible way you will live ten trillion years without the human brain becoming well-understood and upgradable.

So you’re worrying about an impossible scenario.

You never know, he could be visited by an alien that gives him the power of immortality, we don’t know what’s out there

He would need to find a new solar system as well

Assuming science and tech improve exponentially, why wouldn't this happen within a century? Unless phenomenon appear that violate our understandings of physics, neuroscience seems on track. If Musk (or others) can get adoption of even simple consumer devices, it's going to be an arms race.

> Assuming science and tech improve exponentially

That's a pretty big assumption to make. Science and tech seem to improve as a direct function of energy available, and in the past few centuries that has been increasing very rapidly (I'm not sure I'd say exponentially though). However we're clearly hitting limits both in regard to human more energy we can harvest as rapidly and the consequences of unsustainable energy usage.

> upgradable

How human would I be then?

Ideally? As human as you want, whatever that may mean. Not as human as you're forced to be, or as inhuman as the economy or social forces push you to be...

There are many and varied problems we'll be facing. I just don't think "Immortality without any of the supporting technologies" is one of them.

You’re way more likely to stop making any new memories.

You must have a very good memory, then. I was made painfully aware of how not great mine was yesterday.

I met this woman this week, my wife presented us. It turns out we already met 5 years ago - we share a common friend. She remembered me quite clearly, but I had completely forgotten her, as well as the event where we met.

So far all good, it was 5 years ago after all. However, she also told me that we had met before that! 20 years ago! Through a work acquaintance of mine this time. We apparently did some hiking through the countryside together. I remember nothing of that. I don't remember that second acquaintance either. Apparently it was the same situation 5 years ago; she told me all of this, I apologized for forgetting her and everything around meeting her. And then I forgot her. And that was only the first time.

To me my memory is not a "bucket that eventually gets full". It's more like a "dark corridor". Memories are on the walls. As I move forwards, the parts of the corridor behind me get eventually darker, until only the brightest memories remain visible. I have forgotten most of my highschool classmates. I have forgotten most of my past coworkers. I have some memories from my childhood, still. But only the very bright ones. And they are continuously dimming.

I am completely fine with this. I am still me. I think forgetting is part of what makes us human.

Or at least, of what makes me human.

Going back to this person that I forgot twice. Apparently she remembers everyone she has ever met, even if just once. I have met at least another person with this capacity. I can't but consider those people freaks of nature, and in consequence a potential danger for society. We should watch them closely. And perhaps we should watch you closely as well.

At least until I forget all of you again.

I have no doubt in my mind that my memory will never "fill up". More like the opposite: the danger is that it empties too fast at some point.

I don’t think you have any evidence to say that. Our understanding of memory and complex evolved neural networks like the mind is fairly poor. On top of that, we have more evidence of the mind still acquiring new memories and choosing to compact or drop irrelevant memories while it remains healthy.

Then it’d be eternal dementia, a fate probably much worse than death.

We already forget people, places, events, and things even as young adults.

What is missing in this discussion is the notion of finality or end, or telos. Without having a sound philosophical anthropology, we cannot hope to assess the question of death. (Indeed, bad anthropology is at the heart of so many bad political orders. If you misunderstand the nature of Man, then the political order will be pitted against human beings in some manner, by design if not by intention. In the US, the self-interested, hyperindividualistic consumer anthropology construes human beings as selfish beasts whose highest aim in life is to consume, a degradation of the self and a degraded view of others as others become objects for consumption. Communism and socialism suffer from their own grave errors, but an eerie overlap exists between the two.)

So we must first know what it means to be human, which is to say, what the actualization of human nature consists of, actualization as the satisfaction and raison d'etre of human activity. It is the nature of a thing to seek to realize itself, to become fully the kind of thing it is. This does not necessarily involve conscious, purposeful act. Bacteria do the same, and this is by virtue of how they are organized and ordered, as well as their operation in accord with this ordering. For human beings, it is to become fully human, which, again, is the question posed: what is the end of a human being? Only in light of human nature can we determine the meaning of death, whether death is to be understood as an aberration needing a solution, or the natural terminus of human existence. If it is the former, then we might ask what, if anything, could or should be done about it. If the latter, then we must accept it as our natural end against which any resistance is not only misguided, but harmful.

To answer this question, we must first recognize that what is most essential and definitive about human beings is that we are rational animals. Our rationality is not some thing tacked on to us, but what it means to be human, and our organization, our substance, everything from the operations of the intellect, our ability to choose between alternatives freely, and our bodies, follows from this fact.

Then, we must determine what it most means for human beings as rational animals to attain finality. Classically, the highest good is to know and thus experience union with the Highest Good. But the Highest Good is infinite. Perhaps by human nature a certain finite degree of knowledge of the Highest Good suffices, but if the intellect is by its nature open to expansion by the act of the Highest Good, then it could, indefinitely, spend eternity coming to know increasingly better the Highest Good by first becoming indefinitely expanded. This would be transcendence, this expansion of the human person beyond what is merely given by nature, but which, by nature, is open to expansion by the Highest Good.

Of course, we cannot attain this condition ourselves, as we cannot engineer our own transcendence. If we could, we would already be in possession of the cause, and thus it would already be part of our nature and therefore not transcendent (the effect is, after all, virtually in the cause; you cannot give what you do not have). This makes transhumanism a fool's errand, as we can only cripple or deform humanity in our quixotic attempts to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, unlike medicine, which only restores what is already due by nature, but is for some reason missing and in a state of defect.

Assuming this is true, then only eternal life would suffice. Anything less, merely life extension, would not change our fundamental condition, only postpone what was always inevitable. Death would remain an obstacle. But nothing in this world attains this eternal state. As I've said, technology cannot attain this end. Only the Highest Good would have this power, and thus something beyond our power to control and use. Furthermore, there is no one on this planet who can be said to have received this eternal state, at least no one walking among us that we can see. So either this eternal state is possible only after death, which means death is not non-existence but some kind of transition, or it cannot be attained. The first gives reason for at least some hope, the latter is world-weary hopelessness, an absurd condition in which Man is condemned to seek an end he cannot possibly arrive at by any means, but must seek if he is to live.

Excellent. I tried to get at something similar in a comment I made earlier today but was immediately downvoted and thus had my account automatically rate limited. It seems questioning the materialist presuppositions many hold around concepts like life and death can be a sore spot for some on HN. Am I correct in thinking you're circling Christian theology, specifically the Orthodox Christian idea of Theosis?

It's because anything non-materialist is by definition non-physical and thus hogwash bullshit until you can actually prove it. By proving it you have made it physical.

There is zero evidence that anything non-materialist actually exist, literally zero. But what we do have is an island of things people have claimed is non-materialist to get smaller and smaller over time. Childish arguments like "But you can't prove this rock isn't conscious" is just the standard god of the gaps argument in a purple shirt that has been done to death.

> "But you can't prove this rock isn't conscious"

My favourite one in this line is “you can’t prove there isn’t an invisible pink unicorn in the middle of your living room and we can still agree it’s very unlikely to be there”.

Is mathematics hogwash bullshit? How about logic? Or knowledge? Ethics? Reason?

You've just appealed to a wide array of necessary non-physical concepts while making the claim that non-physical concepts are unprovable - don't you see the contradiction here?

This is Aristotle 101, no need to rehash this debate because it's been settled in this exact form for thousands of years.

Some mathematics is hogwash. Some isn't. The game of mathematics is to define some axioms and sees what falls out of that. If your axioms are chosen such that they match reality it's not hogwash. For example boolean algebra is made physical in, among others, digital circuits. That's why mathematics also isn't considered a physical science by most.

I didn't make any claim to anything non-physical.

> the game of mathematics is to define some axioms

Is an axiom physical? Can I touch a mathematical axiom? Can I kick it down the stairs?

> Boolean algebra is made physical

So what was it before it was "made physical"? This statement necessitates Boolean algebra having had some other, metaphysical form before physical instantiation.

> I didn't make any claim to anything non-physical

Yes you did. And you did again just now. "I" - appeal to the self. Non physical. "Didn't" - appeal to the past. Non physical. "Make any Claim" - appeal to truth or falsehood. Non physical.

Again, these are debates that have already been hashed out millennia ago. I don't want to appear rude or condescending, which is near impossible not to do over written debate, but I would highly suggest putting in the work to learn the history of fundamental philosophical concepts like Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Ethics before engaging in debate over them.

The plane of consciousness and imagination is non physical.

Prove that it isn't just signals in the brain then. Untill then the best you can say is we don't know. a few hundred years ago people might have said pain is non-physical but look how that turned out. Just because we don't know now how it works is not an argument that it is non-physical.

In fact there is evidence it is physical. We have been able to decode low fidelity images of stuff people are imagining using brain imaging. That would never work if imagination is non-physical.

This confuses data with runtime.

This makes no sense without further clarification. What is the runtime here? What is the data?

The human mind is subjectively indestructible, I.e. impervious to physically perishing (it is purely mathematically operational.) The body, that uniquely mapped to the person, can be reanimated indefinitely relying upon tissue engineering and neuroscientific knowledge progressing in unique human brain cell networks and respective central nervous system action.

We are less than 2 decades away from digitally migrating to a doppelgänger body.

    Will I forget holding my first child? 
    Will I have forgotten cuddling up in my mom’s lap? 
    Will I miss having forgotten these things? 
    If I can still remember all those moments ... will I still be human in any sense?

I've already forgotten most of those things, aside from a few fleeting glimpses. I absolutely miss being able to remember details about things like childhood, middle school, the first months of my kids' lives, the smell of their hair etc. But life is still rewarding, my kids and family bring me endless joy _right now_, and I don't feel any less human.

If I were able to live another hundred years, I am sure I'd forget things from my time now, forget even more details about my early life, but would still have plenty of things to keep me interested in continuing to live. There are such an abundance of things I can think of that would be worth spending decades mastering, each of which are less important than my current needs, and which I generally have discarded because "it's too late by now...". Swordfighting, glass blowing, painting, creating music, etc. Imagine being able to find something new and interesting, and being able to devote forty or fifty years to developing a (current) lifetime's level of expertise in it. That sounds like science fiction to me, but if such were possible, I'd pick it every time over not having the opportunity.

    Will I still be human in any sense?

I feel like we would redefine what "human" means to include our new selves. I can't imagine not feeling human, even if it is Very Far from my current conceptualization of humanity.

> Between my wife and I we kind of agree that the one who goes first is the lucky one.

My wife died. I get to live on with our children, smell flowers, listen to music, even fall in love again. I’m the lucky one, despite the pain.