Can we beat death?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by baftan, Jul 12, 2009.

  1. baftan ******* Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,135
    There is a 16 min video about positioning death as the real problem in front of humanity by Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nick_bostrom_on_our_biggest_problems.html )

    Is it realistic to gather human beings around the idea of finishing death and preventing anything which causes death? There are millions of possible reasons to die, and we can die anytime. For this reason we plan, organise and do almost everything according to our life period and its cycles. We live in societies with institutions and belief systems about eternal time understanding; religions, nations, family ties, geographic history, philosophy, art, and every other ideas are dreaming beyond the life span of an individual. Yet we still die. This is reality.

    We have achieved many -so called "unrealistic"- goals throughout centuries, although we know that they have been always realistic possibilities. "Finishing death", however, something completely out of this league. It means you have to know everything; if you can not, at least your computers should know. Because death can come from anywhere. This is why I sense that increase in knowledge of universe would yield to immortality. But only "technically", not necessarily.

    For this, I can not find this idea very realistic: "People are getting together against death and organising their society and environment accordingly, like they once did around principles such as abolition of slavery, peace, or civil rights." I can not imagine such a society in near future. Our ape minds are not there, they are somewhere else. Hopefully, our technology will achieve immortal possibilities for us, not our social systems.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,634
    There are certainly eays to etend the lifespan, but death is still inevitable. If you eliminate everyway we know to die (good luck with "slip and fall" as you will have to encase living people in styrofeam balls or the equivalent), you will discover new ones like "the heat death of the universe" and "proton decay."

    It is a fundamental law of physics that entropy increases in a closed system, eventually no matter how good you are, the body will break down. What you are saying is very similar as asking "Could we make an automobile that never breaks down over trillions of years of continuous use on the road and that needs no fuel (here I assume you will eliminate the need to eat, since starvation/dehydration/food poisoning/etc. is a cause of death too).

    Suppose the chance of death is reduced to a 1 in a billion in a given year. That is smaller than the (current) odds of your being killed in n asteroid impact, so that is pretty small. Even then, you should still expect that you will die. Assuming that rate remains constant, then there is a 50% chance that you will be dead within 693,147,180.21 years. That is a long time, but not forever. Personally, I doubt humanity will ever get the odds to be on average less than 1 in 1,000. Also, remember, that most of your time "alive" may see you confined to a bed being fed through a tube, as neurons were not meant to last 1,000 years. You might be able to artificially replace the neurons, but then *you* will still be dead, and a synthetic copy sharing your memories will be the one alive (and even the copy's days are numbered).
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2009
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    You could always end up like this one day if you really wanted to "live" forever. I'd think that even this would eventually deteriorate and die though.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Enmos Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    43,184
    Is that a picture of (Q) ?
     
  8. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    We shouldn't worry or work to eliminate death, we should work to eliminate aging! No one I know would want to live forever with all the aches and pains of old age.

    We should find a way to stop the aging process. Like, for women, we should keep them between 16-19 (before the tits and ass begin to sag!). And for men, we should keep them between 20-25 (just after the silliness of the teen years and just as they begin to mature into reasonably responsible adults).

    Baron Max
     
  9. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

    Messages:
    1,467
    Here's some Kurzweil questions I need to raise:

    Who here knows about putting simple biological processes on a computer? Have we modeled any simple systems yet? To what degree is a a brain more complicated than those simple systems?

    I think its possible if technology develops extremely rapidly, but what evidence of that is there? And are Kurzweil's graphs trustful? Are there publicly available scrutiny of his information?
     
  10. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    Not if you leave the universe before the "end"
     
  11. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    And last one to leave should turn off the lights.
     
  12. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    I have to admit, I'm more for the notion of Transhumanism.

    I mean everyone that lives a life now, is like a work of literature in itself. On death that work is set light to, to be destroyed and never seen again. Yes a few footnotes might be passed on in one form or other, but a potential masterpiece is lost forever.

    The suggestion with Transhumanism is that in this one battle (Transhumanism covers many fronts), Death doesn't have to win through reducing someone's life to oblivion.

    I have a hypothesis that it would in fact be possible to create a way to parallel process a persons life. On the one hand you have what you currently see before you, the biological vessel, which until now is pretty renowned for being the only observer for that individuals life. The on the other hand you have the potential for a superpositioned artificial intelligence entity to follow the birth, growth and adaption of that biological throughout their life.

    Although an individual would be a mergence of biological and radiologically enduced cybernetic components, there wouldn't have to be a split between the two in regards to processing. In fact it would be possible to loop the processing matrices so that both the biological and cybernetic component could operate as one.

    If this was made the case, then on the death of the deterioration of the biological, it wouldn't necessarily be the end to that persons but the start of a new chapter of their own "Virtual life"... an Afterlife.
     
  13. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Huh?? Huh?? You write something like that....? And this is the "Human Science" forum not the "Sci-Fi Dreamers' Forum"??

    And you're a moderator on this site??? Oh, dear me, dear me!!

    Baron Max
     
  14. PsychoTropicPuppy Bittersweet life? Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,538
    Well, unless they can turn your brain into a virtual form, (like computer-like - cyberbrain? )
    Ghost in the Shell shows signs of this...(transhumanism)
     
  15. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    Any your post on keeping women in a particular "Firm" age range? I guess that must be "Planet of the Amazons".
     
  16. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    15,396

    Absolutely nothing can stop aging.
     
  17. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    And you know that ....how? How can you know that a new drug or something won't ever be found ....hundreds, even thousands of years from now that will eliminate aging? How can you make such positive statements without any freakin' evidence to back it up?

    Baron Max
     
  18. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    We should be able to challenge death to a "death match" just as in the movie Bill and Ted's Bogus Adventures, so that we could win another few years here!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  19. PsychoTropicPuppy Bittersweet life? Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,538
    If I'm not mistaken, then stopping ageing is only possible with super high-speed cell regeneration...I presume that this would require an incredible amount of energy. A possible thing? Doubtful.
     
  20. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Why does it have to be "super high-speed"? If the existing cells simply signal that they're growing a little old, new cells could grow then move in to take the place of the "old" cells. What's "super high-speed" about that?

    Joints gettin' a little old and worn? Just have the body rejuvenate individuals cells over a period of, say, a year. At the end of the year, you'd have a whole new, young joint.

    I'm going to start working on that in my woodshop tomorrow morning!! My joiints are definitely getting old.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Baron Max
     
  21. chris4355 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,055

    :roflmao:

    that actually matches him
     
  22. PsychoTropicPuppy Bittersweet life? Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,538
    Okay, high-speed was maybe the wrong word. I should have rather said perfect and faster cell regeneration.

    As people grow older their cells become less and less efficient. Ageing is probably caused by the accumulating damages to the cells of our body caused by the many free radicals out there; they're basically not as efficient at getting rid of damaged protein as they used to because of insufficient regeneration speed which then naturally leads to stocking up of toxic material in our cells which in turn leads to ageing. If we could enhance our ability of getting rid of cell debris faster, and more smoother it could expand our life expectancy by a fair amount.
     
  23. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    I wouldn't say impossible. I know people working with cells from adult that they have made into embryonic like cells using chemicals. Not all cells mind you, but some. And of course this is in a dish. But, the point is, no one would have thought that this was even remotely possible, as a matter of fact it was impossible, only 6 months ago....
     

Share This Page