Immortality

[TheMeInTeam]

Live forever at what stage though? Like if I could be my 30 year old self forever ok why not, but do I want to be 90 with all the physical limitations a 90 year old, even a healthy one, has? Plus I thought scientists determined some practical limit of when our cells would just die, and it was like 200 years old or something. Well short of immortal.

Cells die much more frequently than that and are replaced. I think you mean when they can't viably do so anymore? But stopping that would imply a level of control that could probably stop/reverse aging also.

 

[El_Machinae]

Some of our cells die when we die. Some die and get replaced. Different problems to be tackled. There are disease research charities that are working on a subtype of these conditions of aging. Parkinson's is the early death of cells that should live longer. Liver cells can stop properly replacing themselves. Cancers are partially caused by cellular proliferation running wild.

Each of these are problems that deserve research attention due to the diseases they cause. But they're all chipping away at creating technologies that are more broadly applicable in battling aging.

 

[Kyriakos]

Some of our cells die when we die. Some die and get replaced. Different problems to be tackled. There are disease research charities that are working on a subtype of these conditions of aging. Parkinson's is the early death of cells that should live longer. Liver cells can stop properly replacing themselves. Cancers are partially caused by cellular proliferation running wild.

Each of these are problems that deserve research attention due to the diseases they cause. But they're all chipping away at creating technologies that are more broadly applicable in battling aging.

I suspect it is easier to write a different part of computer code, that covers area outside the existing code and thus both are there but you don't see the one below, than it is to alter the older code and avoid new bugs and CTD. So i would expect that far before we would see actual non-aging we will see more interesting/grim stuff like a body cover which doesn't age.
I find it cool, in a way. Below it you rot, but who cares given on the surface everything is fine. I'd call it 'new teen' ^_^

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes, there will be many insufficient interventions as the technology advances. If the goal is to prevent people from dying, it strikes me that racing past that insufficiency as fast as possible is the way to go

 

[old_andy]

Something that hasn't been looked at yet in this thread.. maybe in the last one, but I haven't read through it yet (things to do, people to annoy, that sorta stuff), which is the passage of time as experienced by any given individual. Everyone is aware that the personal experience of the passage of time speeds up as we grow older. The old adage that summer vacation used to seem to last forever when we were kids, and now it seems that a year just flies by.. Christ-on-a-po-go-stick.. is it almost summer already??

There is no evidence that this process won't continue the older we get, and so I ask this esteemed community:

What use would even a partial immortality (say 1000 years) be good for if our own personal experience of time passing by only increases?​

My dad is 86 and just emailed me that he's working on his next 10 year plan (yeah, the guy's a savage), so I asked him how long does a decade feel in length to him these days.. his answer was that it roughly felt like only a year or two had passed.

Without the ability to 'reset' our personal experience of the passing of time, the longer we live, the faster time will seem to pass. At some point years would pass by as months, then as days. Then decades would follow suit.. and then what?



This is also why I force myself to keep doing new things as I'm getting older. Last year I started working as a radio DJ for a local station here in southern Sweden, playing the greatest hit from the 60's - 80's, talking outta my backside into a microphone and basically getting paid to misbehave
..and last week I started a career as a stand up comedian -and crushed it, btw with the headliner of the evening totally dumbfounded that it was my first time ever on stage, and inviting me to tour with him after the summer.

By the end of the evening I had three more gigs lined up for this summer, with four more 'probables' in the pipeline.


I don't know about living forever, but I sure am gonna try to keep this noodle o' mine as young as I can until hopefully my withered bones give out before it does.





/2cts from an old guy, named Andy.

also, the emojis here are next level awesome!! WOO-HOO!!!!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Without the ability to 'reset' our personal experience of the passing of time, the longer we live, the faster time will seem to pass. At some point years would pass by as months, then as days. Then decades would follow suit.. and then what?

We don't have experimental evidence one war or another regarding what precisely makes subjective perception of time "seem" faster. Best guess I've heard is that the more you've experienced, the smaller a unit of time is weighed against your total experiences.

There is no evidence that this process won't continue the older we get, and so I ask this esteemed community:

This suggests that subjective perception of time would keep speeding up, but there should be an upper bound on that...namely how much of one's experiences can be recalled. If you were to live 500 years, how much of your next 5 would you recall at age 388? Still, we don't know for sure.

I have pieces of memories from 20 years ago, but they're not greatly sequenced. Before that I have the "was young" convoluting factor. I'm not confident in any estimate of subjective experience at age 180, but I would like to find out if possible.

 

[Samson]

Something that hasn't been looked at yet in this thread.. maybe in the last one, but I haven't read through it yet (things to do, people to annoy, that sorta stuff), which is the passage of time as experienced by any given individual. Everyone is aware that the personal experience of the passage of time speeds up as we grow older. The old adage that summer vacation used to seem to last forever when we were kids, and now it seems that a year just flies by.. Christ-on-a-po-go-stick.. is it almost summer already??

There is no evidence that this process won't continue the older we get, and so I ask this esteemed community:

What use would even a partial immortality (say 1000 years) be good for if our own personal experience of time passing by only increases?​

My dad is 86 and just emailed me that he's working on his next 10 year plan (yeah, the guy's a savage), so I asked him how long does a decade feel in length to him these days.. his answer was that it roughly felt like only a year or two had passed.

Without the ability to 'reset' our personal experience of the passing of time, the longer we live, the faster time will seem to pass. At some point years would pass by as months, then as days. Then decades would follow suit.. and then what?



This is also why I force myself to keep doing new things as I'm getting older. Last year I started working as a radio DJ for a local station here in southern Sweden, playing the greatest hit from the 60's - 80's, talking outta my backside into a microphone and basically getting paid to misbehave
..and last week I started a career as a stand up comedian -and crushed it, btw with the headliner of the evening totally dumbfounded that it was my first time ever on stage, and inviting me to tour with him after the summer.

By the end of the evening I had three more gigs lined up for this summer, with four more 'probables' in the pipeline.


I don't know about living forever, but I sure am gonna try to keep this noodle o' mine as young as I can until hopefully my withered bones give out before it does.





/2cts from an old guy, named Andy.

also, the emojis here are next level awesome!! WOO-HOO!!!!

My theory, for which I have no evidence beyond what we are all experiencing, is that the perception of the amount of time that has past is to do with how much our brains are changing. When we are young we are learning lots, and out brains are desperately adapting to try and make us fit into the world we find ourselves. At this time the summer seems to last forever. Once we get older we learn less, and our brain changes less over any period of time. Therefore the summer seems to be over as soon as it has started. Another example would be comparing a weekend that we are very active, interacting with lots of people and doing stuff, which on recollection seems to last longer than a weekend in front of the telly or playing computer games.

This gets to the point of the value of immortality. If we can go on learning, growing, getting better at things then it could be a great boon to civilisation (tech quote from FFH: "How can a society prosper when its greatest minds die after only a single generation"). If we get stuck in our ways, and just keep on doing the same thing for ever, is there any value and will it atrophy all human progress?

 

[jatamixx]

Just as a sort of preface, consider this:

Thank you sir for the brilliant essay!

Allow me to put in doubt one of your points though:

i) Human life always includes suffering (it should!), therefore we can safely conclude that immortality would mean infinite suffering.
You could argue it also means infinite happiness, but imho that is wrong. Happiness is very situational (a banker losing 5 million of his 6 million savings account and jumping out a window vs a factory worker that wins the lottery for 250k. It means the world for both.) What I am saying is that happiness always adjusts to your current circumstances until it's no longer happiness, but being content, and then it goes from being content to being normal, and after some time normal can feel like a drudge. Suffering doesn't work the same way. Don't ask me how it works.

There is no reason why suffering and happiness should not work the same way. Aren't they both sentiments you experience? Are they anything else than biochemistry interacting with your train of thought?

I'm not convinced there is a particular dissymetry between happiness and suffering, except when it is summoned by an irrational fear of mytical gods or something.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Thank you sir for the brilliant essay!

Allow me to put in doubt one of your points though:


1 There is no reason why suffering and happiness should not work the same way.

2 Aren't they both sentiments you experience?

3 Are they anything else than biochemistry interacting with your train of thought?

4 I'm not convinced there is a particular dissymetry between happiness and suffering, except when it is summoned by an irrational fear of mytical gods or something.

1
a) the opposite of suffering is not happiness.
b) the opposite of suffering is the absence of suffering.
c) complete absence of suffering (and other emotions, too) was called ataraxia by the greeks, but I do not think it exists in the real world.
d) the opposite of happiness is sadness, which is an emotion.
e) suffering is more than an emotion. emotions are by their very nature fleeting. suffering is something that can only happen out of a reflection, one cannot suffer without reflecting one's state in the universe. for example; I know that animals can feel pain, that they have empathy and can feel negative emotions, but I do not know if they can truly suffer. it seems one can only suffer from an abstract point of view: these people in Africa have it so much worse than us; I lost my youthful optimism, I am all alone and everyone else is sociable (just as some examples). it's always a comparison and at the same time a reflection of the human condition, the meaninglessness of everything, and the absence of morality and justice on a cosmic scale. that, I think, is what constitutes suffering.

2) to recap: suffering is not (merely) an emotional state, like feeling negative stimuli for example.

3) you can reduce any thought there is to biochemical reactions, but there is absolutely no point in that. thought doesn't cease to be thought just because we rationalize it via the natural sciences. also, the totality of the processes going on in our brain still don't explain the arisal of consciousness, rather the abstract entity that is analogue to the brain would be the mind.

4) I don't believe that either, you are right. but I have this feeling that with having experienced sensations for hundreds or thousands of years, we will dull. that goes for both, I assume, but the existential dread of not being able to feel or experience as you could've before (not dissimilar to a depression, but operating on a different level) in itself would cause endless suffering, I would think.

5) a really stupid example to drive home my point: some people fortify their musical taste in their adolescense. what they liked best "back then" will continue to be their taste for the rest of their lives. they might pick up something now among the way, but not consciously, merely by interacting with their surroundings. if some people lose their sense of curiosity that early, I'd find it hard to imagine anyone retaining theirs being 500 years old.

thanks for your post and thanks for showing interest, cheers!

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, there will be many insufficient interventions as the technology advances. If the goal is to prevent people from dying, it strikes me that racing past that insufficiency as fast as possible is the way to go

So you wouldn't settle for human-looking biomechanical body which is a sarcophagus for a brain?
You are hardcore ^_^

 

[Samson]

So you wouldn't settle for human-looking biomechanical body which is a sarcophagus for a brain?
You are hardcore ^_^

I would settle for a sarcophagus for a brain whatever it looked like, if the alternative was dieing.

 

[El_Machinae]

So you wouldn't settle for human-looking biomechanical body which is a sarcophagus for a brain?
You are hardcore ^_^

There are steps in a path. There is no settling. There will be a cohort of people that will use the suboptimal technology in order to buy the time that allows the creation of the better technology.

 

[Kyriakos]

There are steps in a path. There is no settling. There will be a cohort of people that will use the suboptimal technology in order to buy the time that allows the creation of the better technology.

I am sure children in some overrun parts of northern Nigeria don't hold out for latest pcs and are happy with a 90s gameboy. But one can always dream - afterall the human civ is known to have big dreams that tend to amount to nothing at all :/

 

[El_Machinae]

No one 'holds out'. They do the best they can and then upgrade when they can afford it.

My not smoking, I've added years to my life. This means that I have a higher chance of surviving until a viable lung cancer treatment is available.

If I truly was worried about lung cancer, I would assist in the research through participating or my canvassing for donations. The additional upside of such efforts is that I increase the odds for everyone that viable treatments will arrive earlier.

 

[Kyriakos]

No one 'holds out'. They do the best they can and then upgrade when they can afford it.

My not smoking, I've added years to my life. This means that I have a higher chance of surviving until a viable lung cancer treatment is available.

If I truly was worried about lung cancer, I would assist in the research through participating or my canvassing for donations. The additional upside of such efforts is that I increase the odds for everyone that viable treatments will arrive earlier.

I do find your stance to be interesting, El Mac. But chances are everyone here will be swept away in a few decades, and more than likely the same will happen to yet unborn future kids. Tbh i don't even like the world, and perhaps immortality would create something better, given the so low bar (albeit obviously for very fewer people and not the 8-10 billions we currently have), yet i don't think that will be a situation we shall get to see or live.

 

[El_Machinae]

I do find your stance to be interesting, El Mac. But chances are everyone here will be swept away in a few decades, and more than likely the same will happen to yet unborn future kids. Tbh i don't even like the world, and perhaps immortality would create something better, given the so low bar (albeit obviously for very fewer people and not the 8-10 billions we currently have), yet i don't think that will be a situation we shall get to see or live.

Do you think that there will be interventions created in the next couple of decades that will extend lifespan? Some intervention for heart disease, or various cancers, or neurodegenerative diseases?

 

[Kyriakos]

Do you think that there will be interventions created in the next couple of decades that will extend lifespan? Some intervention for heart disease, or various cancers, or neurodegenerative diseases?

Logically there should be. Then again i am sure logically there should already have been such. I won't be particularly surprised if they won't be around in our time.

 

[El_Machinae]

Logically there should be. Then again i am sure logically there should already have been such. I won't be particularly surprised if they won't be around in our time.

There already have been. But yes, as I say, it's all a ratcheting process. As long as we're trying to prevent people from dying of preventable causes, we have a drive to create the next innovation. As a dysthymic, you don't really care. But I believe that you'll be making use of the best medicine available when you need it, even if you've done nothing to help create it in the first place.

 

[Lexicus]

TIL I probably had dysthymia for a while

 

[Kyriakos]

TIL I probably had dysthymia for a while

That's just greek (nature) to me.