Immortality via technology

[Occam]

I have no way of knowing if this was already discussed, if it was, oh well. If it wasn't, oh well.

If you had a computer that could scan you brain to the synapse level and code all the intricacy that makes you you. And it then had the ability to recreate this mess of electrical pulses with cells or wires. Would it have your memory, quirks and more importantly, would it have your 'awareness'? And if it did, are you then immortal?

[David B]

Only if it also has the capacity to learn and grow (not physically grow, but grow in mind) -- oh, and you're only immortal if the computer doesn't have a hard drive crash. :)

[Sake Samurai]

I think you'd be able to extend your life as long as the system lasted. . .could be quite some time, but not forever.

I think some more interesting questions are these:

Say you could do what you described, but instead of residing completely within the system, you (by wireless remote) let your neurons trigger the corresponding neurons in a human body. Sort of like a R/C car.

Furthermore, the neural transmitters are two-way, allowing you to give and receive stimulae. Now your mind can reside in one location and your body in another. If the body dies, you may inhabit another (back-up).

1. Would the body have to be human?

2. Can you control more than one lifeform at a time?

3. If you implanted the remote transmitters in a live being (sentient), could you control the lifeform or would you have to wage war?

4. Where is the soul in all of this?

[Gaudere]

I read in a recent book (The Case for Immortality?) a theory that after the end of the universe God was going to put all of the possible personalities we could have had into eternal computers. So we would be dead, but He would "resurrect" us (and all our possible variants) in this manner. Interesting theory, but he seemed a little weak in the logic department when he tried to prove why this *had* to be so; it's not like God couldn't use any other manner, that's one of the perks of being omnipotent.

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"Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting."
- Bertrand Russell

[Manda JO]

If the computer did not have any sensory imput, i.e, it could scan in your brain at a given moment, but had no periphial devices capable of seeing, hearing, touching, downloading, etc., methinks one would get awful bored.

[DrFidelius]

Sake:

1) Probably wouldn't need to be human, but the neurology would have to be at an equivalent level of complexity. A dolphin would probably do, but not a dog. You can't run 32-bit programs on an 8088 chip.

2) I have enough trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. I can't picture controlling two bio-remotes simultaneously.

3) Mind-raping a sentient being is unethical. We've called it demonic possession. If we developed the technology to do this we would have invented a brand new sin.

4) Don't know where the soul is as things stand now...


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Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be."
-Charles Sanders Pierce

[David B]

Sake asked:4. Where is the soul in all of this?Same place it is now -- nowhere.

[tracer]

Immortality via technology?

I'm for it. Thanks for asking.

[DrFidelius]

Oh, and to reply to the topic, there's no such thing. Even if an copy of my mind is scanned into a computer, its still just a copy. I am still going to die, eventually. The copy may go along for a while, but it will diverge from being me with every passing moment and experience.

What would things look like to the copy? It would probably believe itself to be me, so would it want to talk to me? See me getting older every year? Eventually hear that I had died?

I actually plan on achieving immortality by not dying. So far, so good.

[David B]

DrF: I wish you luck and plan to join you in that quest. If you do succumb and somehow die, please let me know how it happened so I can avoid similar situations. Thanks.

[Sam Stone]

DrFidelius: You're not thinking about this enough. Let's try it this way: We have a computer scan the first layer of our brain, then slowly remove it and replace it with electronics. Then go to the next layer, and do the same thing. Continue until the whole brain is gone. No 'copies' were made, and you could even have been awake through the whole process. Now you have a computer brain. Now, we do the same thing with the body. Remove the arm, connect all the sensory inputs that come from the arm to a new mechanical arm. Repeat until the entire body is gone. Now you're a robot, and you've been awake through the whole procedure.

At some point along the way do you lose your 'soul'? Do you stop being self-aware? Are there any other differences?

If not, now let's make a copy while you are sleeping and download it into an identical robot. Both of you wake up, both thinking that you are 'you', and having the same memories right up until the point when you fell asleep.

Do you both have a consciousness? Do you both have a 'soul'? If there's a heaven, which one goes? And why? If you destroy one of them, is it murder?

[Satan]

As long as Bill Gates didn't sell the software...

I could see that now - "Okay, Mrs. O'Neill... We have your husband saved right here, now all we need to do is hit save and..."

*CRASH*

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Yer pal,
Satan

[Keeves]

"I don't want to acheive immortality through my work! I want to acheive immortality through not dying!" --- Woody Allen

[Polycarp]

Fascinating! Even a hard drive crash would not cause death, BTW, because you could be restored from your backup. You did remember to back yourself up, didn't you? :)

I take issue with one of David's statements, and will comment here, but it sounds like a new thread:
Sake asked:
___________________________________________
4. Where is the soul in all of this?
___________________________________________

Same place it is now -- nowhere.

That is a dogmatic assertion, no more provable or disprovable than Jeffery's or my assertion that there is one. From the scientific point of view, the best assertion that can be made is that there is no proof one way or the other.

[David B]

Ah, but Poly, even if there is a soul, it would exist "nowhere" -- outside the measurable space and time in which we exist.

(Jeez, can't anybody take a joke anymore? ;) )

[Sake Samurai]

Exactly, dhanson. The nature of identity is being debated here.

Perhaps this thought experiment has already happened and this mortal coil we move around in all day is hollow. Our actual selves exist elsewhere. We don't realize this due to the flawless interface (well, not quite flawless, but our rational minds refuse to process the *bugs* as reality). Maybe you, unbeknownst to hollow you, are controlling several beings. Finding your soul-mate would take on new meaning.

We all could be the product of one (severly MPDed) being.

[CatInHat]

Barbara Hambly, in her book The Silicon Mage, has a character (the bad guy) who is a wizard, Suraklin, who wants to make himself immortal by downloading himself into a computer (he's the "evil wizard" and the good guys are trying to stop him). At the very end, when it looks like he might succeed, he changes his mind and commits suicide.

One of the good guys (a student of the evil wizard from long before) explains that Suraklin killed himself because he remembered that the important word in the phrase "live forever" isn't "forever", it's "live".

Kind of a deus ex machina ending, IMO, but relevant to this discussion. How much can you be "living" if you are just a big ol' binary file and all your input is digital?

[Polycarp]

Very logical.

You realize that we had tentatively concluded that (1) we live within a black hole, and (2) God is suffering from a severe inferiority complex. Both these conclusions were arrived at on this board after thorough analysis.

Therefore I can concur with your conclusions.

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"You shall know the truth
And the truth shall make you flee" - Lazarus Long

[tracer]

dhanson wrote:

Remove the arm, connect all the sensory inputs that come from the arm to a new mechanical arm. Repeat until the entire body is gone. Now you're a robot,

... and sex just won't be the same anymore!

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Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.

[Sake Samurai]

I know there are more than 3 trillion neurons or something, PLUS the brain is massively networked - so how much memory would you need to back up the average human mind?

As long as Bill Gates didn't sell the software Visions of the planet Earth in the year 2434 being ruled by the Evil Terror That Is William Gates ver6.02!

I think may be no need for software at all. You might simply construct an exact replica of the brain and PRESTO: mini-me!

[Sam Stone]

The interesting thing about these 'thought-experiments' is to follow them to their logical conclusion and see where they lead you, and then see if you can gain insight into the nature of existance, or religion, etc.

[Sam Stone]

Why wouldn't sex be the same?

If we can connect artificial sensors up to the brain, then with the right processing you can simulate anything. You can have senses that get stronger over time, you can have erectile-like responses that feel better when stimulated with emotions or fantasies, or whatever you want. In other words, you should be able to mimic the human body well enough that if the person didn't open his 'eyes' he would be unable to tell whether he's a real human or not.


The science fiction story about the guy who kills himself because he'd rather be dead than 'live' in a computer is just nonsense. If you still have emotions and sensory inputs, you're just as much alive.

Another issue is that the brain itself may adjust to make itself feel 'normal', so that the hardware wouldn't have to do it. This happens now - if you put a pair of glasses on that cause everything to be inverted, it'll look that way for a couple of days, then your brain will switch over and make everything upright again. If you take your glasses off, you brain will see everything as being inverted for a couple of days.

[kaylasdad99]

How fun: first Gaudere tells us that Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series has been co-opted for the thesis of a theological treatise, then Sake Samurai asserts that the premise of The Matrix has been the true condition of Man since time immemorial.

What was the question?

Oh, right. Does the CD-ROM kaylasdad99 v2.1 have my awareness? I have to go along with David and Sake Samurai on that one: only if it's capable of constantly receiving any new inputs that my old body would have fed into my brain. Those conditions being met, I would say that immortality had been achieved.

Two caveats, both from literature (fiction):

1.) In I Will Fear No Evil[/], Robert Heinlein alludes to "muscle memory" (briefly, the man whose brain is transplanted into the woman's body can now play the piano, even though he never did before, because the woman was an accomplished pianist before the transplant). I'm not prepared to say such a thing exists, although when I read [i]The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, I was taken aback when Van Horne cited the same phenomenon while trying to coach a cellist in her bowing technique. It seems to me that no artificial prosthesis could be devisd that could duplicate that phenomenon.

2.)In The Book of Merlin, by T.H White, a snake comments that human beings do not really believe in eternity; if they did believe in it and had a true understanding of how long a time that word represents, they'd be very careful about wishing to spend eternity anywhere, Heaven or Hell.