# Immortality via technology **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 14, 1999, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immortality-via-technology/16833 "1999-10-14T00:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 1999, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immortality-via-technology/16833/21 "1999-10-15T01:13:00Z")
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! * * * Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 1999, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immortality-via-technology/16833/22 "1999-10-15T18:34:00Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 1999, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immortality-via-technology/16833/23 "1999-10-17T07:00:00Z")
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 _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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immortality-via-technology/16833.md?page=1)