# Is there a chance that I will l\[i\]ve forever?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 29, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945 "2013-09-29T19:36:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/81 "2013-10-03T02:00:29Z")
Yeah, it’s all good and well until the AI answers your question with “42”.
---
### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/82 "2013-10-03T02:53:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Even if that works, though, all it would get you would be something that could, in decades, learn to think as well as a human. We can already produce those, and the process is a lot more fun than programming is.
Not sure how serious your post is, but there would be massive benefits in being able to emulate a human brain on a digital computer. It would likely make reverse engineering the brain much, much easier for example.
And as to the point that we would only make something on a par with a standard human…for how long would that be the case? Even if we can’t speed up the hardware any further, at the least we would do stuff like network brains together. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/83 "2013-10-03T08:28:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Actually, on thinking about it, my previous post was far too optimistic. A person with Down’s syndrome, for instance, has just as many neurons as a normal person. And the same can be said of a vast number of other forms of mental retardation. There are a great many things that can go wrong, so it’s vastly likely that our first brain simulation will be a simulation of a profound moron.
>
> Further, even if we do get to the stage where we can simulate the brain of a supergenius, that brain will still have to learn. And doubling the speed of the computers _won’t_ double the speed that the supergenius brain learns at, because a great deal of learning comes from interactions with other humans, and hence is limited by the speed of those other humans.
Learning is by and large just the forming of connections between neurons; a lot of this can be skipped, for instance by just emulating the connections of an adult human brain (this, of course, presumes the development of appropriate scanning technologies, but if we don’t insist on this being possible in vivo, then I don’t think that’s too big an obstacle).
But in any case, I don’t really think that explicit brain simulation is going to be the way towards strong AI; but it’s without a doubt going to be a great leap forward in our understanding of what makes us tick.
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/84 "2013-10-03T14:36:03Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Quoth **Mijin** :
>
> Not sure how serious your post is, but there would be massive benefits in being able to emulate a human brain on a digital computer. It would likely make reverse engineering the brain much, much easier for example.
Oh, absolutely: A simulated brain would be a huge boost to the studies of psychology and neurology. But that’s not what **get lives** was talking about. His premise, so far as I can tell, was that brain emulation would produce a simulated brain that was much smarter than us, so smart that it would be able to easily figure out how to make us immortal.
---
### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/85 "2013-10-03T21:02:51Z")
A smarter brain might be more concerned about what makes it’s own self immortal. Part of the answer to that conundrum might be to eliminate us pesky humans.
---
### Author:  [@Dax-ion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dax-ion)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2013, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/86 "2013-10-03T21:25:10Z")
Setting aside the issue of whether you could “migrate” into an AI. Say your own body did last into perpetuity… how long would you still be you?
There is a cool movie that asks this. The Man From Earth (2007) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/)
It is about a man who claims to be 14,000 years-old and the difficulty in establishing the falsifiability of his claim at any one given moment.
---
### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2013, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/87 "2013-10-05T00:53:34Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#):
>
> I intend to beat her record. I’ll let you know.
I intend to beat both of you. I am turning 4,805 in the year 6781 and I found out that my birthday is falling on a Friday. I’m trying to make plans…
---
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2013, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/88 "2013-10-05T01:21:09Z")
I’ll take you a cake on that day!
---
### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2013, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/89 "2013-10-07T04:41:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Except that computers, no matter how advanced, still only answer the questions you ask them. If you ask a computer to model a certain set of biological interactions, it can do that… But that won’t tell it that there’s another important biological interaction that it should have been modeling but didn’t. Experimentation can do that, but that’s still limited by the fundamental limitations you’re looking to subvert: A biological experiment can require multiple generations of living organisms, which, if the organism you’re looking at is humans, might mean decades or centuries.
>
> Or, you can posit that the computer models are so sophisticated that all of the relevant properties are emergent on the base model. But that would require a model that modeled the entire human body at the level of the interactions between atoms, at least. And now you’re pitting the exponential growth of Moore’s Law against a problem that’s also of exponential complexity, and the model again takes longer than the direct experiment.
Plus, to be that sophisticated, you need to have done those experiments both to provide data in the first place, and then to test that all the emergent properties are being caught.
Plus Moore’s law is not an absolute, and is hitting some fundamental limits very soon. Transistors can only get so small before they don’t work. And, despite what you may have been told, quantum computing is not capable of picking up and carrying on the spirit of Moore’s law, at least, in the time frame allotted. It’s only faster at some very specific problems.
Moore’s law that transistor size will decrease exponentially will flatten out, and it will likely happen in my lifetime. Unless you have a replacement process that can carry on the spirit, computing complexity is going to hit a brick wall quite soon.
---
### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2013, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/90 "2013-10-07T06:35:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Even if that works, though, all it would get you would be something that could, in decades, learn to think as well as a human. We can already produce those, and the process is a lot more fun than programming is.
Spoken like someone who’s only ever been tasked with the initial phase of the production process. 😉
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/91 "2013-10-07T15:07:59Z")
OK, that one took me a few moments to get… But well-played.
---
### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2013, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/92 "2013-10-07T16:48:04Z")
Even if we didn’t know how to create intelligence from first principles and could only copy human brains, presumably we could reliably duplicate the very best human intelligences and combine them to form a polymath savant genius- perhaps one with a greater total memory capacity than a human brain, and able to think faster than organic synapses will allow.
---
### Author:  [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/93 "2013-10-08T07:31:04Z")
Back to the OP, it seems to me that strictly speaking only something which entails a contradiction has 0 probability of occurring, _e.g._, the probability of my discovering the round square cupola on Berkeley College is 0. (By the same lights, something which entails a tautology has a probability of 1; it is certain. For example, the probability of Siam Siam dying tomorrow or not dying tomorrow is 1.)
Taken that way (which, if I remember [Philosophy 400](http://www.unl.edu/philosophy/courses/courdesc/400.shtml) from 13 years ago correctly, is the way to take it), then Siam Siam indeed does have a non-zero chance of living forever (and the universe has a non-zero chance of enduring forever) since his doing so (and its doing so) wouldn’t violate a law of logic, viz., entail a contradiction.
---
### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/94 "2013-10-08T12:07:31Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#):
>
> Back to the OP, it seems to me that strictly speaking only something which entails a contradiction has 0 probability of occurring, _e.g._, the probability of my discovering the round square cupola on Berkeley College is 0. (By the same lights, something which entails a tautology has a probability of 1; it is certain. For example, the probability of Siam Siam dying tomorrow or not dying tomorrow is 1.)
>
> Taken that way (which, if I remember [Philosophy 400](http://www.unl.edu/philosophy/courses/courdesc/400.shtml) from 13 years ago correctly, is the way to take it), then Siam Siam indeed does have a non-zero chance of living forever (and the universe has a non-zero chance of enduring forever) since his doing so (and its doing so) wouldn’t violate a law of logic, viz., entail a contradiction.
But assuming forever means infinity, wouldn’t zero be the limit of one’s chances?
---
### Author:  [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/95 "2013-10-08T13:11:28Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> But assuming forever means infinity, wouldn’t zero be the limit of one’s chances?
Yeah, maybe, but then since 0 would be the _limit_ of one’s chances, one’s chances would never reach (_be_) 0. Therefore at any time before the last moment of time (which doesn’t exist), they’re non-zero. Therefore Siam Siam has a chance that they’ll l\*ve forever. (It occurs to me, if the ‘forever’ in ‘live forever’ makes it tough, think of it as ‘won’t die’. For someone to not die doesn’t entail a contradiction, so their chances of not dying \>0 (and \<1).)
This may very well be the wrong way to go about it, but it has a certain intuitive appeal, I think. “Is there a chance I’ll live forever” very naturally reads as “Is it possible I’ll live forever”, and the notion of possibility seems bound up, perhaps inextricably, with the notion of contradiction. But maybe that’s an equivocation on ‘possible’.
Now someone’ll come along and talk about fuzzy logic or probabilistic logic or limits and 0.9999…=1 or Zeno or whatever and make hash of what I’ve said.
---
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/96 "2013-10-08T15:27:38Z")
I’m living forever, and you can’t talk me out of it! :mad:
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/97 "2013-10-08T17:29:23Z")
In order for the term “the probability of me living forever” to have any meaning, it must logically be synonymous with “the limit, as t approaches infinity, of me living to age t”. Which is exactly zero. It does not “approach zero”, because it’s just a number, and numbers don’t go anywhere, they just sit there.
---
### Author:  [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/98 "2013-10-08T21:21:33Z")
No one really understands why we age but it appears that the most likely reason has to do with the fact that our cells have to replicate and that they do so imperfectly. While humans do have a lot of genetic machinery that manages to proof read our DNA, between oxidative stress, ionizing radiation and host of other factors both known and unknown, our bodies accumulate genetic damage that eventually makes our continued existence unlikely.
Telomeres are also a factor of course but it’s likely that this mechanism evolved as a way to prevent the replication of cells that had probably already reached their expiry date anyway - IOW had probably already accumulated enough damaged that continued replication wasn’t advisable.
However the idea that DNA damage can be repaired isn’t all that far fetched if that is indeed the essence of our mortality. Gene therapies have been researched for decades and there is current research into reversing epigenetic tags that attach directly to sugar backbone of DNA. Even the idea of molecular machines that could repair damaged or miscoded DNA isn’t that strange.
---
### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/99 "2013-10-08T22:38:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> In order for the term “the probability of me living forever” to have any meaning, it must logically be synonymous with “the limit, as t approaches infinity, of me living to age t”. Which is exactly zero. It does not “approach zero”, because it’s just a number, and numbers don’t go anywhere, they just sit there.
Right, but the probability of you dying at any age is exactly zero. Assuming there is no time quantum in the universe. Wouldn’t it be like picking a random real number, the probability of picking any real number is zero, but you can still pick one?
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2013, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/100 "2013-10-08T23:19:42Z")
Yes, if the time of death is specified with infinite precision. This almost never happens, though: Colloquially, people usually report ages as a whole number of years, or times of events in hours and minutes (and maybe seconds). Scientifically, there are implicit error bars based on the number of digits reported.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945.md?page=4)