/sci/ - Science & Math

isnt that what the manhattan beach project is doing? live for ever etc.
foreveralive.jpg

>>2389217
>Look up from Google.

Oh, crap! I wasn't thinking about genetics at the moment...

>>2389206
I don't think true immortality is even possible. Halting aging may be possible, but I don't think there will ever be a way to NEVER die.

>if you stop observing then start observing you are a different person

Going to bed must be stressful for you.

>>2389235
Yes. But i've been thinking about it lately.
Maybe, only maybe, if you gradually repalced the brain... part for part, you would deceit yourself as an observer.

If your brain was transplanted to another being's body, conected to all its senses, but your original body remained intact and still living with another conscience, you would be alive from both mental and physical aspects (even when the conscience which is hosted in your body would have a syndrome of personality dissociation)

But, if you replaced your brain to make it more durable and easier to sustain, you would live centuries with the proper technology.

>>2389206

You're implying that there's some "magical" essence in a person, a "soul" if you will, bound but independent from the person's physical structure. You're further implying that "soul" is lost upon death and that a different "soul" will be present if the person's entire structure is recreated.

This assumption of course has no basis on science. As far as we know we're made not made of anything more than matter and physical processes. So the natural conclusion is that the apparent individuality and independence of the human consciousness is an illusion.

We're all made out of the same kind of matter from the same universe. When we recreate someone's exact structure (exact same physical appearance, memories, personality, etc), the result IS the same person, in every possible way.

(first thread I meet in my first visit to /sci/, liking what I see)

>>2389256
Yes... I had a time like that.
I just remembered the basic philosophy classes, and that part where (Don't remember now, sorry) there were discussed the ideas about the existence and reality.
If things change just by the idea of being observed, if reality would exist, even if it's not observed or perceived by a conscience...

Man... maybe i'm inventing this and being delirious with you...

>>2389206
>>2389217

Thank you so much guys. It been YEARS since I had a panic attack like the one a second ago. Last time I was 12.

Anyone have an idea how to combat these? It's not death that worries me: It's thinking about it.

>>2389296
I thought like that when i had six and started with this clusterfuck of insomnia.
I am putting the brain as the "soul" you mention.
And i am wondering all this because what makes you a person, an individual, is the memories you have.
That time when you burned your hand, or the day a stove felt over you.
All that process that you have stored in your brain, represented as the paths of neurons inside that define the way you think, your personality...

If you were able to replicate yourself exactly, that other being that you are perceiving wouldn't be you, if we speak about your conscience.

I talk about making the brain durable enough, without losing the conscience (you) in the process, so you can bear the punishment that is an eternal life

>>2389364
Fap.
Or play videogames.
Or go study a foreing language.

Isn't the point of life to do things so you can forget for a moment you are going to die someday?

>>2389367
So... i am the only one who's been wondering this all this years.
But really... do you think about other forms to achieve immortality, or do we leave it like this?

>>2389367

If you cloned a brain right down to the atomic level, that new brain would still have all your memories. Where do you think memories are stored, a magic box in the sky? They are in the brain of course. We may not know exactly how the brain encodes and stores memories (although there a lot of decent guesses), but they are certainly a result of biological processes, just like the rest of a person's consciousness .

>>2389296
is right, in my opinion. Unless our consciousness is governed by some kind of non-physical entity such as a soul, then there's absolutely no reason to believe that a cloned brain wouldn't be YOU. The same goes for the teleporter problem: if your entire body is rebuilt exactly as it was when you entered the teleporter, that person is still you.

>>2389367

I understand where you're coming for, it's the most intuitive position. However, as there is no evidence even pointing in it's direction, I'm bound to agree with the more reasonable explanation that we are our structure.

Atoms don't have identity or memory. The Universe doesn't care if you're made of the same atoms you were yesterday, as long as they're all in the right place.

Cell necrosis.
If we ever achieve immortality, it will be through technology that has been designed to replenish cells immediately after they die. A basic example- skin cells. Our skin cells die quite often, and yet they are replenished when our bodies are young. As we become older, the cell replenishment cycle slows.
As you all should know, our bodies are made of cells- many different kinds.
It would be very expensive technology, and it would most likely need to be implanted at birth. Small nanoparticles would carry a chemical that, depending on the age of the carrier, would increase the chances of cell replenishment.

That being said, I think achieving immortality would be a terrible idea. I personally wouldn't want to live over 150 years, to be honest.

It's a hard thing to describe but I know what you are saying guys.

A perfect atomic clone of someone will have the same memories and essentially be.well, you.

But after the original you dies and they clone a new you are you still experiencing life through the clone? I don't think so, that would require some shift of conscious or something.


I think the future of life elongation will be nanotechnology. Nanobots repair and transport dead or cancerous cells, be able to provide life support on a microscopic level to your whole body through the blood stream and just constantly repair your body.

That and gene therapy. I don't think anyone will have this commercially available ever as increased life spans for a lot of people would kind of fuck up population. If you're a multi-billionaire then I believe you stand a chance at around year 2050.

>>2389437

It seems to me though that person would undeniably the most perfect of all copies in every possible way, I feel as though there may be a space-time element that is unaccounted for being that that you do not see the world out of those eyes of that perfect clone of you, nor do you exist in the same space as that perfect clone of you. It seems that your sight of the world and place in the world would not indiscriminately go into that perfect copy of you. Like you are the first instance of your person and your clone is the second instance of your person.

I do think trying to find some excuse for souls is rubbish though.

>>2389458
>That being said, I think achieving immortality would be a terrible idea. I personally wouldn't want to live over 150 years, to be honest

I imagine I probably wouldn't like living for ever either, but a mere 150 years seems a bit under-achieving doesn't it?

And it's not like being able to live forever would mean you would have to live forever. If life ever lost it's shine, one could always commit painless suicide.

>>2389471
>But after the original you dies and they clone a new you are you still experiencing life through the clone?

The clone would truly feel as if it were simply you. It would have experienced everything you experienced, and for all intents and purposes it would feel as if it had just woken up from a nap (death).

But would original you, who is concious right now, be living through the body of this clone? Probably not.

It's a ridiculous concept, to be honest. A better way of putting it is, what happens if you create a perfect clone of yourself while you are still alive? Of course you wouldn't actually experience two minds at once.

>>2389437
I suppose, as always, you are not understanding what i propose.

Let's say you are subject A
Subject A is cloned completely; thus, giving birth to Subject B.
Subject A is not both Subject A and Subject B.
In the very moment Subject B appears, it is another being, even if it is made perfectly as Subject A.

See the brain as the sourse of your conscience. It is there, and i am not saying is a soul or another metaphysic concept.
Just because it's made as Subject A, it doesn't mean it IS subject A.

By clonation, even by brain digitalization, Subject A, as and individual is not achieving said immortality.

If Subject A perishes, and Subject B is still alive, at the eyes of other unaware observers Subject A would be alive for them.
But in the bottom, Subject A would be dead. Subject B is just a legacy.
The conscience is the recopilation of the processes and expressions that the brain does.
Each individual has a different point of view; each sees life from different parts

I am not talking, again, as the soul as something dissosiated from the body or the brain. I'm talking about the conscience; what the brain stores.


4/10 if troll

>>2389415

I've been thinking about immortality in recent years OP.
I think a good first goal would be to stop aging.
You must of heard of this guy before.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/aubrey_de_grey.html

Now that we've agreed that if there were a perfect clone created of you and you and your clone are perfect copies but separate beings, will neither of you be virgins?

>>2389502
That's true, but I suppose I try to stick with the whole "natural death" thing as much as possible, so that's where that comes from.

>>2389479
>>2389471

Yes. You got what i try to say.
I don't from where the others started talking about the "soul" when i just say Conscience everywhere.

CONSCIENCE as constructed from the brain.

>>2389508

Is what you're saying that the clone's new memories that they form, and new actions, will cause the brain to change away from the original you, no longer becoming you? I certainly agree. But this also means that every second of your existance, your own conciousness is constantly dying and being reborn in a sense. You are not the same consciousness you were ten seconds ago. That consciousness is dead. But it certainly feels like the same conciousness!

Cloning yourself after death would be like going to sleep and waking up the next day. It's arguable that the consciousness that went to sleep has been gone for hours and is never coming back, but in the morning you don't think, "Oh shit I DIED".

>>Clone myself. Repeatedly have a hidden base of clones who have the more important memories and hormones that cause me to act the way I do.

>>Pray to the spirits of former selves much like avatar does in avatar: the last airbender.

>>Even if consciously aware am a clone, will feel and act the same, will understand WHY I clone, and forget all the non-important shit like names, anniversaries, and random shit that happened to me.

>>Basically Bioshock technology, wears outfits like the pic you see, but has a philosophy much closer to the anti-spirals.

>>Tenacious D's Kickapoo should be playing in your head right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stOB69uj3Rg

>>2389508
>Subject B is just a legacy.

Isn't that what we all are? We lose consciousness each time we go to sleep. We are completely different from our 10 year old selves (different body from growth and aging, much different memories and personality, different atoms constituting the body from exchanges of matter with the outside).

In your example, in the first instant both subjects would be subject A, only from that moment on, as they lived through different perspectives, they'd deviate into new distinct selves.

If the "original" subject is alive it's a duplication, if he's dead it's a revival.

And like I said atoms don't have memory, the argument of continuity of the brain is not valid. As far as we know consciousness has no more individuality than gravity.

>>2389523
Aaaaand that shows me the true face of /sci/.
I think i'm going back to /v / now...
It was good to talk to you, people.
Really

>>2389502

The main salvation I find in the though that I will one day die is not having to deal with or fear the problems and threats of the far-off future such as the sun dying or trying to avoid the possibility of the earth being wiped out by being hit by an unmanageable amount of radiation.

Other than seeming impossible to avert (and far, far off in the future) issues such as those are really the main ones that come to mind in fearing immortality.

Of course, I don't see why someone wouldn't want to live a bit longer just to see how things pan out.

>>2389532
If you clone yourself, you wouldn't be thinking as the clone if you die.
You die.
Your cells stop functioning and your matter transforms.
You would be alive for others, but thinking faithfully that you will live as the other after your life ceases, just because is modeled after you, is like having faith in a religion.

The clone is made with other matter. The clone is like you, but not you.

>>2389547
You have a strong point in that.
Think about humanity as a super being. Humans reproduce themselves to maintain what others have achieved. We get a certain "immortality" if we are remembered. and, as you mencion it, cells die and are replaced by others through mitosis.
Yes, atoms don't have a consciousness. But the brain structure as a whole does, which changes a little everytime the brain receives information through the senses. It is what makes you be, you.

Your position about the atoms is more that applausible, Dr. Manhattan, but i talk about maintaining alive and conscient all this memories, all that makes the person be what it is.
I talk about a way to keep the human race, in a minor scale, alive. And not replicate it for others to see if we lose it.

>>2389561
It's true what you say. Sometimes i don't even care about what i am going to do the next day, but that is why i proposed this as an escapist option.

Maybe you and i don't expect to be immortals, but someone else did it or will do.

>>2389615

You are assuming consciousness is a discretely unique individual "something" that each individual human possesses, separately from his/her brain structure. Something not physical, effectively a "soul", even if you refuse to call it that.

There's a much simpler hypothesis, that of consciousness being an universal property of sorts. To build upon the comparison with gravity I made in the last post: If we were to instantly replace the sun with a star of the exact same mass, you wouldn't say that we were under the influence of a new "different" force would you? Same mass, same distance, same gravitational force.

>>2389686

I forgot to link this video, which is very relevant to the thread's interests:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc

>>2389686
but the old sun would be sad about it

>>2389686

Well, of course all you are saying is correct.
But i am not basing this in a metaphysical conception of the personality.

If we had two computers with the same configuration, but if we used them for different purposes, they would be different in their functioning.
I talk, again, about consciousness as the way the brain works.
But, yes, i was going from the side of philosophy trying to explain the way you and me, for example, think different, even we we have similar body structures; we are to living beings.

I'll keep going in some minutes... My soup is burning...

>>2389760

I would love to continue this, however it's getting late here, I should go get some sleep.

Here's hoping I wake up the same person tomorrow morning!

>>2389686


As i was saying...
I tried to explain this by recurring to existentialism, as i said in the first post.
I am not affirmating that there is something further than the corporeal being, but you, as a living being, see the world, feel it and gather information about it in your brain through the conection of your neurons and the electric impulses that, by traveling a certain route of conected neurons, reproduce an stimule the brain had through the body's senses. The memories, as a matter of fact.

When you die, you stop taking that place in the world, as a sentient being. And the universe doesn't care.
If you made a replica of yourself, it would take your place. But what about you?
I say, cloning is just like writing a book. leaves something to be immortalized as a memory; as something that passes through the coming generations.
But you are not alive anymore.
If the sun could think and simulate all the things our brain does, as >>2389740 says...
It would only be replaced in its functions.
We wouldn't notice.
But the sun, the star itself, wouldn't exist as a star itself. Just as other particles in the vast space.

And i'm gone for a moment. I can smell the corn soup burning

>>2389848
You will be the same.
It's not an atom that makes you who you are.
It's your whole body, especially your brain, changing constantly, who does it.

Man... you should read more about cerebral processes.

>>2389895

If you are still the same person when you wake up in the morning, then that confirms cloning yourself after death would still be original you living through that clone's body. If you think cloning yourself after you die wouldn't be you, then you can't say you're truly the same person when you wake up after sleep, or the same person you were a few years ago.

But since personality is a combination of many things in the brain, all of which are constantly changing, it could be argued that you are not truly the same individual.

Neuroplasticity dictates that our brains are changing as a result of our experiences. Neural circuits are constantly being altered. If you change parts in a computer, you don't say it's functioning exactly the same anymore, but you still call it the same computer. You're only given the illusion that you are the same person, which is honestly good enough for everyone.

It's difficult to explain this concept, there are probably other people who would be able to do it much better.

>>2389707

Nice little video, though for the most part it gives a metaphor that shows only what has already been agreed upon on this thread.


I honestly can't expect that if a perfect clone of me were made that I would ever see the world through the eyes of the clone instance of myself, though everyone could surely see the clone as the exact same person, and the clone would too, because it would be.

>>2389997
That's what i was thinking about replacing pice by piece the brain.
You keep the illusion that you are still alive.
Thank you, then

>>2389296
You're an idiot; please kill yourself in a fire immediately.