/sci/ - Science & Math

Realistically?

You want to go to someplace known for their arts and take Philosophy or some crap because Science aint gonna help you in this lifetime.

>>5747192
biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, grid/quantum simulation of organic molecues
yes that last thing is actually a major (at least in my country)

Bio engineering?
>>5747199
What's grid/quantum simulation of organic molecues like?

>>5747195
Even if I can't make it happen in this lifetime I could still aid in it's progress.

I would say molecular biology is your huckleberry.

Of course, you'll probably spend the rest of your life as a lab rat for big pharma making beans while the jackass frat boys that fucked all the girls in college while you were studying are the dudes wearing the suits, for whom you are working, and making 10 to 100 times what you do.

Enjoy!

Death of the body, death of the mind, or death of the consciousness?
If it's the first two, look into robotics, if it's the last, then give up.

>>5747315
>Death of the body
>Robotics
>implying your brain won't die eventually

>Death of the mind
>Robotics
>Implying with the death of the neurons your mind isn't gone

Neuroscience.
We are already working on cancer, heart disease, etc.
The major limiting factor is the degeneration of the brain. How do you replace brain matter without messing with the mind? Can it be done? Can we just prevent the cells from dying somehow?
I suppose we could replace the brain matter using stim-cell technologies, but what would happen? Would you lose memories? Would you become a different person? Would 'you' effectively die, leaving behind a clone of yourself with a different consciousness?

>>5747361
Don't be a retard. Replace the cells in the same place, allow the same synapse formation and you'll have the same memories. Also, muh ship of theesuraurus.

Study magic.

That's the only way death will be cured.
You should also rigidly define what it is you want to do, because if you want to cure death *permanently* you should probably start developing a way to reverse entropy. So yeah magic will probably help with that.

>>5747353
Transfer of the data in the mind to robot form via a virtual brain.
The consciousness would be lost, but the mind would live on.

>>5747397
>>The consciousness would be lost
[citation needed]

we can't define it and have no idea what gives rise to it.
You don't know if it wouldn't be preserved, or if special techniques could be developed that would preserve it.

>>5747432
It can be safely assumed. If you were to make an exact clone of yourself, would your consciousness suddenly split off between the both of you?
I am going to base what I'm saying on the assumption that it would not.

Therefore consciousness is confined to your body, and more specifically your brain, since we can assumed that you don't lose your consciousness when you lose some limbs. So constructing a robot brain duplicate of your mind, with all your memories would not transfer "your" consciousness, since it is outside your brain, which is where your consciousness is.

However, replacing parts of the brain with robotics is a more interesting question. It would seem that you wouldn't lose consciousness immediately, but at some point you'd lose it. Just as you can take away a little of the brain and still have it, but not all of the brain.

>>5747449
I assume by consciousness you want to really say; representation of the state of 1 individuals brain with an exact clone is the extent of the cloning process. There is no being transfer...
>/x/

>>5747449
I have wondered about what could cause a consciousness to die and be replaced.
If you cut off just a bit of the brain, and replace it with new stuff, and it is perfectly functional, has the consciousness been replaced? Probably not, but who knows. It could even be that if you suffer a great trauma to the brain, the consciousness is replaced. We would not know if a consciousness is replaced because it is only observable by the consciousness itself. For all I know, none of you have minds, you're just 'philosophical zombies.' But I'll assume you do.
I'm not sure what could cause a consciousness to be replaced. I think that if you simply clone your brain and destroy the first brain, your consciousness would be destroyed and the clone would have a separate but identical consciousness - presumably with the same memories as you had and with no knowledge that it was a new consciousness.
But suppose you replaced an entire hemisphere of the brain with new but identical matter, such that it was fully functional. Would you maintain the same consciousness?
Perhaps there is a particular area of the brain where this consciousness is manifested, and all other parts could be disposed of and replaced without any harm becoming of the mind.
What if you replaced one bit of the brain, and the consciousness remained, and then after some time, you replaced another bit, and the consciousness remained, and so on and so on, until the entirety of the brain material has been replaced. The consciousness would still be there? I think that might be the case. But there's no way to ever know, unfortunately.

>>5747484
>it is only observable by the consciousness itself
It's not observable at all. If you have the memories, you will think you are the original consciousness.

>>5747369
>thinking we can place the complex interplay of neurons with precison
We are not ever going to be able to build something like the brain, we grow something like the brain. Its not about placing cells in the right spot, it depends on how they interact that creates emergent properties of interacting cells, thought or conciousness, or whatever other primitive term I can pretend to understand

>>5747488
This has always intrigued me.
The idea that when someone loses their memories they are not the same person.
They are still "conscious" but they aren't the same person.
It brings up the question you could pose to those who believe in that each conciousness is a unique entity (like a soul).
If someone loses all of their memories, they are not the same person, they have the same body, but they are not the same person.
Does this not show that unique conciousness is a physical thing that can be destroyed?

Not what i believe and not representative of my ideas. Just an interesting question.

>>5747505
I'm scared that consciousness might be recycled/shifted slowly as time goes on, so that eventually one at one point is not the same as one 10 years ago.

Every once in a while, I think to myself "I'm still here" and breathe a aigh of relief.

>>5747484
> if you simply clone your brain and destroy the first brain, your consciousness would be destroyed and the clone would have a separate but identical consciousness
Stop using the term consciousness, It implies an aristotilian use of ideals/memes. What you are actually talking about is the interaction of cells in a system creating behavior, this an emergent phenomenome.

>>5747484
>But there's no way to ever know, unfortunately
Yep, dude this is the place to discuss things that are in principle unknowable. But spirituality/philosophy does not have a place here

>>5747505
You question is only interesting the lack of interesting thoughts it provokes in people who take you seriously
Unique: the initial conditions of a system have no effect on the behavior the state of the system at any chosen time.
conciousness is a physical thing, which side of the field did this fly out of
>same=person
A person is a community of cells not a being/machine/object.
We are not static like you seem to desire

>>5747510
The state of the system that you are is not "still" here, the state you exist in is in constant flux. There is no recycling or shift, just change in the system due to inputs/time

Neuroscience and bioengineering probably.

I call this the "chopped head problem". If you can keep the head alive, the person is technically alive, even if you have chopped the rest of his body and connected it to a machine. So there's no reason investigating anything but the head.
So, you have to keep the brain and surrounding tissues from deteriorating basically.

Honestly I think the only reason I keep trying to improve myself is for the ever so slight hope that I will live far longer than a humans current life span.

I think a lot of people do, for most people this comes in the form of an belief in an afterlife, for others it comes in the form of your name living on past your death.

If I were told right now that beyond any shred of doubt it is known that I will die within the next 50-60 years and within 20yrs following that I will be completely forgotten, then I think I would drop out of the physics program, and live a short life of nothing but pleasure (or just kill myself)

>>5747570
thats what i meant but ok

>>implying death is a disease

>>5747645
This. Please can we not "cure" death. Wth would we do with all the fucking people if we stopped dying? We can barely handle the baby boomers

>>5747650
Why don't you go and kill yourself then?

>>5747652
I started to explain why this is stupid, but go fuck yourself instead