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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Immortality and the definition of life
Thread: Immortality and the definition of life This thread is 10 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT»
blizzardboy
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posted September 08, 2009 05:51 PM
Edited by blizzardboy at 17:53, 08 Sep 2009.

You're so goofy sometimes. They're the same thing.
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TheDeath
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posted September 08, 2009 05:54 PM

Quote:
They're the same thing.
what is "the same thing"?
There is no such thing as identical copies in this world on anything
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blizzardboy
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posted September 08, 2009 05:56 PM

Stop convoluting everything. You said you're more fascinated by looking at the micro details than at the grand scheme.
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TheDeath
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posted September 08, 2009 06:02 PM

No, I said that it is much more incredible to think that something "cool" like a CPU is made of basic building blocks, and to think that by themselves they don't appear to have many uses. It is the "complexity of simplicity" (basic building blocks, not millions of different building blocks) I'm fascinated by here.
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blizzardboy
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posted September 08, 2009 06:06 PM

k
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ohforfsake
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posted September 08, 2009 06:18 PM

@TheDeath

If I repeatedly answered your recent posts I think we'd go very off topic, your example of computers and transistors (they basicly beeing mini-cpu's each and every weak, but together in team work strong and make an effect that's basicly the same just empowered) is correct, but that doesn't mean your claim is correct, however I won't go further into that.

If you though, as I understand it, believe that for all it holds true that for any quality to be present, every part of the building blocks of this object must hold the same quality, then we disagree, and it doesn't matter if you've defined life to begin at the cellular level, because cells are like I wrote earlier nothing more than lots and lots of protons, neutrons and electrons combined in various ways, and therefore these should also hold "existance" within them, or as blizzboy nicely puts it "consciously existing entity", given that was true everything should hold this quality and that's not what we observe.

I don't mind having the debate with you, about illusion of macroscopic world with the matrix reference, but I think it's for another thread, if you start such a thread I'd most likely participate.

Quote:
Of couse being an immortal machine would be cool.

But being immortal and having a human body...NO.


Well if you ask me, the human body is much like an advanced robot, that can actually self-repair through stam cells, and doesn't have the same problems as standard machinery does. I suppose it'd actually last longer than most machines, especially if we can boost the regenerative effects.

Quote:
A lot of it is unknown or poorly known to begin with. It's hard to define what makes something a consciously existing entity when we don't fully understand the nature of consciousness to begin with. We know it's there, we have an idea of where it functions in the brain, but we also know that the ocean has a floor; but that isn't to say that it's been thoroughly examined as much of it remains a mystery.


Good post

Quote:
If we're going to look at continued life as keeping the same body, we've already failed at the function. The "you" from 15 years ago has since been replaced down to the last molecule, and your memory has likewise been duplicated, like copying a CD. So on a molecular level, we've all "died", but we don't realize it because we preserve the memories. Of course, we generally look at life on a macro level, like Mvass said, and don't consider ourselves dead until our body stops duplicating itself. Our body is like a regime, and our consciousness is the line of prime ministers. Eventually, the regime itself dies too.


Maybe, I believe we consist of the combination of memory, and a concsciouss self, the concsiouss self only exists in the moment, and is uniquely defined thereby even if all molecules are replaces it doesn't change that you're still you, whereby the memory is what makes us able to understand time, and relate to it, and combining the consciouss self with memory we're able to exist in more than the moment, it's our consciousness that defines us, but without memory we're like without a body not able to express ourself.
Therefore I don't your theory of we never beeing the same from moment to moment holds true, nevertheless like yours are just a theory of relative good guesses, so are mine, and as you put it very well in the first part of your post, sadly we don't know yet.

But some few things do we know, from the simple basics of observation, even the entire world we observe is an illusion there can be no doubt that at least our "self" is here observing something, so the very fact the observing takes places is a very strong indicator. Everything else can very well be an illusion however, and no problem in that, but I do not believe that's what TheDeath is saying.

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TheDeath
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posted September 08, 2009 06:23 PM

Transistors are not "mini-CPUs" they don't compute anything at all. "Computation" is actually a "macro" quality, an illusion, because all it happens, is millions/billions of switches.

The analogy is very close to cells->brain level. Cells may not have the illusionary qualities we attribute to the object as a whole, but they actually COMPRISE that quality.

Let me put this another way. If you say that 10 people have the quality to lift a car, where 1 cannot (due to lack of strength), I would actually say that quality is illusionary. It's not the 10 people who have that quality, it is the individual person who applies an amount of strength on it -- together, the result is that the car is lifted, but the "lift car" quality does not exist, it is an illusion. What exists though, is 10 strengths applied on the car, not a "special kind of strength" but 10 basic strengths ("basic" in the sense that 1 person ALSO HAS IT).
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Darkshadow
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posted September 08, 2009 06:25 PM
Edited by Darkshadow at 18:26, 08 Sep 2009.

Boosting regeneration?Sounds like something the body would be inable to handle itself, would most likely need nanobots.

And a machine body would be good because your strenght limitations would be much lower than in human body.
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ohforfsake
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posted September 08, 2009 06:44 PM
Edited by ohforfsake at 18:45, 08 Sep 2009.

@TheDeath
Yes I believe I understand what you're trying to say here, but I do not find it that relevant for the topic.

Because you can find example where what you say holds true, does not mean it always holds true, here's what I was thinking with electricity:

Counter-example 1: No electric fluid can ever happen given no circuit is present, the components themselves doesn't create the flow, it's the configuration (you need a closed loop)

Counter-example 2: If you split a chopper or an airplane into enough parts it cannot fly, it's not because its component pocess the power of flight which get either multiplied in power due to many components or works together, but is due to the configuration of the plane / chopper which allows is to take advantage of laws of nature and thereby fly.

Many other counter-examples exists, and I understand that you may believe cells themselves are a consciouss existing entity each and every one (though not something we observe), however in that case, you should read my last few posts to see the same should hold true for everything in the universe then.

Though what I think you really means is that the consciouss existing entity is an illusion in its own right due to it not being present in the microscopic level and therefore only exists as an illusion much like the computer computing, to this I can only say read my post before this, the bottom part, and you'll see that the only thing we can be certain of is that we ourselves, our consciouss existant etinty, what defines us, can never be an illusion.

@DarkShadow

I was thinking more like Stem Cells actually.

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TheDeath
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posted September 08, 2009 06:46 PM

Quote:
Counter-example 1: No electric fluid can ever happen given no circuit is present, the components themselves doesn't create the flow, it's the configuration (you need a closed loop)
But the electrons still have the fields and all properties...

Quote:
Counter-example 2: If you split a chopper or an airplane into enough parts it cannot fly, it's not because its component pocess the power of flight which get either multiplied in power due to many components or works together, but is due to the configuration of the plane / chopper which allows is to take advantage of laws of nature and thereby fly.
Actually it's due to aerodynamics and the engine, both of which are made up of "stuff" and that stuff has the components themselves -- if we go to atomic/molecule level. This is the same example as my car analogy.

But anyway maybe it's not as much on-topic as I previously thought -- I was talking about the fact that it's not necessarily the brain that we have to look for immortality, but the cells, how to extract information from them etc...
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ohforfsake
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posted September 08, 2009 07:20 PM

Quote:
I was talking about the fact that it's not necessarily the brain that we have to look for immortality, but the cells, how to extract information from them etc...


But isn't extracting information from the brain or the cells of the brain basicly the same thing?

Btw. I agree, it's the cells we need to look at first and foremost.

Finally I thought, maybe because of all the illusion of macroscopic world part, that you're still trying to convince me that immortality was a bad idea.

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TheDeath
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posted September 08, 2009 07:59 PM

Depends what you mean by immortality, because clearly, if you mean an identical copy of you, it's impossible and a very bad idea. I see it as keeping the ideas & memories though, no matter the "form".
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Darkshadow
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posted September 08, 2009 08:06 PM

A thought, If we ever do become immortal, nature should balance the birth side
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Doomforge
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posted September 08, 2009 08:11 PM

I wonder how long would it take to fully forget something.

Like, that you played a game.

If you fully forget the sensation, say after 1000 years, getting bored is out of the picture, actually since you can re-apply the same pleasures over and over in time.

You'd seriously need a diary.

Anyway, isn't memory limited in its capacity? How much stuff can you fit there? If you live for 10000 years, I guess you'd reach an overflow point at which you couldn't just add new data.

So you wouldn't get any wiser, unless counting forgetting old stuff to learn new, but where does it take you? nowhere

Immortality would be pretty much based on re-playing the life over and over after each overload.
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ohforfsake
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posted September 09, 2009 01:15 PM
Edited by ohforfsake at 11:31, 10 Sep 2009.

I found this on the internet, pretty amazing, I wonder if she'll live forever given no accidents / diseases hits her.

http://www.zmescience.com/girl-that-doesnt-age-baffles-scientists-a-16-year-old-is-an-infan

Her ears probably won't last though, but you can always get plastics.

Quote:
Depends what you mean by immortality, because clearly, if you mean an identical copy of you, it's impossible and a very bad idea. /quote]

I follow it's impossible if every atom has to be the same, however I don't think that level of detail is necessary, and therefore to the level of exactness needed I think it's possible, but then again who knows, however it would be nice if you'd clear up what you mean by both the impossible part, and why it would be a bad idea.

Quote:
I see it as keeping the ideas & memories though, no matter the "form".


But would it truely be you? What differs you then from a machine with a file identical to your memory? I belive we consist of more than just a memory.

Quote:
A thought, If we ever do become immortal, nature should balance the birth side


Well if I'm right in my guess that we're all uniquely defined through configurations of brain cells, then the configurations are limited whereby there's a maximum number of existances available.
Given this number is reached all a new birth would produce is another body, it'd be one mind 2 bodies.
So I think if we'd travel to outer space there'd always be enough room for us, and no need to limit birth rates, though if we stay on earth, every kind of animal would overpopulate the globe.

Quote:
I wonder how long would it take to fully forget something.

Like, that you played a game.

If you fully forget the sensation, say after 1000 years, getting bored is out of the picture, actually since you can re-apply the same pleasures over and over in time.

You'd seriously need a diary.

Anyway, isn't memory limited in its capacity? How much stuff can you fit there? If you live for 10000 years, I guess you'd reach an overflow point at which you couldn't just add new data.

So you wouldn't get any wiser, unless counting forgetting old stuff to learn new, but where does it take you? nowhere

Immortality would be pretty much based on re-playing the life over and over after each overload.


Yeah you'd think there'd be some kind of maximum storage, though from everyday experience we do forget lots of things already, I mean thinking back I can't remember the first 2 years of my life, and the rest of are just glimpses I choose to preserve at the time of the given event, such as my 7 years birthday, and other relative random events.

Heck there're even persons I don't remember anymore who sometimes comes up to me and greets me, so I think it's pretty much already like what you describe, we just don't notice it, because what we don't remember, well we don't remember.

Edit: I found some more links of interest
This one should answer a lot of general questions - http://www.senescence.info/

And this one should answer a lot of the questions that many probably have thought about or have presented in this topic -
http://www.senescence.info/myths.html

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Doomforge
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posted September 10, 2009 03:00 PM
Edited by Doomforge at 15:01, 10 Sep 2009.

Think global. Humanity is like ants at times. Most people live doing their jobs over and over, repeating the same tasks endlessly, living their petty lives. Does it need to extend to eternity? I really don't think so. I actually agree with the point that we have better things to do. Until the "average life" changes to a point where living longer will actually have some benefits other than 600 years of seeing the same four office walls instead of 60.

The only ones who'd benefit from extended lifespan would be the ones that travel the planet, those with artistic minds, and so on. And those are like, 0,0000000000001% population? Or less?

In other words: yes. It's redundant right now.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 10, 2009 03:15 PM

Quote:
Think global. Humanity is like ants at times. Most people live doing their jobs over and over, repeating the same tasks endlessly, living their petty lives. Does it need to extend to eternity? I really don't think so. I actually agree with the point that we have better things to do. Until the "average life" changes to a point where living longer will actually have some benefits other than 600 years of seeing the same four office walls instead of 60.

The only ones who'd benefit from extended lifespan would be the ones that travel the planet, those with artistic minds, and so on. And those are like, 0,0000000000001% population? Or less?

In other words: yes. It's redundant right now.


I actually don't like this elitist point of view at all - it judges people's life in a very inappropriate way: who are you to say that the life of most people is so "petty" that a longer life would be redundant?
Not are artists or travellers worth more than the others.
If you find your life boring and can't imagine to live longer, that's fine; but what makes you speak for everyone else?
And about "needing" to extend life... since when is the quesztion of whether something is needed of interest when it comes to developing or researching it?

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Doomforge
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posted September 10, 2009 03:50 PM
Edited by Doomforge at 16:05, 10 Sep 2009.

It's not elitist. It's the truth. Look around and see. I'm not saying I'm any better. It would be false modesty to say average Joe's life actually needs that kind of a boost, though. I don't see anything wrong in calling mine or my neighbor's life problems petty. Global wise, they are extremely petty. Don't you agree?

And because it's such a hard task, even if possible, it would have to take lots of money and time, both of which could be used elsewhere: for beating AIDS for instance. If you could pick what "tech" you want next, like in Civilization game, I mean. If it pops out at random I obviously won't complain. I'm against devoting time and money to it, though.

I think humanity is not ready for immortality and doesn't need it at all. Nothing elitistic in this claim. More of a conscious analysis of what we, "ordinary people" leave in and for.

Not to mention the problems it would bring. Feeling of inequality, and if everyone could attain it, the world would simply become completely uninhabitable because of extremely severe cause of overpopulation.


And of course artists and scientists would benefit more from extended life. They would give much to humanity. Their life isn't any more important, but would give us much more if they could live longer, of that I'm sure. However, us average Joes wouldn't give much except another 500 years in office, don't you think? And since everyone can do it, going strictly by "what benefits humanity" and shoving morals aside, it's unimportant whether that office job is done by us or our kids/grandkids. Thus, there is no difference - "utility wise" - between us living 1000 years with no kids or living 80 years, but followed by 10 more generations.  As little pieces of machinery, we break to be replaced by pieces that take over our duties again and again. As in Lion King (), it's the circle of life. It's as efficient as immortality as long as it goes on.


Note that I'm trying to push morals aside here. Of course everyone would like ie. their parents to live longer, or their friends, and so on. People who enjoy life also would like to enjoy it longer, and so on. Thing is, It doesn't really bring any "usefulness". Do I sound like TheDeath here?
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TheDeath
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posted September 10, 2009 04:16 PM
Edited by TheDeath at 16:19, 10 Sep 2009.

Quote:
And about "needing" to extend life... since when is the quesztion of whether something is needed of interest when it comes to developing or researching it?
Because most of us don't like to waste money on useless research. Whether you like it or not, most research has a purpose, and usually it is for military reasons (even the INTERNET was born because of that, not because "OMG let's do it for the heck of it!", back then the internet couldn't be used for non-existant home computers anyway).

By the way there should be this rule if we ever achieve immortality, called "You can't have kids and become immortal at the same time", making it illegal. It's not like we don't have enough overpopulation as it is.

Immortality is far from being an Utopia though -- I would consider getting rid of all mundane jobs the first step, or automatizing them.
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Doomforge
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posted September 10, 2009 04:21 PM

Quote:
Immortality is far from being an Utopia though -- I would consider getting rid of all mundane jobs the first step, or automatizing them.


That should be something to work at
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