Immortality is Achievable

Don't hold your breath. I suspect that fusion power has fewer hurdles than this and fusion has been 30 years in the future for a LONG time now.

Actually I suspect that relative immortality is FAR more likely to be achieved through conquering aging than by mapping a brain into a new body.

I would also remind you that this planet has limited resources. Do we really need people around for significantly more than 100 years? Do we really want this option? I'd argue that the answers are “no” and “no.” You've blogged about the problems of disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Do you think that introducing an elite class of wealthy immortals would help the situation?

You should check out 'The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology' by Ray Kurzweil. He discusses this (among other things).

Well, crap. Between you and Carl (both of which are PhDs, I'm feeling slightly less optimistic.

:(

I'm holding out for the singularity to help us then. :)

This is neat, but it's more along the lines ensuring that your memories always exist in some form, rather than immortality.

Transferring my memories to a new body isn't giving me immortality, it's transferring my memories to a new body. Not transferring my consciousness to the new body means that there will just be a doppelganger with my memories – I'll still be in my 65 year old body.

Might want to sign up for Cryonics, just to make sure you make it to this point. I know it sounds expensive, but you can set up a life insurance plan to pay for it — if you're young, it costs about as much as a cell phone plan right now.

I think the 'digital upload' of a 'mind' is the only realistic near-term scenario. We've been preserving small fragments of people's minds for thousands of years now, and the I.T. revolution continues to astonishingly increase our ability to do this– many, many exponential degrees over.

I don't think physical immortality is a sustainable, possible or good idea right now (or for the forseeable future), either – not without routine interplanetary travel and something resembling terraforming – but there's no reason why we can't store more & more of our thoughts digitally, or even conceivably develop some form of AI that ties them together and gives them an unprecedented ability to continue interacting on their own in a lifelike manner. 'Actual' AI that is self-aware could even develop out of this, in a more far-fetched scenario.

People will protest about creating 'software zombies', I am quite sure, but I can't imagine how this can possibly be stopped. Some form of it has probably already begun.

I've had many thoughts along this line, and come to the realization that the first probable option would be having some form of “brain preservation”, which would be the most likely organ to preserve. (Though, perhaps some portion of the spine might be necessary for full consciousness retention.)

Then sensory adaptation to either an android body or genetically debrained clone would be done either by remote transmission or by encasing the old brain into a cavity in the new body.

At some point, this will be the mode of research with the greatest amount of success.

Also, at some point, bodysnatching will be a problem with this research. Once brain preservation can be achieved, then, not too unlike vampires or zombies, a new race of people dependent on fresh young bodies will be born.

Another form that will be researched is the revival of cryogenically frozen brains. I do not believe any of these brains will have survived the instant freezing process, since every cell with water in it will have to have ruptured from the extreme cold. But, they can use this head as a type of “crystal map”, from which they can simulate by computer the pathways of the original brain, in various combinations of complexities for each neuron, synapse, axon and dendrite until they have a conscious person revived in computer form. (Sort of like taking the genetic material from a person and cloning it. You've revived the pattern, but not the original person. It's this very problem that I will never use a Star Trek style transporter on principle alone.)

Unfortunately, even a future run by atheists will be guided by their human passions and, therefore, bigotries. No human of any devising will live longer than a few hundred years, a thousand at most, by sheer circumstance of the inevitable instability of both civilization and environments, natural and unnatural. However, this might be long enough to make a lasting impression on current forms of humanity and it's divergent inheritors.

-=T=-

An interesting piece! Well done.

But…is it really necessary to transfer the information from one brain into another? Given the error rate of simply transferring a huge number of files from one computer drive into another, I don't see this being feasible.

I have a shorter and more elegant solution. Why not simply:

1.) grow a clone of your own body (using your own cells)
2.) transplant the brain into the new body?

I agree entirely about the ruptured cells (something that people seem to be willfully ignorant of). It's possible that we'll be able to overcome that difficulty with some sort of antifreeze solution, but for now .. all those frozen bodies and/or heads are dead.

I think you're being WAY too optimistic about the possibility of mapping those frozen brains. There are incredibly complex connections among the neurons of the brain and we can't expect all of those connections (or the relative strengths of those connections) to survive the freezing process.

We achieve immortality by what we leave behind. This may be our DNA in the form of children. It may be our words in the form of writings that survive the ages. It may be simply that we have done our part to improve the world in some small way.

Of course it is also true that the same sort of immortality is achieved by those who harm the world in some small (or large) way.

Immortality is an interesting thought experiment, but if you carry that thought to its conclusion, it isn't clear that immortality is all it's cracked up to be. This has been explored (quite well) by many science fiction authors. One of my favorite authors in recent years has been Greg Egan. He explores some of the ideas we're talking about here (immortality and brain transfer) in his most recent novel “Incandescence.” One of his earlier novels (“Permutation City”) just about convinced me that computer based AI was impossible. Interestingly, I don't think that this was his intention. Prior to reading the book, I had always taken for granted that a computer based AI (human simulation or other) would eventually happen .. though not in the near future. I won't spoil the book, but it made me give this some serious rethinking.

Anyone interested in mathematics, computer science, and physics would love this guy's books, but he also appeals to those who want to carry on novel-length thought experiments about possible futures.

I had the exact same idea

If you want to learn how to become immortal from a 2,800 year old man, check out my research at my main blog: http://www.BenAbba.com, or my podcasts at http://Achieving-Immortality.com.

If you really me to cut to the chase here, all of the people I have found, who are still alive today and are older than 1,000 years; they all have a strong belief in a creator. Something about have such a belief protects them all from becoming road-kill.

Be Well, Live Long, and Prosperous!