Immortality? A question for you.

[gruntlabor]

I don't see the human body ever being immortale, or our consciousness being harvested and transferred to another vessel.

Me neither, but I can see plenty of corrupt providers of those services.

 

[Paladin1950]

Who’d want to live to 300 years old ?

Especially if all of your family members are long since dead.

 

[VisualBrian]

Certainly not in these bodies, but once AI has become mainstream and we can transfer our essence (whatever we choose to keep) to it, then yes, I think we will be able to go on forever.

 

[sailormann]

This is a cool conversation. It's interesting to see such a variety of veiws on the subject of life and death, which is what immortality is all about. You might even say, to be or not to be.
And there always seems to be two camps divided on the matter, the religious on one hilltop, and the intellectual (i.e. scientific, technological) on the other. There is also a third camp as well which is a bit of a philosophical fringe group of spiritualists, who's beliefs are more reliant upon and attuned to intuition, more feeling than thinking, being than doing, and more to do with spiritual growth, enlightenment, awakening, and ascending to ever higher levels of consciousness.This Spiritualist group consists of those quiet ones who carry on the study and teachings of the Great Mystery schools of antiquity, preserving and passing on the secret knowledge to those few who sincerely seek it.
So here I find myself feeling compelled to remind you that you all already have what you are looking for, and for all intents and purposes that includes immortality. Yes, the body dies and returns to dust, dust to dust, but don't you know you are more than that? Don't you feel it, in your heart, and in your bones?
You have an essence within you, hidden behind and beneath your persona, that which you think you are, what some call the ego or self-identity. This is the true you, and it has a mission, and a purpose, and a fate, which is to go through whatever it must, and for however long it must, in order to experience and know itself. It is the very process of creation itself, and it is unfolding before you right now, and for all eternity.
Call it the trick of finding what you didn’t lose. Or of always arriving at the place you never left. Existing’s tricky, but to live is a gift.

 

[VaughanJB]

Would I like immortality? Well, it's not like I want to die, so yeah, I'd like to be immortal.

However, that comes with caveats. Be immortal in my body of today? Hell no. My body at 21? Hell yes.

Then we have simple biology. The human body is so complex, it's difficult to imagine anything other than a robotic future. We're so fragile, and systems in our body so reliant on other systems. Then you have viruses, bacteria's, predatory animals, and all the ways we've invented to kill ourselves (planes, cars, electricity, and so on.) I can't see the human body being possible of immortality, not unless some super biological healing tool was found.

Right now there is technology that will transfer the consciousness of a dying person into an AI, essentially preserving that person forever.

I think if you dig into this you'll find it's very fanciful, and not possible today. I expect we can recreate a map of the brain cells and neurons, and the connection between them, but I'm not sure how a simple electromagnetic map would translate to remembering specifics, such as a dogs name. If they could do as you suggest, the treatment for diseases like Alzheimer's would be very different, imo. We simply don't have all the answers about how memory works right now, and we lack the tools to look inside our brains.

Still, in a scientific fiction, I can see something more akin to Robocop. In this movie, the brain and spine is transferred from a man to a robotic interface. Eventually, that could be a way forward. We'd be less susceptible to disease and the changing weather conditions. As our planet becomes less friendly to humans, a robotic future would flourish.

I do believe we will one day move beyond our solar system and inhabit other worlds. We have about 7 billion years of evolution to go before the Sun decides to snack on Earth. Think of the pace of change today, and then that rate over 7 billion years! So, while I believe humans will some day go beyond Earth, I don't think it'll be in our current form. I think it'll be more robotic.

It's a complex problem!

 

[gruntlabor]

... you all already have what you are looking for, and for all intents and purposes that includes immortality. Yes, the body dies and returns to dust, dust to dust, but don't you know you are more than that? Don't you feel it, in your heart, and in your bones?
You have an essence within you, hidden behind and beneath your persona, that which you think you are, what some call the ego or self-identity. This is the true you, and it has a mission, and a purpose, and a fate, which is to go through whatever it must, and for however long it must, in order to experience and know itself. It is the very process of creation itself, and it is unfolding before you right now, and for all eternity.
Call it the trick of finding what you didn’t lose. Or of always arriving at the place you never left. Existing’s tricky, but to live is a gift.

If only we look inside ourselves --all the answers are there! After all, we --I mean our particles, ARE a part of the universe.

 

[sailormann]

I

If only we look inside ourselves --all the answers are there! After all, we --I mean our particles, ARE a part of the universe.

I just read that our bodies are composed mostly of water and just a few pounds of the almost embarrassingly common and inexpensive minerals and chemicals found on Earth. In other words, water and dirt.
There is nothing special about the recipe, other than, as you say, it surely contains a little sprinkling of stardust. The fact that we exist and live at all is a complete miracle. We shouldn't be here. It is statistically astronomically improbable and unlikely that we do, yet here we are, and here is everything else as well, a world overflowing with every conceivable type of life form imaginable.
I realize more and more each day what a truly amazing gift life is. And to find that I Am.

 

[Paco Dennis]

 

[OneEyedDiva]

Would I like immortality? Well, it's not like I want to die, so yeah, I'd like to be immortal.

However, that comes with caveats. Be immortal in my body of today? Hell no. My body at 21? Hell yes.

Then we have simple biology. The human body is so complex, it's difficult to imagine anything other than a robotic future. We're so fragile, and systems in our body so reliant on other systems. Then you have viruses, bacteria's, predatory animals, and all the ways we've invented to kill ourselves (planes, cars, electricity, and so on.) I can't see the human body being possible of immortality, not unless some super biological healing tool was found.


I think if you dig into this you'll find it's very fanciful, and not possible today. I expect we can recreate a map of the brain cells and neurons, and the connection between them, but I'm not sure how a simple electromagnetic map would translate to remembering specifics, such as a dogs name. If they could do as you suggest, the treatment for diseases like Alzheimer's would be very different, imo. We simply don't have all the answers about how memory works right now, and we lack the tools to look inside our brains.

Still, in a scientific fiction, I can see something more akin to Robocop. In this movie, the brain and spine is transferred from a man to a robotic interface. Eventually, that could be a way forward. We'd be less susceptible to disease and the changing weather conditions. As our planet becomes less friendly to humans, a robotic future would flourish.

I do believe we will one day move beyond our solar system and inhabit other worlds. We have about 7 billion years of evolution to go before the Sun decides to snack on Earth. Think of the pace of change today, and then that rate over 7 billion years! So, while I believe humans will some day go beyond Earth, I don't think it'll be in our current form. I think it'll be more robotic.

It's a complex problem!

I meant to add the words "in the works" after technology! This capability is not a matter of if, but when. How often have we seen things that used to be considered science fiction become science fact. You're right about the complexity. The technology won't be available to all and what rights would the "immortal" but not really human, have?

 

[VaughanJB]

I meant to add the words "in the works" after technology! This capability is not a matter of if, but when. How often have we seen things that used to be considered science fiction become science fact. You're right about the complexity. The technology won't be available to all and what rights would the "immortal" but not really human, have?

I worked on the cutting edge of IT for a lot of my career. At this point, I've totally given up on knowing what the heck is going on. We will make some amazing advances over the coming 2000 years. From the prospective of today, we can't hope to know what it will be like. Which is cool when you think about it.

 

[VaughanJB]

Just watched this:

 

[Teacher Terry]

No a lifespan of 120 is about the maximum we will reach from what I have read.

 

[LoveTulips]

I don't think so.

 

[Nathan]

Who’d want to live to 300 years old ?

...I would like to give that a shot, might turn out to be interesting.

 

[dilettante]

I doubt that we'll see longevity pushed past a top end of 200 years. Until we know a lot more about the mind, consciousness, memory, and probably more I doubt that transference into a rejuvenated clone body (much less artificial hardware) will even begin to be a possibility.

If you grant that, we may as well be discussing whether Superman can beat up God at this point in time. If you don't, I excuse myself from the discussion unless somebody can describe some realistic mechanism for extreme longevity, much less immortality.

I guess I've read too much fact and speculative fiction over my life that studied the problem and its implications if successful to get much out of opinion polls. The issues have been discussed to death since the birth of human speech permitted them to be shared and mulled over, and probably even longer if burial ritual evidence from even earlier times is considered.

If you take a spiritual approach to the answers then all bets are off. But that isn't really in keeping with the original question if I'm not mistaken.

 

[David777]

My career was in hardware electronics so though no expert, have studied much in that realm of physics phenomenon. All mass is actually structured energy that if two anti particles meet are instantly changed to pure bosun photonic energy. A rather incredible phenomenon at deep levels we don't yet understand.

What all Earth organic animals have but not plants is oscillating standing wave electromagnetic brain wave fields that medical science for decades incorrectly considered were mere epiphenomenon of neural firings. At the same time, brain consciousness science wondered how we have simultaneous parallel awareness. The answer is simple and increasing numbers of neuroscientists are leaning towards those fields as being the obvious answer because otherwise there is nothing else tying it all together. Further why would all animals otherwise have such fields?

Every second about 100 trillion neutrinos, most originating in the core of our sun then due to collisions, taking tens of thousands of years to reach the sun surface, in 8 minutes reaches the Earth then passes through our bodies and in a short time totally through the Earth without many hitting anything. An ancient advanced race of intelligent entities, likely mostly AI inorganic, might given billions of years be able to develop a way to totally XYZ scan as digitized data most anything down to molecular levels. In doing so and knowing the impedance characteristics of organic neural material, then be able to effectively duplicate by non-organic means the impedance characteristics of our body and brain in an effective impedance container that would then possibly be the same as our mind experience.

Our galaxy has billions of stars in a local universe of billions of galaxies within possible infinite space and time. To conclude we Earth monkeys are the first and only entities to achieve intelligence is extremely unlikely. And to suggest even if such did, over eternity none would ever reach non-organic AI immortality ignores even our current level of what will likely be possible in mere decades.

Such an earlier race of ancient intelligent entities over vast periods of time would have enormous reasons to develop ways to selectively save at least some worthy otherwise mortal organic life intelligent creatures. Thus if physically possible it might come to be as I lean towards. It would possibly be considered and be appreciated by entities as the most important gift in the universe.

As Jesus related, eternal life can continue with God after our physical death versus otherwise certain mortal non-existence. In other words we pass into a realm beyond our organic physical bodies. Further in all 3 synoptic gospels, apostles witnessed its reality during the Transfiguration. There is no mortality recreating organic bodies somehow. It is different and we were never allowed an explanation as to how but rather require belief, faith, and hope. Jesus said to Martha, " I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.

 

[Pepper]

Jesus was pitching his rap.

 

[davey]

Jesus said to Martha, " I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.

that summed it up rather neatly actually - this is the meaning of life? and then we wanna ask yes but how??

 

[Paco Dennis]

Jesus said to Martha, " I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.

that summed it up rather neatly actually - this is the meaning of life? and then we wanna ask yes but how??

How what? He says just believe in him, that gives you eternal life.

 

[MarkD]

You have an essence within you, hidden behind and beneath your persona, that which you think you are, what some call the ego or self-identity.

Loved your reply but I might quibble with the idea that we ‘have’ an essence. We are an essence but is it ours in particular? It seems to me that nothing which sets us apart from others as an individual is of the highest importance. Life is eternal becoming, not just endlessly persisting in a settled form.

Last night I was just reading this in Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy. It all came from one paragraph but I’ll divide it up to appease our wonderful website’s aversion to long paragraphs:

The most meagre and non-committal hypothesis is that of Hume. “Mankind,” he says, “are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”

An almost identical answer is given by the Buddhists, whose doctrine of anatta is the denial of any permanent soul, existing behind the flux of experience and the various psycho-physical skandhas (closely corresponding to Hume’s “bundles”), which constitute the more enduring elements of personality.

Hume and the Buddhists give a sufficiently realistic description of selfness in action; but they fail to explain how or why the bundles ever became bundles. Did their constituent atoms of experience come together of their own accord? And, if so, why, or by what means, and within what kind of a non-spatial universe?

To give a plausible answer to these questions in terms of anatta is so difficult that we are forced to abandon the doctrine in favour of the notion that, behind the flux and within the bundles, there exists some kind of permanent soul, by which experience is organized and which in turn makes use of that organized experience to become a particular and unique personality.

This is the view of the orthodox Hinduism, from which Buddhist thought parted company, and of almost all European thought from before the time of Aristotle to the present day. But whereas most contemporary thinkers make an attempt to describe human nature in terms of a dichotomy of interacting psyche and physique, or an inseparable wholeness of these two elements within particular embodied selves, all the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy make, in one form or another, the affirmation that man is a kind of trinity composed of body, psyche and spirit. Selfness or personality is a product of the first two elements. The third element … is akin to, or even identical with, the divine Spirit that is the Ground of all being. Man’s final end, the purpose of his existence, is to love, know and be united with the immanent and transcendent Godhead.

 

[Stoppelmann]

Further in all 3 synoptic gospels, apostles witnessed its reality during the Transfiguration.

The Gospels are not as synoptic as people make them out to be. They all have their own agenda, and the first, ascribed to Mark, has the transfiguration exactly in the middle of the Gospel. From then on, Jesus descends, not just the mountain but into arrest and crucifixion. Essentially, this is a perfect example of a tragedy in Greek tradition. It also figures because the history of thought shows how each time someone brings along a new paradigm, someone in authority doesn't like it, and very often, that person ends up incarcerated or killed.

I'm quite sure that Jesus was bringing a new paradigm into the situation his people found themselves in: Let love transform you! We don't have to rebel against occupation and oppression but rise above it by reaching out and forgiving each other. We don't need another military hero but a healer who teaches people to pull together. We don't need religious militants but a therapeutic society, which lifts people out of suffering and shame. The wisdom traditions have said this for millennia.

Buddha was purportedly asked by a king whether he could conquer another nation. Buddha sent people into that country, and they came back saying how kind the people were and how they cared for the old and the weak. Buddha said to the king, "You may defeat their army, but you'll never conquer that population!"

Immortality is overrated - it is love that widens and deepens our lives, bringing together what has become estranged, healing the wounds, opening our eyes, and uniting us with the sacred.

 

[davey]

who said love wasn't immortal?

 

[Stoppelmann]

who said love wasn't immortal?

I think that the broader sense of what I was saying is clear enough.

 

[Warrigal]

Do you think humans will ever become immortal through enhancements from technology? I do think so. Maybe people will live to be several hundred years old or just last forever. Vaccines will be perfected to prevent disease and if our bodies and minds don't wear out anything is possible. What do you think about this? Do you see it as a possibility for the future of human kind? What's your take on this.

Read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It is not a future I would welcome.

 

[Stoppelmann]

Read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It is not a future I would welcome.

I get the feeling that we are, in some ways, in the middle of it.