Immortality Is Possible
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However, if you didn't quite forget everything, breast feeding on a regular basis could prove interesting.
viaducting wrote:
breast feeding on a regular basis could prove interesting
Too bad if you are lactose intolerant (like me). :)
My .NET Business Application Framework My Younger Son & His "PET"
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Immortal Jellyfish Apparently, this certain type of jellyfish is capable of reverting to a less developed state and then redeveloping, repeatedly and without end. I'm not sure if I'd like that particular type of immortality. You'd have to become a baby every 70 years or so, and you'd probably forget everything you learned in that lifetime... or, uh, growth period. On a related note, check out the life cycle of a jellyfish: jellyfish life cycle I think I need one of these as a pet.
aspdotnetdev wrote:
You'd have to become a baby every 70 years or so
Take my word for it, it takes less than 70 years. ;P
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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viaducting wrote:
breast feeding on a regular basis could prove interesting
Too bad if you are lactose intolerant (like me). :)
My .NET Business Application Framework My Younger Son & His "PET"
That works out perfectly. When you inevitably let loose in your diaper, you get the woman you just breast fed off of to take your undergarments off. :)
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Immortal Jellyfish Apparently, this certain type of jellyfish is capable of reverting to a less developed state and then redeveloping, repeatedly and without end. I'm not sure if I'd like that particular type of immortality. You'd have to become a baby every 70 years or so, and you'd probably forget everything you learned in that lifetime... or, uh, growth period. On a related note, check out the life cycle of a jellyfish: jellyfish life cycle I think I need one of these as a pet.
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viaducting wrote:
breast feeding on a regular basis could prove interesting
Too bad if you are lactose intolerant (like me). :)
My .NET Business Application Framework My Younger Son & His "PET"
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
Too bad if you are lactose intolerant (like me).
All infant mammals can digest lactose; most stop producing lactase (the enzyme that allows milk to be digested) at between 3% and 5% of their lifespan. This helps force the critter off of mother's milk and on to regular food. So if you were to revert to childhood and "regenerate," presumably you could drink milk again. For what it is worth, about 75% of the human population either stop producing lactase after infancy, or produce it at a greatly decreased rate. The 25% who are lactose tolerant in adulthood are the mutants ;P
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Immortal Jellyfish Apparently, this certain type of jellyfish is capable of reverting to a less developed state and then redeveloping, repeatedly and without end. I'm not sure if I'd like that particular type of immortality. You'd have to become a baby every 70 years or so, and you'd probably forget everything you learned in that lifetime... or, uh, growth period. On a related note, check out the life cycle of a jellyfish: jellyfish life cycle I think I need one of these as a pet.
Awesome! However, as much as I can think of lots of uses for being immortal (My TODO list! Completed! Woohoo!) I'm not sure how I'd use a mouse if I only had jellyfish tentacles to work with. Keyboarding would be easy, but the wheel on that mouse? That's going to cause problems.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
Too bad if you are lactose intolerant (like me).
All infant mammals can digest lactose; most stop producing lactase (the enzyme that allows milk to be digested) at between 3% and 5% of their lifespan. This helps force the critter off of mother's milk and on to regular food. So if you were to revert to childhood and "regenerate," presumably you could drink milk again. For what it is worth, about 75% of the human population either stop producing lactase after infancy, or produce it at a greatly decreased rate. The 25% who are lactose tolerant in adulthood are the mutants ;P
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
presumably you could drink milk again
And this time I will like it. :)
My .NET Business Application Framework My Younger Son & His "PET"
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Awesome! However, as much as I can think of lots of uses for being immortal (My TODO list! Completed! Woohoo!) I'm not sure how I'd use a mouse if I only had jellyfish tentacles to work with. Keyboarding would be easy, but the wheel on that mouse? That's going to cause problems.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Since everyone else would be a jellyfish too, we / they would develop jellyfish-friendly input devices. And just think how fast you could type, with all those tentacles! Good luck with the TODO list: if it is anything like mine, getting something off it appears to spontaneously generate two more items. It's a sort of ToDo-hydra composite really. :laugh:
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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Since everyone else would be a jellyfish too, we / they would develop jellyfish-friendly input devices. And just think how fast you could type, with all those tentacles! Good luck with the TODO list: if it is anything like mine, getting something off it appears to spontaneously generate two more items. It's a sort of ToDo-hydra composite really. :laugh:
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
OriginalGriff wrote:
ToDo-hydra
My new favourite term.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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According to some it's extremely close already, google "Actuarial escape velocity" for some interesting reading.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
Very interesting. Only problem is, I remember people saying exactly the same thing back in the 70s when I was a kid. I recall someone on one of the TV programmes saying that "children today have a good chance of living for ever" or at least a very very long time. All I can say is they'd better hurry up...
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Very interesting. Only problem is, I remember people saying exactly the same thing back in the 70s when I was a kid. I recall someone on one of the TV programmes saying that "children today have a good chance of living for ever" or at least a very very long time. All I can say is they'd better hurry up...
Well, I was a kid in the seventies and I ain't dead yet.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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Well, I was a kid in the seventies and I ain't dead yet.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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Awesome! However, as much as I can think of lots of uses for being immortal (My TODO list! Completed! Woohoo!) I'm not sure how I'd use a mouse if I only had jellyfish tentacles to work with. Keyboarding would be easy, but the wheel on that mouse? That's going to cause problems.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
TODO list complete? Will never happen, especially with me since I'm married. Wives never let the TODO list get empty. Not long after we were married and moved into our new place, my wife start a printed todo list for me which she put on the fridge. Despite my best efforts it continued to grow (it grew even faster after my worst efforts). When it got to the bottom of the page I warned the wife that she wasn't allowed to start a second page - so she reprinted the list with a smaller font :doh:
Graham Librarians rule, Ook!
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Well, I was a kid in the seventies and I ain't dead yet.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
How about now?
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TODO list complete? Will never happen, especially with me since I'm married. Wives never let the TODO list get empty. Not long after we were married and moved into our new place, my wife start a printed todo list for me which she put on the fridge. Despite my best efforts it continued to grow (it grew even faster after my worst efforts). When it got to the bottom of the page I warned the wife that she wasn't allowed to start a second page - so she reprinted the list with a smaller font :doh:
Graham Librarians rule, Ook!
That's how the Tories are reducing waiting lists...
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Very interesting. Only problem is, I remember people saying exactly the same thing back in the 70s when I was a kid. I recall someone on one of the TV programmes saying that "children today have a good chance of living for ever" or at least a very very long time. All I can say is they'd better hurry up...
Back in the 70's I was reading things like 'Methuselah's Children' by Isaac Asimov. Perhaps the first Methuselah Foundation. But as for living longer, given the state of things, why would you wish to? :~ This might be the golden age as far as most things still exist, but the future doesn't seem to indicate that will always be the case.
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Immortal Jellyfish Apparently, this certain type of jellyfish is capable of reverting to a less developed state and then redeveloping, repeatedly and without end. I'm not sure if I'd like that particular type of immortality. You'd have to become a baby every 70 years or so, and you'd probably forget everything you learned in that lifetime... or, uh, growth period. On a related note, check out the life cycle of a jellyfish: jellyfish life cycle I think I need one of these as a pet.
The only kind of immortality that's interesting is immortality of the consciousness of self-sameness, which requires memory. The immortality of a jellyfish is no more interesting than the immortality of a rock. Even the immortality of the consciousness of self-sameness is, as a practical matter, an illusion. Any being that is complex enough to be conscious of a self changes over time, to the point where what one was in the past may be completely repudiated by what one is now, or profoundly regretted by what one has become. Any interesting form of immortality is, ultimately, undesirable, and we should thank God that it does not exist.
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The only kind of immortality that's interesting is immortality of the consciousness of self-sameness, which requires memory. The immortality of a jellyfish is no more interesting than the immortality of a rock. Even the immortality of the consciousness of self-sameness is, as a practical matter, an illusion. Any being that is complex enough to be conscious of a self changes over time, to the point where what one was in the past may be completely repudiated by what one is now, or profoundly regretted by what one has become. Any interesting form of immortality is, ultimately, undesirable, and we should thank God that it does not exist.
New iterations need not be considered to overwrite the past self. One might consider it growth, so long as such an immortal mind was capable of growing forever. And if an immortal being could remember its past self, there might be emotions and thoughts that we've never had a chance to experience. Perhaps they would feel a sense of achievement, at how much they'd changed over time. Or maybe they'd go through different stages of emotion and thought, perhaps never ending, or perhaps ending up at some inevitable conclusion. If you are interested in this subject, you might want to watch The Man From Earth. It's basically a bunch of friends talking about one of their friends who is supposedly immortal. And he's there and participates in the discussion. It's pretty interesting.
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New iterations need not be considered to overwrite the past self. One might consider it growth, so long as such an immortal mind was capable of growing forever. And if an immortal being could remember its past self, there might be emotions and thoughts that we've never had a chance to experience. Perhaps they would feel a sense of achievement, at how much they'd changed over time. Or maybe they'd go through different stages of emotion and thought, perhaps never ending, or perhaps ending up at some inevitable conclusion. If you are interested in this subject, you might want to watch The Man From Earth. It's basically a bunch of friends talking about one of their friends who is supposedly immortal. And he's there and participates in the discussion. It's pretty interesting.
"New iterations need not be considered to overwrite the past self." In the case of a jellyfish, it does, or in the case of any organism that is reiterated by reconstructing the entire organism from a single one of its cells. Also, in cases where this reiteration is naturally possible, it is highly doubtful that there is any sense of self to begin with. Even when you clone a human being from a single cell, there is no sense of continuity from or memory of the parent. "One might consider it growth, so long as such an immortal mind was capable of growing forever" I think it's safe to assume that memory requires structure in order for memory to exist. In matter, structure requires space and mass. So over time, there is only a finite amount of memory that the organism can retain. Eventually the matter embodying the memory becomes saturated and in order to retain new memories, old memories have to gradually fade out. It's moot whether over long stretches of time we can regard the organism as retaining the same sense of self if it continuously replaces its past memories with new memories. If we can't, then there's no meaningful sense in which we can say the sense of self can be immortal. On the other hand, it's also moot to claim that an organism that eventually replaces all of its past memories with new memories necessarily loses the same sense of self that it had previously, so long as through it all the organism retains its same relationship to its environment. On the other hand, environments are constantly changing themselves, so retaining the same relationship may be impossible. "And if an immortal being could remember its past self, there might be emotions and thoughts that we've never had a chance to experience" As pointed out above, there is going to be a limit to what an immortal being can remember. But it's true that a self-conscious immortal organism can continue to evolve mentally forever. But it is moot whether it retains the same sense of self that it had, let us say, 10,000 years earlier. Hence, nothing is immortal in a non-trivial sense that is embodied in matter. "Perhaps they would feel a sense of achievement, at how much they'd changed over time" Eventually, they wouldn't even know how much they've changed over time. "Or maybe they'd go through different stages of emotion and thought, perhaps never ending, or perhaps ending up at some inevitable conclusion" If the organism goes through enough stages, it will eventually completely lose its identification with
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"New iterations need not be considered to overwrite the past self." In the case of a jellyfish, it does, or in the case of any organism that is reiterated by reconstructing the entire organism from a single one of its cells. Also, in cases where this reiteration is naturally possible, it is highly doubtful that there is any sense of self to begin with. Even when you clone a human being from a single cell, there is no sense of continuity from or memory of the parent. "One might consider it growth, so long as such an immortal mind was capable of growing forever" I think it's safe to assume that memory requires structure in order for memory to exist. In matter, structure requires space and mass. So over time, there is only a finite amount of memory that the organism can retain. Eventually the matter embodying the memory becomes saturated and in order to retain new memories, old memories have to gradually fade out. It's moot whether over long stretches of time we can regard the organism as retaining the same sense of self if it continuously replaces its past memories with new memories. If we can't, then there's no meaningful sense in which we can say the sense of self can be immortal. On the other hand, it's also moot to claim that an organism that eventually replaces all of its past memories with new memories necessarily loses the same sense of self that it had previously, so long as through it all the organism retains its same relationship to its environment. On the other hand, environments are constantly changing themselves, so retaining the same relationship may be impossible. "And if an immortal being could remember its past self, there might be emotions and thoughts that we've never had a chance to experience" As pointed out above, there is going to be a limit to what an immortal being can remember. But it's true that a self-conscious immortal organism can continue to evolve mentally forever. But it is moot whether it retains the same sense of self that it had, let us say, 10,000 years earlier. Hence, nothing is immortal in a non-trivial sense that is embodied in matter. "Perhaps they would feel a sense of achievement, at how much they'd changed over time" Eventually, they wouldn't even know how much they've changed over time. "Or maybe they'd go through different stages of emotion and thought, perhaps never ending, or perhaps ending up at some inevitable conclusion" If the organism goes through enough stages, it will eventually completely lose its identification with
fjparisIII wrote:
Even when you clone a human being from a single cell, there is no sense of continuity from or memory of the parent.
Perhaps on some levels. Is a human baby any more valuable than a baby pig? Is a baby supermodel more valuable than a mentally retarded baby? Biological transformation is of some value. There is some "memory" of past selves, even if it's not in the form of conceptual recall.
fjparisIII wrote:
Eventually the matter embodying the memory becomes saturated and in order to retain new memories, old memories have to gradually fade out.
Suppose this being could physically increase brain size over time. Perhaps even to extremes (the size of, say, planets). Perhaps there is no limit, aside from the available mass in the universe. Maybe this being could learn until the end of the universe, supposing there will be one in several trillion years. That wouldn't be truly immortal, but it would still be an interesting experience to live that long. Say there will not be an end to the universe and there is an infinite amount of mass available. Then such a being could continue to grow forever. One might argue that there would be no value in such a large brain, as it would take so long for thoughts to transmit between sections of the brain that there would be a disconnect of thought. However, as the structure grew larger, it could take on new properties not seen in current brains. For exmaple, "processing" could be assigned to various portions of the brain... the result would eventually be passed to the "main" processor in the brain for review (e.g., to make decisions based on that information). But then, why must we assume that information has to be ever-growing? Perhaps there is only a finite amount of information to be had in the universe, or perhaps it is a matter of encoding it (i.e., the structure would change, but the size wouldn't). As with the mandelbrot set, perhaps infinite complexity can be created from a very simple substrate. And who says information acquisition is the end goal? Perhaps just experiencing life in ever changing ways is what would make being immortal an enjoyable (or worthwhile, or valuable, or whatever) experience. And while we're getting abstract, perhaps we have too narrow a definite of an "immortal being". As I described with the growing brain example, maybe civilization is one large organism. We each have specializations, and we communicate
