How would immortality change you?

[lajoswinkler]

By that same logic you aren't you. You have more experienced than you did years ago. Maybe it's not that big of a change, but it's still a change.

It really depends on how you define "you". Yes you are this arrangement of atoms with a specific genetic code. Yes you are your mind/personality.

- - - Updated - - -

It's called biological immortality, or something like that.

No, that conclusion does not follow from those premises.

I possess memories from my earliest age all the way up to today. Not all of them. Some of it is forgotten, some of it very difficult to access. I'm a continuation, a mind constantly improving upon itself.

If one can live eternally, that means either the memory storage system needs to be infinite in size (impossible) or memories have to be deleted in order to make room for new ones. As humans aren't computers, memories aren't files and they can't be selectively saved, that would mean that at one point in time all that made you who you are will be lost.

We're dealing with huge numbers here, and also infinite value. Stuff breaks down when the values are too high.

Person is not an arrangement of atoms with a specific genetic code. Person is what's inside the neural net in the brain. Scientifically and legally.

[-Velocity-]

And what when significant memories exceed the capacity? If you live forever, that will happen sooner or later. 100 000 years? Million? Hundred million? It's still nothing. You live forever.

That's where immortality destroys itself. With enough time passed, everything you were will be gone and replaced. That means you will die.

Our brains are constantly replacing themselves anyway. It's been disproven that brain cells do not regenerate. Our brains are capable of healing themselves considerably (minor brain damage, at least), and of course, they are capable of rewiring existing cells into new configurations (how we retain memories, learn, and a second way in which minor brain damage is repaired). So if losing all your original memories is dying, or even, if having your brain rewired to a different configuration is dying, then we die thousands of times every second.

Edit:

I'm just saying that by the definition you are using for death, there isn't a qualitative difference between living 100 years and living 100,000 years. Either way the "you" that dies at the end is a different person than the "you" that began life.

A more useful definition for death in terms of consciousness is the permanent cessation of an instance of a conscious being. There is still the question of how much such a conscious being can change at one time and not be considered a different, new conscious being. (There is no real dividing line, actually, because our sense of self and consciousness is not a real, physical thing.) But if we want a useful definition, we must say that the normal changes our brain undergoes and normal brain damage we endure throughout life does not make us "die" when such changes occur. Thus, since you are more-or-less continuously conscious from birth to death- except for sleep- and are only changed a little bit at a time, then no, you don't "die" if you live, say, 100,000 years. The person you will be in 100,000 years is not the same as the person you are now, but that also goes for the person you will be in 10 years not being the same as the person you are now. If you define death as a specific configuration of your conscious being ceasing to exist, then, like I said, you die thousands of times a day, maybe thousands of times a second. This is a useless definition of death.

Edited May 1, 2015 by |Velocity|

[lajoswinkler]

Our brains are constantly replacing themselves anyway. It's been disproven that brain cells do not regenerate. Our brains are capable of healing themselves considerably (minor brain damage, at least), and of course, they are capable of rewiring existing cells into new configurations (how we retain memories, learn, and a second way in which minor brain damage is repaired). So if losing all your original memories is dying, or even, if having your brain rewired to a different configuration is dying, then we die thousands of times every second.

You're talking about matter replacement. I'm talking about information replacement.

Two completely different things.

[-Velocity-]

You're talking about matter replacement. I'm talking about information replacement.

Two completely different things.

Please read my edit. And no, I'm NOT talking about matter replacement. You think when a neuron dies, the information it was storing is preserved? Of course it is not. That information is gone. When the brain re-wires itself, it's not taking unused neurons and giving them a use- it's destroying the old configuration and reconfiguring those neurons for soemthing new. Information is CONSTANTLY lost and replaced in your brain. That information is lost and replaced when matter is lost or replaced or reconfigured is such an obvious point to me that I didn't even mention it. The information that is fundamental to describing your conscious state is constantly changing, and we don't experience death constantly. Of course, death is impossible to experience, as death is the lack of experiences, so that doesn't say a lot, but like I said, defining death in such a way that you say we constantly die makes for a useless definition of the word "death".

If you've read any of my posts on consciousness, you'll see that I believe that our conscious states are nothing but information. You're preaching to choir when you try to tell me that the matter that makes up our brains and the information that makes up our selves are different things. Of course they are, I've said so myself on these forums many times. But that doesn't mean you die every time your brain rewires itself- unless you want to use a definition of death that is useless.

Edited May 1, 2015 by |Velocity|

[lajoswinkler]

I don't think you understand what I'm talking about.

Let's pretend a personhood is the shape of a large building and the bricks are the matter. The building itself is the brain.

What brain does is it constantly removing old bricks and importing new bricks (metabolism) on the same places, but the overall shape is preserved. What you are (memories, etc.) is preserved.

Learning and getting life experience would be extending the building, adding more rooms while preserving the central building. Can it go into infinity? No, because there is a limited amount of matter (bricks) available. Brain has a finite size, finite amount of neurons and synapse combinations.

So the temporary solution would be rearranging the existing bricks in order to make different rooms, and to dismantle the less relevant rooms to make space for more new rooms.

If you rearrange all of the bricks into a completely new shape of a building (which would happen eventually if we're talking about eons, after all we've got eternity in our hands), the original shape is lost. That means you're dead and the whole point of having an immortal body is lost.

I don't think I can simplify it more than this.

[Bill Phil]

No, that conclusion does not follow from those premises.

I possess memories from my earliest age all the way up to today. Not all of them. Some of it is forgotten, some of it very difficult to access. I'm a continuation, a mind constantly improving upon itself.

If one can live eternally, that means either the memory storage system needs to be infinite in size (impossible) or memories have to be deleted in order to make room for new ones. As humans aren't computers, memories aren't files and they can't be selectively saved, that would mean that at one point in time all that made you who you are will be lost.

We're dealing with huge numbers here, and also infinite value. Stuff breaks down when the values are too high.

Person is not an arrangement of atoms with a specific genetic code. Person is what's inside the neural net in the brain. Scientifically and legally.

It does. You and your views, your thought processes, and all of those things change over time. Even the atoms you're made of. You aren't you anymore. You may be 90% you from a decade ago,but that's not 100%.

You are a collection of atoms. That's it. That's you. But those atoms have a specified pattern. They also have acquired consciousness. But the specific atoms change. So you aren't you, not exactly.

A person is many things. A collection of atoms, a consciousness, and much more.

And if person is the neural net, then why would one say, "On my person" at all?

[lajoswinkler]

It does. You and your views, your thought processes, and all of those things change over time. Even the atoms you're made of. You aren't you anymore. You may be 90% you from a decade ago,but that's not 100%.

You are a collection of atoms. That's it. That's you. But those atoms have a specified pattern. They also have acquired consciousness. But the specific atoms change. So you aren't you, not exactly.

A person is many things. A collection of atoms, a consciousness, and much more.

And if person is the neural net, then why would one say, "On my person" at all?

Not everything will change in an average human lifetime. You still retain memories. You can remember stuff from your third year of life, your first day at school, etc. Unless dementia strikes in, you're fine until some of the basic organs give up.

What does changing of matter have to do with anything? A person is not a collection of exactly specific atoms. Person is information stored as specific arrangement of those atoms. Atoms might change, but their arrangement is what remains.

[WestAir]

Not everything will change in an average human lifetime. You still retain memories. You can remember stuff from your third year of life, your first day at school, etc. Unless dementia strikes in, you're fine until some of the basic organs give up.

What does changing of matter have to do with anything? A person is not a collection of exactly specific atoms. Person is information stored as specific arrangement of those atoms. Atoms might change, but their arrangement is what remains.

He's saying they don't. Memories and personality change over time. If we're technical, thousands of times a second.

[jwenting]

No, that conclusion does not follow from those premises.

I possess memories from my earliest age all the way up to today. Not all of them. Some of it is forgotten, some of it very difficult to access. I'm a continuation, a mind constantly improving upon itself.

If one can live eternally, that means either the memory storage system needs to be infinite in size (impossible) or memories have to be deleted in order to make room for new ones. As humans aren't computers, memories aren't files and they can't be selectively saved, that would mean that at one point in time all that made you who you are will be lost.

Yes, the population as a whole will rapidly become senile with old age, the few young people left so busy caring for the billions of others who can't even clean and feed themselves they have no time to procreate before they themselves grow old.

People may not die from old age, but they'll starve and/or die from poor sanitation. Not because there are no proper facilities but because they've forgotten how to use them.

[Camacha]

People may not die from old age, but they'll starve and/or die from poor sanitation. Not because there are no proper facilities but because they've forgotten how to use them.

Immortality is immortality, no matter how much you suffer. Let that sink in.

[mrfox]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom

An interesting novel set in a future with immortality, lack of scarcity, and how a society might cope (or not)

[rtxoff]

Yes, the population as a whole will rapidly become senile with old age, the few young people left so busy caring for the billions of others who can't even clean and feed themselves they have no time to procreate before they themselves grow old.

People may not die from old age, but they'll starve and/or die from poor sanitation. Not because there are no proper facilities but because they've forgotten how to use them.

Becoming senile is the result of aging, it would not affect someone who is immortal. Also i don't think anyone immortal would tend to forget to do things which you basically do every day. It does not work like this. People tend to forget stuff they don't repeat, stuff that you do in shorter intervals repeatedly are constantly refreshed in you brain.

The thing with personality is yes, it will definitely change, hell it even changes often in a normal human lifetime. A great part of your personality is the product of your past experience. If this experience gets lost over time cause you are not needing it anymore you will become someone else. A good thing for an immortal being would be to keep track of its history by saving it to other data mediums however all storage mediums we know are also affected by entropy so after some time that being would use up all its time to save the data of the aging storage mediums to new ones until a point where it is no longer possible.

Time is the single most dangerous enemy to every immortal being. Sooner or later it will rip you apart. It may be a slow process but it is one that is definitely not to stop. And no matter how strong you fight time you will loose the fight at some point.

At the end oblivion awaits us all.

[lajoswinkler]

Immortality (not simple one, but paranormal one) would obviously go against laws of physics. In the end, you'd be all by yourself, witnessing the heat death of the universe.

Would you go mad? Mental illness is an organic disturbance of brain chemistry so the premise says no. But can we imagine being alone, floating in the void, no stars, just complete black vacuum?

Stuff breaks down when the numbers approach extremely high values.

[mrfox]

Memories do get compressed and recompiled as time goes on, and things get hidden away, deleted, or lose their references with lack of use - do you remember the specifics of a certain date years ago, or a telephone number you had once commited to memory?

Those who do remember everything are usually haunted by their ability and have mental issues (which may be the cause of the ability in the first place) - even within the timeframe of a normal human lifespan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptional_memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek

[WestAir]

Immortality (not simple one, but paranormal one) would obviously go against laws of physics. In the end, you'd be all by yourself, witnessing the heat death of the universe.

Would you go mad? Mental illness is an organic disturbance of brain chemistry so the premise says no. But can we imagine being alone, floating in the void, no stars, just complete black vacuum?

Stuff breaks down when the numbers approach extremely high values.

True, but biological immortality is a real thing. There are organisms that do not age past adult-hood and have a lifespan equal to their ability to avoid starvation/accident.

The real question becomes, then, what would you do if you weren't limited to a 75 year lifespan? If you could realistically expect to see the continents reform a Pangea in a few million years. How would this change society?

[RedDwarfIV]

My Grandad has Alzheimers, and is only rarely lucid. He usually doesn't remember anything recent. But he can remember what he did as a child, and he talked to me at length about what he did in World War 2. He is also perfectly capable of following a daily routine - which includes using toilets and washing.

So when you say "immortal senile people will be rolling around in their own filth, completely incapable of independent action", I'm not inclined to believe that you're right.

[-Velocity-]

I don't think you understand what I'm talking about.

Let's pretend a personhood is the shape of a large building and the bricks are the matter. The building itself is the brain.

What brain does is it constantly removing old bricks and importing new bricks (metabolism) on the same places, but the overall shape is preserved. What you are (memories, etc.) is preserved.

Learning and getting life experience would be extending the building, adding more rooms while preserving the central building. Can it go into infinity? No, because there is a limited amount of matter (bricks) available. Brain has a finite size, finite amount of neurons and synapse combinations.

So the temporary solution would be rearranging the existing bricks in order to make different rooms, and to dismantle the less relevant rooms to make space for more new rooms.

If you rearrange all of the bricks into a completely new shape of a building (which would happen eventually if we're talking about eons, after all we've got eternity in our hands), the original shape is lost. That means you're dead and the whole point of having an immortal body is lost.

I don't think I can simplify it more than this.

No, I understand completely, and I never misunderstood. You must not be interpretting my posts as I intend them to be, because I'm saying essentially the same thing you are, but in just one key area. I just disagree with you on semantics. To me, unless that change happens instantly or very fast, it really can't count as any form of death. Technically, yes, the person you were originally is gone, but as a conscious being you would experience nothing like death. I just think that you using the word "death" for the slow and steady transformation into a different conscious being is wrong. It's a process we do every day very slowly, and we don't feel like we are dying slowly (except perhaps in cases of degenerative neurological conditions). In fact, if we didn't slowly change ourselves and the ways our brains work, then we wouldn't be conscious, intelligent beings!

As I said, I think that "death" should be reserved for more sudden, irreversible, and negative changes, not the slow accumulation of the natural changes in our brains that occur as a necessary component of being intelligent and aware and self-repairing. By instantaneously comparing the current you with a future immortal you 100,000 years older, you're ignoring the time in-between, and you just can't do that. Sure, if the present you INSTANTLY changed into the future you, it would be something much closer to death, but since the present you changes into the future you as part of the natural and necessary processes involved with being alive and aware, I don't feel you can call it death at all. Death is supposed to be the opposite of life, so what you're effectively saying is that after 100,000 years of being alive, life would have made you dead. See how that just doesn't make sense in terms of what the word "death" is supposed to mean? Being alive makes you dead??!!

So your definition of death makes the word meaningless because it erases the distinction between being alive and being dead. Whether some absolute distinction between life or death actually exists in reality is irrelevant, there is a human concept of life and death, and we need words to describe those concepts (such as "dead" and "alive").

Do you get where I'm coming from now? Since it's really just semantics- we agree on all the technical details- I don't mind so much if you disagree with my reasoning, just as long as you understand what my reasoning is.

Edited May 4, 2015 by |Velocity|

[Mazon Del]

Lajoswinkler, I feel I should provide some input on your interpretation of death over time.

The being you were as a child is effectively dead by your definition. All memory containing sections of your brain from about 5 years old (it varies) and before are still in your brain, but locked in a section currently inaccessible by the rest of it. Short of a scientific intervention to reconnect those memories to you, they are gone forever. Thus that being is dead.

And no, you don't get to go "The data in that section of the brain still exists, it's just not used, so not dead!" because IF that is how you want to play it, then you cannot state your previous interpretation of death over time is valid. This is simply because in a rather short period of time from now, with the vast quantity of cameras and other monitoring gear around, you can make the argument that EVERY piece of data concerning your experiences in the world is stored somewhere in the human archives. And thus at a moments notice, we could run a program to search through all of this knowledge and reassemble your existence back to base in an even greater detail than you would ever be able to manage with the terrible storage device known as the human brain. And thus all of that information is preserved. Heck, it won't be that crazy long before its possible to get neuron-precise brain scans which you could get updated every now and then to store even the neurological pathways.

In the end, the person you are today is NOT the person you are tomorrow. The events of our lives shape us, some events less so and some more so. Do we hold a funeral for someone whose spouse has just died? No? Why not? After all, their emotional circuitry has forever been altered by this event. Even if the only difference is that every year for a period of a week or day consistently for that period of time the person is depressed or sad, the point is they are now fundamentally different. Therefor the old them is dead and gone.

But this is not how we treat life, and waxing artfully on the topic aside (looking at you writers...), we do not describe the transition of a previous self to a current self after some major event as a death. Sure, we might say something like "The death of my innocence" or something, but this is purely a language and preference construct than anything else. When someone marries someone else, their neurological patterns are as firmly altered just as much as they would be for negatively traumatic events, but in ways that we are all happy to have occurred.

In no quantifiable way do we as a people distinguish between us of one year ago and us of now as far as our minds and personalities are concerned. Sure we might get fatter, thinner, smarter, dumber, etc. But I do not need to report to my job, government, etc that "Oh nuts, I'm very clearly NOT the person I was a year ago. Time to fill out some paperwork."

Could we do that? Sure. Will we? No. Why? Because its stupid and there is no point to it. You are who you are NOW. The more that time passes, the more that any old you no longer has any bearing on yourself. And who cares?

A fun example I used on a friend when we had a similar discussion. His favorite food is chocolate cake, and one example that he gives for why these sorts of immortality things "don't work" is because at any time one of these other hims might no longer decide that chocolate cake is his favorite food. But even something as seemingly fixed as a favorite food is transient at best. Let us ignore the possibility that at some point in the future, he will for the first time ever come into contact with pineapple upside down cake and declare it better than chocolate cake. Something happens to him, accidentally takes a swig of some corrosive chemical, burns his tongue in some way, etc. Something that alters his sense of taste just a bit. The flavor of chocolate cake is now revolting to him. (It's a hypothetical, go with it.) How long is he going to keep saying that chocolate cake is his favorite, knowing that this will result in people giving him such a cake for his birthday or parties, etc? Not super long. It will take a while, but eventually chocolate cake will become simply what USED to be his favorite.

Everything about you is transient, and that is nothing to be anxious or hateful about. You feel like you have 'always' felt because YOU in this moment are YOU and very VERY rarely do you remember a time when YOU were very clearly NOT YOU. And even when you do (trauma, etc), why does it matter? Because YOU choose to care. The past is in the past, and even if you could revisit it, it wouldn't be the same because you aren't that person anymore. We talk about this all the time in movies, shows, books, etc where a character is all hyper depressed because they want to relive the glory of their youth and they spend all this time being miserable because they don't have that any more. What do we ALWAYS hear someone tell them? Let it go. You have to move on.

So. Why does it matter that the you of today will not be the you of tomorrow?

[HoloYolo]

Well, if I was the only one in my family allowed and/or have the money/genetics to be immortal, I would change how I see everything. I would prize every goddamn moment I was with family/good friends. I would get off of my computer chair more often to get more information. I would research things to find new answers/explanations. I would help the world more. I would do new things, and become a new person. To be honest, I sorta want to be immortal already, but I don't want to lose everyone that I love. I would keep track of all major events that happen. Maybe, if I died because of an accident, my family (after thousands of years) will see me as an artifact, a memory perhaps.

[prophet_01]

Immortality is very likely to cause severe problems to a society. Even the more optimistic variants hold many problems. How many people will be allowed to be immortal? I don't think that I could accept someone that lives forever, if I don't get that opportunity. The smart way seems to be to only allow a very limited number of people to live longer, but not forever. The conflicts within a society that contains a group of immortal elites would be huge and problematic at best.

Another way to go about this is to offer everyone immortality. As mentioned, what about getting childreen? A law against it is pretty hard to keep up. What do you want to do with people that break the law? Prisons aren't much more than a tradeoff for someone that doesn't have to care about a few wasted years. I personally can't think of a proper solution. Afterall this would be the foundation of a society that I'd have to live in.

I don't believe that the scientiffic progress would stop at all, but we would be srsly limited by the lack of resources. I don't think that we would be able to control the population effectively. Within a few cebturies we are likely spending a lot of ressources on an evergrowing population. I don't see us realising big projects like space exploration in a world that struggles to feed it's inhabitants and runs out of energy and space.

This thread is about how immortality would change me personally, but I do believe that the enviroment we would live in affects our personality. As I see it, I would be pretty depressed in a world that gets crowded and runs out of ressources.

Immortality might not be a gift to humanity as it exists now. We only have the rssources of a single world at hands and the limits aren't reached yet, but they are definetly there. I don't expect this to change anytime soon.

Edited May 5, 2015 by prophet_01

[Umlüx]

immortality? i don't think this would end good.

it may be awesome at first. but in the long run i fear it would change me for the worse. i'd loose my motivation to do something with my life, see my beloved ones go one after another and eventually go mad..

[WestAir]

immortality? i don't think this would end good.

it may be awesome at first. but in the long run i fear it would change me for the worse. i'd loose my motivation to do something with my life, see my beloved ones go one after another and eventually go mad..

Your loved ones would be immortal as well. You'll probably stop talking to them after a few centuries.

[NeatCrown]

I'd be happy if I was immortal. Even though I'd see family and friends dying as I don't age, I'd get over it: I have forever(Well, A really long time, at least). There are so many things that I want to do: Become an aerospace engineer(Many of the components of it), quantum physicist, cartoonist, animator, but can only choose one to keep things simple. (And get anything done)

Having eternity to do everything would be great! (Assuming that I would be biologically immortal while still obeying the laws of physics)

[fairytalefox]

There will be no immortality. If these guys succeed, there will be few more years of life expectancy and few more diseases to die from. That's it.

[Geschosskopf]

Immortality in the flesh is a bad idea. The world is overpopulated already. Imagine the wars, genocides, mass forced sterilizations, etc., that would follow if physical people stopped getting old and dying. I hope it never happens. Now, immortality as a computer program, or as part of the Borg group mind, that might be tempting.

However, the world in general sucks and most people in it are jerks. The afterlife is probably no better for the same reasons, but at least it would be a change. Even nonbeing looks attractive as an alternative to sticking around this place indefinitely or, even worse, being reincarnated without being able to learn from all the mistakes I've made this time around.