Totalitarianist

When we can adequately perform neuroregeneration upon humans, we will be in proximity to a breed of technological immortality. Also, if brain cells and tissue can be satisfactorily regenerated, and if brains can be transplanted, and if bodies can be cloned -- all ideas that do not seem to me unlikely to realise in the future -- mortality amongst mankind would be, practically speaking, a thing of the past. Imagine, at perhaps the age of 110 (for all we know), your organs begin to function incorrectly, and your body is altogether defective, or you have some sort of incurable virus, and your death seems to be just beyond the horizon. Imagine, I say, if you had a clone of yourself, grown to puperty and frozen, at your reach. Its brain could be removed, and your brain could be transplanted into its body.

The only tools necessary for technological immortality are the following: Neuroregeneration, human cloning, and brain transplantation (or body transplantation, depending on how you look at it). Each of which seems to me not that farfetched.

What are your opinions of the above means to immortality, or some other form of technological immortality?

Undercurrent

Seems tragically immoral towards the poor clone. Essentially living its life for the purposes of dying in pubery to grant immortality to the person it was cloned from. But if a clone could be grown never having a brain, or only a very simple one, but with the connections all ready to support one, it isn't so ethically problematic.

I think that the prosepect of complete neurological immortality is the farthest-fetched notion in this scenario. If your brain tissue itself is diseased or daying of old age, then transplanting it to a new, younger body wouldn't make it live any longer. And it's hard to imagine developing a technology capable of keeping brain tissue youthful and disease-free forever, but not being able to do the same for the rest of the body.

The best bet, IMO, for technological immortality is to abandon human bodies completely. Figure out what it is about the brain that gives conciousness, and transfer that to a more long-lived medium, or one that it's easier to make back-ups of.

m.

Totalitarianist

To be certain, I never used the word "immortality" literally. Most deaths, even most deaths from old age, have nothing to do with the brain. Rather, the chief cause is usually a defect, whether caused by age or a disease, of an organ other than the brain. And perhaps diseases that relate to the brain can be cured in the future, and perhaps in the future brain tissue can be regenerated, and brain cells adequately regenerated. Put hormones, cryogenics, and brain transplantation into the equation, and we almost have immortality.

Not quite as realistic. At least brain transplantation, and of this I am assured by many neuroscientists and researchers, is in the realm of future possibility, in accordance with the rate at which we are presently progressing.

Totalitarianist

And the clone's "feelings" are irrelevant. The question is this: can we attain, by means of technology, something close to immortality?--that is the point of the present topic.

Totalitarianist

Imagine the possibilities! One could relive one's childhood, for aught we know!

Edit:

It is so fascinating that nothing could be more fascinating. And if it is beyond the limits of the technology available when one dies, remember cryogenics. If it will always remain impossible, we must endeavour nonetheless; for the scientific knowledge acquired would be immense.

happyboy

i agree, embodiment. it would be nice to live for as long as you wanted. but still, true immortality would get quite boring after a few thousand years.......

AtomSmasher

Why do you think that?

happyboy

think about it, atomsmasher.....after a few thousand years, you've mastered every hobby you could possibly be interested in, exhausted every possible avenue of learning you cared to indulge in, and exhausted every pleasurable sensation to the point where they no longer satisfy.

i think after a few thousand years, let alone the millions of years true immortality would confront you with, you'd be pretty eager for an end of some kind.

happyboy

Jayjay

Assuming that we achieve working cryogenics before brain transplant treatments such as you proposed, what makes you think that the future society that finally does find cure for cancer etc. will actually revive the millions in the freezer? Why bring that kind of burden onto themselves?

Totalitarianist

That is a possibility.