3 ms·
Would be a pity if Kurzweil's predictions follows the path of fusion energy - always, eternally, twenty years away. At any rate, I question the practicality of
by JCThoughtscream 17y ago
Would be a pity if Kurzweil's predictions follows the path of fusion energy - always, eternally, twenty years away.
At any rate, I question the practicality of /physical/ immortality. If we're swapping out blood and organs with effectively superior equivalents, why shouldn't we reexamine the necessity of a fully human-equivalent body? If the entire purpose is to establish life support for the brain and preserve and augment the human sensorium, then why keep blood? Or the liver? Or the stomach?
- aarongough 17y agoI agree... I think it's quite likely that once we have the tech to replace all the components of the human body the possibility will also exist to do away with it entirely. I would definitely opt-in for a robotic body! I think I would prefer if it still looked human, but we can debate that in 30 years or so!
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoPeople'll pay for a humaniform body for at least the first few decades. Then the Grinders get involved, and the cultural body image paradigm starts to shift ever so slightly...
- oconnor0 17y agoGrinders?
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoGrinders, modders, etc - "Grinders" is Warren Ellis's term for it, and I've been rereading his stuff recently, so... Basically, anybody who starts tinkering with the physical form itself - whether by small modifications, such as improved eyesight, or large modifications, like swapping your legs out for a tank chassis.
- Anon84 17y agoWhy not just build a clone and "flash in" the contents of your brain?
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoBecause a clone will take about two decades to mature? And if it's a full clone, will in all likelihood have its own ideas about who occupies its head? And will probably physically develop different from you, as development is partially environmental? All sorts of problems with the cloning path to immortality.
- Anon84 17y agoOr you can assume that by the time you figure out how to download the contents of a brain, you'll have figured out how to speed up the cloning process. Or just start growing a "mindless" clone when you're 30 and start inhabiting it when you turn fifty and then repeat the process. Technically, these are all doable. Now, ethically and morally... that's a completely different story.
- jacquesm 17y agoThis is all nonsense anyway, but if you're going to do it then I would suggest a way that does not introduce generational noise between copies, or you might find after 'n' generations that you are not immortal after all. Best to keep 'cloning' from your original cells, not from the ones that have gone through possibly many such cycles.
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoAlternatively, save the entirety of your genetic code as a data file and update it to the latest storage medium every few decades. Even the best-preserved original cells will become unusable after a while.