14 replies to this topic

[Guinevere]

To save an aging life, you have to worry about the aging heart, aging liver, etc. Instead of worrying about all the different, degenerating parts of the human body, why not care only for the human brain.

A pragmatic solution for immortality would be to fuse the human brain with a robot body. No, not mind uploading (it only immortalizes a copy of you, not the actual you), but actually inserting the human brain into the head of a lifeless robot.

This would immortalize you because the brain is the seat of human consciousness, and, essentially, the only thing that matters for your continuity. It also simplifies our task to curing brain aging (rather than curing the whole body), and making the robotic body able to respond to signals from the brain.

How about it?

[Mind]

A Russian billionaire is working on this: http://2045.com/

You should contact the project and see if they need some help. Make it a reality! Go for it.

[Pour_la_Science]

But the brain is aging too... (I can contemplate my neurons dying...). An Alzheimer robot

But, seriously, speaking about pragmatism, the best option is cryonics. I mean, watching the (lack of) success of medicine against aging, (the lack of) people support -----> No Benefits in your lifetime.

Edited by Pour_la_Science, 12 June 2013 - 05:30 PM.

[cATsE]

Why'd you need a robot? Everything in life is mere perception, so just have your brain digitized and store it on a SSD - or whatever storage media they will come up with next - and live forever (just make sure to have a back-up!). According to some scientists this will be possible in about 25 years from now.

[niner]

The biggest challenge for anyone likely to be reading this forum is surviving until we have the technology to do all this stuff. I like Aubrey de Grey's concept of Longevity Escape Velocity- We need to survive until the next breakthrough, which will, we hope, give us enough time to make it to the next breakthrough after that, until we make it to the point that we are no longer in danger of dieing of aging. I try to rank the various longevity solutions by when they are likely to appear. For example, today our best technologies are optimal diets/health habits and c60-oo, and telomerase activators are showing some value. Within the next decade or so, we should start seeing widespread stem cell therapies, and not too long after that, the ablation of senescent cells. During this period, we'll continue to chip away at the various "diseases of aging" that usually kill us, so that will help reduce the likelihood of dying. I feel like if we can survive for 20 years, the odds of surviving the next 20 will be substantially enhanced, at least relative to what they would have been with no technological progress.

What does this have to do with brain-bots and uploading? I think that those technologies are pretty far away. 2045 for uploading is probably wildly optimistic. Maybe 2065? 2085? Thus, if you are looking to those as the answer, you are going to have to "not die" for a long time. Cryonics? We can certainly freeze people today. What we can't do is re-animate them. I can't even imagine a roadmap to this capability, so I have to rank it out beyond uploading. There are so many variables and unknowns there that I couldn't begin to predict where it will go.

[Luddist]

Taking the measures necessary to slow your body and its organs from aging or otherwise becoming compromised sounds like a more pragmatic solution than becoming an early adopter with a robot body. Ever hear of phantom limb syndrome? Wonder what that would be like without an entire body. Not to mention the interwoven nervous system between the gut, heart, and brain. For some further pessimism, I doubt if you were able to stay alive as a head in a jar that the quality of life would make it worth it.

[Pour_la_Science]

The biggest challenge for anyone likely to be reading this forum is surviving until we have the technology to do all this stuff. I like Aubrey de Grey's concept of Longevity Escape Velocity- We need to survive until the next breakthrough, which will, we hope, give us enough time to make it to the next breakthrough after that, until we make it to the point that we are no longer in danger of dieing of aging. I try to rank the various longevity solutions by when they are likely to appear. For example, today our best technologies are optimal diets/health habits and c60-oo, and telomerase activators are showing some value. Within the next decade or so, we should start seeing widespread stem cell therapies, and not too long after that, the ablation of senescent cells. During this period, we'll continue to chip away at the various "diseases of aging" that usually kill us, so that will help reduce the likelihood of dying. I feel like if we can survive for 20 years, the odds of surviving the next 20 will be substantially enhanced, at least relative to what they would have been with no technological progress.

I remember the conference with Aubrey de Grey. I remember clearly about his personal hope (this element struck me at this time): He doesn't believe in "immortality" (or at least "longevity escape velocity") for himself. It's quite courageous when we think about all the efforts and passion he take for the cause, considering he doesn't think it will have some use for himself.
And a bit sad too for everyone of our generation...
Well, I meditate sometimes about this last man dying of tuberculosis when the antibiotics against it were released a few weeks after. Life is cruel.

[Guinevere]

Why'd you need a robot? Everything in life is mere perception, so just have your brain digitized and store it on a SSD - or whatever storage media they will come up with next - and live forever (just make sure to have a back-up!). According to some scientists this will be possible in about 25 years from now.

But that stored copy won't be you per se, just a copy of you. Mind uploading does not immortalize the actual you. Hence, the need for preserving the brain, the seat of human consciousness.

[Marios Kyriazis]

Remember that 'you' is not only your brain but also the rest of your body. The survival of your brain alone would not be the same as the survival of your entire 'you'..

The naive notion that only the brain needs to survive is a fallacy. Research shows that other parts of the body are also 'aware' for example, bowel cells can sense olphactory molecules, etc.

Let alone that the aging process is going to devastate your brain tissues in any case. What we need is the total abolition of aging in the biological sense.

Edited by Marios Kyriazis, 14 June 2013 - 02:13 PM.

[Marios Kyriazis]

For example, today our best technologies are optimal diets/health habits and c60-oo, and telomerase activators are showing some value. Within the next decade or so, we should start seeing widespread stem cell therapies, and not too long after that, the ablation of senescent cells. During this period, we'll continue to chip away at the various "diseases of aging" that usually kill us, so that will help reduce the likelihood of dying. I feel like if we can survive for 20 years, the odds of surviving the next 20 will be substantially enhanced, at least relative to what they would have been with no technological progress.

What does this have to do with brain-bots and uploading? I think that those technologies are pretty far away. 2045 for uploading is probably wildly optimistic. Maybe 2065? 2085? Thus, if you are looking to those as the answer, you are going to have to "not die" for a long time. Cryonics? We can certainly freeze people today. What we can't do is re-animate them. I can't even imagine a roadmap to this capability, so I have to rank it out beyond uploading. There are so many variables and unknowns there that I couldn't begin to predict where it will go.

I wanted to add another technique to your list. That of 'hyper-connectedness', i.e. the exposure to meaningful information. This may have a positive impact on somatic cell immortalisation. See my paper here: http://eprintweb.org...q-bio/1306.2734
.

[machete234]

A Russian billionaire is working on this: http://2045.com/

You should contact the project and see if they need some help. Make it a reality! Go for it.

Definately maybe they need a human head that you can donate.

[McGTak]

Why'd you need a robot? Everything in life is mere perception, so just have your brain digitized and store it on a SSD - or whatever storage media they will come up with next - and live forever (just make sure to have a back-up!). According to some scientists this will be possible in about 25 years from now.

But that stored copy won't be you per se, just a copy of you. Mind uploading does not immortalize the actual you. Hence, the need for preserving the brain, the seat of human consciousness.

That was the problem I always had with all of those cloning movies. They were saying that through cloning themselves they could essentially live forever, but a copy of you isn't exactly you. The stream of consciousness in this self doesn't move to the other (in this case the uploaded mind).

It would be fun to upload your mind and then talk to yourself though :D

[Danail Bulgaria]

I agree with Guinevere and McGTak, that both mind uploading and endlessly making clonned copies of You will not solve the problem of the aging and the death of the individual.

According to me, the real biological immortality will be achieved only if the older organs and tissues of the individual can be replaced periodically with new organs or tissues, or to be replaced with an artifitial, but functional substitutes. This is why the "robotizing" of the rest of Your body (except Your brain) is not a stupid idea at all. In the medicine replacing a missing organ or tissue with an artifitial one is an old idea, it is proceeding its development, sometimes gives good results, and it is called "implantation". There will definately pass alot of time, however, before functional artitial organs to appear, that to be able to substitute each of our otgans and tissues. This will perhaps be a possible option for the grand - children of those readers, who are now between 20 and 30 years old.

I think, that a more possible way (but still too fictious) for us to be immortal, is to be developed the practice, when needed, the old or damaged organs, tissues and cells, to be replaced with the same type, but young and working organs, tissues and cells, including to be found a way to be replaced the neurons in the brain with new ones. In the medicine it is called "transplantation". Transplantation developes faster, than implantation, at least for the most important organs. In order not to be rejected, it is better the organs, tissues and cells to be clonned. This is why the cloning of organs, and the growing of homunculuses for spare organs have to be allowed and developed.

[solarfingers]

This is an interesting subject. Here's an idea that I think is promising. So far I have seen two proposed methods for immortality. One, replace the body with a duplicate and two, replace the body and keep the brain. My idea is a bit more involved and would also require advancements in emerging and undeveloped technologies. Recently, a group of researchers where able to make a nano-computer that is one molecule deep. It can receive, hold and transmit data. I think the next step along this technology is to find materials that the human body would accept. If we could teach it to interact with brain neurons then we could have a potential cure for certain brain injuries. This idea could be expanded to allow these molecules to infuse into the brain, interacting with it, learning from it to create a brain which has unlimited potential. It is possible that these artificial brain neurons could learn everything the real neurons perform and do. As brain cells die, the artificial ones continue and could potentially carry the consciousness into infinity. If we can pull this off we are one step closer to moving the brain to an artificial body or some sort of cloned host. Coincidingly, the rest of the body could also slowly be replaced with nano technologies, slowly at the cellular level so that the organic body would die a normal death but be replaced imperceptibly with an artificial one. This sounds like the least obtrusive methodology and would do everything from preventing aging and death.

[solarfingers]