'Time Travel'/'Access to the past' Poll

Explain me more about how do you imagine the changes in the human body?

How exactly a posthuman body will still be biological human body

Explain me more about how do you imagine the changes in the human body?

 

How exactly a posthuman body will still be biological human body

Synthetic biology allows for new genes, new proteins, new molecular structures and machines.   Proteins, even the existing one's often take roles as molecular machines within the body.

Humans, primates, rodents, we all share basic machinery and basic instructions to build and maintain the body.   The software of life, dna.   Change the instructions and you change the body, you change being and its capabilities.

We will drastically change dna, vastly boosting our abilities and our bodies, to a superhuman state.   That does not mean loss of the human form, it only means loss of human limitations.

I envision, negligible senescence, increased radiation resistance, the ability to develop and survive in microgravity environments, the ability to regenerate limbs and even regenerate from central nervous system damage.    We will take the best traits from all the species of earth, those with super immunity, those with super resistance to cancer, those that do not age, those that can hold their breath, those that can withstand radiation, those that can regenerate the central nervous system, those that can return to a childlike state time and again, those that can be inactive for prolonged periods, those that can suspend their metabolism to survive failing environments.... and we will go beyond, we will be able to take digital backups of our current higher nervous system, and when regenerating restore memories and personality.   We will go beyond, and the artificial structures and molecular machines, envisioned to be stronger and faster than anything known will be synthesized by our biology and incorporated into our bodies.

Edited by Castiel, 14 September 2016 - 10:11 AM.

When you change the instructions (the DNA software  that you mean) you change the body, and thus you loose your identity as a human being. You trade new capabilities for your human stats and features, and thus you redirect to the route of becomming an unindentified mutant. Thats my point of view.

All the things you want may become possible by making items abd treatments, that do not mess up with the fact, that we are biological human beings.

When you change the instructions (the DNA software  that you mean) you change the body, and thus you loose your identity as a human being. You trade new capabilities for your human stats and features, and thus you redirect to the route of becomming an unindentified mutant. Thats my point of view.

 

All the things you want may become possible by making items abd treatments, that do not mess up with the fact, that we are biological human beings.

Each new child is said to have around 50 new mutations,  by the age of 100 about 400 mutations have accumulated in the fastest dividing cells.

In the cells that make you you, your very neurons, the number of genetic changes appears ridiculous about 1000 by some accounts.  That is by design, natural design

 

New research has demonstrated that individual neurons may carry up to 1,000 genetic mutations not present in surrounding cells.-http://www.hhmi.org/...s-human-neurons

Your definition of human may actually exclude humans from qualifying as humans.

Regards the future

https://www.youtube....h?v=giuVfY-I-p4

Edited by Castiel, 14 September 2016 - 11:59 AM.

We come again at the point of the personal choice.

You don't mind to stop being an alive human being and want to immortalize yourself thatway.

I want to be an alive human being and that is my pathway.

DNA accumulates with the time - true, but what I would use will not be discarding my human genetic repairing system from my DNA code, and replacing it with some other animal's genetic repairment mechanism, or worse, with an artifitial one, I would use a genetic therapy to recover the mutations done. That is one of the differences between you and me. But as I wrote above, everyone has his own pathway, and his own choice. Whose is better maybe can say only the time. Nevermind, I wish you a good luck on your pathway.

We come again at the point of the personal choice.

 

You don't mind to stop being an alive human being and want to immortalize yourself thatway.

 

I want to be an alive human being and that is my pathway.

 

DNA accumulates with the time - true, but what I would use will not be discarding my human genetic repairing system from my DNA code, and replacing it with some other animal's genetic repairment mechanism, or worse, with an artifitial one, I would use a genetic therapy to recover the mutations done. That is one of the differences between you and me. But as I wrote above, everyone has his own pathway, and his own choice. Whose is better maybe can say only the time. Nevermind, I wish you a good luck on your pathway.

note, your dna replication, repair and maintenance is mostly virtually the same code as the bonobos.  It's not human or bonobo, it's a code shared by both.   You even share code with a banana.  That is due to a common ancestor.   The common ancestor diverged and gave rise to all.   So a lot of code is shared, it is not particular, not unique, to any one species. 

The evolutionary function, can be viewed as a kind of search function.  Intelligence, like sexual reproduction, is but an algorithmic solution able to basically put evolution into warp drive.  It can take all the solutions that aid survival found in the search tree, and can even transcend into the landscape of possibilities to attain solutions beyond what is evolvable... through it the unevolvable, becomes a product of the evolutionary process.

You may say you don't wan't warp drive in your ship, because other planets are not earth, despite being composed of the same type of atoms and being hospitable.  You're free to do that, but realize the earth is not special.  Just as a section of dna is not special it is not "human" vs not "human" it is simply code, and the physical components are identical, mere rearrangements of the same underlying building blocks.

To say my legos, I won't rearrange them in a better way, because it would no longer be legos, well that's nonsense.  

Edited by Castiel, 14 September 2016 - 02:02 PM.

Go live, posthuman Castiel, with MOSTLY the same bonobos banana shaken DNA and nanobotic metalic body with the newst brain software ... 

Go live, posthuman Castiel, with MOSTLY the same bonobos banana shaken DNA and nanobotic metalic body with the newst brain software ... 

if you do not want to remember the truth, if you do not want the ideal.  Call it metallic if you like, but it is not metallic, call it nanobotic, in as much as cells are nanobots and you're already like that.    The world, diseased and corrupt, but one word, one truth, and it is reshapen into the ideal.

That is the difference in power between the truth and a lie, a lie may heal a few and comfort a few, but the truth, because it is the truth, is powerful enough to heal entire worlds.  

The body of man is a product of evolution, defective and sick, weak, feeble.   But that which is broken can be fixed, that which is not whole can be made whole.

If you do not want to be healed, that is your choice.  But realize that remembering is not abandoning humanity.   From the moment we're born we integrate external information, at the level of our cells, at the level of our minds, to our very core constantly changing and evolving as we exchange information.    The process does not change our fundamental nature.

That said, like the poor often mock the rich and how they'd rather not be rich and prefer being poor, that is nothing but a beautiful consoling lie.   Those who seek a perfect body, and attain it, know that those without it may claim that their imperfections is what they want, that they need not perfection, that they need not divinity, that they would rather live in a world of lies than a world of truth.   That is their choice, but one who lives amongst lies is blind.

"oh woeh me , my car is breaking down, my car has a flat tire"...-p1

"ye let me change your tire, and fix your car"-p2

"no, I'd rather not, go ride with your fixed car, I'll push mine!"-p1

Edited by Castiel, 14 September 2016 - 05:10 PM.

I am not against you, Castiel. I simply underline the differences between our two choices. 

Lets wish each-other, that after 200 years we will meet somewhere, I as a biological alive human being at a visual age of 35 and you as a nanobotic genetically modified posthuman being. 

I am not against you, Castiel. I simply underline the differences between our two choices. 

 

Lets wish each-other, that after 200 years we will meet somewhere, I as a biological alive human being at a visual age of 35 and you as a nanobotic genetically modified posthuman being. 

I just want to clarify:
Genetically modifying cells, does not make them non-cells.   Changing the letters in a book, does not make it non-book.

You can't regrow your limbs because of some letters in your dna, you say I would rather depend on an external machine providing me a new limb than being able to regrow it myself.   Well, ok, but being able to regrow limbs does not make you nonhuman nor nanobotic.

There are people who would rather be in a chair than able to walk, perhaps they could say there's something wrong with having working legs.  Well, that's their perspective, they're free to depend on external machines to live, they're free not to be self-sufficient.   But being self-sufficient, again don't see why you see it in a bad light.   

No different than seeing a half bit $1 burger on the floor and looking at the latest and greatest dish from chef on top of the table in a bad light, while extolling the virtues of the half bitten $1 burger on the floor.   Reminds me of Don Quixote, living in his own world.   But deep down must know the truth.

Edited by Castiel, 14 September 2016 - 05:33 PM.

Genetically modifying human cells that gives the cells new abilities makes them non human cells. Changing the letters in a book abd thus adding new information to it, makes it non original book. 

I can't regrow my limbs, but I would like my new limb to be grown in a lab and transplanted to me. 

Genetically modifying human cells that gives the cells new abilities makes them non human cells. Changing the letters in a book abd thus adding new information to it, makes it non original book. 

 

I can't regrow my limbs, but I would like my new limb to be grown in a lab and transplanted to me. 

Ok , and you can grow your food by working the land too.

This idea of human versus non humans is based on definition.   The gradual change that gave rise to humans from their so called non human ancestors does not have a straight line dividing human from nonhuman.    When humans evolved blue eyes and blond hair, did they stop being human in your book>?

It is a matter of point of view. 

I choose the biological alive human being route on the crossroad. 

You choose the posthuman route on the crossroad. 

Nothing bad. The bad would be if someone of us decides to change the route when its too late. 

My food either will be grown by machines, or will be grown on the way it is grown today. So will be yours before the posthuman ... how to call it .. era, maybe. 

First you need to be in intergalactic space far from any gravity wells. Then you will need a temporal computer, probably tachion based or similar to plot a course through space so you avoid hitting planets, suns etc. (assuming you know all of the local galaxies vectors and velocities) Then you need a stasis field to exit our continuum on a trajectory to your target. Timing must be perfect or you could exit in a different (parallel) universe. This would not be too big an issue because another you would exit into our universe as if nothing went wrong. But it would bug me because I like getting it right.

If time travel to the past is possible, then would not someone from the future be visiting us today? If we could become immortal through time travel to the past, would not have someone from the future already made us immortal?

Wonder what happened to Prof R Mallett's closed time like curve device using lasers?

He was hoping to send particles back in time.

If time travel to the past is possible, then would not someone from the future be visiting us today? If we could become immortal through time travel to the past, would not have someone from the future already made us immortal?

Reasons for that are many. The most convincing in my opinion is that if the people from the future change something in the past (from their perspective), they change absolutely everything, the entire vector of events gets diviated. The longer the vector stays diviated, the larger becomes the difference between what it was, and what it is before the change. If they normally reside far away enough from the moment of change, the diviated vector of events reach in a moment in which the people themself do not exist. Thus if they go too earlier in time, and make a change, they kill themselves.

For example, lets imagine, that you can timetravel to the past. You go 2000 years ago and stop some war. Thus you saved lets say 1000 men from death. The saved people go back in their towns and villages and make completely different famillies, than those, which would exist if exatly those men were death. Those newely spawned famillies start to do other families, that should not exist further. The people, who result from these newely spamed famillies actually destroy the famillies, that normally should exist by marrying for the wrong people. And it happens so, that Your great great great grand mother do not marry your great great great grandfather, but instead she marries some of the survivals, that you provided. And your own lifeline is destroyed. Everyone, that you loved like your mother and father do not even exist, because you killed them before they were born. If you come back into the present (from the perspective of your start point) you suddenly understand, that your familly simply does not exist enymore.

A feedback loop between future and past would get very complicated, if such a thing were possible at all. Now, suppose person X from the future visits the past and takes some action that causes him not to exist. There still could be person Y from the future to visit us in the present and actually do something to ensure his existence in our future. We may never see an X type person, but would we not see a Y type person?

A feedback loop between future and past would get very complicated, if such a thing were possible at all. Now, suppose person X from the future visits the past and takes some action that causes him not to exist. There still could be person Y from the future to visit us in the present and actually do something to ensure his existence in our future. We may never see an X type person, but would we not see a Y type person?

Here is my intuitive take on this problem.

Person A travels from the t=1000 to t=0 then changes the past so that he won't make the trip again.

Now, the future can only change at the speed of time. If person A stays in the pasts timeline there is no problem: the people from his future keep living in their version of the future which progresses at the speed of time, while the people in the past are slowly overwriting the future, one second at a time. The timeline of the past will never reach the people in the future, because for every second it progresses, the people in the future progress also a second. The will live out their time blissfully unaware that their past is being erased/replaced.

But if person A travels back to the future, he will find it totally unchanged, because not enough "time" has passed for the past to reach the future. The only way person A can change the future would be to travel on a time wave from the past -- that is, live through the past.

Here is another way of getting around the problem of a time traveler erasing his existence. Suppose the time traveler is 55 years old and travels 50 years into the past. He has entered history too late to erase his existence. However, will the 55-year-old and the 5-year-old be the same person?

 

Here is my intuitive take on this problem.

 

Person A travels from the t=1000 to t=0 then changes the past so that he won't make the trip again.

 

Now, the future can only change at the speed of time. If person A stays in the pasts timeline there is no problem: the people from his future keep living in their version of the future which progresses at the speed of time, while the people in the past are slowly overwriting the future, one second at a time. The timeline of the past will never reach the people in the future, because for every second it progresses, the people in the future progress also a second. The will live out their time blissfully unaware that their past is being erased/replaced.

 

But if person A travels back to the future, he will find it totally unchanged, because not enough "time" has passed for the past to reach the future. The only way person A can change the future would be to travel on a time wave from the past -- that is, live through the past.

 

This solution to the time travel problem would seem to introduce splitting of the universe into separate worlds. There would be one world in which time travel did not happen and another world in which time travel did happen.

If the time traveler does not split the universe into two worlds, then we would have to consider presentism. According to presentism, the present always erases the past, so the past simply does not exist. If the past does exist, then we are back to the need for multiple worlds.

Assuming time travel is possible, then, for the multiple world possibility, it becomes a puzzlement as to why we are not aware of people from the future. Someone in future would likely travel back to our time with knowledge and devices that are obviously from the future. Maybe, the answer to this would be that the worlds in which time travel did not occur far outnumber the worlds in which it did. If we were to try to develop statistics for this, I think we would simply end up concluding that time travel is not possible, because thermodynamics makes the probability of information traveling into the past extremely miniscule.

"

Here is another way of getting around the problem of a time traveler erasing his existence. Suppose the time traveler is 55 years old and travels 50 years into the past. He has entered history too late to erase his existence. However, will the 55-year-old and the 5-year-old be the same person?

"

There is no reason whatsoever for them to be the same person. If the physical body travels in time, the physical body will emerge with its own physical consciousness.

"

Assuming time travel is possible, then, for the multiple world possibility, it becomes a puzzlement as to why we are not aware of people from the future. Someone in future would likely travel back to our time with knowledge and devices that are obviously from the future. Maybe, the answer to this would be that the worlds in which time travel did not occur far outnumber the worlds in which it did. If we were to try to develop statistics for this, I think we would simply end up concluding that time travel is not possible, because thermodynamics makes the probability of information traveling into the past extremely miniscule.

"

This argument is identical to the argument of "if there are aliens, why have they not contacted us yet?". The time travellers may not want to or not be allowed to reveal their identity, and being from the future, would be very good at hiding it. If a time traveller travels from the future they are changing the past and their predictive ability is exponentially diminished with time. Thus it would likely be impossible for someone from the future to prove that they are from the future based on predictions alone.

Only very few people today are able to build a computer from the very basic parts, and likely no one knows how to manufacture all the parts themselves, or even if they would, just gathering all the metals and making the plastics in the past would be impossible and the amount of work to combine them unpractical (even today, probably no single country has all the resources to manufacture them without importing some). The usability of knowledge is overrated, humanity uses machines to make machines, and this has been the case for thousands of years. Think if you travelled 1000 years into the past and you don't have a ruler to judge length and you don't even have a voltmeter, what can you really make? Is present day knowledge be useful for anything or just a hindrance? How easy is it to register a patent and how much does marketing and ability to find investors matter? If you try to sell something that is way too advanced like a time machine / or fusion device would anyone buy it or think you are a scammer/lunatic?

Another aspect is how easy is it to survive until you publish something. Likely the cost of using a time machine is linear at least with the mass that would go to the past, and maybe amount of time in the past. Maybe most people can't even afford travelling more than 1 year into the past? If you can't bring anything with you then how would you survive today? Would you know English? You would start out homeless with no government ID, and there are plenty of homeless people now claiming they are from the future... How easy is it to survive with no gov. ID and no money and no relevant skills or employment/education history?

Besides are there really good reasons to change the past? One can argue that no one from the future would prefer to live out their lives in the past as they probably don't need to work in the future and all of their needs are satisfied. If they are going to change their own past, it would likely never affect them in person when they return to the future (see my theory in the post above), so why would they even bother going back?

Edited by nickthird, 12 November 2017 - 06:35 PM.

When you change the instructions (the DNA software  that you mean) you change the body, and thus you loose your identity as a human being.

 

When you change the instructions (the DNA software  that you mean) you change the body, and thus you loose your identity as a human being.

Do you lose your identity as a human when you get cancer (instruction change in cells)?

A pacemaker?

Surgery to remove the appendix?

Corrective gene therapy to cure a genetic disease?

 

When you get cancer the cancer cells are thosa, that loose their identity

When you take a pacemaker you loose a part of your biological identity, but people do it out of no choice.

Surgery to remove the appendix does not change your DNA so in the context of the topic it does not change your identity.

Corrective gene therapy to cure a genetic disease changes the genetic identity of the cured part of the body. It is the choice of the patient to do it or not. If he do it, it again will be out of no other choice.

This topic is fun. Who did not dream of going back in time? I sure did. As a kid I wanted to see and experience. how people lived hundreds and thousands years ago. In lieu of a time machine I had to contend with dreams. I still remember how, on the flying bike, I traveled  all the way to a  bustling bazaar in Constantinople or how, as an Indian girl in saree, I nervously digged out coins from the sandy soil under a tree (having just seen a man in white turban and blue salwar hurriedly burry them there). Those dreams were fun and they were the real thing up until the moment I woke up. Recently, I bet many of us wished we could slip --or just for a few minutes please!-- a year back (two better!) and buy buy buy those crypto coins -- no? 

ah... sweet dreams..

But back to reality. I read most of the thread and saw that initially people argued whether time existed at all or was just an illusion. Then someone said that there were no time but only spacetime and nothing, in theory, prevented you from going back and forth, cause nothing in spacetime distinguishes future from the past. Everybody agreed  though that changing the past will change the present and no one wanted to rock that boat. The thread died soon after someone said that just looking at things will change them forever..  ..what?

IMO those are good examples of how we confuse reality with models of reality -- as if  they were one and the same thing. But clearly they are not. Models are visions of reality from a specific POV while reality -- well, it just is. Many also believe that reality and information about it are one and the same thing. Someone brought up "relativity of simultaneity" -- that's a good example of how information about an event is taken for the event itself. 

So in this poll my take is that reality exists and it exists in time. Regarding time itself, the past is information about how the current state of the Universe evolved, and so as such it exists only in the... "information field" (for the lack of a better term). The future (or, rather, many futures) also exists, also as information.

And we exist in the reality of now, which is the process of many possible futures converging into one and only past. We can access the past stored in the information field, but we cannot access the "real" past, real in the sense of this thread -- and that's of course for the simple reason that that sort of past does not exist in reality.

It only exists as information. Good news is that future, or many futures also already exist, as information, and they are equally accessible. This means that information about how people in the future will solve the problem of aging already exists. The problem lies not so much in accessing that information -- the real difficulty is in translating it into practical ideas and language we can understand today. So, I believe it's difficult, but it's not impossible

Edited by xEva, 04 January 2018 - 08:11 PM.

Genetically modifying human cells that gives the cells new abilities makes them non human cells.

 

Genetically modifying human cells that gives the cells new abilities makes them non human cells.

No it doesn't.

If we fix the incorrect chromosome code in Down Syndrome sufferers, does that make them non-human cells?

Are cancer cells non-human?

Are people born with polydactyly (up to 10 fingers on a hand) full of non human cells?

 

In the context that we were arguing with @Castiel I meaned genetic modifications, that give abilities, that normally the human does not have, such as regrowing new limbs. In this meaning if you modify the cell to give it a new ability,  is not among the abilities of the human cells, then you are making it a non-human cell.

If you fix a Down Syndrome suferrer, it still will be a human. You are not giving abilities, that the people do not have. You are bringing back abilities, that are lost due to a disease.

Cancer cells are genetically twisted. They do not have the genetics of the person anymore, and in these terms they shoud not be human anymore. The more correct would not be "human cancer cells" but "cancer cells of human origin". Further woud be more correct to add the name of the tissue that they originate. So it should be for example "cancer cells of human epithelial tissue origin" or "cancer cells derived from a human epithelial tissue". I haven't been thinking on that until now, but this should be the correct way.

I refuse to comment the polydactyly and other genetically damaged people, because the conversation may unvolunterely lead to conclusions, which are against the largerly accepted views of tolerance and thus to disrupt unnecessarily the good tempers.

Everybody agreed  though that changing the past will change the present and no one wanted to rock that boat. The thread died soon after someone said that just looking at things will change them forever..  ..what?

I am a physicist and know something about this wonderful subject.... if you could go back in time and influence the future, you would only influence the future into the future timeline that you are familiar with.

This means that you can't go back in time and stop yourself from being born. You can however go back in time and cause yourself to be born.

These are all mighty IF's

But there are theories out there that restrict the possibility of time travel in the reverse. I personally believe those theories over theories that allow for time travel. And I am talking about large scale time travel... traveling minutes, hours, years in reverse.

I do think that time travel may be possible on very short scales... picoseconds and such.

all that exist is virtual particles in a virtual machine.  Human consciousness is but a sequence of digtial patterns part of larger pattern, a fractal like permutation allows nonrepeatability, discontinuity in time does not mean discontinuity of consciousness.

All life is digital life and digital life is eternal.

quantum information is neither created nor destroyed and same applies to digital information.  There is a tight link between the digital and the quantum, they're each defined in terms of the other at a fundamental level.

The problem is not of immortality, but the inevitability of fate, not even nonexistence can kill something that is both alive and dead and anything in between.  Forever trapped unable to die, with the hope of death yet surviving all deaths.   Guided by a simple underlying logic that governs all behavior limited to repeat in different permutations of the same exact story.