21 replies to this topic

[Willie]

I have two questions bothering me, and I would like to find out some of your opinions on them.

If aging was stopped/reversed/cured, wouldn't our lifespans still be limited by the eventual heat death of the universe due to the neverending increase of entropy?

Is the only true possibility of eternal life to be found in another world/dimension such as heaven, or is there a possibility that we will be able to make the universe (in a sense) immortal as well?

[EmbraceUnity]

I have two questions bothering me, and I would like to find out some of your opinions on them.

If aging was stopped/reversed/cured, wouldn't our lifespans still be limited by the eventual heat death of the universe due to the neverending increase of entropy?

Is the only true possibility of eternal life to be found in another world/dimension such as heaven, or is there a possibility that we will be able to make the universe (in a sense) immortal as well?

There are a few things to take into consideration. The idea of the Omega Point deals with this question, but as far as I know, it presumes that we will never have the power to engineer an immortal universe. That could very well be a false assumption. Who knows what could be accomplished with picotechnology or femtotechnology, or other such things.

Basically, some conceptions of the Omega Point idea are that as we reach the heat death of the universe, if our civilization still exists, we will all be uploaded beings. We will compute our own consciousness at increasingly faster speeds, increasingly speeding up subjective perception of time until we use all available matter in the universe (Kardaschev Level 4). Thus, one nanosecond will subjectively be like a billion years, and then one nanosecond will be like a trillion years, and so forth. We will be able to stay at that point basically indefinitely from a subjective standpoint.

Another thing to take into consideration is a new theory that the universe isn't really expanding at an accelerating rate, but it just looks that way relative to our position in space (time dilation). Thus, we might have a few billion more years than scientists used to think.

One more thing to ponder is that over the course of infinity, your chances of death are approaching 100%. 99.9999999999...

Edited by progressive, 06 January 2008 - 06:11 PM.

[abolitionist]

"to be here and now while working progressively for the future"

[cyborgdreamer]

One more thing to ponder is that over the course of infinity, your chances of death are approaching 100%. 99.9999999999...

That depends on how the risk of dying changes over time. If risk decreases quickly enough, the probability of dying might approach something less than 100%. And there's still the chance we could some day eliminate death altogether. Maybe we could engineer a perfectly safe parallel universe. (Of course, this is immensely speculative.)

[Richard Leis]

If aging was stopped/reversed/cured, wouldn't our lifespans still be limited by the eventual heat death of the universe due to the neverending increase of entropy?

With our current technological abilities, we can try to realize "indefinite" or "unlimited" lifespans while developing solutions to a selection of existential risks. As our technological capabilities increase, we will take on buses, falls, accidents, murderers, and other dangers that will continue to claim even those with indefinite lifespans. In transhuman and posthuman forms, we can then tackle problems like heat death, perhaps with your suggestion to "make the universe (in a sense) immortal as well."

We cannot know the outcome, but I see no more worthy goal than to try, and try again. An extra day here, a few years there, decades, centuries, and whatever else we can snatch from the jaws of death and non-existence, even if it is inevitable: those are the moments that make the fight worthwhile.

Edited by Richard Leis, 06 January 2008 - 11:50 PM.

[EmbraceUnity]

One more thing to ponder is that over the course of infinity, your chances of death are approaching 100%. 99.9999999999...

That depends on how the risk of dying changes over time. If risk decreases quickly enough, the probability of dying might approach something less than 100%. And there's still the chance we could some day eliminate death altogether. Maybe we could engineer a perfectly safe parallel universe. (Of course, this is immensely speculative.)

There is always a non-zero risk of something unforseen happening, and extrapolate that risk into infinity and your chances of death are 99.99999...

[jonano]

"compute our own consciousness at increasingly faster speeds, increasingly speeding up subjective perception of time"

can you elaborate more? I dont want to feel the time so long, I want to stay so long, for real, objective or subjective, both.

right?

--Jon

[Luna]

funny thing about the entropy rule.
1. it was proven incorrect
2. people always dismiss the "naturnal systems" part

[knite]

funny thing about the entropy rule.
1. it was proven incorrect
2. people always dismiss the "naturnal systems" part

if ONLY thermodynamics were disproven, our looming energy crisis would be over before it started, but alas I find your statement unlikely to say the least.

[Luna]

funny thing about the entropy rule.
1. it was proven incorrect
2. people always dismiss the "naturnal systems" part

if ONLY thermodynamics were disproven, our looming energy crisis would be over before it started, but alas I find your statement unlikely to say the least.

Ah! but note I meant the second rule only.

[EmbraceUnity]

Ah! but note I meant the second rule only.

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.... you have provided none

[marcopolo]

Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves, worrying about the end of the universe? Personally that is too far off for me to really worry about at the moment. Not saying it will always be that way, but I think the priority should be to find out how to live more than another 70 years before we concern ourselves with how to live more than another 70 billion or trillion years or whatever. Once we figure out how to live longer then our current biological lifespans, there will be plenty of time to worry about and figure out solutions for these other problems.

Edited by marcopolo, 10 January 2008 - 05:39 AM.

[Andrew Shevchuk]

I think this is a rather futile topic right now. The answer is "we don't know and we can't even begin to guess."

[Shannon Vyff]

I put the chance of aging being ended in my lifetime, lower than the chance of cryonics working. There are many ways to die that would not enable you to be cryonicaly preserved. If aging is ended, there would still be many ways to die.

I'm certain that I will die, and pretty certain that I'll never recover from being cryonicaly preserved. But if anything caused me to live vastly longer than my natural lifespan, then I'd be happy for the extra years --and would make my own decisions in a thousand or million years about whether or not to keep on living. We don't know if there are other universes we could enter into if our own dies from heat death. We don't know if we can create these ourselves yet, or even how the laws would differ from our own universe. I hope our species get the chance to find out, even if all from our generation are lost--and the next several hundred generations... Even though I feel that I and other transhumanist/futurists will not be around several hundred years from now--I do what I do to support the movement and people involved in it, because of the possibilities it has--I hope there are always futurists around

[bacopa]

We will compute our own consciousness at increasingly faster speeds, increasingly speeding up subjective perception of time until we use all available matter in the universe (Kardaschev Level 4). Thus, one nanosecond will subjectively be like a billion years, and then one nanosecond will be like a trillion years, and so forth. We will be able to stay at that point basically indefinitely from a subjective standpoint.


This subjective look at time increasingly longer time is fascinating. I have often thought that if we could think X amount of times faster then the faster we are able to think and process information the longer the subjective time will be. Because we will pack in so much more information in a small amount of time.

I am pessimistic that I will live to defeat death only because of all the problems hampering our progress as a civilization. Having people like Bush in office makes the dream of defeating death a utopic fantasy. Unfortunetly scientific advances have been hurt by things liike wars, religious oppression, stupid politicians, etc. If we had a more forward thinking world than defeating death could very well happen.

[dr_chaos]

There is always a non-zero risk of something unforseen happening, and extrapolate that risk into infinity and your chances of death are 99.99999...

I don't think so. Isn't there something called a series in mathematics, which is a sum, that even converges with an infinite numer of terms? Unfortunately I forgot what I learned at school about it and don't have the time to look it up now. So maybe I am wrong.

Edited by dr_chaos, 13 January 2008 - 11:55 AM.

[Luna]

In order to live forever, you just simply need to destroy the chances of dying.
Then it's all simple living

[cyborgdreamer]

There is always a non-zero risk of something unforseen happening, and extrapolate that risk into infinity and your chances of death are 99.99999...

I don't think so. Isn't there something called a series in mathematics, which is a sum, that even converges with an infinite numer of terms? Unfortunately I forgot what I learned at school about it and don't have the time to look it up now. So maybe I am wrong.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say in my other post. For example, let's say your chances of dying during year zero are 1/4 and the risk is halved every successive year. This is represented by the infinite series 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 +... which approaches 1/2. Therefore, in this scenario, you have only a 50% chance of dying over an infinite period of time.

Edited by cyborgdreamer, 14 January 2008 - 04:51 AM.

[Shannon Vyff]

There is always a non-zero risk of something unforseen happening, and extrapolate that risk into infinity and your chances of death are 99.99999...

I don't think so. Isn't there something called a series in mathematics, which is a sum, that even converges with an infinite numer of terms? Unfortunately I forgot what I learned at school about it and don't have the time to look it up now. So maybe I am wrong.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say in my other post. For example, let's say your chances of dying during year zero are 1/4 and the risk is halved every successive year. This is represented by the infinite series 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 +... which approaches 1/2. Therefore, in this scenario, you have only a 50% chance of dying over an infinite period of time.

I'd take those chances What about death in a more violent manner such as when we whittle away the many causes of death...the chance would just go down further.

But yeah, a brain backup would be nice

[tamalak]

As fun as this is to consider it's really irrelevant. The end of the universe is so far away, that if it's POSSIBLE to overcome heat death, we have practically a 100% chance of finding the solution to it. So we really have either a 0% or 100% chance to avoid heat death depending not on our ingenuity, but on what the fundamental laws of reality really are.

[Willie]

Wow! Thanks for all your feedback. I'm overwhelmed by the tremendous response.

The way I think of this whole immortality thing is that once you die, no matter what you've accomplished, how long you've lived, what you've contributed to society over your lifetime, and you [probably] descend into a chasm of non-existence, lack of perception, etc. The world ends for you. I understand that halting aging ought to be the primary concern, since it affords us a comparatively immense amount of time to consider other problems. But without solving these other problems, the conquest of aging will be ultimately futile in that there will still exist an inevitable death, which is what we were trying to get around in the first place.