Suppose Science Made Immortality Into A Reality?

[tinkerdan]

I'm not sure memory would be an issue since the common thought is that we only use a small portion of our brains--as it is. Though there might be some argument to there being a portion that might be inaccessible.

Analogous to the computer I bought for work once that had 4 gigs of memory and when I had the OS downgraded to XP it could only access 2 of those. So we'd require some sort of upgrade to access the presently inaccessible.

One thought is that if we could live long and remain perfectly healthy the rest of the perceived problems might be easily solved. I'm just not sure that we'd ever reach the point of perfect health and the whole concept of the definition of what perfect health might be comes into play along with other subjective issues. It's likely at some point that anyone who doesn't conform to some 'standard' will be deemed a throwback who has lost the capacity for perfect health and needs to be put out of their misery. So, I'm just not sure that perfect health = mental stability; although there would likely be a segment of society that would spout that philosophy and at some point I might question the mental stability of those who spout such nonsense.

One reason the Earth abides and survives is that humanity has to constantly refresh itself with new generations. If we lived forever I'm afraid we'd destroy the Earth long before we'd find a way off Her withered smoldering carcass.

 

[Biskit]

I'm not sure memory would be an issue since the common thought is that we only use a small portion of our brains--as it is.

From some of the documentaries I've seen recently, that notion seems to be out of favour - we use all of it, but just now it's not clear on the how.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

We use 100% of our brains. We just don't use all of it at the same time. If we ever did, we'd probably cook it.

And memories in the human brain are stored holographically. There isn't one neuron for horse. The concept of horse fires a number of neurons that have been 'trained' to fire at the concept. Any particular neuron will have multiple connections, each of which has its own training (or combination of connections for some concepts). A single neuron can remember a horse, your favorite book, the color of your mother's hair, etc. But such concepts have to be re-refreshed occasionally or they fade.

And the more memories you pack in, the greater the number of concepts any specific neuron has to be trained for. Eventually, memories that haven't been used in a while might be trained almost identically to newer ones that are coming in, and although they aren't technically 'overwritten', they are hard to distinguish from other, unrelated concepts.

This part of memory processing is the same way expert systems work, and is fairly well understood. What is not so well understood yet is how any particular concept is indexed, and how the decision is made in the first place about which neurons should be trained.

 

[Parson]

Don't know about dementia, but the mechanism behind Alzheimer's seems to be pretty well understood at this point. If I remember correctly, it's due to an accumulation of junk in the brain, and just another thing to clean up, like arterial plaque and artery wall hardening. I wouldn't be surprised if dementia is similar.

Alzheimer's is a type, the most common type, of dementia. But the last I'd heard was that the stuff that accumulates in the brain which causes Alzheimer's is not necessarily related. Some people with "stuff" in very high amounts had no obvious symptoms while some who did not have the "stuff' showed the signs of dementia.

 

[Biskit]

One reason the Earth abides and survives is that humanity has to constantly refresh itself with new generations. If we lived forever I'm afraid we'd destroy the Earth long before we'd find a way off Her withered smoldering carcass.

Weird - I read this last night and it hardly registered. Skimming through the thread again today and I hit this - what a remarkably depressing thought, and all the more so because it's right on the mark.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

Weird - I read this last night and it hardly registered. Skimming through the thread again today and I hit this - what a remarkably depressing thought, and all the more so because it's right on the mark.

I dunno. One comment I hear regularly from climate denialists is "So what? By the time it goes bad, I'll be gone." I wonder, if people knew they'd be around in a hundred years, if they might pay a little more attention to the long-term effects of their actions.

Failing that, in a hundred years when they're sitting in the consequences (whether pollution, climate change, or over-population), they might be more inclined to work to fix things if they will personally be around to reap the benefits.

 

[Parson]

I dunno. One comment I hear regularly from climate denialists is "So what? By the time it goes bad, I'll be gone." I wonder, if people knew they'd be around in a hundred years, if they might pay a little more attention to the long-term effects of their actions.

Failing that, in a hundred years when they're sitting in the consequences (whether pollution, climate change, or over-population), they might be more inclined to work to fix things if they will personally be around to reap the benefits.

That makes sense to me. In fact I think that there are a lot of people who think that, but don't have the balls to say it in public.

 

[Biskit]

Failing that, in a hundred years when they're sitting in the consequences (whether pollution, climate change, or over-population), they might be more inclined to work to fix things if they will personally be around to reap the benefits.

Maybe so - it's just that changing attitudes seems to be easier from one generation to the next rather than within a generation. (Except where you have a fine tradition of keeping feuds, or their equivalent, alive.)

 

[Edward M. Grant]

But the last I'd heard was that the stuff that accumulates in the brain which causes Alzheimer's is not necessarily related.

OK. I haven't read any stories about it for a few months, so I guess research is still progressing!

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm not sure memory would be an issue since the common thought is that we only use a small portion of our brains--as it is. Though there might be some argument to there being a portion that might be inaccessible.

Analogous to the computer I bought for work once that had 4 gigs of memory and when I had the OS downgraded to XP it could only access 2 of those. So we'd require some sort of upgrade to access the presently inaccessible.

One thought is that if we could live long and remain perfectly healthy the rest of the perceived problems might be easily solved. I'm just not sure that we'd ever reach the point of perfect health and the whole concept of the definition of what perfect health might be comes into play along with other subjective issues. It's likely at some point that anyone who doesn't conform to some 'standard' will be deemed a throwback who has lost the capacity for perfect health and needs to be put out of their misery. So, I'm just not sure that perfect health = mental stability; although there would likely be a segment of society that would spout that philosophy and at some point I might question the mental stability of those who spout such nonsense.

One reason the Earth abides and survives is that humanity has to constantly refresh itself with new generations. If we lived forever I'm afraid we'd destroy the Earth long before we'd find a way off Her withered smoldering carcass.

What is the average lifespan of a species ? 10 million years ?

 

[DelActivisto]

What is the average lifespan of a species ? 10 million years ?

Depends on how you define "species." Arguably, humans were a different species just 200,000 years ago. Other species remain basically the same for 50 million years.

 

[Vertigo]

Depends on how you define "species." Arguably, humans were a different species just 200,000 years ago. Other species remain basically the same for 50 million years.

The biological definition is fairly precise: "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding." But yes I think some species changed little over long periods whilst others changed a lot over short periods. Probably depends mainly on how stable the environment is as any particular time. Stable and there's probably relatively little change, unstable (think global warming, meteor strike or maybe breakup of Pangaea) and probably individual species will be quite short lived.

 

[BAYLOR]

The biological definition is fairly precise: "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding." But yes I think some species changed little over long periods whilst others changed a lot over short periods. Probably depends mainly on how stable the environment is as any particular time. Stable and there's probably relatively little change, unstable (think global warming, meteor strike or maybe breakup of Pangaea) and probably individual species will be quite short lived.

The modern Coelacanth looks much like it did 70 million years ago when it was thought to be extinct.

 

[hej]

I'd say we'd have a feudalistic system ran by elitists which would probably cripple any thought.

Right.

Only the wealthy could afford it initially. Naturally, they would build ever greater empires and attain further, political control. We've already seen something like this in family dynasties.

Still, I think disruptive technologies would still occur as they do now. Look at Linux, Google, and Facebook -- and the youth of their founders when they started. Old age and experience is not helpful for thinking outside the box.

 

[hej]

I've said this before, but a lot depends on the technology, costs, and risks involved in producing the immortality. If it's cheap but dangerous (one in five users turns into a big ball of cancer), then you'll get one result.

I think five in five would eventually have cancer. Think of it. Hundreds of years without skin, breast, prostate, etc. cancer is possible -- but increasingly unlikely.

So, immortality depends on curing cancer, imho.

 

[hej]

At this point your odds of contracting one type of dementia or the other doubles with every decade past 50. If that holds, the odds of living with dementia past 120 begins to approach certainty.

Dementia strongly correlates with aging. So, one crucial aspect of any immortality would have to be perpetual youth.

Moreover, even without dementia, increasing decrepitude is a serious problem. If someone can no longer walk, likely their organs are not doing too well either.

So, maintaining spry biology is inextricable from any reasonable concept of immortality.

 

[hej]

Don't know about dementia, but the mechanism behind Alzheimer's seems to be pretty well understood at this point. If I remember correctly, it's due to an accumulation of junk in the brain...

A friend of mine's research was on this subject.

The 'junk' is amyloid plaques -- which often, but not always, correlate with Alzheimer's.

Check out this lengthy list of resulting diseases,

Amyloid - Wikipedia

 

[hej]

Science already has two examples of immortality. I'm not sure what to make of these, so I'll simply post a couple wikipedia links with brief comments.

HeLa - Wikipedia

Helen Lane died of cervical cancer. As was normal at the time, doctors took her cells without asking her family for permission. Their immortality is a problem, because they often infect other cultures in laboratories that work with them.

Turritopsis dohrnii - Wikipedia

I believe this organism to be of at least equal interest. It has not only the capacity for immortality, but also the ability to revert to youth!

I think that, with that return to an earlier life stage, it must necessarily forget what it has encountered. Phrased differently, as an organism matures, it adapts to its environment. If it 'un-matures,' it must 'un-adapt' -- i.e. forget.

I wonder how many people would trade much of their memories -- in effect release a good deal of who they are -- to reattain their youth.

I find the concept unsettling, at the very least.

 

[Biskit]

Old age and experience is not helpful for thinking outside the box.

But it brings you much closer to not-thinking inside a box.

 

[DelActivisto]

The biological definition is fairly precise: "a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding." But yes I think some species changed little over long periods whilst others changed a lot over short periods. Probably depends mainly on how stable the environment is as any particular time. Stable and there's probably relatively little change, unstable (think global warming, meteor strike or maybe breakup of Pangaea) and probably individual species will be quite short lived.

It is a precise definition, but like many things, in practice it winds up being far stickier. For instance, you can have two butterflies that live in different areas. They look almost identical. They are obviously very closely related. They are still considered separate species because when they interbreed, their offspring become increasingly infertile for some reason. So they are separate species even though a cursory glance would probably throw them in the same species, and they can technically mate with each other.

And also from that example, we look at whether or not their ancestor would have been a different species. Was their ancestor mostly like one butterfly or the other, or were they different enough to be a common ancestor, but that species is now technically extinct because it morphed into these other two species? That ancestor is at once dead and alive in a way then. Or the common ancestor is the same, and the second butterfly species is a slight offshoot.