His Divine Shadow wrote:Let say for the sake of this discussion that scientists have been able to clone human bodies and accelerate their growth so a mature clone of say the equivalent of 20 years could be made in relatively short amount of time and that they could transplant the brain from the original to the clone, would this be immortality or not? I mean the brain, wouldn't it still be old, and wouldn't it eventually fail anyway even with a new body to support it? Or would the original brain be sort of rejuvenated from the new younger body somehow?
The original brain itself has been subjected to anywhere from 50 - 70 years of antioxidant and radiation damage. It has suffered cell death from all those accumulated poisons. Unless you have some method of repairing all that damage to the brain cells, you will have a person who may have a young body, but end up being completely useless by the time their body hits 40.
Computer technologies will eventually get to the point where we can reliably simulate a neural network with 10E+9 discreet switches, each having about 20,000 different connections. Then . . . you could just copy the brain, connection-for-connection, to the new android brain. Though you'd better hope that the error rate is really, really really low. I don't think there'd be a way to do that copying without destroying the original medium, so if the copying process gets interrupted . . . well, it's off to the Big Sleep for you.
I think there was an episode of Twilight Zone (not the b&w one) or some other similar show, about this very rich guy with a fatal disease who basically cloned his own body and copied his memories to a computer brain, and had it implanted in the clone before dying, then left all his fortune to him. There were several issues like his sons whining because they wanted all the stuff, and eventually the clone died because the brain was unstable (so I guess neural-net tech wasn't advanced enough, this was like 20th century, not even the near-future )
I have heard one theory that might work if we ever get advanced enough micro-tech or nano-tech, imagine a bunch of probes in your brain checking out and measuring one neuron at a time then replacing it with an inorganic counterpart, and then move on to the next neuron and so on and on.
One would ofcourse have thousands or millions of groups doing this across the brain at one time and it could take years, but by the end your brain could be inorganic computer and you might not have even noticed it occur.
Well thats one idea anyway.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.
I think that, that would be a more plausible idea (relatively speaking), simply because unless we can stop the aging process, we will always die.... You know what I mean.
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"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
Too many of the options end up basically making copies of you and not keeping you around. The one which ends up with an inorganic brain is pretty cool but in all but the most perfect scenerio it (to me) seems like a copy.
That was one of the things I thought was messed up with the premise behind the movies Freejack and The Sixth Day. Arnie's movie made no bones about the cloneing process making copies of people but in Freejack they were (trying to) imprinting a digital copy of Anthony Hopkin's brain on Emilo Esteves'. The original guy was still going to die but the reprogramed Emilo would have lived on as him.
I guess, I look at it pretty much the same way that Mike looks at transporters as killing a person and making a copy from the same mater. Unless at least your brain becomes permanent everything else is a copy.
Last edited by Tsyroc on 2002-10-18 02:11pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
It seems the only way to prevent a "death" would be to physically transfer the brain into the new body. But even then, I don't think this could be a method of absolute immortality, since I assume the brain would eventually just wear out and die on its own.
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I prefer the slow process of getting a artificial brain myself, that will live on itself and can be put in a new clone body or android body.
And possibly even enhanced.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.
How about the use of nano-technology (if/when it comes around) to keep a constant recording of ones brain on file? This method though would have to start from day 1 of a persons life, but say a nano-factory were implanted into the person. Nanites would hang around in the brain (thus they would have to be small enough to get through the blood-brain barrier) and just record each bit of stored info as its being stored. Then at the end of a day its all downloaded into a storage medium (or perhaps a remote, continuous download). Continue doing that until the subject dies and then record the info into a clean slate brain. Though in essence it wouldn't be keeping the same person alive, but in all acordances to the brain in the new body it never died. I guess this theory brings up the debate of the transporter that makes an exact copy of the person at the destination but destroys the original so is the person at the destination still the same or a new person... okay, enough for now.
"Once again we wanted our heroes to be simple, grizzled everymen with nothing to lose; one foot in the grave, the other wrapped in an American flag and lodged firmly in a terrorist's asshole."
Brotherhood of the Monkey: Nonchalant Disgruntled Monkey
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Larz wrote:How about the use of nano-technology (if/when it comes around) to keep a constant recording of ones brain on file? This method though would have to start from day 1 of a persons life, but say a nano-factory were implanted into the person. Nanites would hang around in the brain (thus they would have to be small enough to get through the blood-brain barrier) and just record each bit of stored info as its being stored. Then at the end of a day its all downloaded into a storage medium (or perhaps a remote, continuous download). Continue doing that until the subject dies and then record the info into a clean slate brain. Though in essence it wouldn't be keeping the same person alive, but in all acordances to the brain in the new body it never died. I guess this theory brings up the debate of the transporter that makes an exact copy of the person at the destination but destroys the original so is the person at the destination still the same or a new person... okay, enough for now.
This is, of course, ignoring all the inherent difficulties of nano-technology. (Economies of scale and the like.)
If you want some difficulties with brain transplants, then how about the muscular knowledge that has been aquiered in ones original body through out their life... the clone would be Tabalas Rasa.... a blank slate. Each time the person brain was moved to another body, the person would have to train all the muscles again. Basically the person would spend their new life in their new teaching the body to do the things that they want it to. Movement isn't all in the brain: interneuron neurons (spinal cord), motor neurons, and sensory neurons all develop movement memory throughout a persons life. So in theory one would have to progam/train the clone body to do everything the person recieving the clone body could do.
To Terwynn: And the whole concept of immortality cloning isn't one big difficulty of technology and manipulation how?...
"Once again we wanted our heroes to be simple, grizzled everymen with nothing to lose; one foot in the grave, the other wrapped in an American flag and lodged firmly in a terrorist's asshole."
Brotherhood of the Monkey: Nonchalant Disgruntled Monkey
Justice League
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