Immortality- is it logical?

[Shrykull]

The closest thing to immortality I can think of stopping the aging process so you'd never age and die- and you'd also have to be absolutely disease proof as well, then there's always the possibility you could be killed or die in an accident. I was wondering, what about if somehow in the future there's a way to transfer you consciousness into a machine, then grow a clone body and put your consciousness in it? Though I think this is immoral because a person when created always comes with a consciousness and it's rightfully thier body, so you'd just be imposing your consciousness over the one that's already there. But if you could do it, you could use a clone, then when it dies or you want to switch/change bodies, you transfer it back to the machine, then transfer it to another body.

[Lagmonster]

Even if you forego the 'clone' part and just put your thoughts and memories and personality into a machine, you're still DEAD. This issue has been raised with the 'Star Trek Transporters' and the concept of continuity of consciousness.

In a nutshell, according to one theory of personal identity, YOU were killed. You now have a machine that thinks it's you, feels like you did, and will experience life as you did, but it's still not you. You are dead and gone. Even if you take a clone and chemically and electrically mess with its brain until its brain is a copy of yours, it is still just another person who thinks it's you. You're STILL DEAD.

The only way that you avoid being killed is if they remove YOUR brain and spinal column, and stick IT in a machine capable of supporting and regenerating it indefinately, and at some point overcoming the numerous problems associated with memory and age.

Face it: Humans cannot be rendered immortal. Their personalities and such can be preserved, but we all die just the same.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Also, if humans could live forever, wouldn't they die anyway when the sun goes supernova, and chars the earth?

[HemlockGrey]

I think humanity will have colonized the galaxy by then.

[Patrick Degan]

Even if you forego the 'clone' part and just put your thoughts and memories and personality into a machine, you're still DEAD. This issue has been raised with the 'Star Trek Transporters' and the concept of continuity of consciousness.

In a nutshell, according to one theory of personal identity, YOU were killed. You now have a machine that thinks it's you, feels like you did, and will experience life as you did, but it's still not you. You are dead and gone. Even if you take a clone and chemically and electrically mess with its brain until its brain is a copy of yours, it is still just another person who thinks it's you. You're STILL DEAD.

The only way that you avoid being killed is if they remove YOUR brain and spinal column, and stick IT in a machine capable of supporting and regenerating it indefinately, and at some point overcoming the numerous problems associated with memory and age.

Face it: Humans cannot be rendered immortal. Their personalities and such can be preserved, but we all die just the same.

It is an interesting connundrum, isn't it? What defines "humanity", specifically? If we go entirely by the biological classifications, then simply downloading a copy of your personality will not give any one individual immortality but would merely preserve a copy, and the original person is indeed dead now and forever. If on the other hand, we consider a definition of humanity as that of our functional, waking intelligence and personality, i.e. that intangible that we call "mind", then the body is merely the vessel which carries and maintains the continual existence of Mind. Continuity of consciousness becomes the key issue in preserving and continuing any individual human's existence.

Suppose there was a way to implant a transceiver in the brain of an individual human being which could be linked continuously to the storage matrix of a sufficently complex computer or to the growing brain of a clone, or to the artificial brain of an android? The person would continue in his present life, growing, living, and experiencing everything around him in the real world, while simultaneously being aware of his interaction with his new storage/processing medium and every input it is receiving from external sources. In this way, you would perhaps have an individual consciousness which is now distributed between two "brains", both of which are interacting realtime in the world over an extended period, so that when the "original" person's body ultimately succumbs to age, injury, or terminal illness, the living consciousness of the person merely completes the transfer to its new vessel and continues on in its new form, without a break in its receipt of sense-data or in its thought processes. Could the essential humanity, i.e., the Mind, be said to be immortal in that case?

[SyntaxVorlon]

Is it a machine that think's it's you or is it you? I personnally wouldn't mind having my brain dLed to a comp, with adiquate(sp) processing power to emulate me as myself, for posterities sake. Or the thought of merging computerized cybernetics and bioengineering to the point where our bodies can be virtually immortal. Really the idea of immortallity is workable if one could get over certain obsticles in cellular decay and disease, but genetic tech will advance to a point where that is possible. I personnally would enjoy some fraction of immortality, though I would probably find it necessary to eventually bow out of the mortal coil. But I am, as yet satisfied with the fact that my life will be 80 years at best 120 at most. It is a fact far too many choose not to accept, religion is the end product of not being able to accept your own death. If it happens it happens, it's death.
There are three things every human can hope to do: Live to have children, live to raise those children, and live long enough after that just in case your kids don't make and their kids need help. No real point in going beyond that, other than fun.

[Shinova]

I think some questions have to be answered first, such as what defines your "consciousness"? Your actual brain or the electrical impulses that run through it?

[Crown]

Let's put it this way; you are a ST red shirt (no character shielding), you step on the transporter and instead of being beamed an malfunction digitises you (insert power spike) you get digitised again on the transporter, and at the destination, which one is you? Neither because you have already ceased to exist. Even if somehow a copy is made and you aren't killed (digitised) to begin with, the copy isn't you. They might know everything about you up until the moment of it's creation and vis-versa, but as soon as one of you move, you are now different entities, with different thoughts and experiences.

Err did that make sense?

[Patrick Degan]

Let's put it this way; you are a ST red shirt (no character shielding), you step on the transporter and instead of being beamed an malfunction digitises you (insert power spike) you get digitised again on the transporter, and at the destination, which one is you? Neither because you have already ceased to exist. Even if somehow a copy is made and you aren't killed (digitised) to begin with, the copy isn't you. They might know everything about you up until the moment of it's creation and vis-versa, but as soon as one of you move, you are now different entities, with different thoughts and experiences.

Err did that make sense?

It was, in fact, a central connundrum in the plot of James Blish's original ST novel Spock Must Die.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The closest thing to immortality I can think of stopping the aging process so you'd never age and die- and you'd also have to be absolutely disease proof as well, then there's always the possibility you could be killed or die in an accident. I was wondering, what about if somehow in the future there's a way to transfer you consciousness into a machine, then grow a clone body and put your consciousness in it? Though I think this is immoral because a person when created always comes with a consciousness and it's rightfully thier body, so you'd just be imposing your consciousness over the one that's already there. But if you could do it, you could use a clone, then when it dies or you want to switch/change bodies, you transfer it back to the machine, then transfer it to another body.

Immortality would be an expensive and pointless boondoggle. One has to ask what would be the point of keeping people around, essentially forever. I can understand extending the lifespan of an individual person. But to make them immortal? It's senseless. And one has to think of just how much life somebody can experience before it just becomes repetitive.

[lord scandon]

what is immortality? having those damn telemarketers always calling?!?!
never getting a discount because you wont eat that much anymore? but now you get to watch your favorite sports player goin' and goin' and goin'.............................damn maybe ill just go postal whats life when you live for ever

[Lagmonster]

It is an interesting connundrum, isn't it? What defines "humanity", specifically?

Yes. It's an interesting concept, with the 'two brains' idea, but I still believe that despite that, the original human will still suffer a personal end to consciousness. It's all in perspective. To everyone else, I have endured flawlessly. To myself, I have ceased to exist. At best, I have been split into two consciousnesses, man and machine. But ONE of them (the man) is still dead. For one of the two personalities, an end has come. No, I still believe that humans cannot be rendered immortal without preserving the original consciousness indefinately.

[Dooey Jo]

Also, if humans could live forever, wouldn't they die anyway when the sun goes supernova, and chars the earth?

No, the Sun is way too small to go supernova, only blue supergiants die that way. Though the Earth will get cooked pretty bad when the Sun becomes a red giant (which will happen in 5-10 billion years), and the immortal person will get a horrible sun burn if he stays on Earth...