What do you think about immortality ? Is it something we should strive for, or should we be afraid of it ?
And if it is achieved regardless, what would it mean for philosophy ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01hbkh4hXEk
>>864025
Alex Kirkeegaard had a really interesting refutation for this type of stuff. Computers so far have ran on binary type of thinking. Computer thinking a series of variables given numeric values and a some Boolean
The human brain does not work like this. Wittgenstein showed us thinking is abstract and not boolian (as the postivists tried to assert).
So the idea of a computer emulating a human brain is not going to happen as long as we are still using languages derived from binary.
Immortality isn't possible, but we should strive to double or triple our lifespan. As a start.
Overpopulation is not a problem, as it's already happening now anyway, and as it's unlikely to be available for poor people and rich people don't reproduce. The real problem is social, it is to determine who gets to live. And the fact that this becomes a problem is a good thing, because it will force a positive evolution of society.
Philosophers will talk and no one will care as usual.
Even if we did it, then congrats - there's a robot copy of you!
And you're still going to fucking die.
>>864076
You wouldn't happen to be a fan of John Searle?
>>864025
>An atrifical brain in which a human personality is transfered
This wouldn't really transplant the personality, it would be merely a copy of it.
>>864076
Quantum computing?
>When one has much to put in them, a day has a thousand pockets.
>>864025
Avatar Project?
I'm onto you, bitch.
>>864089
This.
Even stars die and you think you're above them? Real immortality will never happen but I'll gladly welcome longer life-spans.
A better question is, would you still be the same person even after 500 years? People change so much in just 20, would there be any trace of your former personality after so much time?
>>864320
I wonder what a world where everyone was completely immortal but reproduced extremely slowly, or at least immortal enough that you can't feasibly kill them, would look like. Imagine if Grak the caveman had been a constant throughout all of history.
>>864385
On one hand I'd be inclined to believe we'd be further up with science thanks to great minds living longer and applying their knowledge themselves, instead of writing it down for future generations which might or might not do anything with it.
On the other hand change might happen at a slower rate, kings and nobles would be kings and nobles for longer periods of time, and people with old mindsets wouldn't be replaced as often by young people with more modern, open mindsets.
We'd probably still have slavery by now.
>>864320
>Even stars die and you think you're above them?
Do I think mankind is smarter than balls of gas? Yes?
>>864413
How would you keep slaves if you couldn't kill them? All the slave has to do is lie down on the floor like a sack of potatoes and he's useless to you. You can't kill him and he won't starve. Seems like too big of a hassle.
>>864320
>A better question is, would you still be the same person even after 500 years? People change so much in just 20, would there be any trace of your former personality after so much time?
Can you step in the same river twice?
>>864320
>Even stars die and you think you're above them?
Yes, We are basically gods now. Some dudes created actual bacteria synthetically, Which means we created life from scratch
>>864450
Torture and pain I reckon.
But yeah if we were to take things from that point of view I'd wonder if we would even bother inventing society or anything if we were immortals.
>>864025
God will stop it before it happens
>>864486
>Some dudes created actual bacteria synthetically
Source?
>>864497
Assuming we'd still have the same drives and shit we'd still stick around each other, would be much more entertaining that way
>>864501
http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/home/
How do you think we will achieve it first? Ending the aging process? Transferring consciousness? How would one get into studying it? I was thinking about emailing Aubrey Dr Grey to see what books he read to get him into trying to rehabilitate aging damage. I feel like people would get super buttmad about some people being immortal but how different is it from living in a first world country compared to a third?
>>864564
By the last question I mean that human disparity is already huge, so it might not be as huge a change as far as revolt as one would expect. Then again the opposite is also compelling
>>864566
And then inserted a partially synthetic and modified genome, Which means they created a new species: Mycoplasma laboratorium
>>864320
>Even stars die and you think you're above them?
Potentially? Why limit ourselves?
We probably won't see biological immortality or some weird computer alternative for centuries, maybe millennia. Granted.
But never?
>>864594
it's entirely synthetic and partially modified
but modified genomes are nothing new, they still haven't made life from scratch
>Thinking life isn't already long enough for those who know how to live it.
>>864025
>>864828
That niggas ded
IF we are capable of genuine immortality, then we definitely should strive for it.
>>864076
I'm not too certain about that. It depends on how it is realised. Certainly, you cannot model a thought process in the same sense as you would model a regular computer program, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to simulate something resembling a thought process. After all, we cannot simulate a continuous physical process either, but we can approximate it to a certain extent. In the same sense we could be able to simulate a thought process. It wouldn't be the same, but perhaps it would be sufficient, in the same sense as an artificial leg is not the same as a real one, but functional enough.
This is of course highly hypothetical but I wouldn't rule out the method itself.
>>864177
It depends on how it's done.
Imagine you had a device which you could use as an interface to your biological brain. Your brain itself is a distributed process, where all kinds of cells have different functionality. Brain cells can grow and they can die, so the brain itself can deal with introducing or losing components. Some of these components would be artificial which are addressed through some sort of interface. If you managed to gradually transfer your biological brain to the artificial components, you could achieve a transition that does not involve "dying" in the process. At a certain point you could simply turn off the machinery that keeps your biological brain alive and the process that is your "self" would be fully inside the artificial structure.
>>865696
You'd have to start the idea of programming over from scratch. Anything based on binary is going to fuck up. The basis of binary is boolian. Something is either true (1) or false (0) but that's not how the human mind thinks, this is literally what atomic facts were supposed to be about and that was a failure.
>>865789
As I said, while the human brain may not think like that, after all the human thought process is unlikely to be something discrete, you should still be able to approximate it. Whether the end result is something that resembles human thought, i.e. something that is experienced by a "virtual" person in a similar fashion as "real" thought is to be seen, but depending on how powerful your underlying system is I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
>>865804
>I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
This is like saying that with a strong enough physical strength you can read Latin. All more computing power does is let it do more tasks of seeing if something is true or false faster and more simaltinious. If the thing you are trying to have to do doesn't work in boolian terms than you really arn't going to get very far no matter how many operations per second you can do. Just like reading Latin has nothing to do with muscle mass, so having a stronger bicep isn't going to matter.
>>864076
Thinking, as WE understand it will not happen. The idea of AI is a tricky subject fraught with everybody making wild assumptions about how an AI would behave. We simply don't know.
>>864076
>Wittgenstein showed us thinking is abstract and not boolian (as the postivists tried to assert).
The fuck are you talking about? Our brain is a neural network and such networks can be simulated with computers
>>865817
I can only repeat that we can simulate continuous processes despite the fact that we only have a discrete system on our hands. Certainly we're dealing with approximations, but the closeness of the approximation depends mostly on processing power.
