The Pursuit for Immortality...
I am a big fan of immortality, but but don't subscribe to the popular belief of spiritual immortality. See, I am quite certain that eternal life, regarding our consciousness, can only be achieved secularly.
That sales tactic of religion where God grants eternal bliss to obedient followers doesn't sit well with me. There is too much evidence that leads me to believe that higher consciousness is the direct result of patterns and complexity of the brain rather than some ethereal soul. This means that in order to live forever, our physical self must be eternally maintained.
How would one go about maintaining oneself eternally. Surely all cells decay and die quickly, so an organic life form is inherently doomed. One solution is to transfer our complexity and pattern to a maintainable, fault tolerant and secure system.
Eventually we'll be able to scan each and every neuron, detecting the strengths of axons and dendrites, each neural interconnection, the locations of capillaries and the bio-chemical constitution in sections of the brain environment. All these factors could be represented in a model of our brain, and the functions can be simulated. What then would be the conscious difference between the model and the physical thing?
There would be two individual entities, right? Certainly, eternal life for the original physical being will never be possible. Wrong! If by using nanorobots, you could replace each organic neuron with a seamlessly fit nano-neuron that takes over the connections of the physical cell, then by replacing each neuron, one by one, the organic conscious being phases out into the nano-brained being.
The death of single neurons occur continuously throughout our lives. Ever have a night of heavy drinking? Many brain cells die from poisoning. Drop acid, smoke crack, hold your breath too long? Chances are you killed some brain cells. But what if there is a single master brain cell that is key to consciousness? Well, then when that cell gets scanned and replaced, that key gets a face lift.
So, consciousness can be maintained beyond the organic realm, but there are other concerns. Resources is the primary concern. The world as we know it has a limit to its resources. Energy and matter will all eventually decay and become unusable. This means that any system will eventually fail. However, one can work to ensure that they live as long as the universe (which by all reasoning is infinity).
The being will have to consume resources for repairs and energy in order to continue their consciousness. This makes immortality dependent upon resources available to the being.
By accruing as much resources as possible, and being as efficient as possible a being could increase their potential for everlasting life. But by accumulating resources you take those resources from another entity bent upon the same drive. The victor of the resources essentially murders those that fail to acquire them.
That is the crime of immortality. In order for one to live forever, that being must kill off every other being. Sure there is the potential of a collection of entities equally sharing the resources, but one would sacrifice a shorter lifespan by doing so and would in essence be committing suicide (early death). Therefore, reason would assume that a being would work to rob the other entities of this collective to lengthen their own life.
The pursuit for immortality leads to eternal infamy.
That sales tactic of religion where God grants eternal bliss to obedient followers doesn't sit well with me. There is too much evidence that leads me to believe that higher consciousness is the direct result of patterns and complexity of the brain rather than some ethereal soul. This means that in order to live forever, our physical self must be eternally maintained.
How would one go about maintaining oneself eternally. Surely all cells decay and die quickly, so an organic life form is inherently doomed. One solution is to transfer our complexity and pattern to a maintainable, fault tolerant and secure system.
Eventually we'll be able to scan each and every neuron, detecting the strengths of axons and dendrites, each neural interconnection, the locations of capillaries and the bio-chemical constitution in sections of the brain environment. All these factors could be represented in a model of our brain, and the functions can be simulated. What then would be the conscious difference between the model and the physical thing?
There would be two individual entities, right? Certainly, eternal life for the original physical being will never be possible. Wrong! If by using nanorobots, you could replace each organic neuron with a seamlessly fit nano-neuron that takes over the connections of the physical cell, then by replacing each neuron, one by one, the organic conscious being phases out into the nano-brained being.
The death of single neurons occur continuously throughout our lives. Ever have a night of heavy drinking? Many brain cells die from poisoning. Drop acid, smoke crack, hold your breath too long? Chances are you killed some brain cells. But what if there is a single master brain cell that is key to consciousness? Well, then when that cell gets scanned and replaced, that key gets a face lift.
So, consciousness can be maintained beyond the organic realm, but there are other concerns. Resources is the primary concern. The world as we know it has a limit to its resources. Energy and matter will all eventually decay and become unusable. This means that any system will eventually fail. However, one can work to ensure that they live as long as the universe (which by all reasoning is infinity).
The being will have to consume resources for repairs and energy in order to continue their consciousness. This makes immortality dependent upon resources available to the being.
By accruing as much resources as possible, and being as efficient as possible a being could increase their potential for everlasting life. But by accumulating resources you take those resources from another entity bent upon the same drive. The victor of the resources essentially murders those that fail to acquire them.
That is the crime of immortality. In order for one to live forever, that being must kill off every other being. Sure there is the potential of a collection of entities equally sharing the resources, but one would sacrifice a shorter lifespan by doing so and would in essence be committing suicide (early death). Therefore, reason would assume that a being would work to rob the other entities of this collective to lengthen their own life.
The pursuit for immortality leads to eternal infamy.
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