Immortality..can it be acheived

[Tomcat]

Ray Kurzweil

I been a fan of Rays for a long time and he is a bit of a maverick in the Scientific community, but they take him seriously enough to follow hi quest for immortality. I would not bet against him with the pace of technology moving along eponential growth

basically Rays is 62 with a body of a 42 year old due his obsession with the science of longevity. He takes 120 Vit pills a days and drinks special hi Alkaline water and so on.

his plan is three stage..very briefly

1) A life of frugal calorie intake low cholesterol using existing knowledge along with other well known present day proven life enhancers

2) Around 20 years time he reckons that by then the Science of the day will be  able to reknew all his body parts and his neurons and with avanced genetic engineering he will be able to live another 20 years to get to the final stage and the most controversial. This is because eventually even genetic engineering may not be able to keep his body from fraying at the edges.

NOTE
If you replaced someones neurons one by one each day with artificial variants  at what stage would your brain become artficial

3) At the pace of technology in 2050 being 20,000 times more powerfull than it is now he then plans to download his brain into a supercomputer. conciousness  and identity according to Ray K is is probably philospohical and not a scientific matter and he claims that it will stil be him in essence


I wouldnt bet against it happening crazy as it may seem. This will happen at some stage in the future even if its 100 years off

[guydesavoy]

Aah crazy Ray. The Timothy Leary of our times

The one flaw in his argument is that the exponential increase in micro chip and computing efficiciency does not necessarily translate to such areas as the 'brain'. Let alone consciousness, soul, and the spiritual dimension.
All areas with which Science has yet come to terms.

Rave on Ray mond

(Interesting thought nonetheless )

[manarak]

I read somewhere that cells were provided with a limited number of times they could undergo parthenogenesis.
As I understood it, there is some kind of protein chain that will get divided each time, until the chain cannot divide anymore. When this stage is reached, the cell will not divide anymore and just die off (old age).

So yes, I think science will at some point be able to prolong life a lot.

But I am sceptical that they will succeed in repairing the general damage done by life on all organs.

[Tomcat]

Rays has two pages in this weeks New Scientist .. they gave him the opinion page. It expands on what i made a pracy of . I dont have the time to expand on the more technical stuff outlined but i think this is not in doubt

Of course what conciousness actually is we still dont know but he does not care as long as his self awareness is still there. The philosophical arguments are for others not for him.

[guydesavoy]

(Tomcat @ Jan. 08 2011,20:58) Of course what conciousness actually is we still dont know but he does not care as long as his self awareness is still there.

The philosophical arguments are for others not for him.

This is the crux of the biscuit, as it were. Ray is proceeding on the basis of Science, which at this time is incomplete on such matters.

The Unknown Element here does not relate to 'Philosophy', even though so-called modern day philosophers will expound on such themes ad nauseum  

It relates to an altogether different realm of which both Science and Philosophy have but a flimsy grasp at this time.

[Tomcat]

heres a U tube on the basic theme which he calls the singularity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uIzS1uCOcE

[Tomcat]

(guydesavoy @ Jan. 08 2011,21:12) Ray is proceeding on the basis of Science, which at this time is incomplete on such matters.

yes , but he is a futurist and his prognosis is that just before he pops his clogs the technology of the day will have advanced a billionfold and hence give him the chance to immortalize himself first hence avoiding the final curtain by a whisker.

His own website is pretty good if your science nut like me. Otherwise its probably just ahead of ( name your hated sport here) in the zzzzzzz stakes

[transcebu]

Despite the billion-fold increase in computing capability in the last 30 years, we still can't cure baldness and wrinkles (as Ray demonstrates), we've advanced little in terms of sickness prevention in those years, and the media and schools still propagate baloney daily.

If this guy thinks we'll be saving his brain and body for eternity within 30 years I think he's deluded. Yeah, I'd take some bets, but not if I have to be out of pocket till he croaks it. I'd take 3-1 he doesn't make it to a 100 years old for 100k. When his theories start falling apart like tissue paper in 10 years, I expect rapid physical and mental degeneration to kick in.

Just having a go at being a futurist ;-)

That said, the future will sure be interesting, even if some parts of mundane life pretty much remain the same.

[El_hefe]

Agree Look at all the predictions & prognostications of "Life in the 21st Century" claimed in the 40-early 60s..... I'm still waiting for my personal jet pack & "roast beef dinner with all the trimmings" pill. Not one of them predicted the internet I believe.

But good luck to him, Ray has done some amazing things.

[transcebu]

(El_hefe @ Jan. 09 2011,01:53) But good luck to him, Ray has done some amazing things.

You're right there, I read up on his achievements after writing my prognostication and the guy is somewhat of a pioneering superman. Good on him!

[Tomcat]

Once quantum computing gets underway then you will really see thing advance as problems that would even take today 1000 years will then take a few seconds. My guess is that this is around 15 years away maybe sooner.

Its like the problem of trying to gauge the frequencies given off by near star systems to figure out if there is anyone watching "i love lucy"  in the Orion nebula. What used  to take months to sift through the frequencies now takes seconds. On the same theme if there is life on planets near to us then the guess is that we will know pretty soon as they will be able to scan a  billion fold faster. I think that within 20 years intelligent life will be discoverd .

Just because we are all not flying around on jet packs does not mean that advances are not being made. Theres more money to be made in IT than jetpacks

[guydesavoy]

Note to Ray :

Consciousness needs a vehicle if one wants it to be useful in the physical world. Once the physical body ceases to function, that's it. It moves on. (This also goes for cryogenics)..

By that stage Ray's consciousness will have already moved on to bigger and better things.

It won't be hanging around on some hard drive  

[Tomcat]

The human brain is around 100 Billion Neurons and one supposes that mind is an emergent property as such of this system. just as with just a male singer you dont have a rock band but add a few bodies and you got "living on a prayer"

If i replaced your body bit by bit over the next 30 years each day you would not be able to say" this is not me" at any stage. Eventually we come to the neurons and we replace them batch by batch..at some stage there will not be any human parts in your body but you will still have the same memories and it will still be you.

remember that there are barely any biological atoms in your body that were there when you were born.

[guydesavoy]

(Tomcat @ Jan. 09 2011,18:47) remember that there are barely any biological atoms in your body that were there when you were born.

Quite right. The body renews itself constantly...up to a point. Then it gives up the ghost.

Ray's only hope is that between now and his natural life expectancy, Science makes a huge and extravagant leap in progress (hitherto unheard of) and finds a way to keep the old and failing corpus alive and regenerating, rather than slowly decaying..

Perhaps we might see that in 100 years or more.. But for Ray the clock is ticking..

Of course there's always the chance he may be hit by the proverbial bus

[transcebu]

(Tomcat @ Jan. 09 2011,18:47) ...there are barely any biological atoms in your body that were there when you were born.

I tend to see that fact as supporting an incorporeal self, or a soul as some understand it. That the physical body is merely a vehicle in which our eternal self is a passenger during earthly lives.