Clinical immortality- Do you want to live forever?

[Coolgamer]

Re: Clinical immortality- Do you want to live forever?

This is about as bad as scientists wanting to create chips that they implant in your brain so you don't have to school because you would know everything you would have gone to school for. if that would happen how the hell would there be difference.

I'd say that's wrong given how "smart" we've proven ourselves to be time and time again. We'd all get lazy and not find our mistakes... sorta like never figuring out the Earth wasn't the center of the Universe and the world isn't really flat. Just like giving a calculator the wrong numbers, garbage in, garbage out.

[Cavernio]

Re: Clinical immortality- Do you want to live forever?

I'm probably terribly behind in posting, so probably no one's going to read this, but what they hey.

Firstly, I don't want to live forever. Rather, I want to have a opporunity to die. I guess these are 2 slightly different things. But if I did live forever, I can seriously see me going insane. I already feel like I'm going insane sometimes :-p I'd either get exceedingly bored, or I'd become evil so I wouldn't be bored. (hehe)

Secondly, I don't think there's much wrong with speaking in absolutes, we all know we're just portraying our own opinions anyways, right? Just like when you write a paper for school, you don't use "I think".

Thirdly, I don't think that the solution to immortality is upon us. I think that its very possible we'll solve some riddles though, and be able to replace dying organs, including the brain, perhaps someday not too far down the road. With biological tissue, might I add, not nanotechnology or something, although, when you get down to it, what makes tissue organic? Organic chemistry is the study of organic molecules which are made by something which is living. Its possible to synthesize these things. We synthesize flavors all the time. I guess what I'm getting at is that even if we were able to replace body parts with inorganic material, I'm not sure this would cause us to become someone else, or not self-aware, or sentient, or concious.
(Aside: I don't like the term 'self-aware' when being used for rights. I don't think fish are self-aware, yet they've probably got feelings or something. I don't think of them as a tree.)
However, despite me thinking that if you were to replace someone slowly with made-up parts they'd still retain themselves and be human, I have my doubts if it will ever be possible make from scratch a sentient machine. That doesn't really make sense with what else I said though ack, I dunno!

Lastly, I'm shocked that no one's mentioned anything about stem cells. My understanding is that these are the things which would make anti-aging possible. We age because our cells are programmed to die after a certain amount of time. Rather, they're programmed to stop reproducing themselves. (Cells die all the time.) So we age as more and more of our cells stop replenishing themselves. Undifferentiated stem cells are unique in that they have the capacity to turn into just about any other type of cell in the body provided its in the correct environment, and also that they aren't programmed to stop replenishing themselves. Once they've differentiated however, ie: become a cell other than a stem cell, they'll take on all the characteristics of the cell it now is, including the characteristic to eventually die. We all started out as stem cells.
People have already messed around with these things quite a bit. Made artificial stomachs or livers or something like that. But the possibilities these things have are amazing if you think about it. Imagine if as soon as one of your organs are failing, you can just get one grown. Hey, you could even grow it from your own stem cells so you'd keep the same DNA!
The brain would be a little trickier though. Neurons/nerves are tricksy in that they often won't replenish themselves at all. Or if they do, they just don't up and reform the same connections that they once had, although it has happened. Thats why people with spinal chord injuries become paralyzed if they injury is in the right (well, more like wrong) spot; the nerves don't re-grow and attach themselves again. But this doesn't mean re-growing nerves couldn't be done. And I think that if it were possible to reform the exact same connections as an older neuron, then I don't think the person's mentality would be changed either.