immortality . . . by body hopping

[Lord Romanus III]

So, I had a thought a few weeks ago about what it would be like to be immortal. In this version of immortality, it is achieved by simply moving your brain from one body to another through whatever imaginable process (aside from magic or 'god') that you can think of. What kind of human would one eventually be like? How would the brain begin to think of each new body as it survives through time and would it really be you inside of that body or would you think that personality would be somehow lost? Pointless ramblings, but I thought it interesting enough to post to see what kind of fanciful ideas you can think.

[hellheaven1987]

Brain cells would still die normally, so that moving process cannot continue forever.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Brain cells would still die normally, so that moving process cannot continue forever.

Not necessarily. Keep your mind sharp, try new things, read books you haven't read in years, and your brain won't "rot". It's a common misconception that brain cells die out faster than they divide.

[hellheaven1987]

Not necessarily. Keep your mind sharp, try new things, read books you haven't read in years, and your brain won't "rot". It's a common misconception that brain cells die out faster than they divide.

The problem is that brain cells don't divide or reproduce - you stuck with the amount of brain cells you have when you born, and only slowly lost them and no replacement.

That means, after few hundreds years your brain would still die, regardless what you have done.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

The brain doesn't just degenerate after birth. It grows a bit, trims off connections for efficiency (when a teenager there are a lot of useless connections), and then dies if it's not learning. Google neuroplasticity.

[Ancient Aliens]

The problem is that brain cells don't divide or reproduce - you stuck with the amount of brain cells you have when you born, and only slowly lost them and no replacement.

That means, after few hundreds years your brain would still die, regardless what you have done.

Not neccesarily true. One could clone and preserve their own braincells for replacement, or could theoretically occupy a mechanical brain rather than an organic one.

@ The OP: Would the personality and thoughts of a person change over time? Absolutely. Would this have a profound effect on our entire species? Absolutely. If a person became capable of existing forever, murder would be much more heinous, and life sentences would be infeasible. A person tends to get more conservative as they age (as they have firm beliefs that conflict with an ever changing world), this dynamic would be taken to the extreme, with the extremely well aged individuals forming an entirely different political and ideological spectrum from their juvenille contemporaries.

Actually, the social implications of immortality is worthy of a thread all its own.

[hellheaven1987]

Not neccesarily true. One could clone and preserve their own braincells for replacement, or could theoretically occupy a mechanical brain rather than an organic one.

Which may sound easy but in reality not; cloning technology is not suitable enough to produce healthy brain cells and I have not heard how possible to achieve a "mechanical brain" with memory preserve.

[Himster]

I'd be a space ship: a thousand miles accross bristling with turbo lasers.

[Marechal Ney]

Replace "brain" with "soul", and you might have a good idea...

...of course, this is still just a possibility, since it is impossible to prove the existance of the soul.

[Amorphos]

Replace brain cells with nano cells made of artificial diamond [which can already be made into disks] by using nano-bots, then your brain will last forever. Do the same with the cells of your body and it will too, then you wont need to do any body hopping.

Watch out for the sun going supernova, but hey, you are now made of diamond so could travel through space etc.

Alt/ take your electromagnetism and brain matrix and put it into other brains [like avatar]. If you are happy that that would be you then forget the spiritual stuff eh.

[Lord Romanus III]

Replace "brain" with "soul", and you might have a good idea...

...of course, this is still just a possibility, since it is impossible to prove the existance of the soul.

Souls are not real. Brains are. I am trying to not stray too far into the crazy zone.

[Marechal Ney]

I'm a skeptic, so you materialists and dualists can beat each other senseless while I watch

[Amorphos]

Souls are not real. Brains are. I am trying to not stray too far into the crazy zone.

Qualia are real [wiki it] and our entire experience of the world are qualia, given they derive info from the physical senses. All I am saying is that we don’t know yet and neither do you! So you cant rightly say something is crazy until you know it is.

One possibility is that qualia are of the world and hence we may be able to move them between bodies. If so you wouldn’t need to move the physical brain, you just hop from one to another.

[Lord Romanus III]

Qualia are real [wiki it] and our entire experience of the world are qualia, given they derive info from the physical senses. All I am saying is that we don’t know yet and neither do you! So you cant rightly say something is crazy until you know it is.

One possibility is that qualia are of the world and hence we may be able to move them between bodies. If so you wouldn’t need to move the physical brain, you just hop from one to another.

You say they are real and then that 'we' don't know yet. That is you directly contradicting yourself.

[Amorphos]

There are fundamental philosophical disagreements on the matter of qualia e.g. it is a fact that colour is a qualia of mind but it is also a fact that if you turn the lights out in the brain then qualia do not arise.

…
from the wiki article;
Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_D..._Consciousness

The main tenet of "Fame in the Brain" is that consciousness, much like fame, is not the cause, but the aftermath or certain brain processes..
…In order for something to be considered "conscious," there must be enough correlating neural events that go with it (e.g. memory formation).

Not a contradiction, just a problem we have yet to understand fully.

[chilon]

Even if you mean physically transplanting the brain itself (and not just copying "software" aspect) then you are still transferring to a new nervous system (spinal cord + all the other neurons in the body outside the brain itself). It might still be *you* to some extent but it would be a different *you* than what is now living.

Even though it wouldn't be as iterated as pure software copying I think this type of "immortality" is still an Immortality of Iterated Consciousness rather than an Immortality of Continuous Consciousness if that makes sense?

[Himster]

I watched Astro-boy today, I was blown away, I suggest everyone interested in this topic and like kids movies: watch it.

[Coldinat0re]

Hi, being interested in some immortality stuff, I can say with great enthusiasm that SENS is the way to go if you seek immortality.

Its basically a plan to eliminate aging by cleaning up damage on the cellular level. If you think of antique cars that are still around, they are only here because theyve received extensive repair and maintenance. The owners didnt change how the cars worked, but they repaired the car to keep it running. You can think of the human body as a very, very fancy antique car for which we do not have the plans. However, we do know what kind of damage goes on at the cellular level which allows us to sidestep this ignorance. You repair damage on the cellular level as a form of maintenance on the human body. Easier said than done, but theyve got a lot of scientists working on this





More detailed information if you are interested: http://www.sens.org/

[CarbEast]

It's not even the fact that brain cells die and structures degrade that makes it impossible. The main limitation is that your ability to learn, change and adapt is limited by the number of still unused (unbroken) connections still present in the network of your brain. This is not dissimilar to a sculpture made of stone that is given form by removing all the excess material. The ability of stone to take that form is strictly dependent on presence of sufficient excess. As soon as all the excess is used, no more substantial change is possible. Even though technically you could call this state "being alive", but I wouldn't call it "living". What's interesting is that an artificial intelligence, if was ever created and was built on same principles as human brain, would have to be mortal just as we are.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

You never want to know what happens when you die?