- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
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I’d rather not enact the highest stakes ship of Theseus
You don’t want to save your old brain chunks and put them back together to see if you can make on old version of you?
Probably the best description I’ve seen of this lmao
What’s that I smell, is it the doctor for doctor death season 5?
No thanks. We don’t need rich people living forever.
Speak for yourself. I think it would be great.
They can live forever but have to trade their fortune for it permanently
Seems your plan doesn’t work, they are here anyways.
Might be the only way to get them to give a shit about the environment.
I doubt it. They will just dump shit further away. If their solution default is to make things “somebody else’s problem” there’s no reason to believe they will stop thinking that way.
That might be their outlook on “local” pollution for a while, but you don’t think going from 20 years left to centuries to live might affect their opinions on global climate change?
Not really. Many of them are already heavily invested in life extension tech (not that I think it will work, but it means they’re optimistic). I think their general worldview is that technology will fix it, at least for them.
Yeah, I’m probably being too optimistic.
Somebody’s been watching Picard.
I’m a transhumanist, and I’ve never heard of Picard in the context of something you watch, and what’s being spoken of in the article is something that’s been part of our wider Philosophy for longer than I have.
Picard swapped his brain into an android body. It wasn’t very good writing.
Wounds like Dresden Codak is a better story.
If you want a bit of a deeper dive, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape gets into the science of aging and known workable remedies/treatments.
The good news is that Billionaires will not be living forever any time soon.
The bad news is that we’ve got a cellularly defined terminal limit and there’s nothing we can do to simply reset the clock. “Cloned Bodies” for animals are dysfunctional bordering on nightmarish. The human brain’s plasticity isn’t something you can renew with a pill or a potion. Blood Boys don’t work. There aren’t trivially replaceable components in the human body.
Its wild this research is even being attempted, its borderline unethical to experiment on otherwise healthy people.
I fully don’t expect immune system driven aging to be understood until the Thymus better understood. DNA reproduction and telomere related aging will not be addressable until cell to cell signaling is finally mapped, and methylation activation/deactivation can be targeted.
Most likely some kind of cloned brain tissue can help reduce age-related cognitive decline and some diseases. Imo we’d get far more out of targeting specific diseases than going after aging.
I’d be fine with billionaires getting it first. As much as I’m not a fan of late stage capitalism, I refuse to cut off my nose to spite my face; they got A/C, feather beds, cars, baths, and all sorts of other luxuries long before us plebs got them. Let them beta test the stuff, and by the time the economies of scale pick up enough for it to be affordable to the rest of us, the kinks will be worked out.
Of course there’s always the possibility of a cartel withholding it from the masses, but that’s what the second amendment and guillotines were invented for.
“Cloned Bodies” for animals are dysfunctional bordering on nightmarish.
That’s nothing to do with the back that clone is impossible and just that cloning is hard. You are acting as if it is an unsolvable problem.
clone is impossible
It’s possible in the sense that you can get near identical genetic replicas of the parent organism.
But the side effect of this process is in line with historical experiments of inbreeding. Most notably, you get a high instance of progeria, which is the opposite of what you want when aiming for life extension.
You are acting as if it is an unsolvable problem.
It is an unsolved problem. Whether it is solveable (either theoretically or practically) is an unanswered question.
But there’s a real possibility that “anti-aging” is, at its heart, a war against entropy that we can’t win.
The best we can do may be to archive the information of a subject and pass it on to an inheritor. And we’ve already got a good handle on that, by way of schools and libraries and making babies.
Or maybe not. Maybe there’s a trick to indefinite cellular repair and replacement. It’s just not anywhere on the horizon. If it exists, the closest we’ve come so far is hypothesis. Nothing we’ve tried has successfully undone aging, even at a single cell level.
But there’s a real possibility that “anti-aging” is, at its heart, a war against entropy that we can’t win.
You’re going to need to provide some citation on that one because I see no evidence that this is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. It’s not a mathematics issue, it’s a scientific one. As far as I can tell there’s no biological reason that organisms need to age and die, (see lobsters) so it isn’t a war against entropy because entropy isn’t biological aging. They have nothing to do with each other.
All of the above you would know if you weren’t intent on being a disingenuous twit.
You’re going to need to provide some citation on that one
I linked to the podcast which has citations to the research in the show notes.
All of the above you would know if you weren’t intent on being a disingenuous twit.
Take it up with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Decay Theory of Immediate Memory. You’re trying to turn a human into a Ship of Theseus, but at best all you’re doing is imperfectly copying and replicating the information therein. We run into the same problems with computer memory, and the only real working solution is to make multiple perfect copies at discrete intervals as backup.
That’s simply not possible at the cellular level at this time. Nor would backup/restore of cellular data be a practical solution, particularly as it regards the human brain, any time in the foreseeable future.
You’re doomed to die, just like everything else that’s existed to date.
That’s not how the laws of the thermodynamics works. Biological immortality is perfectly possible and we see it all the time in nature please look it up.
Biological immortality is perfectly possible
Cellular decay is a consequence of entropy. The solution to decay is replication. But replication is imperfect because of errors in the process. You’re still dealing with decay, only this time it is in information.
we see it all the time in nature
Point to the immortal organism.
Brain of Theseus.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh…
I stopped using shampoo for unlisted purposes.
There are two reasons he believes the neocortex could be replaced, albeit only slowly. The first is evidence from rare cases of benign brain tumors, like a man described in the medical literature who developed a growth the size of an orange. Yet because it grew very slowly, the man’s brain was able to adjust, shifting memories elsewhere, and his behavior and speech never seemed to change—even when the tumor was removed.
That’s proof, Hébert thinks, that replacing the neocortex little by little could be achieved “without losing the information encoded in it” such as a person’s self-identity.
The second source of hope, he says, is experiments showing that fetal-stage cells can survive, and even function, when transplanted into the brains of adults. For instance, medical tests underway are showing that young neurons can integrate into the brains of people who have epilepsy and stop their seizures.
“It was these two things together—the plastic nature of brains and the ability to add new tissue—that, to me, were like, ‘Ah, now there has got to be a way,’” says Hébert.
Very interesting. I’ve also seen research suggesting that the application of stem cells to damaged neural tissue within the spinal cord could repair it, so the idea that you could use a similar approach to actual brain health isn’t such a big leap. But still, wow. I wonder how long it would take for the immature cells to develop into “adult mode” that’s fully integrated into the patients cortex. In order to replace the entire brain, you’d have to do it in like, 8 parts, with years of recovery time in between each surgery. Also there would exist the potential for the new cells to develop into like, a second, smaller brain, if the connections sour or if the new material isn’t stimulated the “right” way.
a man described in the medical literature who developed a growth the size of an orange. Yet because it grew very slowly, the man’s brain was able to adjust, shifting memories elsewhere, and his behavior and speech never seemed to change—even when the tumor was removed.
Wow, that’s wild.
The final boss of subscriptions
As long as it’s made mandatory to cover with insurance so it’s available to everyone. The last thing we need is an immortal ruling class.
On the plus side an immortal ruling class might actually start caring about climate change.
Sure, in the most dystopian way possible.
“Have you tried ‘kill the poor’?”
… and reduce emissions by wasting the rest. But due to negative selection leading into that upper class they won’t be able to manage the planet further despite thinking that they can and will die of hunger eventually.
Hoping real hard that Alternate Carbon is not becoming reality.
I see that you too have heard the prophecy.
Don’t worry, going by past history this will be available to any and…uhh, [checks notes] oh, uh-oh.
Oh at this point it seems like we’re treating dystopian science fiction as a guidebook instead of a warning.
Someone’s getting hangry and needs a Soylent.
Hold on, what color Soylent are we talking about? Is it the delicious, definitely only plants, green flavor?
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech
Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus
this might finally be a way to eliminate insurance companies
So we get Universal healthcare then, right?
right?
no
Let the death of Saburo Arasaka be a lesson to us all: even 150+ year old bastards can get choked the fuck out
Is a forever expanding population of old people much better?
If they’re functional, and we get serious about space or birth control, then no it’s not a problem. But that is another path we can take to really juice the dystopia.
It will take a very long time indeed before we can reach another habitable planet enough to alleviate an exponentially growing population, and forced birth control will be unpopular, not to mention probably employed as eugenics by those in power against those who aren’t.
There’s always orbital habitats. They ramp up a lot quicker than even a Mars colony.
Not the way I’d want to spend the rest of my life, that’s for sure.
Eh, it would be worth it with the right recreational activities up there and knowing we weren’t setting up altered carbon.
You’d have zero control over your existence. Someone else would own that station and you’d exist entirely at their whim. They would decide if you get food, air, water, shelter. No real access to nature. I’d rather die.
I don’t want to live longer, fix my fucking knees and back.
This would do that.
Ya the SENS repair approach is the way to go IMO.
If they make it so I can eat cheese and go outside in summer without drying I’ll happy
Yes, please focus on the Global Dryness problem first. I must be wet at all times.
…fresh cloned bodies…
they tried that a few years back via a quadraplegics brain transplant to a normal body. he died on the table. not likely to change that with cloning
I’ve just looked it up and there has never been a full brain transplant, so I don’t know what you’re on about.
They might have confused it for a head transplant?
Although neither patient was alive at the time of the transplant.
I don’t know if a full brain transplant would be feasible, or even a good idea. Not only would none of their senses and motor nerves work for weeks while the brain and nerves re-established themselves, but they would be walking around in a dead person’s face, body and speaking with their voice. That seems genuinely horrific.
Why not?
go look at images of old telephone wiring like when POTS was still the main method.multiply those rats nests of wires by a billion and shrink that them down to the molecular size and you might see the issue
Just enhance a few times and it will be easy!
I cut a big nerve in my thumb years ago, and apparently plastic surgeons fix that sort of thing.
They reattached the nerve bundles, but I was told the sheathes could be realigned, but the nerves would have to grow back from the point of the cut all the way to the skin.
At first one half of my thumb was entirely numb, and over the course of well over a decade I’d get pins & needles as bunches of nerves would finish regrowing, except attached to random channels in the nerve bundle, so my brain had to completely remap all those signals to what they actually meant. Also extreme nerve pain near the cut whenever it was bumped, I assume because many nerves just didn’t grow successfully and remained near that site.
It felt super weird because hot, cold, pain & touch were all mixed up, but eventually my brain sorted them out. It still feels a little weird, especially near my nail, but I haven’t had a pins & needles experience for a few years.
The problem with doing that with a neck is that it would take wayyy longer and the chances of the patient dying from complications due to no brain signals working right… yeah I don’t see medical science fixing this unless we can regrow nerves in a much shorter span of time.
At first one half of my thumb was entirely numb, and over the course of well over a decade I’d get pins & needles as bunches of nerves would finish regrowing, except attached to random channels in the nerve bundle, so my brain had to completely remap all those signals to what they actually meant.
It felt super weird because hot, cold, pain & touch were all mixed up, but eventually my brain sorted them out.
Wow, that’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing your story.
Thanks! As far as I know I’m not describing anything too unusual with the mixed-up signals, I think pins & needles is essentially that, just a bunch of nerves randomly firing, so you probably do know what it’s like in little doses.
I’ve been paying attention to it since I wrote that, and it definitely is still slightly more numb on the affected side, I think I was right that not all the nerves regrew completely.
Yes, because who wouldn’t want to live for centuries amidst floods, fire, raging mad politicians and greedy billionaires…
Well this really exists for those billionaires and rulers. This isn’t for the common person.
They’re so mad that they’ve removed themselves so far from us and we still share a common experience in death. That’s unfair for them to have to be associated with peasants in such a debasing way. So now they’ll remind us that death is for the poor or at least not living centuries will be for poor.
I have never understood people who make this argument. In all of history, can you point to a single time when technology wasn’t eventually commercialised and made available to the masses at affordable prices? The billionaires don’t want to keep it to themselves, they want you buying more stuff from them.
The brain renewal concept could have applications such as treating stroke victims
If this can restore functions to stroke victims again, it’s absolutely amazing.
If this is vastly successful which remains to be seen, there might be a path format to the longevity part of the idea.This could help a lot of veterans and football players too
I can think of a lot of football players who are in need of more brain.
CTE.
I mean, they were in need of more brain before the CTE too
Hey I resemble that remark
Happy cake day!
I want a brain update and a penis upgrade please! Yes 275Tb of ram for my penis and 6" of brain 🧠!
After upgrade, years later in a CT scan. Dr. “That is a weird looking brain it almost looks like a pecker.”
Total mindfuck.
I don’t want my penis remembering that much.
rm -rf penis/Oops
That actually made me laugh out loud. 😂
The penis upgrade already exists, it’s called a “vaginoplasty,” sweaty 💅💅💅
Cyberpunk, let’s gooo🤣
