IMORTALITY-WHO WANT LIVE FOREVER

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    Immortality: Who Wants To Live Forever?

    Assuming that there is no actual afterlife, or reincarnation, then perhaps one can try for (near to actual) immortality, or at least as much immortality as theultimate fate of the Universe allows for, and cheat death. I believe Woody Allenis quoted as saying something along the lines of, 'I don't want to achieve immo

    rtality through my films; I want to achieve immortality by not dying'! How can immortality by not dying be accomplished, if indeed it can be accomplished?

    Some cautionary notes first of all, and that is physical immortality could be asdownbeat as any afterlife. While nearly everyone wishes for immortality, whether they realize it or not, this is a case of be wary of what you wish for, leastyou get it. Immortality (which doesn't preclude death by accident or design - just natural [aging] death), if achieved, would be a very boring existence as you'd end up spending trillions of years in a dark, intensely cold, lifeless (heat death) Universe. Looking at current observational evidence, our Universe will keep on expanding, and expanding at an ever accelerating rate at that, continues toever cool as stars and galaxies ultimately die as their energy supply becomes e

    xhausted and what energy there is becomes diluted throughout an ever increasingexpanding volume. Such is the predicted fate of our cosmos.

    Even if the fate of the Universe is a Big Crunch, that is, our Universe slows down the expansion rate, halts, and starts contracting again under the collectivegravity the Universe's mass has, that alone would terminate your immortality quick-smart!

    I should note that it's the fate of the Universe that's important here vis--vis becoming, and more importantly, staying immortal. The demise of Planet Earth is of no consequence. If you achieve immortality, then by the time Earth goes kaput,you will have had ample time to have packed your bags and left. You've fled andescaped elsewhere in the Universe to a location that hasn't yet gone kaput. But

    when the entire cosmos goes kaput (in either direction - Heat Death or Big Crunch), then it's ultimately curtains for you too! It's hard living the comfortablelife when the temperature of the Universe is just a tiny fraction above absolute zero; in the Big Crunch, down a Black Hole you go!

    Oh, the other cautionary note is that if you achieve, in your organic body, immortality, you'd better have achieved eternal youth as well. There's no point in living to a ripe old age of several million years if your aging process doesn't stop! Unlike some of the mythological gods, Norse I believe in particular, thereis no endless supply of golden apples to keep you eternally youthful. Apart fromthat, the mythological gods are given as immortal, or as close to immortal as makes no odds, so if you should come across Zeus or equivalent, you can always as

    k them what the secret is!

    Anyway, for starters, there's no way (currently known) that, assuming you possess an organic multi-cellular body, that you can stop, far less reverse, the aging(and ultimately the death) process. There is, alas, no combination of vitamins;no health club membership; no fountain of youth; no "Picture of Dorian Gray"; no magic witch's brew that can, or will accomplish that objective. And while youcan eat fruit, nuts and vegetables till you're blue in the face, they alone won't see you into the 23rd Century, far less the 123rd Century!

    A unicellular organism (like an amoeba) can (in theory) achieve a sort of immortality via reproduction - dividing in two (mitosis). Where there was one, now there is two, and since there's been no recombination of genetic material, both are

    clones. Continued reproductive mitotic division over the days, weeks, years, centuries, millennia, would see an organism in 2000 AD identical to its ancestor from 2000 BC. Well, you, as a complex multi-cellular critter, can't divide in two

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    like an amoeba, so that fast track to immortality is out.

    Cloning is also out because while that might produce an identical physical body,it wouldn't replicate the inner you (your brain, your grey matter or your mind)that inhabits that body. A cloned you can't ever duplicate that inner you. A cloned brain would be a virgin brain - a blank slate. It wouldn't have your memories, personality, and other facets which are largely environmentally imprinted.

    Anyway, casting those above methods aside, how could you (actually that inner you - your mind) achieve if not infinite immortality, at least near quasi-immortality? The first catch is that what actually needs to be preserved is that inner you. That's the inner you that's part of your physical body you - your emotions,memories, personality, awareness, likes, dislikes, habits (good and bad), etc. Survival for all eternity of your big toe or your wisdom teeth is fairly irrelevant in this context. For that matter, so is your blood, muscles, skin and bone, liver, etc. What needs to survive forever and ever (amen) is the seat of the realyou - the inner you. That of course is your brain or your mind. Of course yourbrain, being organic, and subject to the aging process, can't survive forever and ever (amen). Even if it could, after millions upon millions of years of living

    , its carrying capacity for memories, knowledge, etc. would have become exhausted - our brains have trouble in the here and now coping with sensory and information overload. Brain volume doesn't expand to meet needs above and beyond that ofour roughly three score and ten lifespan expectancy. It certainly can't cope with three million score and ten! However, there's no point in being immortal without having ongoing sensory inputs, at least sight and sound (you could probablydo if necessary without the rest), although all input could be direct and electronic, like how a computer receives data.

    And therein we come to the technological fix.

    Apart from the immortality question, let's say you have an intense personal desire to have a career exploring the planet Jupiter - not via telescope, but in per

    son. Today, for various reasons, your prospects are bugger-all. There's no way to get you there at the moment, and you couldn't survive the hostile environmenteven if you did. There's no part of your organic body that would survive the Jovian (Jupiter's) environment. And if you wanted to explore, in person, extra-solar 'Jupiters', in addition to inherent hostile environments, you wouldn't survivethe time frames necessary to get you to them which would require interstellar travel, travel to be measured in tens to hundreds of thousands of years at present, even extrapolated advances in spacecraft velocities in the near to midterm future.

    So, even a combination of your organic biology coupled with some machine technology (you becoming a cybernetic bio-mechanical hybrid) wouldn't ultimately help your goal. What would work would be an entirely technological or mechanical 'organism' - a robot with artificial intelligence - one that could survive the lengthy journey times and the hostile environments. But that doesn't do you (or more to the point your mind that's within you) any good - unless you became that robot! However, one needs then to get the relevant organic parts of you - your mind or your brain - into an inorganic form.

    Just as it's currently possible for one to transfer or download the contents ofone computer into another computer, and just as your brain (which contains yourmind) is an advanced type of computer - it's your mind's software that controlsthe rest of you - so too might it be eventually possible for your organic mind-within-your-brain to be downloaded into a nuts-and-bolts computer which could then be merged with an appropriate mechanical body or some other technology specifi

    cally designed to achieve a particular goal that's unachievable by actual fleshand blood. Examples are exploring Jupiter, space travel to distant stars and solar systems, or undersea exploration. You cannot, unaided, dive to the depths whe

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    re RMS Titanic rests of the bottom of the Atlantic. If your mind however was somehow contained within a silicon and steel robot, well exploring the oceanographic depths would be easy. Robotic probes have explored the Titanic and the deepestof the deep parts of the ocean.

    The upshot is that if your mind, the inner "you", were part and parcel of residing inside an inorganic body, given that inorganic materials last a hell of a lot

    longer than organic bodies, then you've achieved quasi-immortality! That's ditto the case in that when your mind becomes the software in an inorganic computer.That software can later be transferred to another computer and then another andthen another - right on down the line. That can also lead to lots of copies ofyour mind being around. Not only quasi-immortality, but cloning as well!

    Using nanotechnology, building from the ground up, atom by atom, tiny but usefulmachines/things is a current rapidly emerging technology in our 21st Century. Fast forward to the far future - if one has, down to the last detail, a blueprintfor a living thing, then even that living thing could be created, from the ground up, atom by atom, using nanotechnology techniques, again and again and again- all identical. That living thing could be the physical you combined with the i

    nner you - your mind - a being identical to whatever the pre-existing you was. Immortality! [As an aside, this is the way, atom by atom, that organic bodies arenaturally constructed. Our food, air, water, etc. are broken down and recombined into organic compounds, bio-chemicals and so on up the chain through to cellsand tissues and organs, etc.]Of course such complicated nanotechnology may well be many centuries (if ever) away before this version of immortality is even a remote possibility. But, who knows what advancements might be possible that far ahead?

    That said, it's therefore possible that very advanced extraterrestrial intelligences have already achieved, if not immortality, then at least something approaching it. Such a civilization would have no difficulty, if so inclined, in exploring, even colonizing the galaxy in fairly short order - several millions of years

    at most, even at sub-light speeds. That's a small fraction of the age of our galaxy. Extraterrestrials can colonize the galaxy akin to how humans have colonized Planet Earth - it doesn't take that long relative to the age of the object - galaxy or Planet Earth - being colonized.

    Quite apart from achieving immortality through silicon and steel, or nanotechnology, you know there is no law of nature that states you must die after so many days; after three score and ten years; after so many heartbeats; after so many cell divisions; after so much calorie intake; after so much whatever. Therefore, perhaps you might be justified in firmly believing that no matter what, you willalways wake up the next morning. You are so convinced of that that you have never even remotely contemplated making out a will, or buying a graveyard plot, or making any sorts of arrangements post your death -cause it ain't gonna happen! That's the power of positive thinking as it were! Of course that leads to the converse, perhaps if you do acknowledge that there's no uncertainty when it comes toyour death, you've sealed your own fate! Once you accept that you will die, youwill indeed. Of course it may not matter one bit what you firmly believe or refuse to believe in or acknowledge - like your own croaking. I assume it doesn't matter since I suspect over time there have been lots of individuals who have denied death's inevitability, but nevertheless, are now stone cold dead.

    Of course in one sense we all achieve a form of immortality. Some of our atoms and molecules that made us up will eventually recycle and become incorporated into new life forms - maybe as bacteria, or plants or bugs or maybe a part of another person. The heart may not go on, but the atomic bits and pieces will. Perhaps

    after billions of years, after our sun and solar system are no more, some of the fundamental particles that make you, you, might find its way across the cosmosto eventually become incorporated into some extraterrestrial life form! The rev

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    erse might also be true - molecular bits of you might once, eons ago, have beenpart of an alien organism.

    Science librarian; retired.

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