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The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

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Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#21

Post by fao_ »

mysterypie wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

Looking back ~125 years, if you said to the average person that we could identify him decades later from an object he touched , before the idea of fingerprint identification was well known, it would have sounded ridiculous. These days, decades old murders are solved with DNA -- hypothetically needing nothing more than a single cell. In both examples, we assumed simply that the information (fingerprints or DNA) was pr…

https://www.popsci.com/dna-evidence-not-foolproof

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/a-reaso...

""By one estimate, the lab handled DNA evidence from at least 500 cases a year—mostly rapes and murders, but occasionally burglaries and armed robberies. Acting on a tip from a whistle-blower, KHOU 11 had obtained dozens of DNA profiles processed by the lab and sent them to independent experts for analysis. The results, William Thompson, an attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine, told a KHOU 11 reporter, were terrifying: It appeared that Houston police technicians were routinely misinterpreting even the most basic samples.""

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimo...

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#22

Post by felipemnoa »

1996 wrote: post #5
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

No need to bring the brain back to life. When memories and the connectome are finally understood, simply scan the brain, even by destroying the original if needed: cut it into slices, scan it, then upload it to a robotic body, or even a simple computer simulation (good enough for me!) I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I wa…

>>I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what we are? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. For anybody that does not get the reference this is from Battle Star Galactica. It is a rant by the old Cylon model. His name and model number escape me at the moment.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#23

Post by benchaney »

ALittleLight wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

As a thought experiment, if you knew for certain that in a hundred years an individual who was long dead was brought back to life, and you had to guess whether the recently deceased was a cryogenic patient from 2018 or a mummified Emperor from antiquity - would you be ambivalent about the choices? If not, then you don't really think they're equally good paths to extra life.

Your logic divides by zero in this case.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#25

Post by komali2 »

1996 wrote: post #5
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

No need to bring the brain back to life. When memories and the connectome are finally understood, simply scan the brain, even by destroying the original if needed: cut it into slices, scan it, then upload it to a robotic body, or even a simple computer simulation (good enough for me!) I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I wa…

This doesn't the answer the "how does cloned consciousness work" question.

For re-vitilization, I don't give a fuck if it's a perfect copy of me walking around. I want it to be me, the current stream of consciousness. To the abyss I say, no thank you.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#26

Post by kitsunesoba »

komali2 wrote: post #25
1996 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to bring the brain back to life. When memories and the connectome are finally understood, simply scan the brain, even by destroying the original if needed: cut it into slices, scan it, then upload it to a robotic body, or even a simple computer simulation (good enough for me!) I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I wa…

This doesn't the answer the "how does cloned consciousness work" question. For re-vitilization, I don't give a fuck if it's a perfect copy of me walking around. I want it to be me , the current stream of consciousness. To the abyss I say, no thank you.

I agree – if the cloned/copied/othewise renewed consciousness is not that which is currently residing in my head right now, there’s really no point to it, no matter how much philosophically it might be “me”. The only situation I can envision a clone/copy being satisfactory is that in which I had some grand goal larger than myself that I wished to complete and could hand off to the clone.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#28

Post by visarga »

bgongfu wrote: post #19

The whole discussion is a side track, the essence of who we are is and always was immortal. Do you honestly believe in a universe that would throw away the results of the experiment? There's no proof either way, but it seems the least likely alternative to me. As to Buddha, Gandhi, Tesla, Einstein and many more otherwise respectable thinkers. Examine what you're not supposed to think, what is collectively ridiculed;…

> Do you honestly believe in a universe that would throw away the results of the experiment?

It does not. 'Results' are the survival of our genes. That's how we came to be here. Also, survival of our ideas, in culture and technology.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#29

Post by visarga »

jacquesm wrote: post #3
man-and-laptop wrote: post #2

Being mummified was a clever move. If his brain were preserved long enough, then he may hypothetically have been brought back to life. A bit like cryogenics.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

I'd rather have my experiences and actions (reactions) recorded for later. Even if we don't know how to upload a person now, we might know later. Recording is possible even now with the tech at our disposal. Deep Learning shows that you can build a model with enough input-output pairs.

On a parallel topic - I think the data we are creating today, especially since the expansion of internet and sensors, might be used by future AGI to simulate the conditions that led to its creation for What-if scenarios & AGI pre-history. We might be in such a sim right now. Previous ages left too little information, so they can't be simulated as well. On the other hand, we leave tons of digital breadcrumbs, so we could be a prime target.

Re: The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

#30

Post by enjeyw »

ALittleLight wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give it roughly the same chance that I give the heads sitting in cryogenic storage being brought back to life: 0.

As a thought experiment, if you knew for certain that in a hundred years an individual who was long dead was brought back to life, and you had to guess whether the recently deceased was a cryogenic patient from 2018 or a mummified Emperor from antiquity - would you be ambivalent about the choices? If not, then you don't really think they're equally good paths to extra life.

Your thought experiment got me thinking (which I guess is the point lol!):

Imagine you knew for certain that in a couple hundred years individuals could be brought back to life at great expense, AND that it was at least 1/100th as feasible for mummified remains as it was for cryopreservation.

Who do think scientists would put more effort into bringing back? Another 'Joe Blogs' from 2018, or a mummified Emperor from antiquity?

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