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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

#11

Post by jacquesm »

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…

> I don't get why people so dismissive about cryonics

Lack of proof combined with zealotry.

> The information is there, preserved

maybe. And even if it is there that's a far cry from retrieving it, further from re-uploading it into something capable of making sense of that information, further still from getting something that becomes self-aware (and won't go instantly insane), and further than that from bringing the whole thing back to life. It is about as far from reality as the afterlife as peddled by religion at this point, with the caveat that maybe one day it will be done. But I wouldn't hold my breath. (Pun intended...).

> Maybe it won't make economics sense to reconstruct the preserved minds.

But it makes good economics sense to offer this 'service' to people who are gullible and aware of Pascal's wager.

> But saying it's zero chance sounds very close to an argument for logical impossibility.

It is very close to zero. So close that we might as well consider it an impossibility. It falls right into the 'wouldn't it be nice if' category of wishes. See also: Theranos and other bs along those lines.

> 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.

1858 wants a word with you.

> And today we know that you can uniquely identify a person and construct a model of his face from the DNA in a single microscopic cell.

You are vastly over-selling the capabilities of the DNA facial reconstruction software as we have it today.

It accounts for some double digit amount of variation. Even so, that at least has a chance of happening once you have enough information to factor in the effect of nourishment and aging. But the chances of abuse and false positive are so large that the only place where you'll see it used is missing person cases and cold case revival, and that's a good thing imo.

> The info is there

Sure, but that 'mere matter of engineering' in the middle is where the problem lies and given the challenges in any of the sub-steps required to make this a reality it is SF at best in the present and a scam at worst.

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

#12

Post by garmaine »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
garmaine wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm sure you have a rigorous evidence-backed argument backing that up.

Just as rigorous and evidence-backed as the people claiming they will save your head for the future to bring it back (or some construct of you).

Go look it up; they aren't claiming that. You're fighting a strawman. What they are claiming that they are preserving some record of the information that makes you up on the hope that it would be sufficient for future engineers to reconstruct some version of you. All they are claiming is that cryonic vitrification or aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation preserves in an information-theory sense the microstructure of the brain to sufficient detail that the connectome can be reconstructed by physically realizable scanning mechanisms, which we might not have now but are permitted by the laws of physics.

That's a much weaker argument, but one which actually IS supported by actual scientific papers in the field. And it's all that cryonics organizations have ever argued for.

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

#13

Post by 1996 »

flatline wrote: post #9
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…

I mean, okay to the second part, but as to the first part, who is going to pay to run your simulation?

Me. On the death of my physical body, my assets will be transferred to a trust fund with 90% going as a bounty to whoever can bring me back to "life", preferably not in flesh and bones (only 50% if I get put in a human body)

Part of it fiat, part of it will be crypto with the interdiction to sell 2/3 of it, just in case fiat money has some 1929 like catastrophy.

I think greed will be a good enough incentive and motivator, if more people do the same thing, for a company to develop the technology and collect the bounties.

And with BIP39 some assets can also be stored in your brain- so as to not be destitute if this scheme works.

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

#14

Post by 1996 »

jacquesm wrote: post #8
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…

> When memories and the connectome are finally understood IF . > simply scan the brain Simply? > I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. IF . > Do you see the absurdity of what we are? We are no more absurd than your vision of what you wish to become, with the one note that we are what we are and your wishes will very likely remain just that. The whole cryogenics movement is stron…

If, if, if: yes I know, there is no guarantee. There is no proof. I make bets. There is little profit to be found where there is no risk involved. Immortality is just that biggest profit possible, for which many risks must be taken.

You know what's worse than my bets: someone not making them. That person sure is never coming back when the body and brain rot and turns to dust.

Anyway, if that is what you want, and you made an informed decision, I respect our differences

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

#15

Post by [deleted] »

1996 wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When memories and the connectome are finally understood IF . > simply scan the brain Simply? > I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. IF . > Do you see the absurdity of what we are? We are no more absurd than your vision of what you wish to become, with the one note that we are what we are and your wishes will very likely remain just that. The whole cryogenics movement is stron…

If, if, if: yes I know, there is no guarantee. There is no proof. I make bets. There is little profit to be found where there is no risk involved. Immortality is just that biggest profit possible, for which many risks must be taken. You know what's worse than my bets: someone not making them. That person sure is never coming back when the body and brain rot and turns to dust. Anyway, if that is what you want, and you…

[deleted]

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

#16

Post by ALittleLight »

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.

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.

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

#17

Post by plasticchris »

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've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

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

#18

Post by mannykannot »

1996 wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When memories and the connectome are finally understood IF . > simply scan the brain Simply? > I do not want to be "flesh and bones" when we will have better alternatives. IF . > Do you see the absurdity of what we are? We are no more absurd than your vision of what you wish to become, with the one note that we are what we are and your wishes will very likely remain just that. The whole cryogenics movement is stron…

If, if, if: yes I know, there is no guarantee. There is no proof. I make bets. There is little profit to be found where there is no risk involved. Immortality is just that biggest profit possible, for which many risks must be taken. You know what's worse than my bets: someone not making them. That person sure is never coming back when the body and brain rot and turns to dust. Anyway, if that is what you want, and you…

> I make bets. There is little profit to be found where there is no risk involved. Immortality is just that biggest profit possible, for which many risks must be taken.

Every day carries the risk that your essential self will be destroyed - through a violent accident (even just a fall), a stroke, a disease... and every day, your mental capacity deteriorates slightly. If you are serious about taking on big risks for the chance of immortality, you should be planning on preserving the state of your brain in the immediate future.

Of course, if you don't think the technology for doing the preservation is good enough yet, then bold talk of taking big risks is premature.

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

#19

Post by bgongfu »

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; that's where truth is hiding in plain sight.

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

#20

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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