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Author Topic: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality  (Read 841 times)

Zanzetkuken The Great

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Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« on: September 26, 2016, 07:57:58 pm »

Awhile back I created a thread asking whether people would go for a hypothetical one-way process wherein their consciousness would be transferred to the digital medium rather than the current wetware version, and there was a fair bit of discussion in it.  I would have revived that thread for this new idea, but much of the discussion in that thread was on the basis of this being the result of a rapid changeover including the destruction of the human brain and this new thought is a bit different.

What is this new thought?  In this case, a hypothetical new piece of technology is developed that allows for interfacing between the human brain and computer technology, though it would require you to be plugged into the additions permanently.  With the passage of time causing the brain to slowly fail, the computer augments will slowly take over brain processing more and more until the brain eventually fails and the mind runs entirely off of the computer augments.  In such a scenario, would you go for using the augmentation, and if so, when, or not?
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2016, 08:16:39 pm »

I've always wanted to intertwine with an emergent AI and turn into some kind of gestalt abomination.
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Bumber

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2016, 08:59:59 pm »

When you say plugged in permanently, do you mean the machine parts can still be upgraded/replaced as technology improves?

If so, as soon as it's proven safe (including from thought police) and affordable.

I wonder if people could be augmented in the span of time from heart failure to irreversible brain death.
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Zanzetkuken The Great

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2016, 09:20:13 pm »

I've always wanted to intertwine with an emergent AI and turn into some kind of gestalt abomination.

...and now you have me thinking of more than one person running their minds off of the same hardware and bleeding together...

When you say plugged in permanently, do you mean the machine parts can still be upgraded/replaced as technology improves?

If so, as soon as it's proven safe (including from thought police) and affordable.

I wonder if people could be augmented in the span of time from heart failure to irreversible brain death.

Considering the mind would be running entirely off of computer hardware, it should be possible to have the mind transfer over to new hardware.

As for the latter point, the process would be closest to hihg-level brain surgery, so I don't think there would be enough time ordinarily.  If there's enough development in cryo-sleep  to allow the body to be kept in stasis for long enough that might be a possibility.  Might be initially easier to get the heart restarted temporarily rather than race against the clock, in my opinion.
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90908

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2016, 10:15:39 pm »

To me the ultimate goal of the next couple of generations is to create functional, biological immortality to be followed by a more concrete form. The next step is to create a purely indestructible digital planescape capable of holding the entirety of ourselves and edit the human brain to be more eternity friendly and voila; afterlife 10% off.
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BorkBorkGoesTheCode

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2016, 10:17:39 pm »

To me the ultimate goal of the next couple of generations is to create functional, biological immortality to be followed by a more concrete form. The next step is to create a purely indestructible digital planescape capable of holding the entirety of ourselves and edit the human brain to be more eternity friendly and voila; afterlife 10% off.
We'll have to expand away from our universe to cope with resource shortage
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Bumber

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2016, 10:19:37 pm »

Considering the mind would be running entirely off of computer hardware, it should be possible to have the mind transfer over to new hardware.
I meant before the process was complete. E.g., a critical defect was found in the hardware that could cause certain parts of the brain to upload improperly.
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Dorsidwarf

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2016, 04:08:47 am »

Quote
...and now you have me thinking of more than one person running their minds off of the same hardware and bleeding together...

>You may now resume screaming.
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i2amroy

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2016, 11:38:03 am »

We'll have to expand away from our universe to cope with resource shortage
Even with pure, true exponential growth (so nobody dying through accident or murder, being starved by being unable to afford energy, and with everyone actually continuing to somehow procreate regularly despite being made of totally made of hardware eventually), we'd still have a long time before we even maxed out the energy potential of the sun itself, let alone maxing out the energy output of the galaxy, let alone maxing out the energy output of the universe. The sun (and other stars) are really big, put out a lot of energy, and there is a huge amount of them; like, the numbers get so big that your brain can't really grasp them correctly.
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TempAcc

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #9 on: September 27, 2016, 12:04:02 pm »

Just a tiny part of the energy the sun throws at earth alone everyday is enough to power current human civilization. I'm not sure we'd actualy need to harness a star's full output before we try to do anything short of moving planets or something equally ridiculous. If the current trends continue, energy scarcity will likely cease to be a problem before we reach the half of the century.

Resource scarcity will also likely be less of a problem once interplanetary space travel becomes cheaper and simpler, since that means space mining will be a thing, and our system is pretty diverse so we'll likely have a lot of exotic and rare (by earthly standards) resources waiting for us to grab them. No physics defying drives or anything of that order is required, just efficient, reusable rockets and reliable, independent robots.
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Cthulhu

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2016, 12:32:00 pm »

I still don't believe that doing so would give the me typing this right now some kind of immortality but the me that typed that is already in the past and unrecoverable so do that big emoticon of the shrugging ッ face.

This new version doesn't seem like it would drastically change my life before the point where I'd be dead anyway so again, do that emoticon.

Yes, I'd do it.
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i2amroy

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Re: Further Thoughts on Technological Immortality
« Reply #11 on: September 27, 2016, 01:02:15 pm »

I still don't believe that doing so would give the me typing this right now some kind of immortality but the me that typed that is already in the past and unrecoverable so do that big emoticon of the shrugging ッ face.

This new version doesn't seem like it would drastically change my life before the point where I'd be dead anyway so again, do that emoticon.
Off topic, but the fact that you appear to be using a katakana symbol there as your emoticon means that I'm stuck with the idea of you just screaming "SHEEEEEEEEE" while making that face in response to the question. :P
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