Life Extension and Immortality. Where Do We Draw the Line?
Now that we have become creators of life on Earth (full-grown clones and soon - the wide consensus seems to be within the next 5 years -, AGI), what is next for us?
It seems enough people look into a mirror and don't like the person looking back at them after a while. Hiding our age has been the interest of domains like beauty & cosmetics, and more recently, plastic surgery.
But what's the point of hiding your age, if you still get old, get sick, and die? You're both old and sick? Common! It's not enough one of them?
Health extension and immortality have been a fascination for certain key people for ages. But only recently, it became important at the masses level. Maybe we don't realize it, but not longer than a century ago (before WW1), the life expectancy in civilized countries was around 45-50 years old. Now, it's around 30 years more and higher.
Extending life makes more sense if you extend health also. Why live to be 100 if the last 30 you are in constant pain or you don't remember who you are or your children?
In that sense, when extending life is combined with extending health to the same degree, I believe a moderate increase in life expectancy would be reasonable.
But some elements need to be taken into consideration:
- even prominent people involved in the business of extending life and health (Peter Diamandis, for example) have issues formulating what would have value to humans in a post-AI-taking-over-jobs world; if we can't find something valuable that brings meaning to our lives, why extend them?
- the speed of discoveries is ever-increasing as are the generational gaps; a longer active life probably won't help create a generational bridge, quite the opposite: it will likely exacerbate generational conflicts
- humans are generally social beings, and if life extension is not relatively uniform, the ones left alive long after everyone they ever cared about is gone will have issues finding reasons to stay alive; this will probably be "handled" if our lives become more virtual than real in the future.
AI-generated vampire
Regarding immortality, what can we say? Pharaohs were considered gods during their lifetimes and through their tombs they tried to carry immortality in death - and in a way they succeeded. Julius Caesar was declared god after death too.
For a good while, key people tried to achieve immortality in the flesh. If we don't believe some old Chinese legends, none succeeded. Then, there is immortality in spirit, on which many if not most religious beliefs (and some science fiction writings) are based.
The trend nowadays is to achieve immortality through technology.
If we believe there is no soul because we can't determine it scientifically, and that the mind is everything that defines us, then it is likely we will be able to achieve immortality using technology.
The way envisioned right now is to "upload" our minds to the cloud. Obviously, it wouldn't be a simple "upload", and it is questionable if the mind, once uploaded, will want to work in the environment, probably on a quantum computer.
The question is if we should even try that. But I'm sure people will.
Would you want a Donald Trump living to be 1000? How about Joe Biden? Putin? Xi Jinping?
Maybe I'm choosing the wrong characters. Some people may come with the argument they would like to be able to converse with the bright minds of the past.
Ok... I'll buy into that. What would you talk about with Socrates? About things from his age and his ideas, right? You can't really bring him up to speed.
How about Newton? Bright mathematician and physician, but really, he wouldn't understand a word of what Einstein said, three centuries later.
Maybe I'm approaching this the wrong way. If we are talking about present-day people who, by accessing this technology, will become "immortal", they won't have an informational shock like people from the past.
Ok, let's explore that. People's memory is a marvel of nature. It's inaccurate, it forgets things, and it makes strange connections between unrelated events, based on triggers like a common smell. It's also long or short-term, but based on the lifespan of a human. How do you deal with this when you make a human immortal using technology? Do you rewire its memory to make it remember everything? Forgetting is also a defense mechanism for humans. If not, what is long-term and what is short-term, when you live forever?
I believe we are quite far away from "uploading" someone's mind in a "working form" to the cloud. And even further away from understanding the full implications of making someone virtually immortal (provided the technology doesn't crash and is kept in working condition).
From my current understanding of humans and technology, this is a barrier I wouldn't like to see crossed. I expressed the same feelings about AGI not long ago, and it looks closer than ever.
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Humanity has been searching for immortality for a very long period... and as you say, significant progress has been made in the last decades.
Unfortunately not much happens on the morality side...
You've made some great points! There are and there will continue to be many morally questionable decisions made throughout history involving many people or individual cases, where money or influence is a factor. Often, people making such decisions have either inexistent or flexible moral guidelines.
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My current theory on the path to immortality is first, organ replacement growth from stem cells. This will prolong life even further. Next would be to find drugs/ways to keep the brain healthy, and protect it from dementia/Alzheimer's. Eventually we get surrogate bodies that we can control remotely to keep our physical bodies/brain safe. From there we can live in a realistic metaverse, with our brains submerged in a non-aging liquid. Lastly, we can upload our brains to a sort of mother computer, where we have our own universes, and we can visit other places as well. That is the only way to deal with the eventual overpopulation if people are immortal.
I believe the least debated/resisted of all must be finding drugs to prevent dementia and Alzheimer's.
When you read it, it sounds like a series of sci-fi plots, but that doesn't mean scientists aren't actively working to achieve all of what you described up there. Depending on various breakthroughs, some stages will probably be skipped. Or others will be added.
But that doesn't answer the question: what will we find valuable in our lives as virtual immortals? Exploring virtual universes? A virtual world where the brain experiences "happiness" (or a recurring, preselected theme) indefinitely? I find both can become nightmares at some point, given enough time.
Let's also think about how different personalities adjust to the new condition of immortality and the powers they may have in the virtual or the real world. I don't know if you are a fan of Star Trek - Next Generation, but in that series, there was a character Q, an immortal being with limitless power (except when restricted by other Qs). Out of boredom, it enjoyed putting the crew of Enterprise in dangerous situations. Would some of us start to get bored with our immortality? What would we start doing then? We, humans, can be very cruel right now when we find ways to have fun out of boredom (and in general).
This is true, but I think we can only think about answering that question once we have attained it. The universe has a lot of mysteries still unsolved. One can be an all powerful ruler in their universe, or try to live different scenarios. I firmly believe that at this point, there will be a kill switch for those that got tired of living and want to end it.
That is where the different universes come into play. You can remove/restrict access of such people. I would think that in the mother universe where everyone can go, the AI overlords are maintaining the peace. There are a lot of possibilities, and we are only limited by our imagination.
Yeah, I don't know. The problem is too complex for us to imagine a solution to it. Right now, I feel succeeding in the initial attempts will have enough unforeseen consequences with serious or critical effects. Luckily, we won't see this achieved very soon. So, maybe there will be enough time to turn and study it on different facets.
I think it's just a common goal for the rich and powerful to pursue immortality. I wouldn't want them to live forever but technology is always improving. At the same time, I also think people change so AI might not be able to replicate everything. It's hard to really tell though what would be acceptable boundaries.
Yeah, but I am more comfortable when they pursue it in the sense of leaving a legacy that has their name on it than having them live among us to be 500 or 1000 years old. Imagine Ghingis Han or Hitler or Stalin still alive and powerful.
Well, not everything, but the majority of jobs will be lost to the combination of AI+robots, unless there are communities that reject technology like the Amish reject electricity, for example. I'm not saying AI is a bad thing, in fact, it's important to learn to use it if you want to live in the present, but the transition will be hard. And I believe people are kidding themselves if they think people will start gaming or moving into the metaverse for the rest of their lives. There is (still) a large segment of the population that will reject both.
I don't think anyone knows at this point. The explosion of AI caught many off-guard. The current attempts to regulate them seem made out of fear of what you don't understand instead of a true exploration of where it could lead and what "primary directives" they should have when they will eventually operate beyond the capabilities of human understanding.
I also think physical immortality would not turn out how we imagine it to be, because it presents unique challenges with regards to existence. Becoming more healthier and extending life a bit further doesn't sound bad to me. But living forever, that seems more like an ordeal to me :)
Yes, I have the same feeling. Maybe we are limited in our thinking by our insignificant lifespan in cosmic terms, but unless we find the right values of immortality and how to deal with it before we find it technologically (or otherwise), I believe it's a mistake to become immortal.
Right. I think finding the right values on the why's of immortality should precede the how to achieve it with technology. But it seems the latter is preceding the former and I can only hope that a day wouldn't come where immortality will feel like a life sentence today.
Interesting analogy with a life sentence. The thing I would see differently in this case is that the "convict" could choose the chair when a life sentence seems... too long, after a while.
Right words. I think understanding each other and respecting their boundaries is all matter
Life is what it is, it's best that we respect each other, help each other, if we do this, life will be easier for all of us.
That makes sense to me. We are a social species and working with each other is what best suits us. Although people will always try to push the boundaries as much as they can. We are also explorers by nature.
Yeah you are right.
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