The Immortalists.

The Horizon program tonight was fascinating. There is a very rich man who is funding research into the possibility of uploading the contents of your brain into a computer which is implanted into an android thus giving the possibility that you could live forever.
The basic premise is that 'you' consist of the physical 'you', bone, flesh, blood, etc and the essential 'you' which is everything stored in your brain.
If the contents of your brain could be transferred to something more lasting than flesh and blood and installed in an android to mimic a human body then you could theoretically exist forever.
What do you think ?

Re: The Immortalists.

Hi

To be honest Alan I am not sure.

Would we still be able to marvel at the simple things in life, like a beautiful sky?

If not, don't think I would bother myself.

Re: The Immortalists.

I think if you transferred just the content of brain it would not be 'you' because only part of you is being transferred.

Your body influences your brain to some extent, you are not just a brain. For example imagine you have a pain somewhere, without that pain your brain within the android would be thinking different thoughts from the brain within the real you body .

So the 'thing' existing forever wouldn't be the complete you

Re: The Immortalists.

My thinking is that there is a vital life force that resides throughout the human body.. This same force is what causes the heart to beat, allows us to breath in and out and gives intelligence to our cells, an intelligence that directs our cells to protect our bodies from invading viruses.

As I see it the brain is the computer that runs the body and like any computer, if it does not have a on going energy or in this case, a vital life force it will not work.

We can put a brain into a machine, but that machine or robot will lack a subonsciousness. The true essence of being will ultimately be missing and immortality via a robit will fail

Re: The Immortalists.

If life went on forever wouldnt it lose its value?

I mean we stop to wonder at the sky or the dew on the grass or the first snow because in the back of our mind we know our chances of seeing these things are limited. We know life is precious.

If we knew what we didn't see now we could catch up on next time round I think it would make us lazy.

I like the fact that we are only here for one lifetime its what makes life interesting.

Re: The Immortalists.

I agree, Cass. I think there is something a bit sad (maybe even creepy!) about these quests to live forever.
Apart from that I can't see how the plan would work as the brain needs stimuli to function so surely just transplanting the contents of a brain achieves very little.

Re: The Immortalists.

Good grief-they have only now made a computer that wins at Go. To work out all of a human brain ????? Not in my lifetime

Re: The Immortalists.

You beat me to it Rudolpho ! No surprise there

I put the Horizon programme on expecting to hear about a rich man looking to create the Philosopher's Stone so it was a big let down for me.

I am in total agreement that what makes me, Me, is the quintessence, the vital life force that exists within every living thing and without which there is no life. Our memories and experiences in part shape who we are and how we behave, but they are not the totality of what we are.

Take a look a Alzheimer or dementure patients whom you know and tell me what you see.

I'm mindful of the great Prunella Scales who was Cybil in the fantastic Fawlty Towers series. When you look at how feisty and loud she was in that series and then contrast that with the gentle and much simpler woman she has now become you can start to ask the question . . . "Is she the same woman?"

If she is still that same Prunella Scales, then we must concede that memories and experiences are not "us". If not then we must say that she is now a totally new woman, a different human being.

This is really an old philosophical chestnut. The conundrum usually runs thus:

Two men lie on adjacent operating tables and we are in a point in time where a total brain transplant has become a reality. If the brain from Man A is transplanted into the head of Man B, does Man B suddenly become Man A?

And if the brain from Man B is put into Man A does Man A then become Man B?

It is a dilemma.

At the end of the day, I tend to think that if you were to take a living adult, and totally wipe their brain clean of all past memories and experiences so that they had to start all over, they would still be the same person, the same human, though they would no longer act as they did before.

The quest for immortality is in my opinion a worthy one. The nature of Nature appears to be that living things go through various stages of growth and/or metamorphosis. It seems quite possible to me that were a human allowed to live for say 500 years that they would experience a further stage in human growth. All we know of at present are the stages of Baby, Child, Teenager and Adult. I think there could be more.

Re: The Immortalists.

I can't agree with the idea of each of us having an essential spirit. I believe that the 'you' is what is in your brain and your flesh and blood body is just a vehicle to transport and keep alive your brain as well as sending sensory signals to your brain and, of course, to procreate.

Re: The Immortalists.

Yet the mind can not live without the body. Take away the flow of oxygen to the brain and you become brain dead in minutes. The oxygen isn't magic but it is a carrier, just as water is a carrier. They carry the life essence that we all need imo.