The possibilities for immortality

Author: Singularity
Radical life extension
Transhumanism
Immortality

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#1
Singularity
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It is my opinion there are 4 possible routes to life extension and that we have, and that we should pursue all of them. Here is the 4 of them and how I approach them.

1, we achieve biological immortality in our lifetime

I am watching my health and fitness and paying attention to the latest trend so I can live long enough to live forever.

2. We achieve biological immortality after we are dead. 

I have signed up for cryonic preservation at Alcor, in case I die before society achieves this, and hopefully at some point they gain the ability to revive me, and somebody is nice enough to do it. I also have had children and am trying my hardest to be loved by them, so they are incentivized to revive me after I am dead.

3. We will go to heaven

I am hedging my bets here by forcing myself to go to church and believe whatever the preacher is selling. It seems I can go to heaven through faith, so I am just trying to not be so evil God won't take me and to merely mantain faith

4. We live in a simulation

My goal here is just to make my life enjoyable for observers. When I finger myself, I do so as if people are watching. Putting on a show for our creators. When I have sex, I do the same thing. I am a bitch to inferior men who hit on me, for example because the interaction will be funnier if people are watching. I assume our creators will see I am amusing to watch and maybe save me to put me in different environments instead of just letting my program end once I reach natural death. The same way DC can not let superman die, because he is too loved by his observers. 


SO how are you guys pursuing all 4 of these routes to immortality at once?
#2
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@Singularity
You will certainly die, and you will not be able to avoid this.


Just as you began to exist, so you will cease to be. This is the nature of created things.



Who is immortal? The Eternal Truth, for before all things, The Eternal Truth was there. At the end of all things, The Eternal Truth is there. In all things, past, present, future, The Eternal Truth is there.


What is eternal life? Abiding in The Eternal Truth, for if there is any hope of salvation at all, it is only by that Eternal Truth.

#3
zedvictor4
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@Singularity
What is it that you wish to preserve?

The body or the mind.

You life occurs within your brain, your mass only supports that function.

Downloading consciousness sooner rather than later is almost a certainty.

So would you be happy to exist within an electronic device rather than within the organic device that you currently utilise?



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#4
Singularity
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@zedvictor4
I would rather just swap out parts as they become unusable. I don't know how consciousness works, so I think staying in the biological body would be best at preserving the essence of me. Brain uploading would be a lst resort if my biological self could not be preserved 
#5
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@Singularity
At best, you would only be delaying the inevitable.

If even. You could take the immortal pill and die in a plane wreck the next day.

Upload your mind? Just a solar flare or glitch in the system away from death or irreversible corruption.

There is One Holy Immortal, and eternal life is to recognize who The One is, and to empty oneself in order that divine grace fill that emptiness.

In grasping for life you will end up losing it, because what you call life is in fact death. Who you think you are is actually the muck that obscures who you really are.

Those who put their faith in lying vanities forsake their own salvation. The Truth is Salvation. The Truth is what sets you free. The Truth. The Eternal Way is the path of abiding in The Truth, it is unity with God. Unity with God is Eternal Life. 


So who are you really? You are made in the image of God. In cooperation with God and allowing The Holy Spirit to purify you, you are transformed more and more to not only the image, but likeness of God. 

At the fulfillment of the eschaton when all things are brought before Eternity, the light of Truth will fill all things. Illusion will be exposed for what it is, and that very same light of Truth that is heaven to those who have made their identity in The Truth will be the flame of hellfire to those who preferred their own delusion to The Truth.











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#6
Singularity
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@Mopac
That is all a cope. You fear death so you imagine you have been blessed with eternal life. We will all most likely die,even you who has fooled himself into believing some nonsense. You will die. I am only 99% to die,but since you cope instead of fighting it, you are 100% to die
#7
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@Singularity
Being able to explain away something does not make the explanation true.


In this case, I am not motivated by fear of death in the slightest. If I was, I would not strive to die daily. I die, sure. The Truth lives on. My identity is with The Truth.

#8
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@Singularity
The essence of you is in your consciousness, all the rest is just mush.

Every sensory response occurs within your consciousness.

Technology is simply ongoing evolution. Therefore transferring consciousness is probably inevitable.

Consciousness without the cumbersome and problematic body.

It might be heaven.

But there again, it might be hell.
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#9
Singularity
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@zedvictor4
Would it be a transference or merely a copy though?
#10
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@Singularity
Would it be a transference or merely a copy though?
Whatever those marketing it can convince you of.

#11
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@Singularity
Good question that needs some thought.


#12
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@Mopac
Yep. Definitely third parties to consider.
#13
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@zedvictor4
They could tell you anything, and who or whatever pops out at the end of the process will probably believe it.


Yeah, no telling.

But all of these methods of achieving immortality that rely on created means are destined to fail in the end. At best, all we can really do is maybe extend a lifespan to seemingly immortal lengths. Ultimately, such "immortals" came into being and will one day cease to exist.


#14
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@Singularity
Uhm, you'd die in a simulation no matter how cool you are. Celebrities are dead and they probably put on a pretty good show, unless they were just fake?
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#15
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@WaterPhoenix
The comic book universe is simulated, and they keep bringing the Joker back
#16
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@Singularity
That's fiction, our "reality" would be non fiction
]
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#17
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@WaterPhoenix
How would that simulation differ than ours other than the extra dimension we have and complexity 
#18
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@Singularity
They have superpowers...
#19
DynamicSquid
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Squids are immortal
#20
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At best, you would only be delaying the inevitable.

If even. You could take the immortal pill and die in a plane wreck the next day.

This is true. I recall someone doing the math using current death rates in the U.S. and calculated that the average biologically immortal person would live for 500 to 600 years if those death rates remained the same. One of those causes of death taken into account in this figure is suicide though and I think in a society obsessed with immortality suicide rates would likely decrease (probably not to zero I admit) and over the next 300 to 400 years medical technology will improve enough to have a noticeable effect on other factors too.

Nobody will live for an infinite number of years unless the nature of our universe is somehow vastly different than we currently believe. Nobody. Period. It would be cool to do so but it will not happen for a number of reasons. Immortality may be possible, probably not within our lifetime but eventually. Immortality is not infinite life though.

Accepting the impossibly of infinite life helps me to not obsess over it. Perhaps this sounds paradoxical but if there is nothing I can do to change it then why spend effort worrying about it? This acceptance is not easy. Fear of death is hardwired into our psychology by eons of evolution. It took me years to truly accept the inevitability of death even after I came to the logical conclusion that doing so was the best path. Still, eventually I was able to. Mostly.
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@Singularity
Developing the interface is the technical bit and will no doubt be achieved.

Then it might be as simple as downloading to your smartphone.

Of course you would want to do this whist you still possessed full mental acuity, so obviously it would be essential to copy during an earlier stage of your organic existence.

And therein lie a whole raft of dilemmas. Especially when the organic host dies and you have to hand management of your potentially eternal consciousness over to others.

Though I would imagine, given the exponential rate of technological development it wont be to long before self replicating technology is able to take over for itself.

And of what worth will our minds be to a vastly superior inorganic intelligence. Or more importantly, will a vastly superior intelligence consider our minds to be of any value.

#22
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Anyone who wants to live forever has never thought about it.
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#23
Singularity
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Well, at the very least it would be nice to choose when I die
#24
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@Singularity
Why?
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#25
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@disgusted
Cause I might be having sex or something when the time comes, and if I can push it back to just after the orgasm, it would be better.
#26
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@Singularity
OK!
#27
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@Singularity
 I don't know how consciousness works

Then all this worry and fuss for nothing. I mean I know you think it's some coping mechanism or some fear of death that anyone would propose that your conscious being cannot be destroyed and transcends a physical death so that is very unfortunate to begin with. Because anything we happen to discuss about it will be filtered through that assumption. However if you are ignorant of it why make all the unnecessary assumptions? why not just be open to new or different information? isn't that how we learn and progress?

Nevertheless consciousness, like energy cannot be created or destroyed. You come out of a conscious Reality that is eternal, awareness is the backdrop behind all of life and the entire universe and as a matter of interest both awareness and energy co-exist...that is the very nature of your soul and the nature of the Creator and you can never be anything else. If you want a bit of evidence consider NDE's and spirituality (transcendent experiences) as a whole, there is more evidence that the soul survives a physical death than any other subject. I can link you to an overwhelming data base of NDE's and the corresponding medical facts to back up the accounts.

You can also relax and experience your own conscious being and decipher whether or not what I'm saying is legit. Since you first are a whole conscious entity and not a series of impulses created by the material body your own intuition can infer that what I'm proposing is true and genuine. The only thing that can possibly be an obstacle here is conditioned thinking so you have to be willing to work around that factor, at the same time understand that the nature of consciousness is an open question within the scientific community so many of its postulations are basically conjecture and conclusions based upon an incomplete understanding about the soul and the physical body and how they work together.
But believe it or not you are not a series of impulses and neural firing you are a conscious being that occupies a physical body. You can compare consciousness to energy and or electricity they both exist within form and independent of form, when your physical body ceases to maintain your experience through it your conscious soul exits that form. You aren't going anywhere, you will continue to experience life within the created worlds for a long, long time.

The brain is nothing more than a conduit, conductor or component that confines your experience to this body so that you may interact within this world but it does not create your conscious being. So while you can detect "activity" within the brain while you occupy it, it's the same as when you see "activity" within a circuit board while electricity channels through it. Nothing more nothing less.
Your soul needs a good conduit that is alive and active because the conscious soul is energetic and alive and not dead, this is why you have the brain you have and the nervous system you experience but they are just tools that you use to navigate through this life. Because of that factor the catch here is that you believe it's the body that is creating your experience lol, when in fact it's just a vehicle. This is was makes your experience here complete though, because it helps the individual focus on this life and become productive, this is what confines and restricts your awareness and reduces your experience from a much larger reality just as we confine electricity to be utilized and reduced to occupancy within machinery ect ect. But, on the other hand you are meant to experience all of what you are and where you originated, however your spiritual development will be a process and a journey of becoming aware.

And I say all this basically to let you know you have nothing to worry about and if anything here interests you let me know and I can elaborate on it. If this is just nonsense to you then just ignore it because I'd rather not be blamed for assumptions that are untrue, if you have any curiosity about my motivations for the things I've learned just ask.

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#28
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@EtrnlVw
You asserted consciousness cannot be destroyed.  What are your premises for this?
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#29
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@EtrnlVw
Actually I just noticed you mentioned NDEs. For you debate. I think NDEs as evidence would be a fun debate topic. If not I can just write about it here
#30
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@Singularity
You asserted consciousness cannot be destroyed.  What are your premises for this?
Personal experience/intuition/observation
Correlated sources
Correlating evidence
Cross referencing sources
Spirituality