SO everyone wants to live forever, or at least I certainly do, but the concept of immortality raises some serious questions of population.... having children.... growing up... they have children... if noone dies we'll have way too many people.
But the real limitation here is physical existance. The real question si not necessarily how to preserve the human body as it is, but to provide for the survival of the "self". If I replace my arms and legs, and heart, and lungs with mechanical parts, I am still me... and for the most part this is an acceptable form of survival. How far can this physical replacement thing go. I would contend that the "I", is simply data with software accessing, and manipulating this data. That being the case, why is it impossible to create a medium capable of containing this software and data?
However this raises the question of the "I"... if we were to successfully migrate the self to a man made medium, what would be the downtime associated? and perhaps more importantly, what would be the ramifications of said downtime? Would we in fact die? Would the current contiguous self cease to exist, and another be "born" in its place? Or would our current "self" simply wake up in the new medium?
Once this is accomplished what would be the ramifications of say.... copying the data, and running the software elsewhere in parallel?
If we are not data... then what are we?
-Max
But the real limitation here is physical existance. The real question si not necessarily how to preserve the human body as it is, but to provide for the survival of the "self". If I replace my arms and legs, and heart, and lungs with mechanical parts, I am still me... and for the most part this is an acceptable form of survival. How far can this physical replacement thing go. I would contend that the "I", is simply data with software accessing, and manipulating this data. That being the case, why is it impossible to create a medium capable of containing this software and data?
However this raises the question of the "I"... if we were to successfully migrate the self to a man made medium, what would be the downtime associated? and perhaps more importantly, what would be the ramifications of said downtime? Would we in fact die? Would the current contiguous self cease to exist, and another be "born" in its place? Or would our current "self" simply wake up in the new medium?
Once this is accomplished what would be the ramifications of say.... copying the data, and running the software elsewhere in parallel?
If we are not data... then what are we?
-Max
