Karsten Bänder <Karsten.Baender@ivm.de> writes:
> Well, this is indeed a very desirable future, yet, I think that it is
> at least some of them - aren't made for perpetual function. Life can be
> extended to an age of about 120 years, with the average lifespan ranging
> somewhere around the nineties, but then, eventually, some important cells
> will simply stop replicating. All you can do then is to hope that they will
> still be working, though at a slowly decaying rate.
What about replacing them with younger cells? You could either store cells while you are young, or make stem cells differentiate into the right kind of tissues. This won't solve all problems (the brain remains), but it lessens the impact.
And there are always plastics, metals and silicon :-)
> It might, however, be possible to clone your body with a "blank" brain to an
> age of around 18 and then transmit all that which makes up your immortal
> "soul" (your experience, wisdom etc.) into this blank brain.
Tricky, if you try to do it with a biological brain. You need to make it identical down to the neural level, and that is of equivalent complexity to scanning the original brain in the first case.
> This would also
> reapir problems caused by diseases such as Alzheimer, which do not affect
> the cells, but the communication ability of the brain cells.
Huh? As far as I know, Alzheimer kills off brain cells. Alzheimer brains are notiseably shrunk.
> I'm not a medic, but as I did understand from various conversations, the
> cells which make up your veins (among others) will be affected by this aging
> problem. This means that you could not simply transplant your brain as the
> aging of the brain is largely caused by the gradual malfunction of the
> arterial system.
This is the most common cause of brain-related deaths if we exclude Alzheimers. Either you get a bleeding or a thrombosis, in both cases parts of the brain die. But the brain ages naturally too, for example receptor numbers go down over time and the conduction speed decreases. This has to be fixed.
> I do also understand that it would be nearly impossible to
> repair this by nanobots an genetic engineering.
Hmm, aren't you making somewhat contradictory assumptions here? First you assume the technology to keep people very healthy up to an advanced age. Then you assume technology able to not just grow a clone body (in itself not that complex, but making it grow up well is likely hard) but to transfer the mind either through copying neurally or transplanting the brain and connecting all the neurons in the spinal cord and senses in the right way. Then you assume that this fairly advanced technology can't fix bad arterial walls even given nanotechnology. The problem isn't bad assumptions, it is that you seem to be mixing the technological levels a lot.
Fixing arterioscleroris with nanotechnology is likely possible, an almost classic idea for swimming nanobots. And I seem to recall research into arterial gene therapy today.
> Or perhaps the "soul" would be uploaded into a psychometric device which
> allows you to exist outside of the physical body - transcending into another
> state of living, and then download into a new body if you want - much in the
> way as discussed before.
This is what is commonly called "uploading" on this list. It is regularly debated every third month, when a huge debate breaks out about whether the upload really is you :-)
My guess is that uploading is the hardest technology of the above, but the most important in the long run - we cannot rely on these bodies forever. In the meantime, life a healthful and enjoyable life, make sure to get good medical treatment, and as you age hope medical advances keep up and/or get a cryosuspension contract. My guess is that we will see enough stuff the next decades to make "upload heaven" a possibility for most of us.
(I look forward to be able to read this list while fully digital)
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