Popular immortality is impossible

[CrimsonRegret]

A few months ago I was having a conversation with my family about immortality. My parents are both watchers of Battle Star. I've never watched, so they explained to me what a Cylon is. Now the basis for their immortality for some reason struck me as so incredibly false. If you die, but your memories are placed in something else, that vessel is NOT you. After the conversation ended, I thought about it, and realized that this is an incredibly popular way for immortality to exist in fiction, and it even existed in many works I've enjoyed, but this is the first time I questioned it. No matter the setting this theme can exist, if it's a future setting it can be done by computers, in a magical, or shall I put "sword based" genre, a character (normally the villain) can just transplant his/her soul. Now I could be over analyzing this, and I know that the human mind even now can be put on a hard drive, but hear me out. (The HD is raw data, I don't mean to imply we can put functioning minds into digital form.) Anyway, what is reality? No matter what beliefs you have, whether your existence is a falsehood, and reality is just your construction, and sensory in-put, to any other form of philosophy, reality, and living are phenomena contingent upon an uninterrupted stream of mental consciousness. If your essence, and everything you are, even memories up to your death, are put in another vessel, it couldn't be you. That vessel wasn't carrying your thoughts throughout a supposed transfer, so it's just a back up. A computer, and computer back up metaphor can't be used because computers are not sentient. Think of it like this. Let's say that your soul (I don't believe in it, but it works for this analogy) is copied and pasted into a clone. The clone believes it's you. Why shouldn't it? It has every aspect of you, but you know that it is not you, but rather a copy. Does the clone suddenly share a conscious mind with you. You and the clone are no more the same person outside of data and appearance, then you and a man you meet on the streets. While a copy of you could continue to live out a life for you, it wouldn't be you. In a lot of shows, people can't live with a death so they create a new son/daughter/wife/husband/lover/friend/etc., if given even a little bit of thought, it's incredibly morbid, the person would just a projection of what could have been, the original person is still dead.

I know this topic sounds a little cheesy, but I'm interested to see if anyone has though similarly. Also if anyone can prove me wrong that would be great, because I have a strong hunch that I'm over analyzing. I know there are some repeating reasons above, but I'm writing this procrastinating studying for finals, it's 3:30AM and I'm writing this down in what can only be compared to a fever state.

 

[Yermenko]

You should read The Glass Flower. It is a short story by George R.R. Martin that deals with the concept of "soul transfer". Recently reprinted in Dreamsongs Volume 2. And yes, you are over analyzing, but that is not always a bad thing.

 

[AntiAntagonist]

We can not in anyway put the human "mind" on any device at this point.

More pertinent to your intent of discussion...
I don't think the transfer process necessarily makes a difference; I sleep every night and assume I'm still me when I wake up despite being "offline". However if my 'mind' were to transfer to a new piece of hardware I do believe that would constitute a separate entity.

I think there's a certain amount of debate viable as to if that new iteration left its original hardware for another piece of hardware whether or not it would be considered the same entity. Although the philosophical part of this discussion may be moot depending on how the tech works.

If you're interested in a game setting regarding this, check out Eclipse Phase. It's a free table top RPG; most of the characters are copies or emulations of humanity. Alternatively you can read [link"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon"]Altered Carbon[/link] by Richard Morgan, a sci-fi detective thriller with similar tech.

 

[tharglet]

Just thinking... does it make a difference how you got there? If the vessel was slowly built up around you instead of an A -> B transfer?

Let's say every time an organ of yours was deemed to be failing, it got replaced by a mechanical one. Let's say a piece of you was replaced on an approximately yearly basis? Would you stop being "you" at any point, and become this "vessel" you talk of?
With this, the result would be the same (a body that doesn't have any of the components of the original) but would happen very differently.

 

[rabidmidget]

Well if it identical to your mind in every way, then I guess it is, more or less, you. The uninterrupted stream of consciousness doesn't mean anything to this mind as, from its point of view, there was no interruption.

Also this subject becomes quite interesting if you start thinking about Cartesian ideas of internal and external truths.

 

[Spade Lead]

Just thinking... does it make a difference how you got there? If the vessel was slowly built up around you instead of an A -> B transfer?

Let's say every time an organ of yours was deemed to be failing, it got replaced by a mechanical one. Let's say a piece of you was replaced on an approximately yearly basis? Would you stop being "you" at any point, and become this "vessel" you talk of?
With this, the result would be the same (a body that doesn't have any of the components of the original) but would happen very differently.

But technically, every organ in your body IS replaced in a natural process every seven years.

Transferring your consciousness to a computer (Ala the Cylons) and then into a new body is not a "Different" you. Nothing about your personality changes, just your body. That means, if I placed your conscience in the targeting computer of a Star Destroyer or a Death Star (Ala IG-88) you would still be "You," even though your body would no longer be "Yours."

Your consciousness is you, no matter what vessel contains it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You've also destroyed Transporters in that paragraph.

And human memory.

For your next thought - your body renews itself constantly. (That's what all the skin flecks are from, and how you can get cancer/age - bad cell renewal)

From what scientists understand, over 10 years, your entire body's cellular structure is reborn.

From your first supposition, every 10 years, you're a different person.

The problem with the analogy at the moment is that you lie to yourself anyway.

Your right ear specialises in speech while your left specialises in music. Hear something on your left side and it's different to what your right side would hear - and remember it as.

Move your eyes quickly to the side. See any motion blur? Nope? That's because your brain is editing out the blur by turning off your sight and filling in the blanks from memories.

If you could copy brain information into a new body, they'd have no way of knowing which memories are true or false. And neither do you with your own memories.

 

[Grell Sutcliff]

well really the human mind is nothing more than a complex computer and the only thing that separates it from a cpu is how it reacts to chemicals released and absorbed by the body to produce emotions meaning it should be easier to copy the data of the mind than people believe. Now when it comes to immortality you could keep the brain alive in the machine body without the rest of human body so it's still you or you could make data copies of the brain to be put in the robots, now when your body dies your soul will still pass on but the copy remains it's not completly you but more of an exstention of yourself or an alternate version that still interacts with the world if you want to view it that way but if the mind is connected to the robot that is running on the copy of your mind when your brain dies would that still happen with your soul moving on or would it be passed to the machine if souls exist that is. However it is still immortality as long as that machine has your data because the way to look at it is parts of you are alive while other parts are dead so it's kind of a mix of both dead and alive at the same time

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

its true. if you were to transfer my memories to another body killing my original body in the progress, well its not like id close my eyes one second in my body and open my eyes again in another. Id be dead and thered be something that acts exactly like me out there.

thats something i thought about star trek, the transporter basically kills you and then constructs an exact replica of you somewhere else. And then i hear sheldon saying the same thing on the big bang theory!

 

[plugav]

The way I understood it was that Cylon identities were not copied into new vessels but sent into them upon death, experiencing a sort of limbo along the way (there was a whole subplot about it). The bodies were backups but the "souls" remained the same.

A copy of you, on the other hand, is not really you, I agree here. You stay dead. It only makes a difference to yourself, though - to the outside world and to the new you it seems like immortality. Unless, of course, something goes wrong (as it always does in science fiction) and suddenly there's two of you.

It's not just the problem of immortality, by the way. Certain concepts of teleportation depend on an object being desintegrated in point A and copied in point B.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Dammit... here I was hoping I could wax lyrical about protein design (DNA molecular chaperones - for repair, fidelity and sequence checking - and telomerases).

If biochemistry was that advanced, it's plausible...

OT: Once you insert 'awareness-as-clone' into the new vessel for the memories/abilities/emotions etc (which in the case of BSG, this has been done) it makes it sort of a moot point, since now they are merely a continuation of a consciousness, akin to sequential dreaming. But a thought keeps niggling me: where does the 21g go? /jk

 

[Nobby]

I agree with the op. I think that comparing something like this to a deep sleep or being in a coma is inaccurate. Even if you were to be completely copied physically including all your memories, it's still not you. It would be another person who has all the same memories and experiences but isn't you.

 

[Spade Lead]

Double Post

 

[Spade Lead]

I agree with the op. I think that comparing something like this to a deep sleep or being in a coma is inaccurate. Even if you were to be completely copied physically including all your memories, it's still not you. It would be another person who has all the same memories and experiences but isn't you.

We are talking about Consciousness Transfer, not Cloning.

But technically, every organ in your body IS replaced in a natural process every seven years.

Transferring your consciousness to a computer (Ala the Cylons) and then into a new body is not a "Different" you. Nothing about your personality changes, just your body. That means, if I placed your conscience in the targeting computer of a Star Destroyer or a Death Star (Ala IG-88) you would still be "You," even though your body would no longer be "Yours."

Your consciousness is you, no matter what vessel contains it.

 

[manic_depressive13]

It'd be me as far as anyone else is concerned.

 

[Fudj]

In the Dune universe copies of you can be grown from dead cells named Gholas in the series at first these have no memory or their former lives but through some kind of mental/physical crisis tailored to the person the ghola can regain their memories.

Would this be true imortality or would you count this as being a different person despite being the same physically and having all the memories and experiences which makes that person who they are?.

 

[Laser Priest]

Yeah, keep thinking that, mortal.

Also, it depends on how good you are at your job.

 

[Andarvi]

Well, for all we know, we 'die' every time we lose conscious thought, yet nobody loses any sleep (excuse the pun) over sleeping every day.

There is this nice MMO out there called Fallen Earth where you're simply cloned every time you die with full memory transfer trough a collar all clones wear.

So when you come to out of the clone pod, just how much would you care you're not the original. You would probably agonize over it the first or second time, but knowing human nature, soon you would just shrug at dieing and being cloned again and go about your bussines as usual, since you don't really have the feeling you are not 'you' anyomore...