Popular immortality is impossible

[Rednog]

The fact that you put a time on it is what I took issue with.

It is a scientific fact that the cells that comprised your body at the age of 21 are all dead at the age of 28.

Every X years(I think 7 or 10) all cells in your body are replaced. You are a clone of yourself 10 years ago.

No. You are constantly loosing cells. Right now there is a microscopic cloud of dead skin cells that have fallen off of you in the simple act of moving, breathing, catching a breeze, blinking - you name it - all around you and on the surrounding area.

I think you misunderstood me. I know that you don't go though some magic moment where every single cell dies and are replaced at the same time. What I meant was that the cells that made up you when you were born are not the same cells that are making up you right now. So while I assume that you see yourself as the same person as you 10 years ago, the cells, molecules and atoms that make up you are not the same as they were.

The fact that you put a time on it is what I took issue with.

Why would I see myself as my cells and atoms? I am my thoughts, my memories and my consciousness. Ever said "my body" in a conversation before?

My - implying ownership

Body - the thing being owned

Unless you can somehow be something and own it at the same time, one cannot be their body.

Right. That's my point too. The physical body isn't important, it's the mind that matters. If my mind lived on after my body died, it would still be me.

It wouldn't be your consciousness, no. Your neurons and receptors ceased firing when you died. The body with your memories and such would not be 'inhabited' by you, just your past.

Well, I'm not a biologist or a neuroscientist, but I believe I read somewhere that neuron do replace themselves, just slower then other cells. But to the point, what is my conciousness anyway? My point is that our cells(what makes up everything we are. No exception.) die. So in a sense, you die. I believe that our conciousness IS our thoughts and memories. I mean, I realize why people think it's different to die and then come back in another body, but when you think about it, it's not really different from dying and being reborn as part of a continous process.

I'm a neurobiology major so I might be close enough to answer this.
Your neurons in fact do not get replaced, ever, they are a one shot deal. They, in some rare cases of minor damages are able to replace their axons, aka their "tails" but even this is a finicky process and doesn't go over so well and is much different than replacing the entire cell. I don't know exactly why neurons don't get replaced but my theory is that it is because nerves have insanely complex paths through different tissues through the body and can be quite large.
Also, heart is kind of an iffy cell type also, they sort of do and sort of don't get replaced. Some cells do manage to get replaced by other functioning myocardial cells, but more often than not they are replaced by non functioning scar tissue. So it really isn't a correct replacement of working cell for working cell, it is actually a downgrade.

 

[aaronobst]

^

Youre kidding me right? Banned for that?! what are the mods smoking?

 

[Ketsuban]

If you ask me, the trick to immortality is not to remove the brain and place it in something else, that's absurdly risky and just creates a single failure point. Instead, augment yourself and gradually transfer cognition to the artificial nodes until the point comes at which you can detach and dispose of the redundant organic node.

 

[CrimsonRegret]

I know I left a lot of important information out, I was just trying to convey the main point of my idea. When I was referring to vessel, I meant anything, and hypothetically of course, and by uninterrupted stream, I meant an always functioning mind. The clone situation works the best. The clone wouldn't be able to differentiate it from you, but you would. A memory transfer would be someone that felt it was you, and it would be impossible to prove otherwise, but if you suddenly died, and the clone existed your mind would not (to our knowledge) continue, rather the replica would function with an identical stream of consciousness.

 

[II2]

^

Youre kidding me right? Banned for that?! what are the mods smoking?

Not so much the individual post, but he was very carefully trolling, for awhile now. His gimmick was basically hassling other users by acting holier-than-thou and loftily, though insufferably politely, to bate them into derailing threads with value-less arguments to rile them up.

Either as an insidiously careful troll, or just truely a smug hoity-toity prick, nobody likes an annoying wise ass.*

*[sub]Unless they do so with a modicum of self-deprication and are very funny about it. [/sub]

 

[Woodsey]

Surely your mind is more 'you' than your body will ever be?

I'd count that as immortality.

 

[Iron Mal]

Popular immortality wouldn't work because for the most part humans aren't suitble both mentally or physically for the rigors of enternal life (our bodies start breaking down and degrading at around our 30's or 40's, a sadly large number of people develop problems like dementia at ages around 60 or 70, imagine what a person would be like after 1000 years), even if you could find a way to shrug off the effects of 'death of old age' there would still be the fact that after a while your quality of life (and ability to think) would have degraded to such a point that it could be argued that you're just a mound of undying, brain dead flesh attached to a machine/powered by magic/other explanation for immortality.

Another issue to address would be that for immortality you would have to also possess indestructability, after all, you can't live forever if there's no body for you to live forever in (being destroyed completely and utterly kills most people for a good reason), indestructability has it's own list of issues and flaws attached (which shall be saved for another day).

As for immortality through cloning, functionally a clone would be like an identical twin (genetically identical in every way) so even if you did find a way to 'imprint' your soul/personality/consciousness on it you'd still find yourself dealing with not the original 'you' as much as a very convincing copy or twin of yourself, from the point of it being intiially created there's nothing to say it wouldn't decide to go off and be a completely different person than it's 'predacessor' (the cloning idea would work more along the lines of reincarnation or rebirth than an actual form of immortality).