IMMORTALITY (will it ever happen?)

so ive long considered the concept of immortality. what would happen when we've either been able to keep ourselves alive by fixing any aging/disease, or by transferring "consciousness" into machine. what are your thoughts? how far away is it?

with the latest discoveries concerining telomeres it seems that soon it'll be only a matter of ethics.

consider this http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1963637,00.html

If we were to achieve immortality by stopping aging and disease, murder and death by tragic accidents would be even more of a big deal. I mean, they're both already terrible enough as a shortening of a finite life. Imagine if they were the cessation of an otherwise infinite life.

Jibb

that's true, Jibb. but in my opinion, several more serious problems emerge:

-Earth overpopulation (a stimulus to colonize the universe outside?)
-unpredictable brain reaction on vast amounts of information, collected during infinite(or excessively long) lifespan. What's the upper limit for amount of memories, or speed of learning(even if brain was being trained appropriately during lifetime)?
-huge skill and knowledge inequality between generations(probably can be fixed by 'injecting' a set of predefined facts to speed up learning and adaptation), growing generation gap.

what do you think about those?

I'd like to hear some viewpoints on the ethics part as well.

That is really something ive never considered. along with that imagine how it would alter the concept of the concept of "legendary" and "celebrity".

id also imagine that by this time pretty much everything would be monitored and recorded. imagine the impact that would have on decision making and politics. You could elect aged politicians without fear of impending death or the aging affecting capabilities, and you would have details on a long record of their personality.

now that's what i haven't thought about

i suppose that most celebrities will be forgotten once the 'fashion' changes, and rediscovered when public's attention will be drawn to them again for some reason (new masterpiece, another fashion cycle, whatever)

well that and imagine living in the shadow of your former self... or having a past so long that any time you try to make a change people have an enormous record of who youve always been.

plastic surgery and some underground document-changing organisations would come in handy

anyway, i guess most people will get bored with life in 2-3 hunderds of years and deside to leave.

What, like suicide? Imagine there were services in place to facilitate the peaceful "departure" of those who've had enough as long as they can prove they've lived x amount of years.

John, are you looking for ideas for the setting of a game?

Jibb

no initially, not until about 2 seconds ago

Humans will become immortal as soon as someone manages to count to infinity.

why do you believe that?

Does counting backwards, from infinity also count?

while(1)
{

inf+=1;

}
//while(1){inf-=1;}

lulz

Guys, do you really want to be immortal? If so, why? Don't you think that after about 100 years you'll be tired of living? Death is normal state of life, and even after 100 years (more or less) you'll get tired, and will seek for death. There is only one way to be really immortal in this life, you must be great man, so even after your death people will say your name and will reminisce you as a great person (great author, great scientist etc). Immortality is senseless thing... I agree with Jibb here, better people think about avoiding diseases, murder and death by tragic accidents, but not aging (this is also normal state of life). At least this is my point here. And I'm sure there will never be possibility to be immortal, we were made to be born, to live our life and at the end of our days to die.

i want to be immortal because i have a god complex and 10,000 years from now i want to rule the universe... lolz. not really, but i do have this fear that by the time i die i wont be satisfied with how much i know about the universe. imagine if a caveman could experience todays technology...... and then communicate with us about the days from his early life. Life is ever changing and if you take our timeline and reel it back in 200 year segments, and use that growth to predict the amount of future changes, keeping in mind the massive leaps in science and the actual acceleration of the speed of our discovery...... I have a feeling if we dont all kill eachother or get destroyed by a natural disaster.. the future will always be a very different place.

There are a number of reasons, but I care not to argue it. That is what I believe.

EDIT: I also don't believe the future will be very different from now. I mean, what kind of really big advances have we made in the last two thousand years? Sure there have been advances in all sciences and generally speaking the quality of life has improved, but nothing of significance has really happened. We're not travelling through space. We still live on planet Earth wearing clothes made from animal skins and cotton plants. The three major differences between then and now are:

1. We can communicate much more easily; information is free.
2. We can kill eachother more easily.
3. We can heal eachother more easily.

I'm sure that in a hundred years, next to nothing but clothing style will change.

oh i didnt want to argue. i was just curious as to why you think that. i do happen to disagree, but i just wondered.

I see another problem: Our species wouldn't evolve anymore, but just stand still where we are.

aha, you and i disagree, if we last long enough i think we will "de-evolve" (not exactly they word for it). right now our bodies are built to live in the wild chasing down animals and killing them with sticks. if we were to last another 5 mil years, imagine what traits will die out as unessacary, and how much some traits like itellectual and social inteligence (in born not experience raised) will be rewarded. I'd also be interested to know the impact to societal evolution as well. I mean look at the difference between society from back in the civil war until now.

EDIT: I also wonder how long religions would last.

I believe Sid was making a sarcastic comment about my views. Like I said, I'm not going to argue my opinion.

EDIT: Also religion will last as long as we don't know who created us or if we were created at all.

No I wasn't, sorry if it was a bit confusing.
Thats my honest opinion, we need to get rid of the old ballast so that we can evolve further. Thats how evolution works.

We are evolving - much faster than (biological) evolution ever was able to do.
And, if we (as individuals) live longer we are able to evolve our knowledge and technologies even faster, making 'natural' evolution obsolet.

well it sort of is "natural evolution" we naturally evolved brains large and powerful enough with bodies able enough to figure out, create, and abstract new ever evolving systems such as society, communication, science, etc.

I used 'biological' and 'natural' synonym for genetic evolution while actually evolution became a general term for changes that follows modified and generalized rules of the biological evolution.

i just need a longer little finger to make typing '=' easier while coding!

A little bit uncommon, but go to a plastic surgeon of your choice and show him your wishlist!

I think immortality could rather slow down the evolution/progress of a society. Think about it: New ideas mostly come from the younger generation while the old generation is rather opposed to it. That problem is usually solved when the older generations die.
For example, nowadays younger people all use computers, smartphones etc., while some older people refuse to even buy a computer, and would propably continue to do so for a long time, if they were immortal.
But more importantly, some centuries ago, only a few people fought for democracy, while most others were opposed to it. That seems to be one of the reasons the Weimar Republic failed.

An immortal can accumulate his knowledge continuesly, while a new generation has to learn from the beginning again.

Sure, but what if someone's mind is set up about something? Or if someone is reluctant to accepting new ideas? This is where new generations learning from the beginning are much more flexible.

yes, but a lot of the stubbornness comes with time, once that person has enough time i think they'd start to change out of necessity.

Lukas is right. Take a look at the Samurai, long after the point where they were supposed to fade away they persisted in their existance out of pure stubbornness, until finally a civil war erupted and they were wiped out.

Hypothetically speaking, if humanity achieved immortality it would probably slow down if not halt society's progress entirely.

EDIT: One thousand posts.

Gratz

I've heard before that basically any emotion can be boiled down to some sort of fear. Your saying society's push for science and technology is based on our fear of death?

Thats also another interesting topic, should people live thier entire life for themselves to get the most out of the short time we have on the planet, or should you spend precious time researching knowing that a lot of your goals will never be finished in your lifetime.

I think any immortality would have to be genetically induced, so that all cells can continuously regenerate.

That said I feel life itself has been degenerating while evolving in technological areas.
The first life forms on this planet were less material and more energetic, and thought was the creative force instead of actions as it is today.
At least according to some, which for some reason I agree with.

Maybe in order to become colonisers of the universe we must again regenerate and be able to become pure thought, which would enable the covering of the vast distances throughout our universe.
Just a thought.

Most breakthrough discoveries in maths are done by people between 20 and 40, since your intellectual power is greatest during these years (e.g. the ability to concentrate deeply ceases when you grow older). So I see the failure to learn something new as the worst complication - which then again plays a role in the stuff you guys said about people rejecting new ideals.

The loss of ability to concentrate deeply would surely relate to the aging process. So if we "fix" aging, perhaps this would be a non-issue? Besides, I imagine the 20-40 situation is less to do with ability to concentrate and more to do with the idea that if you get to 40 and you still haven't made a breakthrough, perhaps you were just never equipped to make one.

Jibb

True.

i also agree with jibb. the idea of immortality (for me) ceases the process of aging, therefore also ceases all of the complications. granted this is all theory and if we ever do get that far, we'll see how it all pans out, but it is an interesting thing to think about.

You (whoever I'm refering at with this) could try eating only 100 kcal per day and tell us how it works out...

I still believe the idea of immortality is silliness, and I just thought of a good reason why:

Assuming the universe is trillions of years old, life at least as complicated as ours should have come around before us. If that is true, and inconsequential immortality was a possible venture, they would have discovered it by now. If that is true, the universe should be teeming with life, since the rate of reproduction would be ever expanding with no limit in sight. And if that is true, we should've made contact by now.

But we haven't made contact, thus all of our hypothetical precursors didn't reproduce indefinitely, thus they didn't achieve immortality, and so I highly doubt we will either. In fact I'd say it's downright arrogant to think we ever would, regardless of your point of view, since it's quite obvious nobody else has done it yet.

EDIT: Just found the right term for "inconsequential immortality," which is actually called biological immortality (which means that you never age, but you can still be harmed and even killed).

As it happens, there is a certain type of jellyfish that is potentially biologically immortal, as it can reverse its life cycle by transforming back into a polyp, thus escaping death. These jellyfish are not much more common than any other creature on earth, however, as they are extremely vulnerable to predators in the polyp stage and they are still vulnerable to disease as well.

But, if we somehow able to create a biologically immortal human mutant by stealing genes from this jellyfish, we would have, for all intents and purposes, a biologically immortal man.

Immortality (we have always been talking about the "inconsequential" one) wouldn't make the universe teem with life, because it wouldn't grant us the ability to live on other planets or to travel fast enough to reach other solar systems. Mind that the fact that you don't age doesn't mean that you wouldn't want to go on a trip that lasts a million years and that you could get enough food on that spaceship for that trip or that you reach a planet within ITS lifetime!

Also, reproduction does have a limit. If you don't age, you can still starve to death. So the food, or rather the energy on Earth effectively limits the number of individuals that can live on Earth.

EDIT:


I didn't check if that thing with the jellyfishes is true, but you just contradicted yourself.

Challenge accepted. I will start when I'm death and I'm also reducing it to 0 kcal/day.

The jellyfish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Jellyfish

I didn't actually contradict myself. I said human beings would never become immortal, and I stand by that belief. That jellyfish is potentially immortal, and if you mixed its genes with ours you might end up with an immortal human, but that's assuming the "gene mixing" is even possible in the first place. And if it is possible, and we learn how to do it, who's to say we actually will get the chance to do it? Think of the controversy that would spawn if someone announced they were going to create a new subspecies of humanity. And of course there is still the question, if you add unfamiliar genes to a human being, is it even really human any more?

Also this is a learning process for me, I'm not pretending to be an expert. I'm just telling you what I've read so far, so my stance may change on this issue very rapidly. I suppose you can say I'm following ideas as I post.

EDIT: Oh yes, there are other issues. The jellyfish is supposedly immortal, but we reached that conclusion through extrapolation. It appears to be immortal from what we've seen of it so far, but perhaps there are other processes involved in the fish's biology that will prevent it from living forever, regardless of its outer conditions?

uhhhhhhhh its not. its ~15billion years old. I havent finished reading though.

EDIT:

im talking in consequential and inconsequential since we are pushing both fields. some scientist are working on storing conciesness in an electronic way on a computer, while others are working on cures to aging in general. I'm more convinced that the first one is the closest to have any likelihood near our lifetime. but yeah 15 billion years is not enough time to be "sure" there was enough life already created to contact us, or that they were intelligent enough to create the technology/gather the resources to get here yet.

My guess was just that - a guess. I have no idea how old people generally think the universe is. I believe that in reality the universe is < 10,000 years old, but that's coming from a creationist's point of view.

Keep in mind that as I told Lukas, I'm not attacking anyone. I'm following my own harebrained train of thought, and I'm posting as I go. That, and I'm following a lot of different hypothetical situations - like the existence of aliens, etc.

oh no i didnt mean that as an attack, more like an update for ya. and yeah i figured this is kinda new territory for you. no offense meant.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Self-End-Natural-Evolution/dp/0262025027

"At the dawn of the 21st century, Baldi (a professor of computer science and biological chemistry at UC-Irvine) says, the human genome has been mapped; genetic technology can prevent inherited disease; and biogenetic techniques such as cloning and in vitro fertilization make it possible for people to choose traits for their babies. How, he asks, does such burgeoning scientific achievement alter the nature of the human self? How does cloning, for example, change our conception of ourselves? Is a clone a human being? Is a full-term in vitro aka test-tube baby a human baby? What are human attributes? Baldi observes that "our notions of self, life and death, intelligence, and sexuality" are primitive and evolved to provide us with "a feeling that each of us is a unique individual delimited by precise boundaries." He contends that a world dominated by computer and biotechnologies shatters this model, making us uneasy with scientific advances. For example, in vitro techniques may render sexual intercourse unnecessary for conceiving children. Thus sex, perhaps the clearest evolutionary example of human will to survive, could become extinct. Baldi provides an accessible overview of molecular biology and a masterful survey of scientific techniques, like DNA-manipulation, that challenge our sense of ourselves. While he finds many of these scenarios disturbing, he emphasizes that, in the quest for self-knowledge, we must face these scientific challenges openly. Baldi's powerful, elegant book deftly navigates the interactions between science and psychology. (May)Forecasts: While Robert Wright and E.O. Wilson focused on evolutionary theory as it demonstrates the emergence of self, Baldi goes further to show how the self evolves after natural evolution has ended. Readers of Wright, Wilson, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins will enjoy Baldi, so this title could do relatively well with attentive handselling."

this sounds like a very interesting book related to our topic.

Why do people get old and die?

There is a simple reason: evolutionarily it did not matter if they die at older age.

It the simple rule that things wich are not nessecary will not
dominantly develop in evolution.

Humans live quite long for a mammal, one of the longest lifespans. Only few other mammal species live as long or longer.
(Elephants, Whales etc) Mostlely Animals who have a high
investment to raise their young.

These mammal species specialized in bringing up few young and
extensively invest time in them.

Species who spawn many offsprings (like rodents)
specialized on many offsprings with lower investment in the individual.
These species typically live much shorter.

Now humans probabbly optimized to raise about 4 to 5 offsprings
per woman, starting to reproduce at the age of around 12 to 14. Also twins are few. So humans are a typical 1-offspring species.

Investment in the children had to be at least 8 to 10 years for
it to become independant enough to be a productive member of the group and require less care by the mother.
So the lifespan of women and men up to around 30 years was enough to serve
this reproductive purpose. Its typically the age where people start aging more quickly.

At the harsh conditions back then, most did not make it over 40 anyhow. Life expectancy was much shorter than today.
A few older members where shurely beneficcial (sharing knowledge)
But having a higher percentage of old members would not have benefited the group, and rather slowed it down.
The reproductive and childraising age (for own offsprings) was
over at this time.

There was no evolutionary pressure to keep full health at this age.
So the genes never adapted to support a higher lifespan.
Its not a "killswitch" but rather a lack of optimization to
keep life (the organs and cell) healthy and from deteriorating after such a long time.
It requires costly protection and repair mechanism and thus energy to keep
tissue healthy over long periods.


Image a different scenario: each female can only have one child
in 5 years (because there are 5 year long winter cycles or so)
In this case we would have evolutionarily adapted to live quite longer.
Maybe to keep young and at full health up to 80.

But there was never this pressure.

Nowerdays we live much longer than the original lifespan,
But there the effects of non-repairing tissue kick in.
The aging starts and since we have a much more convenient environment then the club swinging caveman
we can life much longer with pretty overdue organs.

The reason is not so simple: A species with no aging, in combination with other factors such as being not too low in the food chain, had a huge evolutionary advantage. It could grow much more rapidly. In fact it is absolutely not clear why evolution has not developed immortality of most higher species.

A plausible theory is that a non-aging species would not be able to evolutionary evolve further, and thus are stuck in a primitive state and in evolutionary niches.

I think many are looking at it the wrong way.
If you think you are no more than matter(your body) than you are not immortal.
But when you find the energy part of you, which in reality is you, you are immortal and can then go on to meet those who have long left this 3rd plane and are out there in another plane of the universe.
Everybody agrees we are all star stuff, but forgets star stuff is not just matter, it is a constant changing of energy to matter and back.

(ok, I considder myself more than just a lump of matter.
The difference between life and dead matter is,
that life actively counters a gain in Entrophy by
using metabolism. Dead matter does not, at least not
by some purpose.)

Anyhow. In Evolution species evolve by adaption to an environment.
If the environment is very very static, and there are almost
no natural predetor, a species can optimize to live
an almost immortal life -> at the cost of having to have
a very simple organic structure.

Such is the case with fungi and sponges.

But mammals dont live in such an environment. Also their
bodystructure is much more complex and fragile.
Immortality would come at an energetic cost
that would make the mammal have a hard time to compete against
fast-generation populations.

As I said, long living self repairing tissue is very energy intensive,
and likely to operate very slow (metatobic rate) and
be clunky due to needed heavy protection against environmental factors.
(Giant Turtles went into that niche)

Such a species is not very fit against its short living competitors.
-> who can develop fast growing, powerful organs,
that dont need to be build to last very long.
(Like a Formula 1 car vs a Diesel Traktor)

I only wanted to ask, why do people need IMMORTALITY? I just wanted to know... To leave forever? What for?

people want to live forever cause of fear of the unknown Is there live after death ?

For me, it's just the same as if children afraid of darkness.. We just need to grow up from that.. As for me, I think that there is nothing to be afraid of, sooner or later, we all will be there, but for now, we have to make something, that we could leave after we will be gone. Just my two cents.

If you fear the unknown, killing yourself would be the solution to that problem. People rather want to live longer because they are curious how the world will look like in 1000 years from now.

we are immortals from the point of view of very simple organisms having a really short life period, but we are nothing comparing to our galasy. so immortality is easily achievable by finding just the proper reference

Agreed. looking at the last 150 years and the exponential growth contained within, I can only attempt to imagine what could be if we restrain from destroying ourselves in 1000 years.

well i am not that curious about the future in 1000 years
simply by knowing we all get born and we all know for sure we die

ps if you fear what comes after death than its not logical to kill yourself right unless you get a kick out of fear

Yes, but it would be logical when you fear death because it's unknown.

Anyway, normally no one fears death. Death is far away. But anyone fears death when immediately confronted with it. In that situation you normally don't contemplate what comes after death. You instinctively know that it's the end, and that's what you fear.

I have never met a religious guy who is happy to die
If you really believe in heaven you should be happy to die
So I agree with jcl
everybody istintively know that's the end

Not all of the religions are saying, that after death "we" (people which believe in that religion) will be definitely in heaven... There is a hell as well And I think, it's really would be odd to be happy to die, even for those people which think that they are going to be in heaven right after death..

With so many individuals in heaven, there
must be a pretty complex social structure, political hirarchy
and economy for services existing.

How is civil law enforced. Do people have a right to
make democratic decisions about law changes?

Sounds quite unstable.

Not meant to offend you my friend, but you words made me laugh Heaven is something, where we won't need politics, economics (money etc) or other stuff which we need in out current life. In heaven you'll have everything what you ask for, as it will be kind of our reward for living without making much sins and believing in God.

Lets say you are in heaven and want to be entertaned by someone else.
(See a theatrical piece), then someone has to act.
The actor might get bored of doing so. So no entertainment for you. In return you could offer some service (like telling jokes)

It still needs a real concious person to have a "true" entertainment (who has his own needs and likes). Else its just a robotic simulation. Not a real person.

People would in any way build a market for services.
There is demand (need for entertainment) and limited supply (people get eventually bored of acting)


If there is a market, there must be some price to it.

etc etc...

People will want to interact.

-----------

The alternative is to be kind of alone in a static environment.
That sounds more like eternal boredom.

Buahahahah
Mate, do you see differences between theatrical piece and something that you really wish (and you are probably the only person who know that)?
My friend, you really need to read what heaven is, here is the link for you:
Heaven Described In Quran
Description of Heaven in the Quran
Believe me, once you'll get in the Heaven (and I really wish to you, that you will), you'll forget about such things like theatrical piece or telling jokes.

Well but I suppose that you have more chance than me to go to heaven , but I guess that you are scared shitless same as me

What? No jokes or similar and you will kneel in front of god until the end of time???
And in hell you burn until entirety; there will be weeping and jelling, which is annoying after a time...
Is there a third option?

I want a spaceship like in Startreck "the Enterprise" and travel around the universe to explore everything. Which means I would have to be immortal in order to do that.

Heaven is boring and insulting while hell seams to be quite painful and annoying ^^

Random@ sadly, you don't really understand what Heaven really is
AlbertoT@ if you are scared same as me, then it means that you also believe in it I can't really say that I have more chance than you to get into the Heaven, only God knows that, but I'll be happy to meet you guys there

Still, I want to meat you in my spaceship

no one knows what heaven is cause no one that has been there
has told the story alive . Print is not proof

now i imagine an island with me and 3 blond beach babes could mean heaven
unless they turn out to be lesbians then i would be in hell for sure

I have always wondered...

If I live a good and sin-free life, get hit by a bus and go to heaven...

Will I then be allowed to indulge in all the sins I abstained from whilst alive?

I just thought of something. Physics doesn't measure the energy of consciousness of the individual, nor of the collective of humanity for that matter, it just doesn't know how yet. Thus the traditional physical laws can't possibly take this into account. Remember that at one time we couldn't measure radiation or magnetism either, but they were there. And we've just begun to notice dark matter, but we have no idea how to define it, or how to fold it into our existing physical laws. Therefore the flaw is the scientific method itself. Science is slow, and ALWAYS missing something, otherwise we'd have a unified theory. Which leads me to the question of how we can claim to know reality when the comprehension of reality is limited to our minimal understanding of life and the universe?

With that said, we have no way to measure/detect the human soul nor consciousness, we can only detect consciousness by brain waves. However brain waves are only a result of consciousness, not consciousness in itself. Naturally to say it doesn't exist (given my previous statement) would be illogical since we are basing this conclusion on the lack of an ability to detect it. The law of conservation of mass implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space and changed into different types of particles. Physicists tell us that all creation is based on energy and
vibration. Energies vibrating at certain compound frequencies, or at a certain matrix level, constitute the universe we perceive with the senses of our physical body and interpret in our brain.

So would it not be possible that the human soul is just made of energy which, after death, is freed from its binding of our perceived reality?

who says a human "soul" exists? A lot of studies are being done right now on the concept of free will and they are finding that your when asked a question your brain finds the answer before you know you decided (when you feel undecided still). Or so some MRIs have shown.

Consciousness is possibly just a feeling we have as a response between the time we get sensory input and when our brain decides the outcome of our actions.

Conciousness is a functionality of the human brain.
No brain no conciousness. Damage a brain in certain areas and you are a vegetable.

So what is nicely called soul is what it actually ment by beeing conscious.

The brain is an organ made of neurons, their connections and chemical
and metabolical processes to sustain this organ.

Physics/Neurobiology/Biochemistry can describe Neurons to a somewhat good extend.
What is still very hard (because you cant just take a working human brain apart an play around)
is to understand the large scale information processing network.
It very complex, like looking at a smartphone having only 18th century equipment:
You can tell that there is electricity, what materials its roughly made of,
there is something processing (corrupting it will stop processing)
and there are many connectors. But there is no way yet of knowing
how the CPU works, and even less how its programmed.

Anyway. Consciousness is a physical property, relying on
complex information processing. based on already good understood physical processes in the micro scale.
Not some "outer dimension" or "metaphysical" process.
Also not a quantum physical process (the quantum effects have
no effect in the macro scale of a Neuron, they statistically
even out)

its Just that we don't understand the information processing
system behind it yet.
But we do know how its operating in the micro scale in general.
Once its understood (and one has the huge mapping data) it could be even simulated on a Turing machine.
Its not special, just complex.

Also the Kurzweilian "singularity" will not happen just
because out computers will be so damn fast in the future.
Its not a question of processing power (thats just a convenience
of having the machines work faster)
First the programming must be understood.
Any simulation can work on current computers, they just need
much longer and longer tape drives to do it than in the future. The output is the same.
You can even render a Crysis frame on a C64, when you give it
enough memory to swap data to... and wait long enough.


I also doubt that there is a specific area of the brain that
is the councious part. Its probably a multi-module setup.
Damaging one part impairs the consciousness as whole, while
keeping it still enabled. Up to the point where too many
or too important modules are dysfunctional.
Probably where the brain can not self reflect (receiving and processing its own information), and only acts
on some lower instincts.


You can do that already. Just check how many calories your brain uses. The part actually used for information processing
is what your consciousness uses, and which warms your hat in winter. Less than your PC right now.

basically what i wanted to say but figured people might not want to hear, people like to think we have some special spiritual part of us. we don't. we are basically machines

And you know that because of..?


Everyone who truly believes we are only biological machines doesn't take those conclusions far enough. If there is truly nothing except this life, the only solution to every single one of life's problems would be suicide.

That behavior would be evolutionary selected out.
Thats why self suicide not a dominant trait.

Exactly.

and you know gravity is really gravity and not some interdimensional outside force that just appears to be gravity like because? because thats what observed science knows, and until we find otherwise thats all we can assume.

Some thoughts.
I am not my body.
I inhabit my body.
when my body is exhausted, i leave it.
I can choose if i want to have a new body
in case i want to experience more on the matter plane.
Anyway i am energy and always will be.

How do i know this?
I know it, for this knowledge it is stored in me, so i do not have to belie-ve it.
I have left my body countless times, as many others have.

So get to know instead of believing what someone(including me) tells you.

well, i guess i just look crazy then. It's not like there is any number of chemicals both inside the brain and from external sources that can give someone a sense of out of body experience.... oh wait, yes there is.

You are joking, arent't you ?
Only scientific advances ?
Do you know that in the 19th century, 11 years old kids have been condemmed to death by British court of theft ?

what i was trying to says is that you and only you can know what is right, everyone else just has their own version of right, all valid for their own individual experience.
So you are not wrong unless you think you are.

That makes a whole lot of sense, actually. So this logical "flaw" is pre-programmed, because every "flawless" thinker eradicated themself from the gene pool.

Hard to believe but true
I read a book by E .Kandle, nobel price for medicine "In search of memory "
It seems that human beings take decisions a fraction of time before that they become aware of what they have decided themselves
If so free will is just a mere invention

Your CPU also calculated 1+2=2 before the Desktop can display it.
This does not mean the calculation was not intended.

Awareness on ones own thoughts has a natural delay in a time.delayed calculation network.
If you get aware you decided something wrong, you can still check
and correct it, before doing an action.
Thats why complex thoughts get iterated first in the head many times,
before a conclusion is taken.
Otherwise its a reflex. (like taking a leg up when walking)
You can let it run, or manually correct it. (dogshit)

The time delay doe NOT mean there is no free will. It just
means that concludions, or responses can be valued to
be analysed, changed or just intuitively and immideately chosen.
If every though would be "handcrafted" and constructed from logical rules,
our thinking would be much too slow. The brain needs to automise
responses. But these responses can be trained and altered.

Look at the following example:
Girlfriend asks "Should I wear these clothes tonight, how do i look?"
It requires a either an intuitive answer (likely wrong) or complex iteration of answers (likely wrong too).

tell that to the people who thought they could fly off of a building on acid... oh wait, reality hit them to hard and they died.

Truth is not democratic, its not made up in your head. truth is truth.


Edit:



true, but if we are strictly talking consciousness and the role it plays on action/decision making then that means that decision was not made consciously, the inner workings of our brain created that output, and then consciously we feel like we just decided it.

Look at memories.
They spring up on triggers.
Either intentional (trying to remember an event) or unintentional
(a familiar smell)

Retreiving long term memory is not a conscious action. But
asking your memory to "look for it" is a conscious action.

You give the memory system a trigger (like a face or name or situation), and await a response.
If it does not fit, you alter the trigger and await for a different response.

At least this is how I see how the memory works.

Not the memory can be a "decision", But the decision to use this decision can
be evaluated, and changed.
Or split up into smaller decisions which are evaluated in more detail.
Or in the long run retrained / intentionally learned.

I dont see this as unconcious decision making.
More of a decision how much effort one wants to spend on doing so.
How much you want to reflect on your "reflexive" thoughts.

See the way i look at this, and this area of science is new and I am by no means an expert on this topic, but even the decision to "look for it" might feel conscious, but it is really just your brain responding to whatever input asked for it. non-consciously. in this case the "looking for it" covers up the fact that it is still triggered by an outside source and your brain still decides whether its worth looking for or not.

Yes and no
Honestly I dont remember the details of the test
I read the book 5 years ago
In principle
Scientists asked some people to take a simple decision such as to push a button
"Do it when you want"
As you know some area of the brain are mapped
Nobody knows where coscience is but for sure we know which area of the brain must be activated to move a finger
The results where amazing
all subjects first activated the "finger" area and only a fraction of time after other parts of the brain have been activated

When I was a school I asked my religion teacher this question
If someone was born with killing instincts why should he be punished
He said that the killing instinct come from the body but our soul can stop them
God takes it into account
More or less your explanation which , btw, never convinced me

A better explanation, may be, in my opinion the following, even though Mr Kendal do not mention it
The subjects take a decision to push the button with some time delay then they activate a sort of internal clock
The clock automatically trig the event

Im shure the time delay is an indicator if an action is more or less concious.javascript: void(0)

Trained and often repeated actions: automized. (or instinctive)
Newel, potentially dangerous or important actions: concious (they get thought over more)
Until this actions receives enough training to be done automatically.

For example, reading a newspaper upside down takes longer (rotating the image mentally) But if you learned to read it like this,
or trained it long, you can read the newspaper flawlessly fast this way.

Or in your explanation, the soul (conscious decision i call it) can overrule
the instinctive action, if one values that.
Even when you are born as an impulsive brute, you could control it.
If you dont, then you obviously dont value it high enough,
thats where the punishment (rightfully) steps in.

I think the tourett syndrome is one, where the person is not willingly able
to suppress instinctive quick reactions, even if they want.
Thats why they swear easily or make sudden moves.
I think if you could supress this inhibitory function in a normal person, he would
act the same.
But thats a rare condition, an not an adopted excuse for some psychopath killing people.

The time delay was just my personal hypothesis
You should go through the test protocol in detail
I would be surprised if a nobel price did not take in consideration such a simple explanation
As far as I remember there is no evidence, based on celebral activity, that the decision comes first and the action comes later as you would expect
It seems that it is the other way round

Automatism are an other matter

A guy can repress his killing instincts simply due to the fact that his killing instincts are not that strong
It is not necessary to evoke the free will

Of course a murder must be punished by human beings but just to protect the other people
I wonder why God should send him to hell
First God createe Hitler, Gengis Khan etc then He punish them

According to my relion teacher the explanationis more or less, is
Well ,based on their istinct they should murder 10 milion people but they killed only one milion so, ok go to heaven
Ridicolous
We are only machines, as simple as that

Yes, for a species still being (virtually or theoretically) immortal there's probably no evolutionary benefit to dying off more quickly. There's either enough natural selection to take away enough individuals from the gene pool for a steady rate of evolution or there is very little evolution going on to begin with, perhaps because of some kind of isolation.

It's usually wrong to look at the dying aspect of individuals as some kind of trait for an entire species that's supposed to be inevitable. Evolution itself is never some kind of goal in itself.

If a species is able to reproduce many offspring that in their turn can reproduce quite quickly, dying more quickly becomes beneficial to evolution, but only because the new individuals do not have to compete with the older generations as strongly when it comes to the food supply.

On a cellular level, death easily makes far more sense. In order to renew or 'fix' things, you will usually need a mechanic that is able to remove damaged cells. Cells that are able to live forever in their turn will constantly be renewed or the actual structures will become ever weaker.

I'd assume the origin of mortality actually lies in the ability to repair ourselves on a cellular level.

That depends on whether or not you consider this to be a bad thing. One of the advantages of reacting before becoming aware of the action itself, is that in an evolutionary sense it can be the different between survival and extinction.

It might be less apparent nowadays, but anyone who's ever dodged a car almost hitting them, will be very glad indeed that evolution has made us react before realizing what we were going to do.

This doesn't mean we can not freely decide what to do though. But one should wonder, what's the point? If you decide to consciously ignore fight or flight-reflexes, it will probably just kill you.

[quote/]
One of the advantages of reacting before becoming aware of the action ... [/quote]

I was not talking about inpulsive reaction
I was talking about intentional actions

You are told :

"push a button when you like "

Our brain has been mapped

A ) Some area of our brain become active when we take a decision or better when we suppose to take a decision

B) Some area become active when we move a finger

You would expect that area "A" are enabled a fraction of time before area "B"

The other way round

It seems that human being do not take decisions , they only
become aware that a certain decision has been taken

Btw in an other thread I quoted the book "Who's in charge ?"
It confirm exactly such assumption

It seems that the heart is much more than a "pump" and eclipses the brain.



Full link to pdf
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Heart,%20Mind%20and%20Spirit%20%20Mohamed%20Salem.pdf

I find it all so fascinating to learn and discuss things, everyday is usually a learning experience, so i try not to exclude anything i come across. I'm wired "very curious" and try very hard to understand others thoughts, experiences and discoveries.

Well I dont know that guy but it seems to me a charlatan ( no offense of course )
Aristotile believed that heart was the center of coscience but thousand years have elapsed

Look at the references he uses to come to this conclusion. It is by no means his own idea and work.
We should know by now, that just because something is projected by the "official" academia, does not make it the only theories, or right for that matter, i find it interesting to also pursue those who have been barred or excluded from academia, and that way get a bigger picture than the officially projected one.
//
To me the heart is the soul and has always been that. Even our languages reflect that. "He's got no heart", "hard hearted", "heart broken", "captured my heart" etc.
But i respect others opinion and theories, for out of all the theories at some time we get a theorem.

Sorry, hanent read the whole topic, but I do hope this guy gets his funding:
http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html

I think the question isnt "Will immortality ever happen?", but more like "When will immortality happen?"...

Probably not in our lifetime, but the chance is better than zero.

http://www.gizmag.com/aging-reveresed-mitochondria/30209/

How about 'we' live for ever, as an entity - going from body to body down the time track - but each body decays in time. There is a lot of evidence with regard to past lives - so why not into the future?
Ravin'dave

Peer reviewed source please

do peers that are in the quack-science field count?

I have that same response to my mother all the time when it comes to discussions about athiesm/theology. It's obnoxious when the answer always is "because the bible says"

That's pretty much what made me abandon christianity too, I've never been very religious, I was just pretty ignorant and thought all the answers to the universe were pretty clear-cut and unmistakable. Ha ha, well not really!

One of my biggest gripes with this is that children aren't taught to question what they are fed as truth by others. Schools should teach children to ask questions and think for themselves, instead of blindly accepting everything they read as absolute truth.

If you don't learn this, then "the bible says so" becomes a valid argument. No offence to lostclimates mom.

It was mostly this place + the rest of the internet that caused me to begin questioning my beliefs, I used to be pretty argumentative so even when my views weren't already being challenged I would tend to make it happen anyway.

Well at any rate, I feel the whole experience ended up affecting me for the better, even if that's not the case for many people.

I was just like you redeemer. People never teach kids anymore to question the societal views of those around them. The point in my life that I'm going to be most proud of is when my daughter looks at me and challenges one of my beliefs by pointing out a fallacy that changes the way I feel and greater enlightens me in that area. Then I'll KNOW I've taught her to think for herself and that she will never have to rely on others to tell her how life works because she will seek answers on her own.