Author Topic: Would you like to be immortal?  (Read 43208 times)

Thaurismunths

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Reply #75 on: January 30, 2008, 03:48:33 AM
Some issues that I haven't seen brought up in this:
1) You couldn't possibly read every book ever written because the world produces books faster than you can consume them  (every book you'd ever want to read might be possible)
2) Immortality wouldn't be a path to becoming an expert in everything. Your brain is only so big.  Immortality won't make it bigger and it won't make you smarter - wiser perhaps, but not smarter.
3) Just because you could live forever doesn't mean your memory would last forever.  You could end up doing the same things every few hundred years and never know it, or maybe live in constant deja-vu.


All things considered I would still choose to live until Santa's Heat Death villain eats me.

Actually, the first one was touched on:
Quote from: sirana
There are simply so many things that one could do if one had more time. Read every book that has been written. Be an in depth expert(meaning an university education and 20 year working practise) in every field that interests you. See every city on the Earth (and the ones that will pop up on the Moon, Mars, Europa.) I could go on.
I wonder how Xeno's Paradox would be affected if effective time were no longer finite. Could you ever catch up with "every book that has been written"--or would it not matter because you would always have more time later to get to the ones that were written while you were trying to catch up.

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #76 on: January 30, 2008, 04:10:32 AM
Some issues that I haven't seen brought up in this:
1) You couldn't possibly read every book ever written because the world produces books faster than you can consume them  (every book you'd ever want to read might be possible)
2) Immortality wouldn't be a path to becoming an expert in everything. Your brain is only so big.  Immortality won't make it bigger and it won't make you smarter - wiser perhaps, but not smarter.
3) Just because you could live forever doesn't mean your memory would last forever.  You could end up doing the same things every few hundred years and never know it, or maybe live in constant deja-vu.


All things considered I would still choose to live until Santa's Heat Death villain eats me.

Actually, the first one was touched on:
Quote from: sirana
There are simply so many things that one could do if one had more time. Read every book that has been written. Be an in depth expert(meaning an university education and 20 year working practise) in every field that interests you. See every city on the Earth (and the ones that will pop up on the Moon, Mars, Europa.) I could go on.
I wonder how Xeno's Paradox would be affected if effective time were no longer finite. Could you ever catch up with "every book that has been written"--or would it not matter because you would always have more time later to get to the ones that were written while you were trying to catch up.

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

Oh... forgot about number 3... must have a touch of the danged "mad cow"...

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ClintMemo

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Reply #77 on: January 30, 2008, 01:04:42 PM

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

I'm 43.  I found my limit at least 15 years ago. I went to college for 8 years and I have 2 degrees (not bragging, just saying). Most of that information is gone.  There is only so much information that my brain can hold and it's been full for years.  Immortality wouldn't change that.  Even if storing information in my brain was perfectly efficient (and I'm sure that it is not), it is only so large, so unless immortality lets me grow more brain space, I'm out of luck.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


Darwinist

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Reply #78 on: January 30, 2008, 03:38:46 PM

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

I'm 43.  I found my limit at least 15 years ago. I went to college for 8 years and I have 2 degrees (not bragging, just saying). Most of that information is gone.  There is only so much information that my brain can hold and it's been full for years.  Immortality wouldn't change that.  Even if storing information in my brain was perfectly efficient (and I'm sure that it is not), it is only so large, so unless immortality lets me grow more brain space, I'm out of luck.

I'm about the same age and am in the same boat (but only 1 degree).  Why can't I remember much of the information I learned in college but I can remember worthless trivial things, like the words to Adam Ant's song Goody Two Shoes which I heard in high school.   How much capacity does a brain have and how do we determine what is saved and what is lost? 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


DDog

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Reply #79 on: January 30, 2008, 03:52:57 PM

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

I'm 43.  I found my limit at least 15 years ago. I went to college for 8 years and I have 2 degrees (not bragging, just saying). Most of that information is gone.  There is only so much information that my brain can hold and it's been full for years.  Immortality wouldn't change that.  Even if storing information in my brain was perfectly efficient (and I'm sure that it is not), it is only so large, so unless immortality lets me grow more brain space, I'm out of luck.

I'm about the same age and am in the same boat (but only 1 degree).  Why can't I remember much of the information I learned in college but I can remember worthless trivial things, like the words to Adam Ant's song Goody Two Shoes which I heard in high school.   How much capacity does a brain have and how do we determine what is saved and what is lost? 

My girlfriend wonders how I can't remember when she asks me to get something for her, but I can rattle off elf lineages and the history of Middle Earth. What's worse is when I can remember the location where something important was said, what people were wearing, what I did before and afterwards, but I can't remember the actual important thing.

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« Last Edit: January 30, 2008, 03:56:34 PM by Russell Nash »

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sirana

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Reply #80 on: January 30, 2008, 04:57:41 PM

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

I don't think the process of forgetting can be seen as an "age related illness". Nobody, whatever his age can remember everything he does. The brain always sorts things into ones that i stores and things it throws away. If we assume that the amount we can remember is limited then we would remember less and less (for a fixed timespan) the older we get.
What ClintMemo said about living in constant deja-vu sounds plausible to me. It would lead to some interesting searching in one's old blog posts, photos, emails, etc.

"Hmm, I really would like to climb the Everest. Let me see if I already did that."



wakela

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Reply #81 on: February 01, 2008, 12:28:10 AM

For number two; the limit for human learning and memory have not yet been found, and I believe number 3 'becoming forgetful with age' has been taken care of by the 'won't suffer from age related illnesses' in the opening premise.

I'm 43.  I found my limit at least 15 years ago. I went to college for 8 years and I have 2 degrees (not bragging, just saying). Most of that information is gone.  There is only so much information that my brain can hold and it's been full for years.  Immortality wouldn't change that.  Even if storing information in my brain was perfectly efficient (and I'm sure that it is not), it is only so large, so unless immortality lets me grow more brain space, I'm out of luck.

I'm about the same age and am in the same boat (but only 1 degree).  Why can't I remember much of the information I learned in college but I can remember worthless trivial things, like the words to Adam Ant's song Goody Two Shoes which I heard in high school.   How much capacity does a brain have and how do we determine what is saved and what is lost? 
Then again, there's this from Boing Boing.  In summary they electrically stimulated a section of a guy's brain and he suddenly vividly experienced a memory from his past.  I guess we can only speculate on the accuracy of this memory, though.

It could be that the brain stores everything, but the brain wires itself so that information that's repeated ("Don't drink, don't smoke.  What do you do?") becomes more efficiently recalled, while the stuff you learned in college but no longer need gets tucked away like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders.  A zap of electricity in the right spot could force the brain to recall something.  Wouldn't it be cool if we could do some kind of virtual reality of our memories? 

Things are taught to us in a way that's easy to teach but not so easy to remember.  What American who grew up on School House Rock can't recite the Preamble to the Constitution (though doing it without singing is another matter).



Thaurismunths

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Reply #82 on: February 01, 2008, 02:27:01 AM
Nobody, whatever his age can remember everything he does. The brain always sorts things into ones that i stores and things it throws away. If we assume that the amount we can remember is limited then we would remember less and less (for a fixed timespan) the older we get.
I'm not so sure that it is. I remembered this from one of my psychology classes: The Man Who Remembered Everything

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


ClintMemo

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Reply #83 on: February 01, 2008, 01:14:15 PM
What I wouldn't give for a mental garbage collector....

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


williamjamesw

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Reply #84 on: February 02, 2008, 12:13:56 AM
There's definitely lots of things I'd like to delete completely from my brain.  Like the theme from "Barney & friends"  (Heard it one time and it's in there forever.)  :'(

I'll just go back to being silent again now.


Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #85 on: February 02, 2008, 04:56:14 AM
There's definitely lots of things I'd like to delete completely from my brain.  Like the theme from "Barney & friends"  (Heard it one time and it's in there forever.)  :'(

Copacabana?  Funky Town?  Mandy?  Girl from Impanema?  Anything by the Village People?

All infinitely better than that throbbing purple mound of hate.

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williamjamesw

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Reply #86 on: February 02, 2008, 09:08:38 AM
I have no problem with those examples.  I just worry that if I could remove an annoying memory, that having that type of missing piece would cause me to try to find out what was there.  Hopefully I would remember to leave a note to help avoid re-acquiring the irritant. (Otherwise; this could become an endless cycle.)
 ;D

I'll just go back to being silent again now.


CammoBlammo

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Reply #87 on: February 02, 2008, 11:59:05 AM
I have no problem with those examples.  I just worry that if I could remove an annoying memory, that having that type of missing piece would cause me to try to find out what was there.  Hopefully I would remember to leave a note to help avoid re-acquiring the irritant. (Otherwise; this could become an endless cycle.)
 ;D

Hmm, I believe Albus Dumbledore used a Penseive to archive his more important but annoying memories. I wonder what would happen if he archived his memory of where he stored everything?

Depending on how you read The Deathly Hallows he might have been immortal too. Didn't the Jedi figure out that trick?