Hello,
I was doing my daily check in on the news in the world of Crypto and I was inspired by a piece of news is that has led me into an existential themed blog for today which I hope you enjoy.
So firstly, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently donated $2.4 million worth of Ether to the Not for Profit SENS Research Foundation to help develop rejuvenation biotechnologies.
This companies primary focus and goal is to combat ageing to help us all live for a thousand years or more.
I personally don’t believe they will ever develop the technology to stop our biological bodies crumbling away with age but no doubt they will find ways to extend our life span.
SENS Research Foundation's goal combined with the Netflix show I am watching - Altered Carbon, is what has inspired me to write my thoughts on it.
Before we enter into SciFi territory, what SENS Research Foundation and other scientists are exploring, are ways to make us live longer in the bodies we are in.
I think this is a worthwhile cause no doubt, cell rejuvenation, stem cell technology, I am sure science will in time dream up all sorts of methods to keep us ticking over longer.
My questions would be:
How long can they extend us out?
Will our brains deteriorate? It's not like they can use stems cells to grow us a new one of those.
Would our minds degrade over time?
What would our appearance and energy be like? I don't like the idea of being an elderly citizen for 700 years lol.
Also, say they can keep our biological bodies alive for hundreds of years, it is by no means a fix for the human condition.
Firstly, imagine the resistance levels we would build up to antibiotics. Nature would be sure to find a way to kill us somehow with some evolved super bug or something scientists can't cure.
The longer we live the more likely something nasty like that comes along.
Alternatively the longer we live the more chance we could still die in an accident of some sort, be murdered or accidentally killed, heck struck by lightning even or killed in some sort of natural disaster.
There's a long list of other ways we would still be vulnerable, so the longer we live the more chance something like that could happen to us and undo all of science's good work of keeping us alive longer.
Now you may scoff at this next part but remember a lot of inventions dreamed up in science fiction have become reality. Everything starts as an idea, check out the old Jetson's Cartoons if you want proof of this.
The concept Netflix TV series Altered Carbon runs with is one that has been around for a long while and that is:
What if you could remove the mind from the body and place it into something else?
Download the contents of our brain basically and transplant it - either to some sort of disk or drive or synthetic body or even another biological body.
In Altered Carbon they refer to the bodies they are placed in each time as mere sleeves!
This futuristic concept for making us live potentially forever I think is a more worthy ambition that humanity and companies like SENS Research Foundation should explore.
This is the direction science should be heading in and if I was Vitalik Buterin or any other billionaire, this is where I would be investing my money.
This concept does however terrify me at the same time and raises some scary questions:
Say you were on your death bed and a scientist was offering to download the contents of your brain onto a disk to save you, with the promise that you will wake up one day in a new body.
You happily agree to do this as you have got nothing to lose, your body then dies but your mind has been saved.
They then one day insert the disk that is now you into a new body, which they presumably grew in a lab and turn you back on.
Would you actually wake up in this new body and still be you, the real you?
Or more terrifyingly, would you never wake back up and just be gone, meaning a mere copy of you has just been turned on in a whole new body?
The real you being long gone from this world.
It’s a terrifying thought because as far as this new version of you goes, it will naturally believe it is the real you and tell all who listen, yes it’s me, it worked I am here.
This could create a world where we would all believe this technology to be real and think we are all living forever.
None of us would have a way of realising that we are all actually dying a true death and only a copy of us is living on each time.
Science would really need to nut that conundrum out first.
- Caprica was another SciFi masterclass the explored some of these concepts -
What would be perfect and what our goal should be is creating a technology that removes your mind/brain contents from one body and places it on a disk, or a drive of some sort.
Then once this is done, your body is lifeless and your brain activity is nothing - akin to being brain dead.
Science needs to be sure they are taking us out of our own body and placing us somewhere else, so rather than copying your mind they are literally removing it from your body.
Only then would you literally be waking back up in a whole new body and still be your true self. Now that would be cool, that's the holy grail for mine.
Imagine what we can do once we make that possible?
Long distance Space Travel would be possible for one. We could just live in some sort of virtual world whilst in transit on board our ship and travelling away from Earth.
Us leaving Earth would become even more of a must once this technology is rolled out to the masses. We can't all fit on Earth if we are suddenly immortal, not without some serious birth control.
Our resources are running out as it is and the Earth certainly can't take on anymore carbon dioxide production.
Elon Musk would certainly get his Mars mission wish and that whole program would get a shot in the arm. We could live in a synthetic body on the surface and not die from the environment there.
Speaking of living in non biological form, we could also be downloaded into machines or synthetic forms to perform dangerous tasks on Earth or in Space.
I could go on and on as the possibilities really are endless.
So in closing, the end game for humanity needs to be a way to transfer “us” (our mind, our memory, our personality) out of our biological form and into synthetic or other biological forms.
Only then will humanity be able to live forever, populate other worlds and basically rule the Galaxy & beyond.
I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading.
- Dahmsy