Most extroadinary inter planetary.......plan

Capt'n Midnight

kneemos wrote: »

Our only hope for survival is to download our brains onto something which can last the thousands of years it will take to get to another habital planet and reasemble ourselves when we get there.

Apart from mammals most other animals come from eggs and don't need weaning.

This means you can freeze the egg (may have to separate out the nucleus and reconstitute later) , defrost it when the robot ship gets there and keep it warm till it hatches.

So to get intelligence to the stars we could train up birds or an octupus or both.


Humans are a bit difficult unless we come up with some sort of artificial womb. Could it be as simple as having a LOT of frozen blood on a non-recycling system or are there lots of two way interactions across the placenta ?


Given the chances of survival on a 50,000 year journey chances of downloading yourself to a disk and hoping for a successful reboot isn't something I'd like to bet on. Especially since it means you could be cloned which means you are really dead and it's a copy that gets rebooted.

Capt'n Midnight

kneemos wrote: »

Thought there was some work being done on organic computers. Who knows where that ends up,given time it may even be faster,stronger and smarter than a human brain.

But it wouldn't be you.

2020 is when we'll have silicon with the same number of connections as the human brain. Thing is that we won't be able to emulate a brain until we understand how it works and that is a long way off.

kneemos

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

But it wouldn't be you.

2020 is when we'll have silicon with the same number of connections as the human brain. Thing is that we won't be able to emulate a brain until we understand how it works and that is a long way off.

Even 10,000 years from now is just a blink in our evolution.

crazy cabbage

kneemos wrote: »

Even 10,000 years from now is just a blink in our evolution.

we will have long blown ourself to bits in 10,000 years time :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

kneemos wrote: »

Even 10,000 years from now is just a blink in our evolution.

30,000 years ago we still had our cousins the Neanderthals. And the mammoths and wholly rhinos and all the other critters that survived a million years of ice ages.

3 million years ago North America and South America were joined together. At that stage South America's dominant carnivores were giant birds and marsupials. There were armadillos the size of cars. Giant ground sloths bigger than elephants.

Needless to say the biggest extinction event was the arrival of us.

stateofflux

crazy cabbage wrote: »

we will have long blown ourself to bits in 10,000 years time :rolleyes:

yes, most likely...im guessing ww3 between china and the usa within the next 100 years to get the apocalyptic ball rolling

kneemos

crazy cabbage wrote: »

we will have long blown ourself to bits in 10,000 years time :rolleyes:

I'd be more concerned about a meteor strike,a volcanic caldera,a worldwide virus,loss of natural resources or an ice age.

Bipolar Joe

kneemos wrote: »

Do you want me to build the spaceship and send you the plans.It's an idea.

Yes, I hate it here. I;d give anything to be in space. Seems like bliss.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

But it wouldn't be you.

True enough CM, but then again you might argue you're not really you either over time, merely the continuation of memory believing you are/were. Think back to an early memory of when you were say 6. The differences in your body and brain since then are huge, you're essentially a whole new person. Your bone and blood and muscle etc have all been replaced and in your brain cells have died off, connections have been lost and gained, it's even grown a little in size. On the "quantum level" and all that jazz you're an entirely different entity.

Yet for all that you know you are and were the same Capt'n Midnight inside looking out. Or is that all a delusion based on a tenuous memory link from second to second and thought to thought? I suspect if we do get to a point where we can introduce an interface to the brain/mind, so long as we don't do it too quickly* and interrupt this memory continuity/illusion we could transfer whole to another receptacle our individual "me".

I also don't see why it's assumed emotions wouldn't follow. Emotions are just types of thoughts. Nothing "other" or magical about them. Ditto for "gut feelings" where logical thoughts flit about until coming up with something for us to recognise as concrete. I don't see why they won't go along for the ride.

Cool link to the gut nuerons Cú Giobach. Didn't know about that. Funkaay. I've long been of the opinion that who we are doesn't magically stop where the brain meets the rest of the body. IMHO our whole body gives rise to "us", from the fingertips to bacteria in your gut. The brain is by far the most important part, the hub of all that, but if we were just a brain in a jar we'd lose a lot of what makes us individuals. This would explain why in some cases(apparently it's not that rare either) people who recieve transplanted organs appear to get vague echoes of the donor coming with them. With some the changes have been quite obvious, even personality changes. IMHO it's because they've been interfaced with another "me" just at a lower level. So fill out that donor card folks, cos I reckon more than just the cells will live on in some way.

Cú Giobach

Wibbs wrote: »

Cool link to the gut nuerons Cú Giobach. Didn't know about that. Funkaay. I've long been of the opinion that who we are doesn't magically stop where the brain meets the rest of the body. IMHO our whole body gives rise to "us", from the fingertips to bacteria in your gut. The brain is by far the most important part, the hub of all that, but if we were just a brain in a jar we'd lose a lot of what makes us individuals. This would explain why in some cases(apparently it's not that rare either) people who recieve transplanted organs appear to get vague echoes of the donor coming with them. With some the changes have been quite obvious, even personality changes. IMHO it's because they've been interfaced with another "me" just at a lower level. So fill out that donor card folks, cos I reckon more than just the cells will live on in some way.

Thanks Wibbs, indeed the whole question of what makes you you can be quite murky when you look deep into it, the results of experiments I have found absolutely fascinating is that the brain makes a decision on something before (sometimes by up to 6 seconds) we are concious of making the decision, in one by watching a brain scan in real time the experimenter knows before the subject does whether he/she will randomly raise his/her left or right arm.
It questions whether we actually make decisions based on our logical conscious brain or our subconscious decides the action which we then rationalise with our concious.

kneemos

Our past also dictates how we react to the present,based on past experiences and memorys.So it's a bit more than just a vague memory link.

Wibbs

kneemos wrote: »

Our past also dictates how we react to the present,based on past experiences and memorys.So it's a bit more than just a vague memory link.

Not really. It's all a memory link. "I burned my hand when I touched a flame yesterday, I remember that, therefore I won't touch a flame today". The interesting bit is the "I". Over the course of a day the mechanism behind the "I" is barely changed, however take that out to the distance between a five year old discovering that Flame = burn and the "same" 80 year old avoiding flames because of that memory. The changes to the mechanism of "I" has changed radically. The physical links between the two states is tenuous enough considering how sure we all are that the "me" of today is the same "me" that had these self aware thoughts when we were 10. Essentially we're a whole new mechanism, but the "I" remains, or the illusion of the "I" remains. My point was that we may be able to transfer the "I" to another mechanism if that continuity/illusion is maintained. To do it we "just" have to figure out what that continuity is.

books4sale

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

Yes, I hate it here. I;d give anything to be in space. Seems like bliss.

Smoke some!

Capt'n Midnight

kneemos wrote: »

I'd be more concerned about a meteor strike,a volcanic caldera,a worldwide virus,loss of natural resources or an ice age.

No need to worry about the ice age thanks to all the CO2 released and deforestation during the last 50 years.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

True enough CM, but then again you might argue you're not really you either over time, merely the continuation of memory believing you are/were.

We are our conciousness. It's like a running program can ask the operating system to move arms and legs but doesn't know how the OS works, and the OS mostly ignores the program and does it's own thing till there is a request.

"Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong"



Beware
Teleportation is murder !

3ndahalfof6

the brain can survive for over a thousand years in the right host.

ScumLord

kneemos wrote: »

Our only hope for survival is to download our brains onto something which can last the thousands of years it will take to get to another habital planet and reasemble ourselves when we get there.

Congratulations, a copy of your brain has now been saved to the computer. Guns are in the rack to your left you may now dispose off your old hardware.

kneemos

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

the brain can survive for over a thousand years in the right host.

Eh?

Rabies

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

the brain can survive for over a thousand years in the right host.

Clearly you have 1000yrs of scientific data to prove this, right Doc?

Big Nasty

Biggins wrote: »

We will need the carpenters again!

(Fellow oldies will get it!)

Do share!

Or is it classified?

Wibbs wrote: »

Not really. It's all a memory link. "I burned my hand when I touched a flame yesterday, I remember that, therefore I won't touch a flame today". The interesting bit is the "I". Over the course of a day the mechanism behind the "I" is barely changed, however take that out to the distance between a five year old discovering that Flame = burn and the "same" 80 year old avoiding flames because of that memory. The changes to the mechanism of "I" has changed radically. The physical links between the two states is tenuous enough considering how sure we all are that the "me" of today is the same "me" that had these self aware thoughts when we were 10. Essentially we're a whole new mechanism, but the "I" remains, or the illusion of the "I" remains. My point was that we may be able to transfer the "I" to another mechanism if that continuity/illusion is maintained. To do it we "just" have to figure out what that continuity is.

That's some serious heavy sh1t there Wibbs! :eek:

3ndahalfof6

Rabies wrote: »

Clearly you have 1000yrs of scientific data to prove this, right Doc?

of course.

kneemos

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

of course.

Clearly it's gonna take some waterboarding to get the info.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

We are our conciousness. It's like a running program can ask the operating system to move arms and legs but doesn't know how the OS works, and the OS mostly ignores the program and does it's own thing till there is a request.

Ah but you can effectively shut down the running programme through deep sleep, anesthesia, or the extrme, deep coma, yet when the programme reboots it's still you. Interestingly it's not just tied to memory as due to brain trauma some rare individuals can have no long or short term memory. They can't recall who they are, or were, every 5 minutes is a surprise to them, yet they know they're them looking out. So it seems it's not just continuation of memory, nor is it an unchanging brain as the brain changes radically throughout life(esp in the early years), or through massive head trauma, yet we always remain "I", the ghost in the machine. Maybe it's one of those global holographic thingies you linked to? That so long as enough of the "I" hologram remains, you feel like "I".

Beware
Teleportation is murder ![/SIZE]

Yea I was thinking on that very thing. Teleportation could get odd. If you're an exact copy down to the cosmic string/quantum level then it's you. A perfect copy. Unique self awareness should continue. After all our quantum states are changing as we sit here typing or reading. I'm about to boil up a brew and my quantum states gonna go apeshít , yet I'm gonna sit back down with my cup of tae still me. Where it could get really fcuking odd if we ever crack teleportation is if we don't destroy the original(if that's within the bounds of reality, don't see why not). What would happen to the "I" then? The original "I" would clearly still be you and you'd feel no diffs, but what of your identical copy's "I"? Would ye share a consciousness for a time until the quantum information started to drift? Then again as I say it's about to drift as I go make me tae, soooo ye could share a consciousness. Head-fcuking-melt. :eek::D

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

the brain can survive for over a thousand years in the right host.

Unlikely. Brain cells aren't immortal contrary to popular, they die off. You've end up at say 90 with a notable amount missing. Now if you keep the old brainbox exercised you can continue to grow connections in the brain which will, barring disease processes, keep you well ahead of the curve losswise, but 1000 years? No way. You'd have to find a way to trigger the growth of new cells as well as connections and that would bring it's own dangers.

When you're born and up to a year old you're growing new brain cells(newborn humans are essentially still gestating in many ways, just out side the womb like marsupials). Becoming smarter actually comes about through both making connections and pruning the cells you don't need.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Ah but you can effectively shut down the running programme through deep sleep, anesthesia, or the extrme, deep coma, yet when the programme reboots it's still you.

But no one is suggesting coma patients live longer so no longevity benefit in being unconcious

Interestingly it's not just tied to memory as due to brain trauma some rare individuals can have no long or short term memory. They can't recall who they are, or were, every 5 minutes is a surprise to them, yet they know they're them looking out. So it seems it's not just continuation of memory, nor is it an unchanging brain as the brain changes radically throughout life(esp in the early years), or through massive head trauma, yet we always remain "I", the ghost in the machine. Maybe it's one of those global holographic thingies you linked to? That so long as enough of the "I" hologram remains, you feel like "I".

isn't 'now' about 3 seconds long , deja vu and all that

was it a story or was there really a Roman soldier who used to write stuff down and re-read it again every morning to remember the plot

MOC88

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Also what the hell are these nanobots that people keep talking about?

I think that you have gone crazy my friend. How a computer and your brain work are completly different. So how do you attach a computer to your brain and share data between the two in any meaningfull way?
Again the memories being backed up or whatever. how would this be done bearing in mind what i said above.

Even if this was 100% right and we could do it today if we wanted there is majour moral/spirtual/philosical questions that must be asked.
Not least is what would you do? you are now in essance a computer with full axcess to everything. you phisical body has died so there is no need to eat and drink and have sex and work. what would you do.
Actully would it even be possible for you to experience emotion when this 'switch over' happens. I dout it. so whatever you do decided to do you would feel no pleasure from it

I would rather take my chance at death/reincarnation/whatever the **** happens when we die.

As far as the nano bots meant I meant it as a way of ensuring against cell breakdown and process of aging- IF it is ever possible - nano bots are minature robots (although by the time they get small enougt they'll probably biologica)l- so the idea is that these microscopic units would ensure you didn't die - your physical body hops on a spaceship and spends the next million years in the same area - of course this would create problems of its own such as memory functions and going insane - you'd keep your body

of course computers work differently there based on codes that developers have on the main developed in the last forty yeears. Give neuro scientists/engineers/programmers another 1000 and what you would see would probably not be recognizable - how would you explain an i-phone to someone 200 years ago?

as for letting a functioning machine slowly take over your functioning brain it ensures you're not just a copy but you as you've evolved and developed it, not only imprinted a copy and hits on the idea it doesn't matter what your physical brain processed everything in as long as you have a functional feedback loop that does the same process as your organic brain did ie. if you disconnected both sides assuming you and it survived the mental trauma you would be only 1 part of two not two identical copies- obviously we would have reproduce brain patterns etc. or at least some way of giving yourself a priority and impetus - otherwise you'd be just a big load of data that isn't arsed to do much- it may never be impossible but if we can ever download a brain in to a computer why not live for a few million years rather than whatever your brain dictates or degrades into


as far as the implications you've stated - tbh I'd assume that everyone would have an original aim after which you'd let components deteriorate- as for what I'd want to do if it was possible just travel around and see the universe etc. etc. so it would be a different answer for everyone

Capt'n Midnight

MOC88 wrote: »

As far as the nano bots meant I meant it as a way of ensuring against cell breakdown and process of aging- IF it is ever possible - nano bots are minature robots

our immune system is comprised of organic nanobots that have been carefully tuned over the last 500,000,000 years are genetically programed to recognise your uniqueness. And they still get it wrong. If you live long enough you have a one in three risk of cancer. If you lived beyond three score and ten the risk goes up faster.


Unless you can slow down human metabolism drastically - and that's going to be hard since primates have been restricted mostly to the tropics since the time of the dinosaurs - individuals won't be able to travel to the stars using current physics.

Robots with human memories might go, but a long way off.


Mammals aren't designed to be sent on seed ships.
Teeth made mammals successful but at the cost of dentists , most other animals have teeth that constantly regrow or use gizzards.

crazy cabbage

Weather or not this will be possible in the furture is hear say. I think you did ask the right question though

MOC88 wrote: »

why not live for a few million years rather than whatever your brain dictates

Here is where there will be difference of opinion and where my problems with this idea start. The reason that there is value to life is becouse it is short. Becouse our time is limited. If we all had an unlimited amount of time then would it be worth it. I couldn't imigine living for 'a few million years'. To me that would be hell.
You mentioned going off to see the universe. I imagine that it a beautiful place and the reason that you wish to go there but but beauty is all around us if we can just open our eyes and see it.

And i want to die. I dont mean to be morbid and i hope i will not for a while yet but death is he final unexplored frounteer. It is something that everyone must enter alone and deal with alone. It is an adventure that can not be deprived of anyone. What happens after death. Who knows? But that makes it all the more exciting! And even if nothing happens you will atleast know that you spent a natural amount of time on earth and hopefully contributed something to your fellow man and made the world a better place And you will now biodegrade into dust and all the nutrions in your body will enter the earth from which new life can seed itself.

What you are suggesting seems so un-natural. It seems to go against every moral/philophisoacl/meatphical/spirtual thought that i have ever had.
Is what you are suggesting possible? That doesn't matter. This debate has to center around the spirtual/moral/whatever questions. Do we really want this??

MOC88

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

our immune system is comprised of organic nanobots that have been carefully tuned over the last 500,000,000 years are genetically programed to recognise your uniqueness. And they still get it wrong. If you live long enough you have a one in three risk of cancer. If you lived beyond three score and ten the risk goes up faster.


Unless you can slow down human metabolism drastically - and that's going to be hard since primates have been restricted mostly to the tropics since the time of the dinosaurs - individuals won't be able to travel to the stars using current physics.

Robots with human memories might go, but a long way off.


Mammals aren't designed to be sent on seed ships.
Teeth made mammals successful but at the cost of dentists , most other animals have teeth that constantly regrow or use gizzards.

Well aas far as the nanobots I wouldn't consider it a definite possibility but jsut because we havce evolved somehthing doesn't mean we can't improve it - yes I've realised the implications of sending us on ships - ie. the ship would be massive and we would have to be altered genetically or otherwise

I wouldn't simplify it as much as human memories in a computer becasue what you have is a copy - the computer processing woould share the burden so you expand into it and it becomes an extension of you until you're using it fully and you no longer limit yourself to your original physical body

- the whole thing about current physics - possible just not with current technology ie. forget about faster than light travel - it would be a fraction of light speed we would travel at - w ewould have to have a way fo replacing all components of a spaceship while in flight - the idea I said early about a massive block of ice which could eliminate space particles which could be combined with blocks of minerals to supply wiht requirements unless we can artificially construct required elements - we would need to engineer ourselves to last naturally

kneemos

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

the brain can survive for over a thousand years in the right host.

Curiosity has gotton the better of me and I'm going to suggest you explain your statement.

MOC88

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Weather or not this will be possible in the furture is hear say. I think you did ask the right question though



Here is where there will be difference of opinion and where my problems with this idea start. The reason that there is value to life is becouse it is short. Becouse our time is limited. If we all had an unlimited amount of time then would it be worth it. I couldn't imigine living for 'a few million years'. To me that would be hell.
You mentioned going off to see the universe. I imagine that it a beautiful place and the reason that you wish to go there but but beauty is all around us if we can just open our eyes and see it.

And i want to die. I dont mean to be morbid and i hope i will not for a while yet but death is he final unexplored frounteer. It is something that everyone must enter alone and deal with alone. It is an adventure that can not be deprived of anyone. What happens after death. Who knows? But that makes it all the more exciting! And even if nothing happens you will atleast know that you spent a natural amount of time on earth and hopefully contributed something to your fellow man and made the world a better place And you will now biodegrade into dust and all the nutrions in your body will enter the earth from which new life can seed itself.

What you are suggesting seems so un-natural. It seems to go against every moral/philophisoacl/meatphical/spirtual thought that i have ever had.
Is what you are suggesting possible? That doesn't matter. This debate has to center around the spirtual/moral/whatever questions. Do we really want this??

well I'm not a neuroscientist so I couldn't say what the odds are but I'd say it is a reasonable expectation.

A few million years is nothing compared to the length of the galaxy . What would be immoral about someone jetting off never to be seen again- either way you'd still die you'd just have extended your natural life by quite a bit. If you really do regard it as morality why not continue your existence to help people if it is required - see how the beauty develops around you. I really do find it hard to see any moral implications considering we are already extending our lives far beyond what we could have lived 200 years ago