The potential for eternal life

AXF

At this moment, many of the Silicon Valley's most revered investors are pouring billions of dollars into health and longevity research. The general consensus is that death always occurs for a technical reason (the heart fails, brain cells die etc...). So potentially, if we could tackle every single cause of death, the human body should have no expiry date. This is now an accepted paradigm to the level that
many companies and research centres define their long term mission as to 'cure death' or 'extend human life indefinitely' (one example of many is Google backed company Calcio). Google's chief futurist, Ray Kurtzweil believes this could be achieved as early as 2029.

So with eternal life potentially not being science fiction within my lifetime, I've started pondering over the following question:

"Should I dedicate all my time to the pursue of eternal life"

My ultimate desire is to experience as much happiness as possible for as long as possible. Given the current advancements in AI, genetics and chemistry, it is not unfathomable that at some point in the future we could 'engineer' cognitive states that are amazing beyond anything we can currently imagine. Combine the two and you have the ultimate goal achieved - never ending happiness.

If you accept the conclusion that you should pursue eternal life at all cost, the dry practicality means that you should dedicate your life to making as much money as possible, as any of these technologies will come in the form of medical services. You should not spend any resources towards making a family, pursuing hobbys or taking care of your parents, as these are only suboptimal states that will hinder you from maximizing your chance to obtain potentially very expensive medical procedures.

I could come up with the following arguments to rebut this, however, at a closer look non of them seem to stand the trail of (my) reasoning:

"Live the here and now because if non of these things will eventually materialize you'll regret wasting your life"

If indeed I'll find myself on my deathbed, the misery would be so very short compared to the potential gain of eternity, and when death hits, this all wouldn't have mattered anyway. It is like an investment with an endless potential profit and a slightly painful consequence if it fails. It's worth making.

"For the long run, both life and death present nothing but uncertainty. If your life continues indefinitely you'll eventually experience the death of the earth, the sun and other things that are currently beyond your perception. So in the end, it really doesn't matter what path you go (life or death) as they are both equally beyond your scope of understanding"

I couldn't quite rebut that one. I'll be happy to hear your take on it.

So...to maximise our chances for everlasting happiness, should we spend our lives chasing money at all cost or do some other stuff? What do you think?

Terrapin Station

In my view you shouldn't spend your entire life pursuing something you don't have and which you're not sure you'll get unless the pursuit itself is worthwhile to you.

If the pursuit isn't itself worthwhile to you, then a balance is better. Spend some of your time pursuing that, but spend other time with activities that are worthwhile to you as they are.

The Great Whatever

2029? Seriously? 2029?

Terrapin Station

2029? Seriously? 2029? — The Great Whatever

Sounds more like Kurzweil simply thinking that it has to be done by then--he'll be 80/81.

Galuchat

"Should I dedicate all my time to the pursue of eternal life" — AXF

That would depend on your definition of eternal life (for example, would it involve becoming a cyborg?), and your plan for obtaining it (e.g., the phased replacement of your failing body parts with robotic parts).

Ponce de Leon had a simpler plan which is much more appealing.

Given the current advancements in AI, genetics and chemistry, it is not unfathomable that at some point in the future we could 'engineer' cognitive states that are amazing beyond anything we can currently imagine. Combine the two and you have the ultimate goal achieved - never ending happiness. — AXF

Actually, human cognitive states are complex beyond anything we can currently imagine. Also, the screenplay for Frankenstein has already been written (spoiler: it didn't end in happiness).

You should not spend any resources towards making a family, pursuing hobbys or taking care of your parents... — AXF

Just give up my humanity for the benefit of the IT industry and medical profession (among others), and the empty promise of an everlasting transhumanist nirvana? Hmm, let me think about it. No thanks.

It is like an investment with an endless potential profit and a slightly painful consequence if it fails. It's worth making. — AXF

You go first, and let me know how it works out. What do you do for a living? Stand-up comedy? Used car salesman? Everglades estate agent?

Thinker

So...to maximise our chances for everlasting happiness, should we spend our lives chasing money at all cost or do some other stuff? What do you think? — AXF

Follow your bliss.................

BC

So potentially, if we could tackle every single cause of death, the human body should have no expiry date. — AXF

It's not just a matter of fixing the various causes of death. In order to live without death the body would not only have to "not die", it would also have to continually renew -- rejuvenate -- itself. This goes beyond replacing cells. Even the agéd, teetering on the edge of the grave, continue to replace cells until they fall in and life stops. As far as I know, no organism on earth has managed to do this. While there are some trees that are a couple of thousand years old, one would not call them vigorous specimens.

Rejuvenation is more complicated than mere longevity. Just take the skin, for example. Young skin is very elastic. As we age, it loses elasticity--a small piece of what happens throughout the body, and starts happening long before we become "agéd".

The other problem is existential, and it's as huge, if not more so, than the problem of biology. Even if it only took one fix to cause one to live a healthy perpetual life (and not frequent treatment), one would face not just an eternity of novelty, but one would also face an eternity of perpetually fresh losses. Novelties would arise, again and again and again, but would cease to be novelties. Everyone else who was not "fixed" would die, again, and again, and again.

I suspect the suicide rate for the 'fixed' immortals would be rather high.

WhiskeyWhiskers

The general consensus is that death always occurs for a technical reason (the heart fails, brain cells die etc...). So potentially, if we could tackle every single cause of death, the human body should have no expiry date. This is now an accepted paradigm to the level that
many companies and research centres define their long term mission as to 'cure death' or 'extend human life indefinitely' (one example of many is Google backed company Calcio). — AXF

This isn't quite accurate.

Why we age is the subject of vigorous debate. The classical view is that ageing happens because of random wear and tear. The newest view holds that ageing is more orderly and genetically programmed. Proponents of this view point out that animals of similar species and exposure to wear and tear have markedly different life spans... The idea that living things shut down instead of wearing down has received substantial support in recent years. Researchers working with the now famous C. elegans (twice in one decade, Nobel Prizes went to scientists doing work on the little nematode) were able, by altering a single gene, to produce worms that live more than twice as long and age more slowly. Scientists have since come up with single-gene alterations that increase the life spans of fruit flies, mice, and yeast. These findings notwithstanding, the preponderance of the evidence is against the idea that our life spans are programmed into us. —

- Being Mortal, Atul Gawande, pp. 31-32.

So it's not quite clear which view is correct. It doesn't seem to be the case that if we tackle the causes of death, then we tackle death itself. Even if we tackle them, we probably still have an expiry date that we won't be able to avoid unless we also manipulate our genes somewhere along the line. The newest research strongly suggests that genes do play some kind of ultimate role, but it isn't quite enough to overturn the evidence for the classical view you mention. I suspect that's only a matter of time, though, until genetic research into the ageing process in humans develops.

deletedmemberwy

As others have mentioned, many more factors play into the possibility for physical eternal life. A few more reasons might include having to reverse environmental factors, which would then require one to have complete control of the universe. Excessive sunlight, for instance, has been known to cause cancer of the skin, which would then been an ongoing problem. To "un program" the genetics to not allow new cell growth (in a case like that of cancer) would undoubtedly cause more issues and problems that would instead shorten life rather than lengthen it.
Another aspect to consider is that of unnatural death, such as war and murder. Reprogramming genetics to withstand aging will not solve this issue.

In other words, it sounds essentially to be another chasing after the highly desired Fountain of Youth. It doesn't exist, even though many legends declare it to be real. To plan your life according to the unlikely possibility of eternal life, apart from what the religious view it as, is folly due to the fact that it has not happened. It would be like saying I almost discovered a new planet . The fact remains that you did not. Therefore, from a moral perspective, planning and withholding all that would have been given to the less fortunate according to a non existent discovery would be considered selfish and from another perspective, sheer idiocy.

Noblosh

This:

So with eternal life — AXF

Doesn't follow from this:

the human body should have no expiry date. — AXF

Learn the difference between expiration and termination.

mcdoodle

I wonder if poets might be a better guide.

lambda

"Should I dedicate all my time to the pursue of eternal life" — AXF

I was a devout life-extenionist a few years ago. I kept a strict calorie restriction diet, abstained from all hedonistic activities, and had ambitions to pursue anti-aging research. The lifestyle is extremely stressful. Depressing thoughts would always cross my mind: "what if I die a few months before a cure for aging is found?", "what if I'm part of the last generation to die?", "that last meal I ate is going to shave a few more hours off my life", "time is running out", etc. I eventually gave up the cause when it hit me that death really is inevitable. Now I dedicate all my time to pursuing eternal life through the more conventional means of religion.

Thinker

AXF

↪WhiskeyWhiskers

↪Bitter Crank

I was a bit hasty when writing the original post, so please allow me to clarify what my exact dilemma is.

For the sake of the argument, please accept that at least within some highly achieved academic circles, an unexpirable human body is thought to be at least within the realm of possibilities. Many smart people out there think we could make it happen soon.

Please also accept, that given a very, very long period of time, we could acquire the power to engineer our own feelings and emotions and to open up a wide variety of subjective experiences. Just imagine antidepressants or neurological interventions but with a much greater potential.

Given that the ultimate goal is to be as happy as possible for as long as possible, wouldn't the rational course of action be to maximize the chances of experiencing that utopian future while be willing to sacrifice happiness until then?

In the event of success, the reward is beyond any suffering that might have been incurred. In failure, that is death, non of that would have mattered as I no longer exist.

AXF

I could come up with two rebuttals

1. The event where we live forever but are unable to 'crack' happiness and are stuck in an eternal, miserable chase for it. That seems like an unlikely scenario to me given a span of thousands or millions of years. And at any point in time where we 'crack' the code for great happiness, the reward would still be far greater than anything we might have had to go through.

2. For the long run, both life and death offer the same complete uncertainty. If you continue to live indefinitely you'll experience things that are beyond the scope of anything you can understand or perceive (the end of the universe etc...) so even if you're in a state of bliss for a while at some point you might experience things that are terrible beyond anything imaginable.

jkop

..to engineer our own feelings and emotions... — AXF

There is little to be happy about when the happiness is engineered. There is more to happiness than what constitutes the emotion.

Thorongil

I'm not liking the abuse of language here. What you're talking about is the body living on for a longer amount of time than it does now, but a really long time is not eternity. Life exists rather precariously on the Earth. One missed asteroid and we could be extinct. If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted with full force, that could be a global extinction triggering event. There's also the possibility of a nuclear war or incurable deadly disease. Then the Earth itself will eventually become inhospitable to life when the Sun expands. We still haven't figured out how to colonize other planets and moons, but let's say we make it off our own before that happens. Well, those planets and moons will eventually become inhospitable, too. All of the universe's visible matter will be sucked into supermassive black holes, which themselves will slowly dissipate over time. In the end, the universe will expand into an infinite nothingness. So no, humans will never achieve eternal life in the sense you describe.

And there's no way in hell it's happening in 2029.

Janus

↪AXF

If such medical technology is ever realized, there's simply no way it could be made available to everyone, or even to many. It would likely only be available to the mega-rich. "What a sad day for humanity; those who are the ultimate parasites upon the rest of will now not even die" one might think, but on the other hand I guess it wouldn't matter, because they are always replaced by others parasites. in any case, and their must be an upper limit to the numbers of possible mega-rich dudes.

If you want to pursue this path: i would say the only viable way is to become a mega-rich parasite yourself. Who knows, you might enjoy exploiting everyone and everything around you, which would take the sting out if the technology fails to materialize.

TheMadFool

↪AXF

The quest for immortality isn't new. It's a staple of many ancient legends which span across cultures and geography.

The search for happiness is also not new. History proves it and we, ourselves, are living proof of this.

The two, immortality and happiness, are married together in religion.

It appears to me that the combination of the two, as seen in religion, necessarily implies that one is not the guarantee of the other - we could be immortals in hell and we can be happy mortals. This relationship is quite symmetric - happiness is devalued by death and immortality is devalued by suffering. The two are tied together to be of any worth, as far as we're concerned.

As the OP states immortality seems to be within reach of modern medicine and technology. I don't know when and how BUT I'm quite optimistic in this regard because we do have very long-lived species and to me, perhaps in very simple terms, all we need to do is unravel the secret of longevity, adapt it to humans and implement the remedy. In a nutshell, we're not simply daydreaming on the subject of life-extension.

Happiness, however, is not so easily dealt with. It's a complex emotion and 2 thousand years of thought by the best minds humanity has to offer hasn't yielded definitive answers. People are deeply divided on the meaning of happiness.

Perhaps it's a mirage and there is no such thing as a universally meanigful definition of happiness and we're free, individually, to find and live in our own private versions of happiness. If this is the case then immortality seems even more attractive as we're relieved of the burden of trying to find happiness and we may live our eternal existence in our own terms - doing what give us joy.

So, I do find the prospect of immortality very attractive. People wouldn't be lamenting ''so much to do and so little time'' and great minds will have the chance to maximize their potential - imagine if Enistein, Aristotle, etc. were still alive.

That said I think immortality, if realized, will have broad and deep impact on every facet of civilization.

TimeLine

So...to maximise our chances for everlasting happiness, should we spend our lives chasing money at all cost or do some other stuff? What do you think? — AXF

I am quite content ageing gracefully and being natural, that my happiness is no longer dependent on others but quite simply a state of harmonious intellectual and emotional growth that enables me to give love and that in itself is everlasting, since such growth will last until my cognition permits at which point it will no longer matter. I see eternity in family, in our children who will continue epistemically and so on, that the idea of the 'individual' is deceptive.

If one depends on sources of happiness external to themselves, they will never attain it as happiness is a state of mind and the clarity therewith. The desire for money or beauty merely exemplifies a mindless conformism where happiness is given through the superficial approval by others, but only those who become empowered within can actually see nature authentically and what everlasting actually means. The material world is the same as ideology; it is imagined.

Noblosh

Given that the ultimate goal is to be as happy as possible for as long as possible — AXF

And this follows from? I think you're delusional... I'd argue anyone who refuses to live in the present is.

The potential for eternal life

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