
How To Live Forever - reitzensteinm
http://www.dansdata.com/gz092.htm
======
russell
Several decades back I read a SF story (by Fred Pohl?) where the crew of a
near lightspeed craft needed to be continually replaced by new members
teleported in, because the existing crew was being killed by radiation. For
some nominal payment you stepped into a booth and a copy of you was teleported
to the starship. You collected your payment and went and had a nice dinner or
somesuch. Meanwhile your copy on the starship tried to cope while dying some
horrible death.

The angst of who is me and who is alive and who is dead has kept me from
trying teleportation or brain downloads. I know that, when the organic part is
shut off, my personality will continue to live. But is it really me?

~~~
DarkShikari
The Ship of Theseus has a rather interesting application to this concept,
explaining a way to do brain downloads _without any risk of losing "you"_.

We basically know for a fact at this point that the "soul" is not stored in
any one brain cell--that is, you can lose any single brain cell and you're
still who you are. Thus, if we take one brain cell, digitize it into some form
in which it exactly replicates the function of the original, including ability
to reconnect to other cells and so forth, it will continue to function as the
original cell.

So you do this one by one for every single cell in the brain. In practice,
this might be possible with nanotech or something of the sort.

Since no single cell can store consciousness, and you ever have one less cell
than normal in your brain, "you" must logically be fine. Yet once the process
is done, not an atom of the original "you" remains. The only way I've found to
poke holes in this concept is the idea that there is something "not
replicable" about brain cells, which seems unlikely--for example, it's
doubtful that there is a significant quantum effect on consciousness. This
would of course stop one from doing this, since quantum states cannot be
duplicated.

See the last paragraph of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples> as well.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Reminded me of Ise Shrine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine>) and also
Shirky's reference to it (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs>). The
point there is that function is also a meaningful definition of is-ness.

Besides, aren't all of the cells in a human body replaced every x years
already?

~~~
DarkShikari
Brain cells aren't normally replaced regularly, AFAIK, so they're an exception
to the rule.

------
Herring
" _The problem, it seems to me, is discontinuity._ "

It's really just a philosophical problem. It's also hard to explain why.

~~~
rw
"just" a philosophical problem!

------
systemtrigger
Insightful perspective on what might happen if you gradually augmented your
brain. Kurzweil covered a lot in The Singularity is Near; this narrative on
consciousness is more playful. The brandy in the chocolate here is his
existential musings on the Omega Point - blew my mind.

------
stavrianos
If you believe in an uncopyable soul, a teleporter like that about would be a
way of creating actual, honest-to-god P-zombies. Fun!

On the other hand, if you don't, then it doesn't seem like it's such a big
deal. Diaspora, by Greg Egan, has a lot of this kinda thing happening in it
(in fairness, they're software minds, which simplifies things).

~~~
derefr
Indeed, Greg Egan's short story "Learning to be Me" is on exactly the argument
(both sides!) that the article is trying to make:
<http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/361474/learning_to_be_me.html>

~~~
pfedor
Let me use this opportunity to make a plug for another excellent writer. If
you like Greg Egan, chances are you will like Stanisław Lem, who tackled some
of the very similar questions in his work. One good place to start is:
[http://www.amazon.com/Star-Diaries-Further-Reminiscences-
Tic...](http://www.amazon.com/Star-Diaries-Further-Reminiscences-
Tichy/dp/0156849054/)

------
geuis
Loved this article. Its the first such article in a long time that essentially
sums-up my own thoughts on this topic. I also appreciate all of the other
commenters (and HN overall) because everyone is commenting on this with
respect, open-mindedness, and thought. Its way, WAY too common for people who
don't really understand what's going on to say how this is all sci-fi,
won't/can't happen, etc. The great thing about being one of the people that
wants to upload is that eventually, all the people who don't believe I'm still
alive will die off.

------
enneff
Topical:
[http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Complete/Bor...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Complete/Border.html)

------
buggy_code
My favorite variant on this is:

every 20 years, have science advance enough to extend everyone's life by 30
years

(doesn't take care of things like getting hit by bus, but takes care of
'regular' life extension)

(iirc, there was some ted talk on this)

------
Allocator2008
I think to the best of my knowledge that in teleporatation when one grabs the
quantum information from the original location one destroys the physical
content from the original location, then transmits the information to the
second location, and rebuilds the original physical content. In other words
the original physical content is destroyed in the act of analyzing the
content. So there is not a danger of leaving a "copy of oneself" at the
original location. Necessarily to measure quantum spin and so on, the original
physical material is destroyed, or more precisely, is re-arranged into
indecipherable form.

~~~
ericb
Good point.

One question. If you know the exact location of all the particles as you do
this, and you "teleport" them, but at the same time create a copy in the old
location with the same quantum information, aren't you back to the same
problem?

~~~
Allocator2008
Had not thought about that. I suppose once one has all the quantum information
one needs, one could "splice the signal" into an arbitrary amount of copies.
Unless there was some entanglement going on. That is, if Origin Point and
Destination Point where put into some kind of EPR entangled state to preclude
both points having a "copy" at the same time.

