World's only Immortal being.

[Silos]

Must be fake. I highly doubt god would create something immortal other than himself. It doesn't make any sense.

[Uzor]

Must be fake. I highly doubt god would create something immortal other than himself. It doesn't make any sense.

There's only one explanation; God is a Jellyfish.

[Kyte]

If god was a jellyfish, I would consider becoming religious.

[JigglyJam]

There's only one explanation; God is a Jellyfish.

I could see that.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.co...8107516844.jpg

[braaaanch]

Must be fake. I highly doubt god would create something immortal other than himself. It doesn't make any sense.

some of these posts seem like weird trolling attempts.

[Daemien]

im going to carry telomerase around in a bottle and call myself the last namekian

There was an anti-aging product that used telomerase as one of its active ingredients. I dont remember what it was called, but I do remember that it was pulled rather quickly from the market because it was shown to directly cause skin cancer. The gene for Telomerase is active in virtually every cancer we know of. If it weren't for telomerase, we wouldn't have nearly as bad a time with cancer as we do.

[Max™]

Seriously, let's release this amazing specimen back into the wild so it'll most likely get killed within a couple years! Because an arthropod really has enough awareness to give a shit where it lives.

A lobster that size isn't likely to encounter a predator willing or able to take it out, fucking thing is a tank at that point.

As for immortality, trying to keep a biological system running indefinitely is a nightmare, better to transfer your awareness into a far more resilient technological solution, bonuses include being able to set aside "back up" data stores, far superior storage and processing capabilities, and the option to upload into a body that is actually suitable for the vast majority of the Universe that isn't a rocky planetoid, like a spaceship. Further, if you chose to do so you could simply grow an organic body and download an awareness locus into it.

Biological longevity methods are merely stepping stones to better methods of prolonging awareness arbitrarily, though eventually you would have to contend with the heat death of the Universe. Oh, and you'd probably go batshit fucking insane after 10 ^10^64 years of awareness.

[Khamsin]

As for immortality, trying to keep a biological system running indefinitely is a nightmare, better to transfer your awareness into a far more resilient technological solution, bonuses include being able to set aside "back up" data stores, far superior storage and processing capabilities, and the option to upload into a body that is actually suitable for the vast majority of the Universe that isn't a rocky planetoid, like a spaceship. Further, if you chose to do so you could simply grow an organic body and download an awareness locus into it.

Biological longevity methods are merely stepping stones to better methods of prolonging awareness arbitrarily, though eventually you would have to contend with the heat death of the Universe. Oh, and you'd probably go batshit fucking insane after 10 ^10^64 years of awareness.

So the only thing you care about preserving is your awareness/memories/consciousness/etc.? The rest of you is disposable, providing you have a means to preserve your mind? As an evolving life form on the scale of eons, with self-preservation as an instinctual goal, from one stage of evolution to the next... the only thing you *really* care to preserve is your awareness? That's all that has to stay around to constitute self-preservation?

I suppose it might seem self explanatory to some, but personally I do wonder why, of all things that make up ourselves as an organism, we care more about something as intangible as our "soul" more than our actual physical selves? Primordial life, the first cells that coalesced out of lifeless matter, fought to preserve their physical selves and reproduce. Now, we'd be more than happy to sit around forever, body or not, as long as we can think.

[Feedmenow]

Well, that might not be far off, since human memory is considered equivalent to 1.25 Terabytes, and some hard drives are capable of even more storage than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_...ude_%28data%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near
Of course, the real challenge is transferring data.

I suppose it might seem self explanatory to some, but personally I do wonder why, of all things that make up ourselves as an organism, we care more about something as intangible as our "soul" more than our actual physical selves? Primordial life, the first cells that coalesced out of lifeless matter, fought to preserve their physical selves and reproduce. Now, we'd be more than happy to sit around forever, body or not, as long as we can think.

Not our soul, our minds.

The human body without the mind is not at all interesting. The human mind without the limitations of mortality or simple necessities could be a very powerful tool in itself.

[Max™]

So the only thing you care about preserving is your awareness/memories/consciousness/etc.? The rest of you is disposable, providing you have a means to preserve your mind? As an evolving life form on the scale of eons, with self-preservation as an instinctual goal, from one stage of evolution to the next... the only thing you *really* care to preserve is your awareness? That's all that has to stay around to constitute self-preservation?

I suppose it might seem self explanatory to some, but personally I do wonder why, of all things that make up ourselves as an organism, we care more about something as intangible as our "soul" more than our actual physical selves? Primordial life, the first cells that coalesced out of lifeless matter, fought to preserve their physical selves and reproduce. Now, we'd be more than happy to sit around forever, body or not, as long as we can think.

Chalk it up to being mildly autistic, perhaps? As long as I can see new things, study new phenomena, gain greater insight into existence, I wouldn't care much if I was riding a bony meatbag or a tin can.

I am not of the school of thought that awareness is a purely chemical/neuronal process, the biological hardware is where the emergent structure that I define as my self is stored, but assuming there is a way to maintain continuity of self while upgrading to a more durable, and mentally powerful hardware to store my mind in... I'd happily do so.

My body is full of self destruct devices, requires a very limited type of environment to function, has limited physical durability, and agility. Though it does have a very nicely set up processing system, the human brain is a powerful computer, but if there were a way to upgrade, I can not imagine sticking with an old Pentium 400 mhz chip out of sentiment if I could get a new multi-core 2 ghz+ setup instead.

[Rhyis.]

Somebody has watched too much Lain.

[BRP]

Immortality would be fine, if it came along with having terrible memory. Otherwise, life would be boring. Too... casual.

[Max™]

Is that what Lain is about?

If anything I've read too much cyberpunk, hard sci fi, Ghost in the Shell, and Futurama, sweety.

[Kaelen]

Population control for immortals?

We start The Quickening. Duh.

Sword fighting, Queen, Sean Connery, and ponytails all day. Every day.

[Kyte]

There was an anti-aging product that used telomerase as one of its active ingredients. I dont remember what it was called, but I do remember that it was pulled rather quickly from the market because it was shown to directly cause skin cancer. The gene for Telomerase is active in virtually every cancer we know of. If it weren't for telomerase, we wouldn't have nearly as bad a time with cancer as we do.

Do you even know what cancer is?

better to transfer your awareness into a far more resilient technological solution, bonuses include being able to set aside "back up" data stores, far superior storage and processing capabilities, and the option to upload into a body that is actually suitable for the vast majority of the Universe that isn't a rocky planetoid, like a spaceship. Further, if you chose to do so you could simply grow an organic body and download an awareness locus into it.

The thing is with that, though, is that you would only be creating copies of yourself. Your current consciousness would be essentially destroyed. It's the same issue that arises with teleportation technologies.

[Feedmenow]

Do you even know what cancer is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase#Cancer

It doesn't directly cause cancer, but it allows the cancer cells to become immortal.

[Max™]

Do you even know what cancer is?



The thing is with that, though, is that you would only be creating copies of yourself. Your current consciousness would be essentially destroyed. It's the same issue that arises with teleportation technologies.

That is not proven yet, but that is why I would wait til others tried it and it was shown to work.


If there is no manner in which you could distinguish between two entities, for example: my biological state of awareness, and an exact copy produced by destroying the original, only stored in a different technological medium, there is no manner in which you could discern that the transferred awareness is not the original awareness.


Some guy named Leibniz pointed it out, and Descartes extrapolated that while he could not disprove his sense of self, he could disprove the existence of his body, as one can be known to exist directly for him, but not the other. Concluding that he is not identical to his body from that difference.

If you could not disprove that your sense of self was located in a location other than your original body, it is not illogical to assume there would be a continuity of self after such a procedure.

In fact you could have a multiplicity of selves, numerous identical awarenesses distributed across different bodies.

[Kyte]

In fact you could have a multiplicity of selves, numerous identical awarenesses distributed across different bodies

This is actually the main reason why I believe that a so-called transfer of consciousness would only be creating a copy.

Now here's the paradox- if you were to slowly transition your brain from wetware to hardware, would that actually produce something that is truly you? The end result would be the same more or less, but that would seemingly be a more likely candidate for preserving the self.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase#Cancer

It doesn't directly cause cancer, but it allows the cancer cells to become immortal.

That's like saying DNA causes cancer. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what cancer really is.

Cancer cells are:

1) Immortal <------ This is why telomerase is being lumped in with cancer, and why I think senescence research could lead to a cure for cancer.
2) Non-differentiated
3) Lack contact inhibition

If you could remove that latter two, you would be on your way to creating an immortal being.

[Daemien]

Do you even know what cancer is?

How many papers and studies would you like me to quote that show the role of telomerases in virtually all malignant tumors? "Directly cause" may have been a little bit strongly worded on my part, but to downplay its significance is downright retarded.

[Tristam]

Last week I actually saw a great talk by a postdoc heavily involved in longevity research, and a question asked of him was something along the lines of the concept of extending lifespan arbitrarily is essentially fighting an extremely steep uphill battle against evolution. It is in a population's best interest to *not* live too long due to competition for resources etc. The problems of aging would therefore be expected to become even more burdensome if we devoted therapies intended to extend lifespan.

You keep the body alive, you eventually get cancer, it's simply a numbers game, built into life by virtue of the fact that your cells must divide and inevitably acquire mutations. You keep the brain alive, you forget most of your life, as the ability to forget is essential to mental health.

The pathways this guy was investigating had more to do with energy metabolism than anything else, but iirc there were questions regarding whether messing with insulin signaling and sugar metabolism would create diabetes related complications. It was a fantastic talk, don't get me wrong, and it's really exciting research. But creating a complicated immortal organism would probably require completely rewriting the script of life in ways I personally can't even imagine.

edit: I guess there are bacteria and trees that are considerably ancient, but I don't know if that necessarily constitutes immortality. hmmm, food for thought I guess.