1. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    Can We Become Immortal? The Quest to Live Forever Through Technology

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Mans, Oct 15, 2018.

    Let me be the first person that answer this question.

    Based on my all scientific and metaphysical knowledge and researches, my answer would be no.

    The basis of this world life is based on mortality and destruction, especially organisms. Nothing can remain unchangeable forever or be eternal in this world. In fact, this world is not a home for an everlasting life for human and it is a temporary place.

    Technology is a great tool built on science but the science itself expresses that this world is the world of generation, change, deformation and destruction. These principles are seen in the physics, chemistry, and biology rules obviously and reasonably.
     
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  2. Komposten

    Komposten Insanitary pile of rotten fruit Contributor

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    Living forever isn't necessarily an impossibility. There are e.g. plants that are over 10000 years old. However, those plants are built for that, whereas humans are built for a limited life span. I wouldn't be surprised if we could extend human life by quite a bit, through evolution or technology, but maybe not infinitely.
     
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  3. Bobby Burrows

    Bobby Burrows Banned Contributor

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    To upload ourselves.
    To 'save' ourselves.


    How about a story of the life eternal, 'heaven', being the future and the Holy Bible and other ancient texts being proof of time travel, and, when we get to live forever, it'll be sold to the markets with the biggest pockets and hugest dreams.
    So to believe in Heaven is to have faith in technology and to doubt near death experience is to under estimate the organic brain.

    This is all faith based stuff, like, my faith of the future and understanding of the Holy Bible.
     
  4. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    Humans don't 'remain unchangeable.' We rebuild our bodies all the time, removing dead cells and replacing them with new ones.

    Indeed, current research seems to indicate that much of what we see as 'ageing' is due to failures in the mechanisms that the body uses to repair itself, and fixing those mechanisms will cure those problems. Just the other day, for example, I was reading about a potential cure for osteoporosis which is apparently caused by a mismatch between the rate at which the body creates new bone and the rate at which it destroys old bone: in youth we create more than we destroy, while in old age we destroy more than we create.

    Similarly, if I remember correctly, exercise and fasting trigger autophagy, where the body eats up poorly-performing cells and replaces them with new ones. Which it should be doing all the time, but doesn't do very well in old age.

    Longevity research is exploding right now, as Wall Street has noticed its existence and is starting to look for good places to throw money.

    Immortality will be difficult, as anyone can die from accidental causes, but very long lifespans seem perfectly achievable.
     
  5. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    .


    There is a wonderful thing in life of man in the history that is like a puzzle for me:

    Old people had a longer lifetime than us in this era. I guess the most of people (maybe scientists as well) don't know that the people in the Noah era (4000~5000 years ago) had a long lifetime about few hundred years. Our knowledge and information is scant in this case. Noah himself lived about 900 or 950 years while became a very old man among his folk.

    I'm sure what I say is a certain thing and the issue is that, why scientists (especially archaeologists) have not done a comprehensive research herein to discover this fact.I actually don't know what the cause of this wonderful long lifetime in the ancient eras was?

    Besides, old peoples were very huger and stronger than the nowadays generations. It is told, a man in the prophet Huod's (or hood) season ( probably before Muses and Jesus) could lift up a rock with 500 kg weight easily! . Those men were very tall, muscular and square shouldered.

    However, it is not clear (scientifically), why whatever the time goes further the lifetime of man becomes shorter, and he becomes smaller in physical size. The problem is that scientists have not noticed this fact yet. This principle is including animals as well.

    As we all are informed; there were the ancient beings in the earth namely Dinosaurs. They were some species of huge and giant animals in size of body. We also have heard from mouth of old people about a being namely dragon, or find this name in the old stories. It is told, dragons were some giant predators; something between great snakes and iguana.

    The difference of great size of such the beasts in compare with the small body of nowadays animals shows which in the ancient eras being huge and giant was a normal thing. As well as, the lifetime of those beasts was very longer than the animals in recent eras.

    So this belief that the ancient humans were bigger and stronger than today, and also lived for hundreds years is not far away from logic and fact.

    The issue that busies my mind is that, what the reason of this difference between lifetime of old and nowadays humans is, and also, why whatever the time goes further the size of stature and beings' body (among human) becomes smaller?

    Is it dependent on this theory that the earth becomes denser and smaller than the past; similar to other Draft Planets in the space?

    I think it can be a new study for scientists to research around this unclear phenomena and find out the reason of the differences and changes.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2018
  6. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    Stromatylites(?) created MASSIVE amounts of Oxygen, and creatures grew gigantic.

    The Moon was MUCH closer to the Earth, and there was no wobble in it's spin=hotter short days.

    Moon moves away, Earth micro-wobbles, volcanism destroys seas and atmosphere.

    Earth cools, seas change, more land, less oxygen, non-gigantic creatures appear.

    Meteors strike, environment changes, less oxygen, smaller creatures survive and evolve.

    Blah bla... continents... bla bla... more wobble creates seasons as Moon moves away

    Life evolves, man appears and creates God in thousands of ridiculously different ways.

    Man creates religion and goes to war over it.

    Moon gets scared and keeps moving away, and people need to consider the Moon's effect on climate change as it moves away.

    And we sorta live happily ever after, maybe.

    Now, go to sleep!
     
  7. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    Hi some guy

    I deleted a sentence that probably made you uneasy
     
  8. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Immortality? I sincerely hope not.

    The thought of living forever scares the shit out of me. I like to think of life as something I tried for a while, but was never particularly good at.
     
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  9. writingistelepathy

    writingistelepathy Member

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    There's so many things we think are impossible, our own brains constraint us by thinking only logical things are possible (or what we think is logical).

    Really, anything could be possible...

    It's scary but I think that the universe, or what we know of it, is so amazing and crazy, that anything could really happen. Whether it will or not, who knows!
     
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  10. katina

    katina Banned Contributor

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    No. It is not possible.
     
  11. T_L_K

    T_L_K Senior Member

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    I wouldn't wish for anything in the world to be made a witness of humanity's follies for centuries on end.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2018
  12. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I realize that the above statements may be part of your religion, and therefore to be observant, you need to believe them. But most of us don't.
     
  13. Alan Aspie

    Alan Aspie Banned Contributor

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    I just asked that from all the immortal dudes that hang here and they told that it is impossible to be immortal.

    They should know. They are experienced.
     
  14. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I don't care if it's possible. I would not want it. I don't for one second think that the ability would be shared with the whole of humanity, because, you know, history. So, understanding that there is a 99.999% chance it would just be an elite group of individuals, the prospect of looking at those same faces, those same assholes across literal eternity... no, thank you. There is nothing remotely appealing to the idea.
     
  15. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    An important announcement and correction !!

    I had a great mistake in my second post that expressed, "the lifetime of ancient peoples was hundreds years."

    After the declaration I referred to some reliable Iranian references to access some additional information about the long lifetime of ancient people, but I couldn't find such the subject as a fact! Nowhere of the references was this belief that old people had a lifetime about hundreds years!

    The references expressed:" ancient people hadn't a lifetime longer than nowadays humans and it was just Noah who God gave him a long life (about 950 years) miraculously. In the long period of his life, he was contemporary to a few generations of his folk that were born and died."

    This is one of the expressions:

    Don't suppose the humans in the Noah time each one had a lifetime about few centuries, it was not so. The lifetime of that people was ordinary. It was just Noah lived for 950 years by God's will and order.

    So I correct my previous claim that ancient people had a lifetime like us.

    But about the power and strong body of prophet Houd's (or Hood) giant folk, the reality was the same that I explained.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2018
  16. Artifacs

    Artifacs Senior Member

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    Did you know that the programmed death started with the creation of eucharyotic cell?
    Bacteria and Archaea don't have aging issues. We just die because our cells are programmed to.
    Reversing or interrupting programmed death involves tweaking with the very core of the symbiotic evolution of euchariotic cells.
    Have you ever heard of the say "Sometimes it's better start from the scratch"?
    That would be easier than tweak euchariotic cells, built three billion years ago. Believe me.
    "Machines" are the answer. I mean Biotechnology. Human race is meant to be something very different. Tranhumanism is unavoidable if we want get even close to inmortality or, at least, bypass programmed death.
     
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  17. Mark Burton

    Mark Burton Fried Egghead Contributor

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    We've already been fiddling around with extending our lives. You know what we found? Other issues that weren't issues when we had shorter lives come into play. Cancer and various forms of dementia are on the rise because the other things that wiped us out earlier have been defeated. Our bodies aren't built to survive forever. We have a rough shelf life and have evolved to be that way.

    I cannot see that there will be any magic bullets here. Even if we solve all physical diseases and senescence issues, our enigmatic brains are not designed to last forever. Even if the cells survive, down that path probably lies madness.

    There are organisms that are immortal. Immortal jellyfish, for example, revert themselves to juveniles and then mature again. Basically, they start over again. For them that's not a problem, but for humans we've got massive emotional and mental baggage that we would like to take with us. To be like the jellyfish, we'd have to give up what makes us quintessentially us, our minds. If we don't want to take that with us, there's a perfectly good low tech solution: have kids!
     
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  18. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    There's nothing looking particularly complex about the current paths toward life extension. The treatments that have worked well in mice are mostly available for a few cents a pill.

    Yeah, when you get down into genetic engineering, it's going to cost more, but if it turns out to work there'll be a genetic engineering clinic on every street corner in Mexico in twenty years. A Greyhound bus ticket and a few thousand bucks will buy you another century of life.
     
  19. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    Cancer is looking to be largely caused by the increase in the number of senescent cells and the decline of the immune system as we age. Both are being fixed.

    There was a study just the other day which showed that dementia and alzheimers may be caused by a herpes virus. Certainly we're starting to home in on the causes of those diseases.

    But the fundamental cause of the diseases of old age is... ageing. Cure that, and we don't need to cure each disease individually.

    And that's looking to be one of the most likely candidates for 'immortality', to the extent that it may be possible. We can just roll our cells back to a younger age on a periodic basis, and that's a process that's already been tested in animals.

    Edit: oh, yeah, another thing. Humans have been shown to have the same regeneration genes that some animals use to rebuild parts of their body when they need to (e.g. a lizard growing a new tail when the old one is bitten off), but in us they're turned off. We have little idea what kind of regenerative abilities humans have hidden away that can easily be turned back on.

    Of course it may cause us to sprout three heads, so there may be a good reason why it's turned off.

    Better yet, have clones. Japanese researchers just managed to clone 25 generations from one mouse.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2018
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  20. Edward M. Grant

    Edward M. Grant Contributor Contributor

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    Actually, the latest theory is that we die because our cells forget what type of cell they are due to defects in the DNA repair mechanism, and the bad cells accumulate over time until our bodies no longer work correctly.

    When I was a kid, we were taught that there were all kinds of cells in the body, like liver cells and brain cells. Now we know there's only one kind of cell in the body, and it does different things based on which genes are activated and which are deactivated. Researchers have shown that, if you artificially increase the rate of DNA repair in mice, you end up with mice that look an awful lot like old humans, and you find cells in their organs which should be in a different organ.

    That's something that can potentially be fixed, by periodically reminding the cells of what kind of cell they are.

    See this video by David Sinclair, who's one of the leading anti-ageing researchers right now:



    Defects in Mitochondria, which have less effective DNA repair mechanisms than the cell nucleus, also seem to cause a lot of problems. Someone's already worked out how to move most of those genes into the nucleus, where they'll be better protected.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2018
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  21. flawed personality

    flawed personality Contributor Contributor

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    There is some evidence showing that a fetus can help to heal a mother's organs if necessary.

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21185-fetus-donates-stem-cells-to-heal-mothers-heart/
     
  22. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    I'm working on a collective version of infinite consciousness called The Dream Archive.
     
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  23. Artifacs

    Artifacs Senior Member

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    I've just watched the video and it seems quite interesting.
    It gives you a lot to think about; from how pharmaceutical bussines work these days (it's hard not to end up being a little "conspiranoid") to how easy seems to alter a whole oganism by adding a single molecule in the right place at the right time.
    It encouraged me to do some further research about the subject.
    Thanks.
     

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