I think it would be really cool to see what happens slightly beyond our lifespans... for instance, I'm sure Copernicus would shit a brick to spend 15 minutes with one of today's telescopes.

However, I would jump at the chance to live even just a short time - say 5 or 10 years - with perfect health over an infinite life span.

I think uploading a "copy" of your mind to a computer, would be just that (a copy of you.)

I think the key to true immortality, is to use stem cell type research, to renew aging organs, body, and brains.

Even cloning an adult, has its problems...your still cloning "old" cells.

As we all know, a cell has only so many replications that it can do, before cell death.

If you create a clone from an old cell, the same number of replications still apply to the clone.

But by using stem cells to grow totally new cells, that could take over after the old cells die, then you are on the road to real immortality.

Of course its more complicated than that, but you get the gist.

In answer to your original question, yes, I would take immortality.

P.S. Id take the Alloy body too.

Man the thought really freaked me out when I started extrapolating forward and imagined myself in the position of immortality. Can you imagine seeing everyone around you who couldn't do it for some reason old and dying? Imagine your kids deciding not to do it and attending they're funeral in a 20 year old body knowing they had a full life. <---- (that one was tremendously strange to consider.) I would say yes at this point in my life though. It's pretty fkn sweet to be alive .

I'm not sure that would be immortality.

I would take an option to live forever with my body staying at the age of 24, but I would still need the ability to be able to die on command just in case.

I don't see that we would have an excuse not to do anything... all of us just sitting around would just soak up resources we'd eventually run out of and then there's the whole problem of getting off the planet.  of course now there would be population reasons as well as environmental ones.

also this scenario doesn't seem to get around the whole run over by a bus mode of death... i don't know that it would be much different to today seeing that we now have dramatically longer lifespans thanks to the technology of sanitation and medicine.

i think it would be condemned among religious circles similar to that of stem cell research... that is, we would be accused of 'playing god.'

Actually, the idea of living forever (while tempting and awesome looking)...seems like it might become restless. Damn. Forever is a LOOONGG time.

I might take it...but as much as I feel like I never want to die, the idea that nobody lives forever is sort of peaceful. It's what every creature "understands" on this planet. Changing it would throw off a balance that reminds me of a bad sci-fi movie or a Twilight zone episode. Creepy thought.

I guess what it all really comes down to is how much you love your life.

Anyway I should have clarified the clone is not copy of you it is you, the data is transfered from your brain to a new brain. So the information in the brain of your original body is wiped clean as it is uploaded into the new mind. If all we are is a collection of memories it shouldn’t be a problem.

It would not be a copyt of you though, it is more like transfering information from one brain to another. Your brain in your old body is wiped clean....

As good an answer as any.

If we master space we can terraform Mars, yes I am jumping th gun again it is feasible but theoretical. So if we somehow manage to get to Mars before Earth totally fucks up the human race might survive.

Anyway the point is it would be cool to live 3k years and see Mars become like Earth.

I see that most people are making the mistake of immortality = invincibility

Its not as if you would still live for eternity if your head was severed and locked in a damn closet >.>

Its just the chance to live until you feel you want to die... or until some one finally drops a piano on your head ^_^

behold the beauty of an alloy body, no resource troubles

Getting off our little rock was never the problem, it was getting to another solar system before we died >.>

if we were immortal, we may finally be able to colonize other systems... in... 125,000 years

and ya, im REALLY hoping for those "Ghost in a Shell" cyborg bodies

I'd take it, but I'd only live as long as the Earth. I'd jump at the chance to go down with our wonderful and terrible little ship, if only because I'm ever so curious about the end of her story (Will she make it all the way until she dries-up with her crew still intact? How many more major collisions will she endure? ...Will we wind-up being her doom, in the end, somehow?).

Living forever (or, well, until the end of the universe) would be... well, just a little too long for me. Yes, that's likely an interesting tale too - but it's just a tad long for me.

I have fun every day, I even find fun in the most mundane tasks. I would like to live as long as the Universe lives and even then I will be looking for a way to get to another Universe. I am confident that there is nothing after death so I see no reason I should just cease to exist.

Hopefully immortality becomes a reality soon.

The other side to this technology is expanding our memory and knowledge. Apparently we can store info in these chips and implant them into our heads. We will then be able to access the info as if it is something we learned. What I think would be really cool is when it all becomes wireless, you can do that Matrix style learn to fly a helicopter in 5 seconds stuff. You just call the company, give you credit card info and then they download what you want to your brain. Implanting information in our heads will change the world. Imagine how much faster we will advance. It will abolish the need for school since any knowledge needed would just be implanted.

From what I understand animal trials have been done with success. Extending a lab rats memory for example.  

Science is so much fucking fun....... screw church.

Well this is all run from a chip in your brain so as long as the chip is being constantly update like your real brain a shotgun blast to the head would not really kill you. It is just a case of getting the chip and putting it into the brain of a new body. I guess it really depends on how you define life and death.

I agree that some of this is "let's pretend" but for the most part it isn't. This technology is being pioneered as we speak, it will probably be in use in the near future. Probably not to extend life at first but to extend memory and implant knowledge definitely. It is like adding an extra hard drive to your PC.

I think somebody should learn to read.....

This technology is being pioneered as we speak.

dictionary.com:
pi·o·neer
n.  

1. One who ventures into unknown or unclaimed territory to settle.
2. One who opens up new areas of thought, research, or development: a pioneer in aviation.

However we do actually have technology that can read human thoughts and turn them into actions. Like for example we have the technology to interface the brain with a computer and have your brain control the movement of your mouse across the screen. We also have the technology to put wires in peoples brains that can change their personality, improve memory, and terminate unhealthy impulses. Last I heard though the improving memory thing was accidental.

Regardless of all that the fact is I said the technology is being pioneered, I did not say it is in use, complete, or close to complete.

 

Yeh thats what I think, jumping back into a 20 year old body it might get a lot more fun....

No, there's one very important difference.....you can die, if you choose to.

Well one man’s hell is another man’s heaven right...?

It's like religion, most of us here are atheists and most of us are of the mindset that religious people are deluded. Religious people think we are deluded. It would be the same with immortality; you would have the group that think immortal wannabes are deluded and the immortal wannabes thinking the guys that want to die are deluded.

I know immortality will have draw backs, I do not doubt it for a second. The question is would I rather wither away and cease to exist? Probably not. I know that if in the next 50 years that technology becomes available I will throw every million I have earned by that point at some scientists to put me back in a 20 year old body.

I think it also has a lot to do with what you want out of life. If you want to get married and have children immortality would suck. Seeing your children die would probably not be fun. If you do not want to get married and don't want children it might be a little different. I believe truly answering this question would take a lot more than 2 sentences on a forum. It is all well and good to say right here and now you wouldn’t but I would imagine many people’s minds would change quickly if they were presented with the opportunity.

  What ? I can't die , it can't happen, that is impossible, are you all silly ?    Imagine being dead ? Ummm , Sorry, I can't ......      

  Of course I know what you mean ... to no longer be the me as the conscious thing I am now.

  As long as I could end it I would choose 'forever' ... at first thought anyhow.

I hate talking about this subject because of the age span of people who read these posts. However, since there is a probability of dying from unnatural causes and incurable diseases, then it's unlikely that many people are going to live for centuries, with the same portion from those still alive living for thousands of years. Eventually we will all die when the universe collapses on itself, and so will it be easier to die after a few hundred years, after you've done everything that could possibly be done in ones life, or a few billion years?

On with my writeup that I'm pasting from facebook.

There will be several stages that we we'll go through in our quest for immortality, and the first few stages will only be able to prolong our lives.

Our journey begins with stem-cell research, and the manufacturing of organs to replace our dying ones, with the exception of our brain. Theoretically if our brain never aged, then as long as we replaced all our other organs, and laced our bones with iron or something every 80 years, then we could live forever. However, our brain does age and so we would die once our brain gets some incurable disease or something or just went away with age.

Our next step is something I haven't look into much, but it has to do with manipulating our genes (it also works if your currently alive, and not just an embryo still) so that we age significantly slower. After all, aging is just a countermeasure against cancer(cancer accelerates growth production while age does the opposite, I THINK it's accepted that aging is a defense mechanism to slow down the growth of cancers and/or prevent them, but digg is not a reliable source). Aging is a result of other things as well but I have no idea what they are, I'm no biologist. Current results with yeast have yielded an increase in life by 8x, and there currently working with humans that have a particular gene mutation that is for some reason only found somewhere in South America. So let's say the 8x increase in life carries over to humans, then assuming we can replace all our organs, except the brain, every 80-800 years, then we will live til we're 800 because that's how long it'll take for our brain to age... Hopefully in 800 years, other advancements in technology, unforeseen by scientists, will yield results that will extend our lives even further, and further, but not for eternity.

The last stage, and by far the coolest, deals with how we can make our brain last for ever. Oh shit! Now for the longest time I believed that it would be possible to transfer all the information in our brain with wires into a mechanical brain. However, I have conceded the fact that the process would require at least a split second of time where our brain would no longer be functioning before it was rebooted into the new mechanical brain. As a result of this process, it's most likely that we'll have the following resulting scenarios: During the transfer of information from the real brain to the mechanical brain, "you" will cease to exist, and another person with all your memories and personal quirks will reappear in the mechanical brain. Or "you" will still exist in the real brain, but your brain's information was simply cloned into the mechanical brain, and so there would be twins with all the same experiences, but only the real brain is "you". So in the end, "you" will still die.

The alternative? Some radical ass guy I read about through digg, who is the hero of this post (I later found out this is actually promising idea that scientists have considered), came up with an idea that whenever a brain cell dies, we should replace it with a mechanical brain cell. Since each brain cell dies and another is made every several years, this process could be done. A brain cell is just a neuron that fires electrical impulses, and so who's to say we can't manufacture something to do exactly that? Give us the time and someone will figure it out. Now since it takes several years for the transition from a full real human brain, to a mechanical brain, to occur, then there is no point in that time frame where "you" would cease to exist. Eventually, your brain will be completely mechanical but operating just like an ordinary human brain. The only question remains, how will the new "you" slowly transform? I'm sure there may be inherent side-effects to our personality and neural behavior if the brain was made of up millions of machines, rather then chemicals and neurons. Perhaps, with more time, they'll be able to reduce those side-effects until there are none.

About the last half of this post is experimental stuff, but they seem like logical ideas and even sci-fi writers have been right about the future... especially Isaac Asimov... that guy is a superstar.

Consider:  The best cosmological models suggest several dire events:

1) The earth will become uninhabitable in an eyeblink of immortality.

2) Supposing the highly improbable -- that you could find another habitable planet with people who spoke your language -- that planet would become uninhabitable in an eyeblink of immortality.

3) Repeat #2 ad nauseum

4) The universe will die.  All matter will reach a point of heat equilibrium -- that is, all matter/energy will cease to move, and everything will be completely and utterly cold.

Surely you don't mean to outlive the universe, do you?  If you intend to perish at some point, then you are not talking about immortality.  You're talking about a very long life.  At what point would you want to die?

The things made possible by immortality far outweigh any fear of boredom and losing my old home planet to me. So maybe I don't know what I'll do between visiting planets right now, but does that mean I'll never be able to think of anything to do? Absolutely not.

We might even find a way to get out of the universe before it dies. Someone 200 years ago couldn't image what we have today in their wildest science fiction dreams, why so pessimistic about what's possible in the future?

I really do hate libertarianism and its obession with the individual.

Has anyone thought what the consequences of others if you don't die, the world becomes overcrowded and even if you can still remain immortal without resources its not going to be a very pleasant life for most.

There could only be one punishment for anyone who tries to introduce immortality death its the ultimate crime against humanity

As a follower of Extropian principles, and as one starting to believe that he is the only remaining Extropian on the planet, I keep my fingers crossed in hope of just such technology. It isn't that I mind death, but rather that death is such a terrible inconvenience. There is far too much to explore or learn in any one lifetime. The nearest extra-solar planets are prohibitively far away with just our brief span of years, but with a greatly extended lifespan they would become reachable.  Multiple college degrees leaves most people in the august of life, but with life expansion being a polymath is but a starting point for unlocking greater knowledge. 

So yes, I would jump at the chance. Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes. Is it live or is it memorex? The copy probably wouldn't know the difference or even give a damn.

Seconded.

'Immortality' would be dreadful, but a life extension of up to, say, a few million (perhaps even a few billion) years would be welcome. We could watch stars wither and die with such lifespans and traversing the galaxy would become much more plausible.

Uh. Hm. We know the mechanism behind aging (telomeres)... what are the barriers in 'correcting' it, per se?

I suppose I would accept immoratlity. One of my biggest fears is being diagnosed with some diasese and waiting to die. This way my death will be sudden no matter what (or chosen is it comes to that).

I suppose it would be like a cell dividing. The daughter cells are just as much the parent cell as eachother. I assume leagally we would have to be registered as two different people.

No god, no problem. But if we did discover some sort of omnipotent god I suppose we would never know. It could go along with us and make new souls or it could destroy one or both of the copies or it could start a raging inferno that ingulfs all of man kind for doing something like this. It could even just minipulate the minds of scientists to stop them from developing such a technology. So, who knows?

I would also like to know this. Say when I am 25 I sustain a head injury that makes me mildly retarded. I live for forty more years and then get cloned. I no longer have any brain damage but the brain damage and the way of thinking  was what made me me an at this point I had live with the bran damage longer than without it. Am I still me? A question for everyone else is: what do you think it would be like to suddenly be much smarter?