how to cheat death

[sushi]

is it possible to cheat death?

I know I had made this topic before

but is it possible to develop some kind of technology that can cheat death, or live longer.

what kind of technology will make this possible?

death is the destruction of the body or the mind, so if we preserve one or the other , it might be possible to cheat it.

 

[BurnedOut]

1. Hacking a gene in the DNA which disables senescence (aging) in cells. Some plants are immortal but often, they don't survive because they die of some disease. If they manage to develop some kind of technology of preserving something forever and finding that particular gene, immortality is possible.

2. Death is the destruction of sentience if are also including 'mind' in the definition of death. If they find a way to translate the neuron signals' patterns into a code that is sentient, then cheating death is possible.

 

[Cognisant]

It's complicated, much of the natural aging process is mechanisms we evolved to ward off cancer and so disabling them for the sake of life extension ends up being a bit of a own-goal as you end up dying of cancer before aging would have killed you.

Life extension by means of external life support is currently the most viable option however it also comes with a host of issues, most of them concerning quality of life.

In theory with a combination of genetic engineering, external life support (including stem cell and retrovirus treatments) it should be possible to keep someone alive indefinitely without digitizing them.

Speaking of digitizing, scanning and making a copy of someone is fairly pointless because the original still dies, what's better is to integrate cybernetics until the brain is merely a small part of a much larger system at which point its loss, though still a loss, doesn't qualify as the death of the individual, just as our cells come and go but we as individuals persist.

I wonder what that would be like, to "live" through the death of my brain and witness it first hand, will it be a scary and profound experience or will it just be like having a hangover after a night of excessive drinking?

 

[sushi]

good feeback

medical science is already something invented as a means to cheat death, to fix injuries and body failures.

i think the only missing part is ressurection of dead, but thats fundamentally immoral and involve alot of ethical issue violations.

 

[BurnedOut]

i think the only missing part is ressurection of dead, but thats fundamentally immoral and involve alot of ethical issue violations.

I have my gut screaming at me that Resurrection of the dead is against science. I mean the resurrection of the dead and the decaying. I don't understand if it is really possible to reverse the various kinds of matter that the body goes through during the phases of decomposition. Maybe, they'd extract some DNA and then use a stem cell. But then the stem cell will have its own DNA. Then, the question is, would they be able to cultivate a cell using custom DNA? Maybe we need to learn the process of manufacturing of cells themselves by various chemical reactions and custom DNA. Maybe then, a new person can be formed who'd similar to the one who's dead or not? Then the problem of 'Ship of Theseus' steps in.

So, is it resurrection in reality? I don't know. Maybe that's why in scifi movies, they have a common dialogue which extols death as final irreversible even if revival/cloning is possible.

 

[Cognisant]

There has been discussion around resurrecting mammoths from DNA obtained from from frozen corpses, however that wouldn't be "resurrecting the dead" so much as making a new animal in the genetic likeness of the one that died, resurrecting the species perhaps but not "resurrection" in the sense that it's usually meant.

So, is it resurrection in reality? I don't know. Maybe that's why in scifi movies, they have a common dialogue which extols death as final irreversible even if revival/cloning is possible.

When continuity is broken it opens up a lot of awkward philosophical questions.

Fundamentally identity is a contrivance, a reality that we contrivances are incapable of reconciling with.

 

[sushi]

physical resurrection is possible, and there is no science evidence and rules that indicates otherwise.

but the requirements and experiments to reach that goal is borderline unethical. It is like playing god and frankeinstein.

it will force us to fundamentally examine what is life and death in the human body.

 

[Cognisant]

This has already happened and continues to happen, death used to be defined by the lack of a heartbeat, nowadays stopping the patient's heart during surgery is standard practice for some procedures.

Then it was the absence of brain activity but now even brain activity can be temporarily halted and restarted if the patient is in a hypothermic state, this is what inspired cryogenics in fiction (i.e. MC bring unfrozen at the start of Halo).

Someday people who have their heads blown off will have a new one flash cloned and their memories restored from the latest backup on file.

Eventually death as we know it could become a redundant concept, just something that used to happen.

 

[sushi]

This has already happened and continues to happen, death used to be defined by the lack of a heartbeat, nowadays stopping the patient's heart during surgery is standard practice for some procedures.

Then it was the absence of brain activity but now even brain activity can be temporarily halted and restarted if the patient is in a hypothermic state, this is what inspired cryogenics in fiction (i.e. MC bring unfrozen at the start of Halo).

Someday people who have their heads blown off will have a new one flash cloned and their memories restored from the latest backup on file.

Eventually death as we know it could become a redundant concept, just something that used to happen.

what you talk about probably happens 300 years later

we have to develop some kind of technology that can reverse aging and entropy.
aging seems to be the law of universe. we can only build better minds and bodies.