Will science make us immortal?

[Someone here]

Imagine 1000 years from now ..technology will be at a whole new level.  Its just a matter of time and we will find living creatures or aliens on other planets . I mean if you took a man from 300 years ago and showed him the technology we have today he will think it's literally magic .

So what do you think guys about unlocking the secret of immortality? Will science eventually invent a technology that makes us immortal ? (I'm talking about the relative level as  mortal human beings ..so don’t throw at me the  "you are God you are already immortal" stuff please 😂).

[Carl-Richard]

Probably. Will we destroy ourselves before that? Maybe.

[Nilsi]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Probably. Will we destroy ourselves before that? Maybe.

what makes you say that? everywhere i look, i see death and impermanence. unless you are talking about whatever eternal spiritual core there is to all of it, i don't buy it.

[zurew]

43 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

unless you are talking about whatever eternal spiritual core there is to all of it, i don't buy it.

What about animals that don't seem to die from ageing?

[Nilsi]

25 minutes ago, zurew said:

What about animals that don't seem to die from ageing?

they get eaten by predators or killed by pollution. even if they weren't, their evolutionary niche wouldn't exist forever, as their environment and the species itself evolve.

even atoms have only really existed since humans started imagining them through contemplation and research. we are already at a point where any notion of an atom, and with that the possibility to even imagine them, starts to break down. so, at some point in the future, atoms will literally stop existing (until perhaps someone reopens that conversation).

in any case, it's all in flux and utterly impermanent. the only permanence in this is the "eternal return," to talk with nietzsche, which is the perpetual arising and passing away of any form or idea, as, for example, the atom in this example. this is not to imply some teleology, but is rather to be thought of as a divine dice throw, where each throw is an affirmation of chance ("amor fati"), with the possibility of both: difference and repetition.

Quote

"What is the meaning of our being? Does it have any meaning? The goal of all human striving has been reached in the latest generations: we no longer seek happiness but power; we no longer seek peace but war; we no longer seek to retreat to safety but rather to expose ourselves again to the play of chance, to the danger of the dice throw."

 

Edited June 3 by Nilsi

[zurew]

6 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

they get eaten by predators or killed by pollution. even if they weren't, their evolutionary niche wouldn't exist forever, as their environment and the species itself evolve.

even atoms have only really existed since humans started imagining them through contemplation and research. we are already at a point where any notion of an atom, and with that the possibility to even imagine them, starts to break down. so, at some point in the future, atoms will literally stop existing (until perhaps someone reopens that conversation).

in any case, it's all in flux and utterly impermanent. the only permanence in this is the "eternal recurrence of the same," to talk with nietzsche, which is the perpetual arising and passing away of any form or idea, as, for example, the atom in this example

Without getting bogged down in the atom talk and asking you to clarify what you mean by something to exist - I see, you meant different compared to what I thought you meant. I thought 'dying from ageing' , but sure if we talk about all encompassing immortality (not dying from anything) and we take into into account the "death" of the universe , then yeah it seems to be inescapable (according to our current knowledge)

[Nilsi]

16 minutes ago, zurew said:

Without getting bogged down in the atom talk and asking you to clarify what you mean by something to exist - I see, you meant different compared to what I thought you meant. I thought 'dying from ageing' , but sure if we talk about all encompassing immortality (not dying from anything) and we take into into account the "death" of the universe , then yeah it seems to be inescapable (according to our current knowledge)

the point is that difference and repetition, chance, and the dice throw, as i talked about them in the edited comment above, are prior to identity itself.

with immortality being the continuity of identity, any such possibility has to be rejected precisely on the terms that all identity is fundamentally discontinuous, i.e., there is a metaphysical gap in the material (meaning the world of appearances, forms, ideas, natural laws, etc.) universe, which is precisely what allows it to exist in the first place, and what prohibits any such phenomena from being anything other than finite, impermanent figments of infinity.

it should be intuitively obvious that only the infinite can be immortal, but here we are.

Edited June 3 by Nilsi

[zurew]

20 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

the point is that difference and repetition, chance, and the dice throw, as i talked about them in the edited comment above, are prior to identity itself.

with immortality being the continuity of identity, any such possibility has to be rejected precisely on the terms that all identity, form, idea, concept, etc., is fundamentally discontinuous.

This might get us back into the need to clarify what is being meant by 'existing' ,but how would you classify or make sense of  abstract objects  (objects that don't seem to be bounded by time and space)?

Edited June 3 by zurew

[Nilsi]

14 minutes ago, zurew said:

but how would you classify or make sense of  abstract objects  (objects that don't seem to be bounded by time and space)?

i don't know what you mean by "abstract objects" specifically, but on the general question of identity, i don't think i have a better answer in me right now than the one i gave above.

Edited June 3 by Nilsi

[zurew]

19 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

i don't know what you mean by "abstract objects" specififcally, but on the general discussion of identity, i don't think i have a better answer in me right now than the one i gave above.

I meant the classical notion of an abstract object like numbers, sets, propositions. Like if you say that numbers exist , would you say that they are spatio-temporal?

this is a general argument for the existence of abstract objects: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/#4

 

But regardless, I guess what I wanted to ask is that if you think that things that are non spatio-temporal do exist, then how do you make sense of them in the context of identity? Because it seems to me that your definition of identity presupposes that identity is necessarily being bounded by time  (if I understood what you meant there, but I might be misinterpreting)

Edited June 3 by zurew

[Nilsi]

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

I meant the classical notion of an abstract object like numbers, sets, propositions. Like if you say that numbers exist , would you say that they are spatio-temporal?

this is a general argument for the existence of abstract objects: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/#4

the emergence of "numbers" as a concept has been a rather recent event in the evolution of the universe. there are no numbers without some intelligence's cognition of them. also, there can be intelligence without numbers: most of my day is spent without cognizing numbers or mathematics. even modern psychology agrees that there are multiple intelligences, only one of which, "logical-mathematical," is contingent on the existence of numbers.

returning to the allegory of the dice throw, i will run into numbers from time to time, but a lot of the time i won't, and even when i do, the context of what a number is constantly changes, as the situation in which i encounter them changes, as my understanding and the general theory of numbers changes, and so on - and this gap in between is prior to the existence of numbers.

i'm precisely making an anti-platonic argument here.

[zurew]

5 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

there are no numbers without some intelligence's cognition of them

i'm precisely making an anti-platonic argument here.

Okay gotcha, that clears it up for me.

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, zurew said:

Okay gotcha, that clears it up for me.

i'm not even trying to make a kantian point per se, but rather a deleuzian one, but i'm really at the edge of my ability to articulate (and even properly understand) this. let's return to this topic in a year or so and i shall have a better answer.

Edited June 3 by Nilsi

[LSD-Rumi]

"We have achieved the impossible, we have stopped aging and disease"

Get hit by a bus.

Edited June 3 by LSD-Rumi

[zurew]

16 hours ago, Nilsi said:

 but i'm really at the edge of my ability to articulate (and even properly understand) this. let's return to this topic in a year or so and i shall have a better answer.

Sure - I can only talk from my pov  - Im very poorly read in philosophy , especially on this particular topic and I havent thought much about it, so I don't have any strong position on any of this.

I don't have the necessary vocab to have a meaningful talk or debate about this. Im mostly just here to observe and to take some notes .

 

I appreciate the honesty about hitting your limits. If more forum members would be this honest, we would have much more meaningful and productive debates and convos.

Edited June 4 by zurew

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, Nilsi said:

what makes you say that? everywhere i look, i see death and impermanence. unless you are talking about whatever eternal spiritual core there is to all of it, i don't buy it.

Maybe not 100% immortality, but close to it. And I'm talking about physical immortality (this current body).

Curing aging is probably theoretically possible. You might not be able to stop being smooshed by a 10 ton boulder or an asteroid, but I think regenerative medicine could become really powerful as well. We could be on the verge of a paradigm shift in fields like synthetic biology or medicine in general (cracking the morphogenetic code or discovering the next "antibiotics").

Edited June 3 by Carl-Richard

[integral]

Mortality is great at all and will probably get there but I think more important is a high-quality state. Without really good state it’s almost not worth it I rather we Invent perfect state Control.

[Schizophonia]

Let it start by helping us to be happy.

[Hojo]

I don't know if God will allow immortality of the human body. Its not that good you are already immortal. This is just a place to come for awhile you have to get mind wiped so spawning as an immortal in this plane that can be controlled by someone other than you could be hellish.

But I think science should be able to make humans immortal with the power of ai. It should be able to show us our blind spots.

Science and spirituality combined could be a spot for human to come and become immortals in life guranteed but not in ways of keeping the body just by allowing us to be as comfortable as possible while we spiritually transend.

Edited June 4 by Hojo

[Nilsi]

On 3.6.2024 at 10:09 PM, Carl-Richard said:

Maybe not 100% immortality, but close to it.

 

that's a big difference.