Health, Longevity, Artificial Intelligence

[Dylan Page]

If you could drastically extend your life, would you? Would you live forever? This is of course assuming you can have the body of a 20 year old or better. 

Alongside the giant question of what we ought to do in our lives, there is also the question if we should ever stop living them. Technology is advancing very quickly, (and I'm not saying that this will happen, but it's something to consider.) and it might be possible to dramatically extend our lives by the year 2050 or so. If you could, would you? Would you live your life differently if you could? If you wouldn't, why wouldn't you? 

My personal take on this is that I would. I see no reason to accept death, even if there is life after it. We don't know if there is life after death, or if that life will be good or not. This life at a minimum, has the potential to be good. We also have the intelligence to change and adapt if things get bad. I have heard @Leo Gura say that there is no death, there is only life (in the comments sections of one of his videos). What in this case, is life? I would consider life consciousness, although many people even doubt the existence of consciousness, and say that is it some sort of mechanistic illusion (dan dennett). 

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I'd love to know. 

[SFRL]

I would. 

The way I see it is that I would slowly become more and more machine though. Eventually I would be a robot with my whole consciousness  downloaded on a computer chip. 

Although that sounds cool, what if all people are going to do this? Then we got to start controlling the birthrate. Since it's overcrowded as it is. 

Also Just to be a bit cynical: Most people stop 'living' by age 30/40. Stop living in the sense that they are not really trying to do anything with their life anymore. Their soul has died off at that point. What's the point for them to keep living forever. Give some new contenders a shot at the title. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by SFRL

[Dylan Page]

I think the dangerous assumption you are making there is that you can download your consciousness. I think we really need to get a grasp on what it is in order to make that kind of claim. If it's *just* a pattern of elementary particles, then there is no reason that we can't move over to silicon or graphene or whatever. But, there are many, many different views on what it is and to jump to conclusions is kinda stupid. Also, only some people that get to age 30/40 "give up", there are tons of counter-examples and also keep in mind that we would theoretically reverse our age back to 20 (or become a robot or something). There isn't really any good reason to assume that we would just have our motivation die out at that arbitrary age.  @SFRL 

Edited May 12, 2019 by Dylan Page
didn't add the @ on accident

[SFRL]

1 minute ago, Dylan Page said:

I think the dangerous assumption you are making there is that you can download your consciousness. I think we really need to get a grasp on what it is in order to make that kind of claim. If it's *just* a pattern of elementary particles, then there is no reason that we can't move over to silicon or graphene or whatever. But, there are many, many different views on what it is and to jump to conclusions is kinda stupid. Also, only some people that get to age 30/40 "give up", there are tons of counter-examples and also keep in mind that we would theoretically reverse our age back to 20 (or become a robot or something). There isn't really any good reason to assume that we would just have our motivation die out at that arbitrary age.  @SFRL 

I am just fantasizing. I don't know how far they can push it or what's possible or not. I would think that during my lifetime they will be able to start artificially extend life by use of better drugs, implants, and more advanced mechanical parts. 

I don't think people give up because of their body. I think they give up because they are tired of constantly being beaten down and running the rat race, or something like that. They just lose their joy in life. 

[Dylan Page]

ah ok, I would agree with the first part, as for the second, I think that it's just an over-generalization. There are like a billion billion billion different states that adults can be in at age 30-40. 

[SFRL]

@Dylan Page

I think another scenario is we all get hooked up to Virtual Reality and we can be anything we want to be in that world. So a 70 year old man can be a 18 year old boy. Or a T-Rex dinosaur or whatever.