Can those living today live forever?

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According to Raymond's predictions medical care will suddenly be so cheap everyone will be able to afford it, like cell phones and computers are today. He claims that within 20 years fossil fuels will not be used because solar energy will meet every need. We get 10,000 more energy from the sun that we need. So basically, everyone will live like millionaires because energy and matter will be like oxygen is today. These things will come so quickly because technology will start to exponentially grow out of our current reality.

That is the beautiful thing about this. The reason some believe that the US become so successful is because we are so diversified (50 states) where so many different ideas and free enterprise created the best inventions. Every country, who of course are working for their own right now, are competiting with every other country to be the first to discover these things. Eventually these different minds will work in harmony, whether they know it or not. It's called Singularity.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

It is foolish to attempt to cling indefinitely to life. When your time has come, move on. Life in this world is transitory, so enjoy it while it lasts, but to try to make it last forever is perverse.

Physical immortality is unlikely as longevity-tendency life forms can die prematurely.
No one idealizes longevity as an extended aging process, such that Methuselah would
LOOK like he was 969 years old, as if so much uglier than 100 years old. On the contrary,
the archetype of longevity is "the fountain of youth". Rev 21 and 22! Alchemy! ETC.

Somewhere in the bible is a prophecy of the future where people will live longer than
trees do. If I find it, an edit is forthcoming. BY THE WAY I didn't invent my own theories
of longevity, rather they are a synthesis of compatible biblical and scientific ideas.

Anyhoo...

I can't picture myself living forever as I am now. I'm hoping for reincarnation, where I'd come back as something better, like an antelope, a spider or a lion. Living forever in heaven, singing hosannas endlessly sounds incredibly boring. I hope there's more to it than that.

You don't like yourself, and you don't like new music. That's sad.

Psychologically, I can handle immortality. It would be fun but difficult for everyone to achieve. We would need to expand and find homes on other planets. We could populate the entire universe this way.

In fact, this is the only way long distance space travel can be enjoyed since distances are so vast, it's the only way for one person to see the entire universe. Even while traveling @ light speed, it still takes a long time to travel what seems like a short distance in OS. Dying before seeing much of anything is highly probable.
Death happens before reaching destinations.
I think it's a good idea in terms of universe, bad idea in terms of earth.

How? This reality is all their is. Death is pointless. When you die - in lay mans terms - you never existed. The idea of nothing absolute is one the religious minds shy from, and prefer concepts the same. You say that an indefinite capacity to experience is perverse? What of that afterlife notion? How do they differ?
Every living species tries to live so long as they can. You can't move on to nothing, you can only be Nothing, which is simply a useless waste. That's how the universe is like. Get used to it, it isn't going away.

Are we assuming these nanos can repair everything? Because even if the aging process was reversed, all disease and fatal congenital defects illiminated, and the world reached an enlightened and peaceful era, humans would still live on average to be about 1,400 years. The really carefull ones might make it to 20,000. Accidents happen. If a fatal accident did happen, the nanos would have to completely take over. We'd be borgs.

That's if the microbots don't launch war againts us and strip us apart down to the last molecule. We'd be totally defenseless against them. Even if they simply malfunctioned they could be instantly fatal. Eventually something would go wrong.

In all seriousness, I find it odd that a scientist would assume that we have the capasity to soon reach human perfection through technology. Our bodies are chaotic systems, as would be our mechanical symbiotes. They would have to have on a tiny scale the most advanced AI ever seen by man on a grand scale to work in total perfection around the billions of tiny variations that could grow exponetially into very deadly problems. Every moment. Every year. And nothing would go wrong? Are we living in the same universe? Entropy increases, doesn't it? There is just no such thing as humans inventing perfection.

I apologise for my rambling, but thinking about immortality takes up a lot of my time.

First, the scientific approach.

Unlocking the cause of aging isn't as far fetched as many believe. There are certain genes that self destruct after a certain number of repetitions. That number, like a lot of evolved traits (if you believe in Darwin's theories) was something generated fairly randomly. We had our age limits set in our DNA because this age limit seemed to work for us better than others. It's also why some species of bird and reptile have lives as long or longer than ours. But I think every advanced creature on this planet has some "time-bomb" DNA, serving the purpose of us not living longer than would be environmentally detrimental to our future generations and the biosphere in general.

Have we now grown beyond this need to have generational entropy? Is it theoretically possible to ever be beyond the need for death?

Perhaps some things science doesn't try to discover, because the consequences of discovering them would be far too terrible. Still, that didn't stop us developing nuclear weapons.

Over time we start to fail in repairing ourselves, our resistances to natural toxins and even oxidants are reduced. We think of our individual lives as being our presence on this planet, but our DNA knows that we are only as important as any other link in a chain. Our lives are shed and replaced, killed off and replenished the way skin cells or blood cells are in the indivdual. Like polyps on a reef, we are individuals animals that count towards a much more massive life form. And that lifeform is a part of an ecosystem.

In order to gain immortality, one would have to change the DNA on a fundamental level. This requires either genetic manipulation at conception, or gene therapy. If you ask me, most gene therapy is like trying to fix a car with chewing gum. What this boils down to is that if you want to develop immortality, you are basically developing something that will benefit only your children or grand children. And, as immortality is essentially a selfish desire, then who would develop something selfish if they can gain nothing from it themself. Perhaps there is the benefit of passing on your genetics to an immortal offspring, but then, if passing on your genes is of primary importance, than the system we have right now works just fine.

The sort of immortality one would gain from genetic manipulation could only really stop you from aging (or, more likely, just slow it down a hell of a lot) - it wouldn't give you any greater ability to overcome disease apart from extended youth. For any safety from diseases and illness, you would require the same research that we are doing today to attempt to cure the maladies of the world. And people will still suffer injuries. Both accident and illness will still kill you. And they kill more people than simply growing old does.

So, you'll more than likely, be able to enjoy your youth for a couple of decades more until you finally submit to your fate in a hospital bed or under the wheels of an oncoming car or whatever else it was that would have killed you anyway. I'll admit, the potential to continue your life indefinitely is greatly increased - you no longer have a fairly certain time limit - but, the odds are against you ever living that much longer than you would have if you hadn't have been born "immortal".

There's a quote from Fight Club, "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." And that's all it is, a matter of time. Sure, you're more likely to see one hundred, but not as likely as you think, and even less likely every year. It's just probablity. Unless you are shut away for the rest of your unending life in a germ-proof bunker. That's not the sort of life I'd want to last forever.

Even with unlimited youth, the body still wears down, it's not all genetic suicide. Athletes who blow out joints, or suffer RSI aren't simply getting old. The body can only repair what the genes tell it how to repair. A lifetime of favouring one foot slightly will cause a limp, many lifetimes of a limp can cause crippling. And teeth decay eventually, no matter how well you take care of them, or else, they just wear down. Ears loose hearing from damage as well as from getting old. Eyes lose focus because of stretching muscles and while aging accelerates the process, youth doesn't prevent it. Besides which, a lot of eyesight problems are due to an advancing condition finally getting the better of the patient, rather than simple age.

The actual benefits of curing aging are far less attractive than we might first think.

Sorry for going on for so long. If anyone is interested in this long waffling post, I might post my metaphysical examinations of immortality later.

Awww, but that is what is so beautiful about it. Computers are about to surpass man in intelligence. We can't invent perfection, but computers that soon will be more intelligent can. You'll wake up one morning, and there will be more overall change in one day than in the entire 20th century.

Hmmm, define "more intelligent".

I don't mean to be argumentative, but I don't think we have any computers that are even capable of rudimentary intelligence. Artificial intelligence, yes, but this is always a simulation of one ascpect of an intelligent process. It's a bit like artificial grass.

I'd love to see computers or programs actually display intelligence or thought, but I'm not entirely sure it's even possible yet.

[EDIT]

Also, the idea that computers (or any intelligence for that matter) can create "perfection" is fairly subjective a concept too, I'd like to know what your definition of perfection might be.

I hope this doesn't sound impolite.

Computers could never surpass human levels and still be computers as we define them. AI is a rude imitation of ourselves, along more rigid lines.
The assumption computers are more complex than people is false, they are, in fact, simpler.
If a computer truly reached human state, it would be just as fallible as any living thing.

i have already been dead forever.
before i was born i was "not alive" forever in the past.
no matter how far back it goes, i was not there.

there was no beginning of time so time extends infinitely into the past.
all that time i was not alive.

and it went by in the blink of an eye.

here i am alive at the end of a "forever being dead".

but how can forever have an end.

it is because 2x infinity equals infinity again.

after i die, i will "again" no longer be in existence for eternity.
but always life can not experience death, so no matter how long you are dead, you will never know it.

i can not believe i will not wake again somehow in this universe after i die.

Life is a singular occurance in an infinite universe. It recurs, whilst not at once. The universe is a contradictory place, insofar as human understanding holds.

How can it be a singular occurance if it recurs?