The Futurists 8d - Life Extension

13 May 2009

This week we revisited about "Life Extension" as the last time, some of us were not around in the meeting. This meeting is not very well recorded as I was not feeling very well.

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Some people are against Life Extension and Immortality. But when you ask, "Who wants to die?" Then, you get a different reaction.

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How do we die?

When we stop breathing? or when the heart stops? or when the brain stops?

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In evolutionary history, we die from predators before we get into a discrepit state. May be there are evolutionary disadvantage of living a long life.

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But what if we succeed in cloning? Let's say if I clone you, then which one is the real you? Is it the original or the clone? Or let's say, if I clone you and I kill the original, are you still alive? 

At this point, one of the participant replied: "If you kill me, I'll kill you!"

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That threw most of us off guard and off-logic, as obviously the preceeding supposition is for the purpose of hypothesis. It seems that some people cannot cope up very well with the concept of hypothesis; and therefore sidetracked from the main question of "Which one is the real you? You you or the clone? Not "if you kill me, I'll kill you". This is comical!!!!! :)

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So who is the real you?

What is 'self'?

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Is SELF = CONSCIOUSNESS + MEMORY ?

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Ten years from now we will achieve Singularity (that means computers can reach human levels of thinking and in some cases like calculations, supersede human abilities, more powerfully so) - claimed Stefan. Kit thinks not and both of them made a bet. The loser pays a steak dinner. 

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But what made Stefan thinks it'll be so soon?

For one adoption rates for technologies like the Internet and mobile phones are happening at a much faster rate than that of radio in the past. Now, there are several technologies that changes your life so much, such as:

RSS, podcast, ipod, youtube, internet radio, peer-to-peer technologies like bitorrent...etc.

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MY POST MORTEM:

As communications technologies progressed, the quality of conversations deteriorates. So will technological advances necesarily prolong our lives or improve its quality?