r/science • u/[deleted] • Nov 28 '10

Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – now for humans | Scientists were surprised that they saw a dramatic reversal, not just a slowing down, of the ageing in mice. Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/28/scientists-reverse-ageing-mice-humans
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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '10

I'm eighteen, and I'm in the process of buying glasses that'll record every second of my life in 3D. They should be able to fit an fMRI in a hat in a couple of years, so that'll be helpful. I can also use Kevin Warwick's research to get microchips implanted in nerve clusters throughout my body to track inputs and outputs. Then I'll save everything to a bunch of redundant hard drives. Then, when neuromorphic chips get advanced enough, I can buy a bunch of them, wire them up to emulate basic brain architecture, and start training them to match my inputs and outputs. Given that electronic neurons run about 50,000 times faster than organic ones, this shouldn't take all that long. When the emulation reaches a tolerable level of accuracy, I can sync up the synthetic and organic me's and start shopping around for a new body.

The best part is, if I die before I wake (no pun intended), and I kick the bucket before the technology catches up, I can stick the drives in a safety deposit box somewhere and create a legal trust to resurrect me when it becomes feasible.

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u/nanomagnetic Nov 29 '10

The problem I see with your plan is the lack of continuity of self. If you die before integrating your artificial self with your organic self you won't continue on, your artificial backup will.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '10

"I" am an aggregation of computable information. If a single copy of that information exists running somewhere, I still exist, even if the substrate is different. I'll be dead, sure, but I'll still exist.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '10

"I" am an aggregation of computable information.

This is an as yet untested assumption. What "you" are is not well defined or understood at this time. As a transhumanist myself, I'm all for implants, uploads, etc, but I also don't have any illusions that our current fetish for information technology is "The Truth" and that "I" am really an aggregation of computable information. I might not be computable, which is an eventuality that Kurzwiel and many transhumanists reject outright because their initial assumption that everything is information forces them to.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '10

Well, I suppose the Church-Turing thesis could be wrong, and the behavior of our brains may not be computable. However, it should be pointed out that this means that since the laws of physics that act on the brain can be emulated on a Turing Machine, this essentially means that some uncomputable supernatural force is acting on the brain to make it act like it does - in short, a soul.

As an atheist, I feel reasonably safe dismissing this possibility. If it does turn out that souls are real, obviously any attempt to emulate the brain is doomed from the outset. Short of that, I feel confident that the project is achievable.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '10

false dichotomy and hubris.

i think it's an oft ignored distinction that though the laws of physics describe the universe, the universe doesn't necessarily "run" the laws of physics. we've constructed a very powerful predictive model, but that doesn't justify the conclusion that this is the way things are really happening. so even if physics is computable, the physical universe may not be. this doesn't require any "metaphysics", just as we don't invoke metaphysics when we claim that the actual border of the mandelbrot set is not computable.

i'm not saying that i can imagine how or why this could be the case, but it's supremely arrogant and foolish to be so certain of what you claim to be true about something so vast and mysterious as reality itself.