Ben Best, who wrote for The Scientific Conquest of Death: some problems with Immortalism, was a person with fantasy who believed in hypnotic power, and more intriguingly extreme longevity. With no limits on his potential longevity, he doubted the possibility of achieving immortalism. The very fact that “Forever” is more than a long time, it is, in reality, an eternity and thus hard to consider realistic.
There exist highly advanced mathematical models that tend to calculate the value of infinite time. If you were given the chance of choosing whether you would prefer to be given a dollar today or that same dollar in a year, you would probably opt for the $1 dollar today. In this same wavelength, it is more important to be alive for the current year than the subsequent year and henceforth. The value of money can be compared to its future value.
However, such decisions cannot be made when we talk about life. To be alive in the future we need to be alive in the present. This is why surviving today, is primordial in increasing the chance of one living longer. In mathematical terms, if we consider that being alive in 2005 is 98 percent as important as it was to be alive in 2004. The value of immortality is thus calculated as follows:
The sum of N from zero to infinity for: (0.98)N=1÷(1-0.98)=50.
The value that one gives to immortality, based on the figures given above is, that one values immortality 50 times as much as being alive to another year. This seems extremely high and unconceivable. However, think about it, being alive to another year at the age of 100, is it as important to you as being alive to another year when you are of the age of a thousand or a million. In common sense the events in the unconceivable future must be rated less important than current events.
Achieving immortal is by reason beyond theoretical conception. Let’s say that you would know that you would be destroyed at the age of one million years would that be worse than death at ten million or a trillion. However, even after ten quadrillion years we would never know whether we have successfully achieved immortality, as to solve that puzzle it would take an eternity.
Let say that you had a sum of a million dollars, and you used all that money to ensure that you would live for a given year. The chance of surviving for that year would practically be very high but for the subsequent year it would be rather low.
In other words, if you would be allocated only $1 per year, you would probably struggle to survive for the first year, without shelter and medicine. This means that if you allocate more money, the potential chance of living another year keeps on increasing. This simple analogy of money and longevity can be expanded to evaluate the probability of survival.
Whether physical immortality is possible or not is still a scientific question. The very fact that our current survival is at the edge of peril, makes us think twice about it.
Cryonic arrangements are certainly one of the most potential promises to assure maximum life span extension. However, this will only be possible when a solution has been given to death caused by fatal accidents, cancer or cardiovascular disease. If we would be over-concentrating on cryonics, we would practically forego the precursors for death.
Confronting death is also dangerous. For instance, Frank Cole who was studying anti-aging medicine and did follow calorie restriction principles was responsible for cryonics arrangements as an Alcor cryonics transport technician. But he was unfortunately murdered in North Africa due to his desire to supersede death with immortality. Therefore, current safety is something that we must consider of paramount importance.
Another serious issue with immortalism is that it affronts theological beliefs. In literal term, it is not an affront to religion when we talk about extending life to 100 or 1,000 years. The biblical character Methuselah has been recorded to have had lived to the age of 969 years. Thus, ignoring a life span of 1,000 years would practically be an insult to God. However, a thousand years or a million years is still nothing compared to eternity.
Solution for Immortality
In case, medical advancement would assure that death from senescence, and disease eliminated then people would only die from homicide, suicide or accidents. Taking such conditions into account than a 12-years old child would have a median life span of 1,200 years while a maximum life span of 25,000 years. There would practically be only one person out of a billion who would reach the maximum life span of 25,000 years, taking into account the actual rate of accidents, homicide and suicide.
A reasonable goal would thus be to live to a thousand. It should also be noticed that anti-aging science or cryonics are not confronting religion, they are rather mere extensions of medicine.
Cryonicists should consider themselves as life-extensionists as they are not immortalists. However, it is essential that cryonics is accepted by society. This will help cryonicists to better research into the matter. Several questions related to immortality might remain unsolved due to facts such as the extinction of the sun or universe. In practical term, these questions are theoretically uninteresting in our current state of survival. Our current key aim should be to stay alive and preferably as long as possible.
The demise of aging and diseases are vital for longevity to really revolutionize. If ever we would be able to solve these issues, then we would have thousands of years to solve other threats that are at our peril. However, if we are unable to solve our limited lifespan problems than the other problems would be futile to tackle.
In simple, terms if you will be able to celebrate your 200-year anniversary in a youthful condition then you know that aging has been solved. It will be relatively easy to extend that to 800 years afterward.
Our goal today should be to “live long enough to benefit from aging reversal” or to “see technology replacing our brain”. These are all things that are likely to happen within half a century or even less.
This means if you live longer than 50 years your only obstacle will be death-by-accident or murder. But the risk of losing our “self” is also a problem that might occur through computational and biological re-engineering. These are risks deemed to be affronted.
However, being an immortalist might be futile but a life extensionists is much more in our reach. Let’s be one and live to a thousand.
Reference: Adapted from: The Scientific conquest of Death
1. Ben Best., (2004) The scientific conquest of Death, Imminst.org
Mon, Jul 26, 2010
Immortality