The story of the brain its a lot more complicated theres also actual practical advantages in that in some parts of the world and some parts of america. You have to have a special coverage to move the whole body out of state and that could be a problem if its after Business Hours on a weekend whereas the brain only is essentially a tissue donation and you can cross state lines immediately so you have. Do you consider your patients or a life. Neither i dont consider patients to be alive because clearly theres no by a couple activity going on theres no batavia as im. They dont fit the definition of life but theyre not dead either if by dead you mean permanently gone or retrieval but the fundamental sense of dead really is that you cannot be brought back youve gone but nutley and i would argue that silly for most of our patients theyre not dead in that sense because we have stopped the condition from deteriorating and from you know electron microscope studies of the brain from scans from other research on our patients and on some im an animal tissue we know that in many cases we are preserving the structure of the brain sufficiently well given what we know of memory that we are preserving memory and personality. We cant bring anybody back today because we dont have sufficiently advanced technology we can of course quote preserve vers tissues and revive them there are dozens of types of tissues sperm eggs heart valves blood vessels skin cells corneas are lots of tissues weve barbara served and brought back and used as well known so to go from a single tissue type to a whole organ like a kidney or liver or heart is currently on the very edge of possibility we cant quite do that were very close by going from a whole organ to a whole organism like a human being or any complex animal is also beyond our ability to reverse the process we can do it in very simple organisms we actually did some research recently with a microscopic called c. Elegans and we were able to actually teach a very simple task squire preserve it rewarm it and actually remember the tusk so we showed that it actually preserve memory just. When will people start coming back and thats something that i can only guess at i would be amazed if it was less than thirty years for anybody and i would be. Disappointed was more than two hundred fifty so these are very large range i would guess it really depends on so much depends on how Much Research we do how much funding goes into Regenerative Medicine and the aging research we dont want to bring patients back and so we can reverse the aging process. The idea of having myself cryo conserved seems absolutely plausible but it probably doesnt work theres only one alternative to and it is food for worms and to be honest the thought of being preserved in a giant thermos doesnt really appeal to me at all. And what would it be like to live in a world where all the people you love are dead. Head over to a phoenix housing district reserved for people over fifty five. There i want to talk to a woman who may be able to answer my question. My name is Linda Chamberlain im one of the cofounders of al gore it was started back in one nine hundred seventy two by my husband and myself and weve really spent most of our life involved in and around x. And transhumanism. And im now retired. And my husband is in. Crest aces and al gore this time as are my mother and my father in law. I can remember when my mother was dying of cancer and i told her you know what the next time we see each other were probably going to be im going to have taken you out to a wonderful dinner at the best restaurant on the moon of titan with the best view of the planet saturn and you and i will toast to life as well be together again. And then coming back. Redeeming worry a bit your story of course. As an atheist. I had accepted the fact that there is nothing after biological death its just dust to dust youve just gone because i have accepted it doesnt mean that liked it it was just a fact and then i read the prospect of immortality by robert enter who is considered the father of crying on x. And i said wow thats a great idea. Well initially back in the early one nine hundred seventy s. This was considered. A lunatic fringe kind of thinking i mean nobody was actually doing this this was just Science Fiction and so we the problems we ran into was even when we had a member who had made arrangements for the us and. Were at the hospital and were trying to get them released to us so we could do this they just looked at us as if we were just kooks we were just lunatics so i guess youd say that over the last forty years weve gone from lunatic fringe to cutting edge. A lot of people worry well you know immortality sounds kind of good but when i get bored after ive lived a thousand years thats only assuming that you remain at exactly the same level of intelligence as you have right now but if you can think a million times faster. You can there will be so many exciting things for you to explore that right now you would be totally incapable of so i dont think that theres going to be any problem with being bored this can be more to do more to learn work find out. What those are going to be good. Sure it could be im not at all convinced of this kind of resurrection. Perhaps when you reach a certain point you should make way for others and not become a burden to anyone or see that its got your eyes stand in front of the mountain venerated by the apaches when they got older they climbed up to the summit and waited for testicular switchy with. Everything about the way we have structured our society is based on us living for certain at a time on average seventy years or so so the idea of how long were in school and or in university or college how long we work before we retire the is just in of marriage the idea of having children and the rhythm of having children a place in one generation all of this depends upon a group of People Living for a certain period of time and then moving on and making way for the next generation and those you want to live forever those who want to say were going to be the generation that discovers the elixir of life i say forget it were generations that gone forget all the generations there could come in the future we we theres one single tiny thin layer of life i going to rule it all forever and that seems to me selfish and matt. Steven cave is right mortality is the dream of a crazy egotist my investigations are pointless i cant nor should i be able to escape the gray. So i decide to return to the tried and true methods of battling the process of aging. At the Fitness Studio i run into an old friend i havent seen for years but catching up on news is sobering he suffers from a degenerative nerve disease that limits his mobility was to me if i should show a. Really good young. People to whom to do something my take a lot of medication made by the media i mean to him ok to die rather than a scene because the disease and the doctors say no hope for a cure or so what are you sure of that. But. Seeing my old friend gets me to thinking trying to stop or slow the bodys degeneration is a matter of urgency even essential for some people the Scientific Research and technical aids may offer a great deal of hope for those with severe physical disabilities. I resolved to carry on with my research and pursue the third path to immortality that of the soul. Is seen the to me what hannitys stories that promise we can live on in the body both have real problems while the soul bridges this gap this always says maybe youre not just this body that has to die maybe theres something more to you something that is by its nature indestructible by its nature immortal. So its still a very popular view and yet despite that were finding new ways of telling us now of the story using the science and technology of that day. The concept of the soul can liberate itself from the bondage of the body is not new. But a version for our times can be found in the radical ideas of the transhumanist movement. To learn more about that ive come to budapest to meet julio prisco a physicist who worked for cern. With us once that you have a psychic pain some transhumanist believes it is possible and desirable to improve life with the aid of technology. In the study in terms of immortality that doesnt mean living to the age of one hundred fifty rather than eighty. It wants hannity means living for a million years and his side order to live a million years youve got to leave biology behind and remove into a phase of existence that is within the realm of robotic soul cybernetics that what you do is make a copy of your brain with all its thoughts your dispositions healings memories and fears and once all that data has been saved then i can leave this biological body and be transferred into a robot. Were you so i could have a copy of my brain made violet in a computer and install it later in a new artificial body. But is it actually possible to replicate whats in my brain. Ive come back to San Francisco to meet randall combe a prominent specialist in this field. Hand and related mind or brain even be a mind that is a living organism that has a sense of self and all of that i mean theres no good reason to think that there isnt that it isnt that its is it a continuation of me its a continuation of my life my existence i think if there are two ways of attacking that problem there is the philosophical question of what does identity even mean and what would it mean if there are if you suddenly split if you split into two persons two minds which one would be you and if you think it through far enough then mostly the solution mostly the answer is both of you are you really you. And so if i could copy myself onto an artificial platform then i could make other reproductions and bring them back to life on different devices like my cell phone or my tablet. That theyve sold like we made the person whose mind has been digitally i filed it becomes part of that computer they dont want which would be able to run onto official intelligence. Agencies i went on to say. You know i just point the brain and Artificial Intelligence will have melded so much that it becomes impossible to tell them up. Your me a man a machine become one. De de de joria oh prisco so youre more than jr presuppose ideas of immortality or be will during and fascinating. But im not convinced by the idea of uploading my consciousness onto a computer to the brain i think that im also a body not just a brain cancer thing but i think im not sure i could live without my body or accept m. S. E. I just say because ive got a functioning body and thats not true im going to say that. Virtual life in a replacement body or a robot might be wonderful for their own. Good about it. But find the quest to develop a suitable replacement for a diseased or no longer functioning biological body interesting. Is there anything already available. Are we close to seeing the creation of an artificial body. The record polytechnique. In switzerland is a leading institution in the field. A replacement body has to be able to interact with the x. Journal world and have its own body awareness this robotic hand developed by doctors investor me cheer and his team has been provided with a sense of touch a breakthrough that could bear old new advances in the field. And yeah. Were drawing on typical thing as we all do. We take up an object in our sense of touch tells us how firmly we should grip it with. We know that people who have had a hand amputated have great problems because that information is missing. In limits the use of the prosthesis with the broad market problems are tremendous from a psychological or neuro psychological standpoint too because the hand itself remains a foreign object for the patient. Or. Another key component for an artificial body is the ability of the brain to communicate and interact with the machine. In this case has many. Conductors which except the signals. Is transferred through the wire here and then you simply write it in the computer professor millan steam is actually succeeded in getting an exoskeleton to move by giving it mental signals the brain provides the signals and the artificial legs move. Ok. I think that these will not happen in the next two or three days will take a least five to ten. Because the for only two. Avatar feel i dont think that this solution is to have it detach after i think that the dream is to have my own body with all its limitations being in power would do a movie. That for me their real future their real wall their reality here i am back again for the locking patient is not that some detach. Do things for them but that their own body we all have any meat ations augment it with some kind of grow body suit. Can do whatever they want to. My main mission is to have people. Disappear. Now it is clear that this same technology could be used to in. Your body or mine even if we dont have any kind of physical disability because they could have a third arm. A fourth leg that would allow me to do things that they would not be capable to do without those devices. You know. Just how much can this interaction be perfected how precisely can the brain communicate with a mechanical Electronic Device because the mechanic would be a stronger in the fusion of the it and that is difficult to say really difficult because on the one hand i dont know everything about the brains capabilities to learn new things and on the other we dont know where technology will take it. We hope to understand more about both aspects in the next twenty thirty or forty years. Sic a liberal facility and i asked him where that but it was to according to professor were a long way from constructing an artificial body. To have it so i think hes right and i like his perspective. Is that of we shouldnt worry so much about the future so we should concentrate on helping the people who can benefit from mechanical its not. Friends i have been able to build. The transhumanist dream of liberating themselves from their bodies may seem strange but its still fascinating and may even be valuable but its far from being realized. The present day version of transmigration of souls as a way to immortality. Itll be decades before that happens and that may be too late for me. But there is a fourth story and its the idea that we can live all through. Echoed the relieve in the world and this is the legacy story. Has two basic forms one is cultural legacy in and the other is biological legacy and for me the the icon of cultural legacy is a caylees we know that as he sat on the beach in front of troy he faced a decision he knew that if he stayed to fight a troy he would win eternal fame but he would die so he would have to sacrifice this life in this body the here and now. Or he could go home and live a long and happy life as king of the mining kingdom hunting assigning children etc and famously he chose to to stay at troy and fight and and he died and here we are three thousand years later still talking about him so he was he got what he wanted. Now the last many people prefer the more traditional form of legacy that is biological legacy this can be having children einstein said we are like leaves on the tree of life and one generation passes but we live on in the next. Well its clear that we can project ourselves into the future in a way through our legacy but we have to ask is it really immortality the fact that were talking about achilles the fact that there are statues of him or brad pitt is playing him in a hollywood movie does that mean hes reached a life is he has less of a corpse because hes a famous corpse. So that. I agree with stephen came genetic material is not the way to immortality as woody allen says or you know i dont want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen i want to live in my apartment but if a school or even a mere but. Ive got to confess for better or for worse the four routes to immortality even in their present day and scientific guises are an illusion eternal life is impossible for the moment but how can a person bear to live day by day in the ominous shadow of the fate that awaits them. Is that every historical period no matter how powerful the immortality story there were also quiet voices who didnt believe who were skeptical and so when we look at these voices i think they make something of a fifth narrative the fifth story but its very different. To the others because while the other four stories the poor mortality stories having common is that they denied death they say death is not inevitable or death is not real and this big story it accepts the reality of death but it says even though death will come for us it is wrong to be afraid of it this bit of you says the fear of death is natural nothing could be more natural. But it is not rational it doesnt make any sense the first person to clearly express this was the greek philosopher epicurus he said death is nothing to us because when we are here death is not and when death comes we are god. Im trying to follow the wise words of stephen cave and epicurus and shake my fear of death but what about my fear of growing old. I returned to the nursing home to learn more about how my grandfather lived in his final years. Ones that are. You mean this is where my grandfather spent the last years of his life before you could barely see or hear he was isolated from the world. I find that terrible. Day every now if i mean that i see but only the. Know but there he was nearly blind and couldnt hear much was in fact a kind of isolationism let me down and always will let me go. But thanks to his zest for life and positive attitude he compensated for that with friendships kobe southie often said now i am very often but he tried to take every day as it came to living day to day that wasnt a problem for him but i thought they were like witty obviously good thats a comfort to me and im happy for him. I thought that was. What. During my quest for immortality ive at least grasped that i wont be going anywhere with my body and ive come to realize that i belong to a species humans. Im part of the human race i feel solidarity with them and the thought of making space for the people who come after me no longer seems so on bearable. Yes in the end ill probably end up here with my name engraved on the headstone under those of lance esthers. Cut. Better but still as degree says ive got a fifty percent chance of living forever so them hos. Once a victim of the cultural revolution now a celebrated bach interpreter pianist. After over three decades in exile she now returns to her native china with a very mixed feelings. Show me how boss defeated mt. And then fresh d. W. Look at me speak your language tell you about them. For content in dari pashto and. Specs for returning our web special refugio journeys like germany and the prospects for those returning home. And join the discussion on t w dot com and on facebook. Prospects for returning. To the w make for mine
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