Your children will never have to die!

[Oma]

This relates to my "transporters and mind.soul" thread' date=' though it's even harder to visualise. Once you're uploaded into a computer, and are actually conscious and learning to perceive the world, what would happen if someone copied your "file". You'll have to read the other thread because it's a bloody hard thing to explain.[/quote']

Reminds me about 'Immortalis' by Peter James - about uploading personalities into a computer.

[piepie]

Is that s novel or a futurology book?

 

This Ian Pearson bloke is bit out of date to say the least. I remember Ross from Friends talking about this to the character Elle McPherson - I think it was 1999, and even then it's been covered in Star Trek TNG with Data's "grandad"

[elderbear]

 

Heh... there's no more empirical support for reincarnation than there is for heaven. Still, believe what you will, as long as it doesn't cause anyone's premature death ^^

 

 

As long as you keep looking for empirical support, you will be smug until the day you die.

 

Or informed. Humility is the proper approach to science, just as it is to the spiritual. This probably sounds strange coming from me - humility is one of those things I'm learning.

 

When you are talking about the spiritual, it is about what you believe and about what some other kind person is willing to teach you.

 

If no one will teach you, you will be forever locked out of the spiritual.

 

Fortunately, the spiritual can be approached without a teacher. But I'm grateful for the many teachers I've had along the way. "When the student is ready, the teacher will come." I've noticed that my teachers come in many guises. Boris, you have actually been a teacher of mine - believe it or not!

 

If you go around telling people there is no proof and you don't believe them and expressing all this doubt, why would they help you?

 

Then those people shouldn't be your teachers. For people with a strongly empirical mindset, I recommend Einstein - and Brian Swimme's The Universe is a Green Dragon. Swimme is a cosmologist who unveils the spirituality in cold, hard, non-mystical physical science (not like Fritjof Capra). Worth a read ... you can take or leave his interpretations - but a man who insists that Love is the primary physical force in the universe - and has a solid empirical background to ground the idea in, at least deserves a listen!

 

It is your choice. Be a grounded scientific person, stuck with numbers and computers and writing things down, or open yourself up to the spiritual and learn what it means to be human.

 

I choose both. Numbers are magical - spiritual even. Any spiritual book you can name has been written down. Science is a way of thinking about the universe. It is not in opposition to spiritual experience or interpretation. It is a different way to slice this multi-dimensional experience we call life. For me - mind, spirit, passion, emotion, physical being - all are essential parts of being human.

 

I predict that by the time you are 35 or 40, you will lose all interest in computers and science. Around 35 or 40 you will realize that, yes, you are going to die. There is no way to stop it.

 

When you realize you WILL die, computers mean nothing. Numbers mean nothing. Video games and Science Fiction TV shows and movies all mean nothing.

 

You will begin to wonder why you are here and what is your purpose. There has to be more than you are just an animal like a cow, here to eat until you die. Or you will think that anyways as the fear of death hits you.

 

It didn't take me that long. But well into my forties I still love computers and science. And my spiritual experiences continue to deepen and broaden. Your mileage may vary.

 

Then, and maybe only then, can you truly appreciate why you want to believe in the spiritual, proof or not. It is then, in the depths of your fear of dying, that you will be so afraid that you will be willing to open your brain and allow someone to show you that there really is a spiritual side to life.

 

Or perhaps out of the wonder of a starry night, out of the awesome knowledge that comes from science, out of the intricacies of math ... perhaps these things will lead one to experience the Love, the Mystery, the Unnamable that draws any who do not resist to the spiritual.

 

Blessed be.

[MrDad]

An interesting thought. Would it be acceptable to upload the minds of criminals like rapists, murderers, and pedophiles for example and create a virtual Hell to punish them for eternity?

[GorunNova]

>_<... which is better? Putting their minds through a virtual hell for eternity (which won't help rehabilitate them), or execute them, permanently removing them from society so they can't harm anyone again? (this assumes they are incurably sick, and no amout of rehabilitation can cure them... there are people like that, and that's who I'm discussing.)

 

Which is right? Which is moral?

 

I'd say, if they can't be cured and will reoffend if let back into the public, that they should be executed as painlessly as possible to save future victims from harm. Gaah... I feel bad saying that, but it's more humane than meaningless torture and fairer than tossing them in a room and feeding them for free the rest of their lives when normal, good people are starving on the streets.

 

Hmmm... on another point, 'going virtual', so to speak, would be an excellent way to solve food production problems. Virtualized people wouldn't need to eat, after all ^^. Maybe an alternative to execution would be to store the incurables I mentioned on their own server, effectively locking them up like we'd do in real life without using up all that food? Maybe even store their 'pattern', back it up, and put it in secondary storage, existing but not in use? (i.e. they wouldn't be -dead- (i.e. their backed-up minds would still exist), but they'd be sitting on disks in storage)

[mcant]

paedophile condemned to virtual hell? cruel and unusual punishment?

 

which opens the discussion of wether or not certain people should be prohibited from taking advantage of this kind of technology = effectively a death sentence and the glorious (spit) human rights act and the ban on capital punishment, outlaws that in Europe

 

and if you ban one group from "eternal life" who decides? who controls immortalirty?

 

plus who controls the main frame that hosts these people? how is it funded? does all property end up in the hands of the hosting company within 3 generations?

 

 

and do computer viruses aquire a whole new meaning

 

plus did this guy watch none of the Terminator films?

 

and where is Walt Disneys head?

 

and does anyone mind if I try an experimental version of this technique on BorisP?

 

 

The one good point is I will be long dead by the time this is practicable, despite previous posters opinions, I did the whole spiritual route in my 20s,30's etc, including the whole indian/thai gig and now pushing 50 I've come to the conclusion I have no idea what is going to happen next, but it doesn't matter!! (deep down 'm still holding out for a horn of mead in one hand and a buxom valkyrie in the other lol) but what ever happens I can't change it, change what you can change and accept what you can't

 

its called contentment

 

ps Don't feed the trolls ;)

[GorunNova]

To throw a more spiritual aspect into this topic, let's talk about reincarnation (I don't believe in it, myself, but it's an interesting thing to think about for those that do believe in it.)

 

When you're backed up, will you -really- be transferred into that backup? If not... it might be interesting to see that backup, with his or her nice new robotic body, come across his reincarnated self a few generations down the line...

 

paedophile condemned to virtual hell? cruel and unusual punishment?

 

Yes... I consider it more humane to simply kill someone than torture them for an arbitrarily long time (much longer than a normal lifetime, given the debated technology). The torture won't undo what the offender has done, and (as I said) I don't think they deserve free food in a cell, or free power in a virtual cell, when normal people are doing without on the streets.

 

Of course, it's a different matter entirely if there is ANY hope at all of rehabilitation... Only repeat offenders that have demonstrated no hope of recovery should be considered in the 'incurable' category... Death of ANY sort shouldn't be taken lightly.

[VonHelton]

So I guess we live to see the first real data's :)

that's quite promising don't you agree?

 

No, it scares the hell out of me!

 

:o

 

 

[MrDad]

What happens when someone decides to 'edit' the virtual world and its inhabitants to 'improve' it and delete that which does not meet his vision. Imagine this power in the hands of Hitler or Stalin.

[quosego]

Sounds to me that the clone wars are coming......

 

Just clone someone and upload a simplified version of the human intellect to it... Which you made out of the downloaded "normal" version.

 

(obey all orders, kill without remorse, don't ask questions)

 

 

 

[GorunNova]

... that's why we HAVE to study this stuff, so we can examine as many possible benefits and problems it could have/cause, and deal with them. Instead of trying to ban cloning, analyze it... study it... discover the good and the bad about it, and deal with the bad. If you bury something, someone else will always dig it up again.

 

Scary or not, we have to face these things down, look at them closely, learn where the problems lie, and solve them before someone else abuses them.

[carcynsdad]

sounds creepy to me. and who would want to live in a box anyways

[ZaphodiLe]

Isn't it simpler to just stop the aging process and make the body rebuild damaged tissue and other stuff. I mean, there must be some kind of hormone or something responsible for aging...

[ZaphodiLe]

... that's why we HAVE to study this stuff, so we can examine as many possible benefits and problems it could have/cause, and deal with them. Instead of trying to ban cloning, analyze it... study it... discover the good and the bad about it, and deal with the bad. If you bury something, someone else will always dig it up again.

 

Scary or not, we have to face these things down, look at them closely, learn where the problems lie, and solve them before someone else abuses them.

 

Very wise words.

[grimace]

Scary or not, we have to face these things down, look at them closely, learn where the problems lie, and solve them before someone else abuses them.

 

This has never been how humanity works. We stumble across some new technology and use it before we fully understand the implications of our actions.

If a particular use of technology doesn't fück up big-time, we keep using it. If not, we stop/curtail/regulate it's usage.

Test-tube babies and the A-bomb are just two examples of this.

 

Short version... we form our long-term impressions of a technology not from study, but through our experiences with the technology.

[oblisk]

Ghost in the Shell anyone?

[Beawulf]

I remember hearing in a documentary that we cant find the reason for bodies aging and dying. Our body replaces all its cells on a regular basis, and this should be able to continue indefinately.

 

Imagine always remaining at our peak :D