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Cure Death Without Overpopulating Earth

Transfer consciousness into robots, send them to worlds inhospitable for bio-life
  [vote for,

You can't cure death without figuring out where to put all these ten thousand year olds. Boca would fill up pretty quick. So after you've done the obvious and transferred their consciousness into cyborgs you kick them off the planet with a job.

Colonize your new home. Here are your tools: 1- A very very long life.

2- Your reproductive system. Your old body's genetic info in storage ready to make babies once you make your new home ready for them to survive in it. In a million years or so.

3- Lots and lots of other old brains in shiny new robot bodies to play shuffle board, checkers and terraform with.

You'll need the purpose of reproduction because without the ticking clock of death, the human mind will slow down such that to our current eye, it would appear that they haven't moved in ten thousand years, even though they're actually reaching for the remote, but since they live forever, they're in no rush.

We live by the clock, that sword of Damocles that hangs over our head saying every day "32.4 years left Bob, tick tock, tick tock." With no such impending demise the human mind would do the same thing a kid does when he's told he has 6 months to finish that report for school: procrastinate.

Eternal life will need purpose. Your mind will say "What's on the agenda today?" if the answer is "Same as yesterday, sit here and watch the suns rise and set." that active mind is going to rot without purpose and shut down anyway. Life needs to live and reproduce, hence the artificial robo- wombs and preserved DNA material for future generations.

So here's how a human would live their life:

1- Born on Earth, be a goofy little human sproutlet for about 150 years or so. You enjoy your childhood, educate yourself, marry if you wish to do so, raise your children if that's your choice then spend the later years thinking about what you want to do when you grow up.

2- Once the life programming in your cells is gone and you've replaced most of your body with petri dish organs, it's time to chose your next body. It will be beautiful. A magnificent reconstruction of you in the prime of youth only made out of vastly superior materials.

4- And off you go. Your childhood is over, Mother Earth has kicked you out of the house and it's time to get to work. The planet will be a long way away, perhaps a million years of travel time, but with your ability to expand and contract time consciousness, it'll seem alike a few weeks, or minutes, or seconds. You get to choose what you perceive. Remember, you're in no rush. You've got millions of years of life ahead of you. Your body is eternal as long as you have the replacement parts.

5- Despite being a super human cyborg, impervious to cold, heat, pain, darkness, age etc, you'll still have challenges. This is good, because all that you are, consciousness, will need this or it will shut down. You will turn this God forsaken hellhole of a planet into a glittering paradise in which your bio children will run and play.

Now excuse me for sounding syrupy and like a Hallmark card, but you will be rewarded with love, the power that runs the world. I'm not being "spiritual", hippy-dippy or weird, the bond between the parent and child is the force behind the drive for survival. Whether your a human, a bear or the penguinoid from Analon 17 in the Sphinctroid system, core to life's survival programming is the imperative of reproduction. We get rewarded for this job by lots of fun feel good chemicals in our brain that I will, for the sake of brevity, refer to as love. Ok, was that cold and scientific enough to make up for that brief moment of sickening, gag me-with-a-spoon treacle?

With this approach, man has the shackles of death cast aside and he is free to populate the cosmos at his own pace, the way guys like to do things.

We will truly be able to say "Hey, I'm working on it. Don't rush me!"

doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

404 transcription error... https://en.wikipedi...ploading_in_fiction
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 29 2015]

People Zoo http://glitch.news/...n-a-people-zoo.html
“Jeez, dude. You all have the big questions cooking today. But you’re my friend, and I’ll remember my friends, and I’ll be good to you. So don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I’ll still be nice to you. I’ll keep you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for ol’ times sake.” [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 29 2015]

Our Robot Future: We need purpose https://youtu.be/KZ...Fg9Gi69MCFdrn2r7FVP
A thing I did about we, needing purpose [Ian Tindale, Aug 29 2015]


       Allow me to be the first, to call " Magic ! " upon this idea.   

       No, please don't thank me, I'd do it for anybody.
normzone, Aug 28 2015


       "Fuckin' A right." Doctorremulac3   

       And by the way, there's already a planet entirely populated by Earth robots. Mars.
doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

       "Excuse me sir, I hate to disturb you from your long nap, but the universe is about to die from a hest death. Could you set loose some demons to push some atoms around?"
RayfordSteele, Aug 28 2015

       So what happens after the universe does this heat death thing? (assuming that's what you mean) What happened before the big bang?   

       Answer: Nobody knows. Point is, not sure it's worth worrying about or even planning around. So what do we do in the meantime while waiting for the answer to life the universe and everything? I say we tinker with existence and see what we come up with.   

       Gotta do something with this universe we've been given. It's just sitting there, seems a shame to waste it.   

       I say we create Syntho-Heaven. You get eternal life, it's up in the sky. Umm. What else does Heaven promise? I'll double that. You want harps? We got harps. You want wings? Uhh, yea ok sure, we got wings. At Doctorremulac3s Syntho-Heaven, the price for eternal paradise is so low, it's a sin!   

       Ok, this post has gotten a little too weird even for me. Never mind.
doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

       doc: turn this concept into a high SF. The treacly intro is exactly as you describe. However a few thousand years changes a "person" and it turns out the main challenge of interest to an immortal cyborg is to how one can make those other scumsucking cyborgs crawl in abject submission.
bungston, Aug 28 2015

       Any money in writing novels? I'm a pretty good speller most of the time.   

       LOL, that's such a "guy" plot, but yea. I'd much rather see your idea than some syrupy love fest.   

       Ok, live forever and beat the hell out of those other guys! (Maybe I'll have t-shirts printed up)   

       Seriously, I'd be much more interested in reading something with some cool battle scenes. And to those who are afraid the future will be peaceful and boring? Don't worry about it.
doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

       //reading// Give John Scalzi a shot.
FlyingToaster, Aug 28 2015

       My God, this guy's got like a million books out. I'll check out the best rated on iTunes.   

       And hey! I got a bun after only about 45 minutes of typing! Woohoo! Take that Kurt Vonnegut! In your face Ray Bradbury!
doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

       yes well, I can't remember the name of the series - something about the geriatric set being given shiny new rifles and bodies - they're less than 5 feet away but then I'd have to actually stand up.   

       [somewhat later... "Old Man's War", go figger]
FlyingToaster, Aug 28 2015

       That bun, sir, is my gift to you.   

       Howevertheless, it is likely that the problem of longevity versus overpopulation will be solved by the usual method of making immortality available only to the richest 0.001% of society.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015

       Thank you Max, but if it's a pity bun... eh, I'll take it.   

       Is money still going to be a thing in ten thousand years? I don't know, asking. I was wrong about hover boards so I don't want to speculate. Wait, maybe that was Back To the Future.
doctorremulac3, Aug 28 2015

       //Is money still going to be a thing in ten thousand years?// I shall be bloody pissed off if it isn't.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015

       I suspect it will be a thing, but most people won’t have it other than what the government gives them in the form of negative taxation in our robot future, due to automation removing most jobs.
Ian Tindale, Aug 28 2015

       //I suspect it will be a thing, but most people won’t have it ... due to automation removing most jobs.//   

       The idea that jobs are connected with money in the first place is bizarre.   

       [Ian], jobs have never been a way to make money, any more than knitting has been a way to build battleships.   

       Important amounts of money never have been, and never will be, obtained by means of jobs. Equally, important jobs never have, and never will, earn significant amounts of money.   

       So, it is very unlikely that the automation of jobs will have any serious impact on serious money.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015

       But I highly doubt thst money will have much value without the value add that time brings.   

       If everyone has so much time on their hands, how does this time/money thing work?   

       Why work on something today when I can put it off to tomorrow?   

       Syntho-heaven + time travel = some paradoxical religion in which Jesus came to us truth and life by destroying the religion of the day and replacing it with something that was more easily dismissed when the hard science came around.
RayfordSteele, Aug 28 2015

       Thankyou. I do my humble best.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015

       Ah - we seem to be talking at cross porpoises.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 28 2015

       Strange. Porpoises always seem to me to be the happy go lucky type.   

       In some respect this concept seems rather baked by any number of sci-fi novels.   

       Add in a network to merge everyone into the MIND and now you have some Eastern religion.
RayfordSteele, Aug 28 2015

       No probs, live this life, prepare and jump/duck the mind void at the end. I'm sure you could aim for a robot if you wanted.
wjt, Aug 28 2015

       There are currently two, (very wealthy) people in the process of downloading enough of their own thought patterns into AI simulations of themselves which will continue to learn for them until we have figured out how to merge consciousness with machine and have their copsicles thawed.
They did a TED talk about it not too long ago.

       It's kind of a cool concept but sounds depressing as hell to me, to be immortal and trapped in the fourth dimension...   

       What would I wear?   

       //sounds depressing as hell to me, to be immortal and trapped in the fourth dimension... What would I wear?//   

       It's gonna be a while so I'd dress for comfort. Pajamas and slippers. Might want to bring something to keep you occupied. Do you like sudoku?   

       You actually bring up a good point. Let's just say that all this IS possible someday. That all we are, our consciousness really is something that can be duplicated and stored by billions of on off switches. If our mind can be moved into a machine, that machine can continue the task of being human. But if we don't have a task, what's the point? Think you're bored waiting for two hours at the airport? Try ten thousand years with nothing to do. Really not a goal worth working towards. The thing is, if you're going to supercharge your ability to complete the tasks of being a human being by life extension, you'd better be clear on what that task is.   

       So what is the meaning of life? For all life forms it's simply to survive, breed, expand the domain of their group and die. This is nature's programming. If that's somehow un-satisfying, well, nature doesn't really care what we think. So we're imbued with purpose as biological beings. What's the purpose of a machine? This is where futurist that warn of machines destroying us someday lose me. My question to the machines is "Why?" For machines to want to kill us, they need to care. Machines don't care. Well, sort of.   

       My dad used to tell me when I'd get mad at some electronic or mechanical device for not working that "Machines hath no malice" to which I'd said at one point "I think they do. Not the same brand of malice as a person, but they basically don't want to work. They want to decay out of this form we've given them and decompose, fall apart and rust into their most basic elements. That radio, for all intents and purposes WANTS to turn to dust." (My dad would tell me to quit whining and being a smart-ass and just fix the damned thing.) So when machines come to the point of awareness, where will this purpose come from? Unless we tell them to pretend they care about us enough to kill us, they're not going to bother. The futurists have anthropomorphized future computers as much as any religious person who's decided God wears sandals and a toga.   

       Machines don't care. So what happens when we effectively become machines? We will be carrying with us our consciousness, but we'll need to carry with us our programming as well. Otherwise we'll just be machines, perfectly happy to decompose, fall apart and turn into dust, what machines are effectively working on every moment of every day.   

       So since the purpose is to procreate, bringing those tools will be necessary for us to literally not die of boredom.   

       Of course where it gets really weird, is when all that genetic material, dna and such can be synthesized, perhaps a new life form designed with specifics to the task at hand for every new organism. Then you get into really weird scenarios. Can you push a button and duplicate yourself? Can your brain contain some kind of super group of you with say, 1 million duplicates of your consciousness? How would they get along? Would Would you have to appoint a president? A parliament? I don't know why anybody would ever want to do that, but if it were possible, we as humans are all about trying everything at least once.   

       Anyway, obviously nobody knows what the future holds, but I really doubt we're going to be sitting around on Earth as our only home planet watching reruns of "Here Comes Honey Booboo" in a million years.
doctorremulac3, Aug 29 2015


       Uh, it can and it is. Synthetic biology is picking up nicely, and people are working on plenty of customised organisms for a variety of porpoises.   

       We're still squeamish about engineering people (plus we're still crap at it), but in 20-50 years' time we'll have gotten over that. People will expect to be able to edit their genome just as they expect to be able to make music mashups.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 29 2015

       Yup. No stopping it, and the changes, once we get our mitts on the process is probably going to switch from evolutionary to revolutionary.   

       We should be wary of any revolution, but I'm hopeful that when we start engineering people in the lab, rather than on the dating circuit, we'll get more good than bad out of it.   

       Anyway, something I have absolutely no control over. I'll just be sitting back in my hover chair saying "Why, in my day, we had marry a woman to make babies!" "Ewww, great, great, great, great grandpa! That's gross!"
doctorremulac3, Aug 29 2015

       I think the goal would still be procreation, but on a planetary scale. In other words turning dead worlds into living ecosystems to see how they evolve.
I often wonder if that may be a missing component to the Panspermia concept.

       There are a few sci. fi. books which delve into multiple machine consciousness copies of the same person being able to be in several places at once to share information with their other selves at some future point in time.
The Long Earth series is one good one, (Pratchet and Baxter), the character Lobsang attains the status of the first AI to gain personhood and splits his consciousness to travel the infinite Earths.

       //I think the goal would still be procreation, but on a planetary scale.//   

       Absolutely, it's in our DNA. Just as surely as mold is going to discolor your tub, man is going to turn dead matter into organized living matter. We are the reverse of death.   

       Rather than reading all these books in bits and pieces, I need to get the short attention span Cliffnotes versions of ALL books dealing on the subject.   

       Why is information currently such a hassle to assimilate? I feel like a cavemen here.
doctorremulac3, Aug 29 2015

       Wiki has a pretty good list, [link] but there are a few I've read that aren't on it. I just spent the last half hour or so trying to find one of them, but the character had a very strange name I can't remember, and the author wasn't one of the sci fi Giants that spring to mind.   

       I'll probably remember in about a week or so at some completely inappropriate time.   

       Our goal is not procreation. That’s bollocks. We don’t have a goal. What we (life forms) do is die, but with a temporal skew, or delay, between being born and dying. In that delay, stuff happens to information. Information is not us, and is mainly outside of us, but we affect it. One way that human progress occurs is that we are spectacularly stupid, as well as being intelligent. This allows us to get things incorrect. This changes information. This takes the state of information from where it was to where it is, and then to where it will be next, burning through life along the way.
Ian Tindale, Aug 29 2015

       [+] I don't offhand recall a sci-fi story with this particular premise. Category change though, m-f-d in current.
FlyingToaster, Aug 29 2015

       //Our goal is not procreation. That’s bollocks. We don’t have a goal. What we (life forms) do is die//   

       I like to think that some of us are very temporary entropy reversers before we shed our carcasses.
We create.
Scale doesn't really matter, we are a random mote of order in a chaotic universe. It's pretty cool, just way messy.

       //Our goal is not procreation. That’s bollocks. We don’t have a goal. //   

       True, true and bollocks, respectively. I have a goal.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 29 2015

       I hate sports, so I don’t have any of the accoutrements. Wait, I hate French words, too.
Ian Tindale, Aug 29 2015

       Aha! Anson Guthrie.
Take that Murphy!

       That does it. More than 72% of this site is incomprehensible meaningless wibble. Seeya.
Ian Tindale, Aug 29 2015

       Yes, but, [Ian], that 72% includes your contributions.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 29 2015

       On the downside, nobody would be able to reach the on/off switch.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 29 2015

       //Anson Guthrie// Heinlein's middle name is Anson... I don't recall the story though.
FlyingToaster, Aug 29 2015

       It was A Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson.   


       I may have not clarified what I meant. As a species, group or life form, our goal is procreation, not as individuals obviously.   

       If I were saying an individual's innate and paramount goal is to procreate I'd be saying people like Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and my all time favorite character from history, Nikola Tesla, were a bunch of losers who failed their only purpose in life.   

       Far from that, these men formed critical links in the progression of man from dumb animal to creator of worlds.   

       But on the other hand, if the rest of the species took the path these great men took, there wouldn't be much point to their accomplishments because we'd all be extinct.   

       Ian, I watched your piece on needing purpose which I thought was very good, but it confused me. I'm not seeing where we disagree. You pointed out, quite correctly in my opinion, that without purpose, caused in your example by a largely automated and human job free infrastructure, we run into some issues. We already see this "malaise" to some extent in parts of our society. We already have people who don't work. There are people who have lived the majority of their lives and had large families without a job. Our society has set up a system where a person will be given housing and food by the state. Not getting into an argument about if this is good or bad, but it is a fact. I bring it up because I believe this is the future for all of us.   

       No matter what you do, your job has an automation replacement horizon. It's a simple formula. At the point where it becomes cheaper to have technology, a robot, an automated system or a computer program do your job, your job is gone. No jobs are safe, it's just a matter of how far off that replacement horizon is.   

       So what do we do when we are faced with a "lack of purpose" that a robot society presents us? Well, that will be a challenge, like past challenges of finding shelter, safe water to drink and food, those who persevere and solve the problem will survive, those who don't will not. Us H.Saps are are pretty amazingly hardy creatures. If we can survive cave bears, droughts, famine and plague, I think we'll figure out boredom on a Saturday night.   

       My bottom line is I'm wildly optimistic about the future of man. Perhaps, reading between the lines of some posts, this rises some ire, which is fine, but my opinion is just one of many. I personally think we're on our way to the stars and it's going to be an amazing adventure.
doctorremulac3, Aug 30 2015


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