On immortality

[dracova]

It's apparently Newton's birthday. I honestly don't care overmuch. However, during the small hours, I thought I was hallucinating when I saw some movement on the Google page out the corner of my eye; it shocked me as though getting tazed in the taint. Not fun. Apparently they decided to animate a falling apple. Had better not pull that shit in the

Comments

[pearlseed]

I got a lame beater--genetics are going to take me, basically cos my own unit will harden up--the plasticity of my heart muscle will diminish and when that capable beat is reduced, then I drown from the inside out--congestive heart failure, can't get enough water off my lungs outta my bod. The drugs I am provided to remove the water will ultimately kill my kidneys--All this pales to utter insignificance...cos I will go

[dracova]

If it helps any, during the past few years they've started experimenting with extracellular matrix seeding. Basically, they take an organ (say, a heart), remove all the cells, and they're left with a translucent, lifeless extracellular matrix of a heart. Then they can take heart cells from a patient, rub them onto that matrix, and leave the thing in a vessel filled with a sort of nutrient soup. The cells populate the heart like a creeping mold, and when that's done, you've got a compatible transplant organ. It's a very, very exciting technology. You see, one could theoretically even take a heart from a different animal (say, a pig), seed it with human heart cells, and it'll work (if you connect the nerves properly). Possibly we could even have completely artificial membranes, resulting in artificial organs - engineered better than the crap nature jerry-rigged together

[anonymous]

Speaking of bullshit immortality, I just finished watching Mnemosyne. If there is any argument against self-regeneration, it is Mnemosyne. I lost count of how many times the main character is killed, tortured, and revived, only to be killed, tortured, and revived again.

At least biomechanoid replacements might remove the feeling of pain for certain parts of the body.

[dracova]

Well, to be fair, Mnemosyne was drama. But I get what you're saying. All of life is a struggle, and to be in a situation where you want to end that struggle but literally cannot is horrible indeed. It's not a problem for us, though... Death is everywhere. You needn't search for it, because it's actually searching for you as is. Besides, engineered senescence is NOT immortality, and certainly not invincibility, which is something that a lot of deathists seem to believe.
One caveat is the possibility of infomorphs... I'll elaborate on that in another post. Ultimately though, it doesn't matter.