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University Receives $5 Million Grant To Study Immortality
Hugh Pickens writes "Humans have pondered their mortality for millennia. Now the University of California at Riverside reports that it has received a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation that will fund research on aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior. 'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer, the principal investigator of The Immortality Project. 'No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy.' Fischer says he going to investigate two different kinds of immortality. One is the possibility of living forever without dying. The main questions there are whether it's technologically plausible or feasible for us, either by biological enhancement such as those described by Ray Kurzweil, or by some combination of biological enhancement and uploading our minds onto computers in the future. Second would be to investigate the full range of questions about Judeo, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other Asian religions' conceptions of the afterlife to see if they're theologically and philosophically consistent. 'We'll look at near death experiences both in western cultures and throughout the world and really look at what they're all about and ask the question — do they indicate something about an afterlife or are they kind of just illusions that we're hardwired into?'"
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
I predict the only thing that will really happen here is that some "scientists" with questionable ethics burn through 5M! Despite their grand claims, there is zero research need here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Already happening. Her name is Henrietta Lacks. She's recently turned 98 and will live forever in various labs around the world.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Why are they funding research that's already been published?
Principal Investigator
Results and Discussion
Sex Also!
I don't know who said it--when I heard it it was attributed to Mark Twain but that doesn't seem to be right. At any rate, someone asked a nonbeliever whether he wasn't terrified by the thought of nonexistence after death. He replied, "Not at all. I experienced nonexistence for eons before I was born, and I enjoyed every minute of it."
I wish them luck with their $5 million, but I don't think they'll be any wiser than Omar Khayyam:
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d-
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Well, maybe not; but for those with a moderately open mind, you really should -- before concluding -- examine the works of two people. Dr. Lawrence LeShan and Dr. Daryl J. Bem have done some tremendous work on the subject of ESP. LeShan, in his early years went further, working with some extraordinary people, under genuinely scientific conditions. I simply can't imagine someone reading LeShan's The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist and having anything negative to say.
If ESP ever does prove itself an authentic protocol, then its tendency to allow the mind to accurately observe remote locations could suggest a breach in the presumed dependency of consciousness on the form. I also recommend visiting the CIA's CREST database and searching amongst the many thousands of Remote Viewing documents that have been released. Despite rational assumption, there's more than redaction lines to look at.
This is a fascinating subject and I am not telling anyone to make any assumptions either way, but please look at quality research that's available before making conclusions.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations.
No, there isn't. Without a mechanism to transfer information outside of the dying brain, it is simply destroyed, and anything else is merely wishful thinking.
Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable.
We already know that brain is a biological computer with multiple chemical and electrochemical interfaces to the rest of the body. This is understood very well, and was understood even before people had computers and therefore could not yet compress this explanation into such a short statement. The only things unknown about it are the structure and mechanisms, and it's extremely foolish to claim that it breaks the laws of nature known through Physics and Chemistry.
Any alternative to the above is LESS LIKELY TO BE TRUE than "we are all in The Matrix" or "We are in a dream of a sleeping God" hypotheses, what means that it can not be a part of any realistic philosophy and should be relegated to the realm of fiction. All support for this nonsense comes from superstition and nowhere else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
No, there is experimental data as well. Lobotomies are a result of "change the brain, change the intelligence/personality" experiments. There is direct experimental data, not just external observation.
Learn to love Alaska
Most of the great geniuses of recorded history lived when not professing a belief in an afterlife would get you to that afterlife (or lack thereof) more quickly.
Learn to love Alaska
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there. A good first assumption, but not more than an assumption. The currents state of scientific research is that it is completely unknown what consciousness is and what intelligence is. Both can be described by their effects, but to speculate on where they reside and whether they are generated there is very much premature at this time.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer". Actually we do understand that human minds can do things that computers cannot do, and that is currently fundamental, i.e. not a question of the power of the computer, but a lack of any implementable theory that could make a computer do these things. I have been following the state of AI research for quite some time (and know some people in it personally), and this is what comes out when you ask people on the side or actually read the papers. Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built, yet every healthy human being has strong/true Intelligence. (Never mind the BS some researchers publicly say to get funding.) This is actually a rather strong indicator that either the brain is far more than a "computer" or that intelligence and consciousness are not generated solely/fully by the brain.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not any type of proof. If you damage part of a TV set, it stops to exhibit all of its features, for example may stop to display color. That still does not mean the picture is generated in there. So while the brain plays a part like any good interface does, it is not enough to explain the overall thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yeah, usually decomposition, and depending on the humidity levels, mummification. But you won't be around to experience any of that, being dead. You'll have exactly the same point of view as you had before you were conceived. You remember all that stuff from the beginning of the universe until you were born? No. Well that's exactly what will happen after you die, until the end of the universe...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Not necessarily.
Necessarily. Having been dead for quite a few minutes myself, but being lucky enough to have been reanimated, I can assure you absolutely nothing happens. No white lights. No angels. Nothing. But then again who are you going to believe - me, who is not trying to sell you anything, or the guys/gals who want you to a) buy their book or b) donate money to their church?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Will his consciousness cease to exist or will his ability to show us it exist cease?
That's sort of a serious part of the question. Does someone's consciousness really cease to exist or just our ability to perceive it.
So, I died and went to Heaven. When I arrived, St. Peter looked me up in his great book. "I see you haven't been entirely good when you were alive. It seems you killed a kitten when you were young. But don't worry. That's not enough to keep you out. However, as punishment, you will have to pleasure this woman for the rest of eternity." At this point, he introduces me to a fat, ugly, smelly old hag. I almost got sick. But hey, I made it to Heaven!
A few months later, with this hideous broad in tow, I ran into CowboyNeal. And he was walking arm in arm with Megan Fox. "Not fair!" I thought. I knew CowboyNeal when he was alive. And I don't see how he rates such treatment. So I want to see St. Peter. St. Peter dusted off his great book and looked at several entries. "It seems", he said, "Megan killed a kitten when she was on Earth as well."
Have gnu, will travel.
That's not an answer. And I think you know it as well as I do.
First, I'm quite familiar with computability and Godel's incompleteness theorems, and they have nothing at all to do with the question. There is absolutely nothing in them that implies AI is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. In fact, most AI researchers probably understand those subjects far better than you do - and they still consider AI to be a worthwhile problem to study.
Second, the current state of the art in AI is irrelevant. You didn't just say there were things computers can't currently do. You said there are things no computer can ever do, no matter how powerful. That claim needs to be justified.
Third, AI has actually been making dramatic progress in recent years. After decades of following paths that didn't lead anywhere, researchers have finally found some techniques that enabled major breakthroughs. If you want to see practical applications of that, just look at Watson or Siri or the like. A mere five years ago, both of those would have been science fiction. Today they're real.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The medical definition, which is quite easy for me since I'm also a physician. Death can be reversible or non reversible. The legal definition of death is the minute I put my signature to the death certificate. Either way clinical death is defined as lack of pulse, blood pressure, breathing deep tendon reflexes, etc. It is identical in both reversible and non reversible cases, which is why efforts are usually taken to reanimate a recently dead person, especially if the death happens in front of medical staff and is not obviously irreversible (example, decapitation, a body that is obviously cold/stiff to the touch, etc).
but we know the brain doesn't 'die' immediately.
The tissue does not "die", however it stops working almost immediately when blood flow stops. The brain consumes huge amounts of oxygen and will immediately deplete any oxygen present in the blood. That's the reason people will suffer "transient ischemic attacks" (sort of like a mini-stroke) even with partial blockages of their carotid arteries - because there is a momentary disruption of blood flow. Now you could argue that a cell that is still alive in that it can maintain the permeability of its cell membrane for the moment, is not technically dead and you are correct. However that cell, at that moment, is not "working". All remaining ATP is being used to try to keep the cell alive, and it has no energy spare to do things like depolarize and transmit signals.
Maybe the angels, lights and funny guy with the beard show up later.
Buddy you are free to believe whatever you want. For me I just remember not finishing a sentence in the ER, and then being ventilated with a crowd of colleagues and nurses around me a few minutes later. There was no passage of time. There was no pain. There was no suffocation. In fact when I "came to" it took me a while to realize what had happened, with the obvious disbelief that it was happening to me. I do remember a certain disconnect from my body and it took a few minutes to register all the poking and prodding that was going on as IV lines were inserted, etc. And after a few minutes the incredible pain from the burns I had from the defibrilator started to be felt. But it's an amazing feeling to not have to do your own breathing. But I wouldn't read more into it than that. At least now I know that death is completely painless, and I'm not afraid for next time. I was taken completely by surprise, so now I figure that no one realizes when they are going to die. Oh they might feel really ill, or they might realize they are in real danger. But there's no "I'm dying" sensation. It just happens, quite suddenly, and just like the exact moment when you fall asleep, you have no idea exactly when it happens. But all the religious stuff I chalk up to people making shit up because they want/need attention, or they have to justify their beliefs to others in order to convince themselves that it's "true".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests). It gets co-opted and used in some hand-waving to try to explain away consciousness as an "emergent property" (and abstraction) of there being lots of neurons in the brain.
Unfortunately, it also entirely misses the point -- consciousness is not an abstraction, it is atomic (as you sit staring out of your eyes -- which by definition is the only way you have of knowing that you have a consciousness -- you experience only the consciousness and not the neurons).
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use!
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
Philosophy is like math but without rigor, or even an equal sign.
Jesus Christ! It's like you're purposefully ignorant! Philosophy is ridiculously rigorous. Maybe you should try reading the literature. Hell, read wikipedia. Anything is better than ignorance.
This is why I don't bother trying to offer corrections -- idiotic posts like this can only come from someone so unfamiliar with the subject that I'd need to write a fucking textbook one post at a time before I could even begin to explain how moronic the post was!
If you don't know anything about the subject, just shut the fuck up. Spreading bullshit like this isn't helping anyone. You know what it's like? It's like listening to a creationist talk about evolution -- pure, unadulterated, willful ignorance.
Now go find an undergrad textbook and start learning. You've got a long way to go.
Required reading for internet skeptics