Immortal or Not?

pheebs

pheebs

pheebs

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I posted this on my Facebook the other day and I'm intrigued at what others think too...

Scenario: At some point in the future they're able to make human clones of yourself. You live your life and your memories are some how recorded by some form of biological chip which uploads these memories to a "cloud" or "memory bank" so to speak. It's a form of back-up that's like the Mac Time-Machine so not *all* memories are retained, just whatever has managed to stay with you naturally over that period of time (we don't remember everything of our lives after all)

One day you're in a horrific accident and die. A new clone of you is then brought out and all the memories from your last update is uploaded to the clone and they are set on their way.

Does this make you... in a way... immortal!?

O_o
 
nah it would be creating another instance of you - sort of like an identical twin but one that share's your stored memories up until the point it was created

in order for you to be immortal your current instance of you would have to be kept running in some way not merely a copy of it.
 
You would not be immortal. As said, it would simply be a copy of you, with copied memories and thoughts. Exactly like you, but not you.

FYI this is also why teleportation will never work properly - the matter you are made up of will be recreated at the other end, creating an exact copy of you, while the original you will be destroyed.
 
Clone of physical person and mental state at moment of last backup; not immortal. You could however argue that this could be repeated so the continuous clones and backups could be looked upon as an immortal learning chain. Each stage gives the previously backed-up and then restored "persona" a further life to continue to learn and experience.
 
Keanu is already
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And no you would not be.

It could only be considered immortality to an independent observer as to them they would be able to communicate with the same collection of knowledge and thought processes in a familiar body forever.

The clones however would face the same issues of dying and an end to their individual existence as a normal person.

It would be more like a continual sacrifice of clones with no choice in the matter to keep a databank and biological intelligence online.
 
Depends heavily on your view of what exactly constitutes the self and your own consciousnesses.

As a physicality (of limited experience) I would say it would make us immortal as far as extending the existence of the self goes, as the clone would be (I assume) physically indistinguishable from the original and would simply continue the individuals life from the point of death.

The issue is how you are defining immortality really, technically the original still dies so it's not physical immortality at least.
 
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It is very unlikely that we could ever duplicate a human mind. This happens because the brain probably uses Quantum Mechanics to function (a hypothesis so far but, considering other life forms have been shown to use Quantum Mechanics, it's quite likely). In order to make an exact copy of the mind, you'd need to copy and thus know the exact spin and speed of certain particles at the quantum level. Due to the Uncertainity Principle, if you use a tool to find the exact spin, the value of the speed becomes uncertain. Similarly, trying to find the value of the speed makes the value of the spin uncertain.

If you've never been interested in the Uncertainity Principle before, this may sound a bit complicated but what it boils down to is: at the quantum level, you cannot measure things with precision, it's impossible. Since copying a mind requires an exact measurement, it is probably an impossible task.
 
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In Mass Effect 2 when Shepherd was being brought back from the dead, they deliberately did not clone him because whilst New Shep would be identical, he wouldn't actually be Shepherd. If its in a mainstream SciFi game its got to be true!

So im going to vote no.
 
pheebs said:
I posted this on my Facebook the other day and I'm intrigued at what others think too...

Scenario: At some point in the future they're able to make human clones of yourself. You live your life and your memories are some how recorded by some form of biological chip which uploads these memories to a "cloud" or "memory bank" so to speak. It's a form of back-up that's like the Mac Time-Machine so not *all* memories are retained, just whatever has managed to stay with you naturally over that period of time (we don't remember everything of our lives after all)

One day you're in a horrific accident and die. A new clone of you is then brought out and all the memories from your last update is uploaded to the clone and they are set on their way.

Does this make you... in a way... immortal!?

O_o
Click to expand...

I would say that it would make a part copy of the self, but not immortal. Only because we still don't have enough understanding of our own biology yet. If we truly understand the mechanics of consciousness, if ever then we may be able to answer this question with more substance.

But my argument in a nutshell would be that the brain is merely memory & an instrument to be used to figure out problems in reality. If you copied the memories which generated the personality of the person again, where would be that core awareness? The very thing that looks through the lense of you're eyes? We could be missing the core life force from the new entity- it's consciousness.
 
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