Three kinds of eternal life
Pseudophilosophical introduction
As is known, the fate of a person after death is in the jurisdiction of religion, and not philosophy. There are not so many options. At the conclusion of the process of life, the Abrahamic religions offer a choice of hell, heaven, and, in some versions, purgatory. Eastern religions believe that a person follows the path of rebirth - after death, the process is restarted with a higher level of privileges and, with due diligence of the individual, can become systemic - dissolve into nirvana. All religions, even the most pagan, agree with the thesis about the separation of the soul from the body. But some imply the presence of the root process init, which is the root cause of all things given to us in sensations. At the end of the system's life cycle, before the upgrade, an inventory of the processes that have been worked out is assumed - not everyone will be taken for the next release.
Philosophy is much more timidly invades questions of being after death. However, she voices her main question: “What comes first - the idea or the matter?”
Materialism believes that our sensations more or less adequately reflect the existing reality. The hard-nosed materialists believe that it is wasteful to keep the completed processes: so died, nothing after death. In the field of IT, the triumph of materialism is manifested in the principle of Wysiwig (what you see is what you get).
But in the 21st century, the balance has swung in favor of one of the branches of classical German philosophy — objective idealism. The world is filled with the consciousness of the Great Glittering Absolute, which forms the operating system. Living beings in it are processes that are born and die. On the way, a completely realizable technology of replacing real sensations with an arbitrarily wonderful virtual one.
')
After the implementation of virtual realities created by creative teams for consumer groups, no one bothers to implement the model of subjective idealism - an individual virtual reality capsule that can read clearly formulated thoughts directly from the brain. Everyone can become a demiurge and create their own world directly from the Big Bang (in our world, as we know, in the beginning was the Word). For lazy and / or novice gods in the online store will be sold blanks - mirobasov, pumped through a couple of billion years of evolution.
For philosophy, the trouble is that we are ready to accept any answer to its main question as the right one, and after a reasonable time - to embody the working prototype in software and hardware.
Singularity
The twenty-first century offers those who wish to reflect on the existence of many more modern worldviews and even synthetic religions. For example, astrology quite successfully replaces futurology - the study of predicting the future. This is a thankless task - it turns out badly. Futurologists have three main scenarios for the development of the future:
• Everything will be worse than it is now (apocalypse, catastrophe, the death of mankind).
• Everything will be approximately as it is now (the end of the history of Fukuyama and other conservative scenarios).
• Everything will be completely different, but change will not necessarily lead to the best.
Since futurology is a product of the industrial twentieth century, a favorite horror story in it is a technological singularity. The fact is that the accumulation of scientific knowledge goes with constant acceleration. Extrapolation tells us that by 2045 this process will accelerate so much that modern humanity cannot control and even be aware of it. From this it is concluded that either the initiative in the field of progress will turn to artificial intelligence, or humanity will change its form of existence. Strugatsky for posthumans used the term "ludeny".
Unfortunately, nobody is engaged in the purposeful social planning of the new society after the death of the USSR. Therefore, the most likely result of the development of our society is the easiest to study in the literature of the genre cyberpunk.
The only ones who are preparing the world to accept the achievements of progress are the adherents of the transhumanism movement. Philosophy can’t call this line of thought, it’s rather a world view - technological optimism. As an illustration of the difference between the worldview of transhumanists from the worldview of ordinary people, one can bring their attitude to doping. In the mind of the average person the word "doping" has a negative connotation. The transhumanist also welcomes developments in this area, as they expand the capabilities of the human body.
There is a religious context in transhumanism because of its attitude to death: the current generation of people is no longer obliged to die. The technologies of the future will provide physiological immortality to everyone, you just have to wait a bit, and work in this direction.
In Russia, transhumanists are most visibly represented by the “Russia 2045” social movement. This movement is not scientists, but social activists who defend the thesis that developments in life extension are the most important. They even have a calendar plan for the development of Avatar technologies.
www.2045.ru
Predicting the future is a thankless task, but we will try and discuss the main versions of achieving immortality already during our lifetime.
Life is the first. From neural interfaces to cyborg
The most obvious way to repair the human body is to replace the diseased organ with an artificial one. A hook instead of a hand, a wooden leg instead of a severed human, dentures and implants ... In the 21st century, intelligent mechanical prostheses, controlled by signals from a living brain through a neural interface, help a person. Now we have to go through a rather boring stage of deciphering the electrical signals of the brain and creating translators to control the prosthesis. The feasibility of reading brain signals was proven as early as the 60s of the 20th century: with proper training, the subjects transmitted verbal messages to Morse code through an encephalogram. Today, limb prostheses that are controlled through a neural interface are no longer fiction.
But what will happen next? The course of thought is pretty obvious. Than to produce multiple, incompatible parts to the human body, it is easier to immediately manufacture a life support system for the brain with a neural interface. This will immediately reduce the cost and simplify the process - it is enough to transplant the brain once into an artificial skull in the exoskeleton, rather than invent the modules of the liver, heart and other things that are embedded in the human body. Transhumanists call this device "Avatar B". As scientists timidly suggest, the brain is able to function for 200-300 years, so cyborgization will be a good investment in extending life.
The social consequences of this are pretty obvious. After a short period of experiments on the rich, artificial bodies will begin to produce in factories. A social standard will be quickly imposed on states - to provide those who suffered in wars, cataclysms or accidents with serial bodies at public expense (or for health insurance, which is not important).
20 years after the appearance, cyborgization will finally become the lot of unprivileged classes of society. It makes no sense to transplant the liver to someone who is still in a couple of years will bring it to cirrhosis, it is easier to replace the filter.
Nobody forces to make bodies necessarily anthropomorphic. Removable designs of life support modules will allow you to change the form of punishment for criminals - work for 20 years with a port crane without access to the Internet. For more socialized members of society, a business of leasing exotic bodies for extreme hikes and new sports will develop.
In general, everything is like in humans.
Not everything is so bad, the main mass will still be poor, but honest cyborgs, performing simple, useful work instead of current guest workers. Cyborgized retired soldiers will begin to form veteran unions and private military companies.
Second life. Virtual reality given to us in sensations
The social problem of unnecessary people is already realized by modern society. 20% of the population can produce everything you need for the remaining 80%. Capitalist society now uses, above all, social methods to solve the problem of utilizing the free time of these people. This is the creation of jobs in the service sector and an increase in the number of office plankton. A fresh idea, which is used only as an experiment, is a monthly basic income - a fixed amount that the state pays a person to find for himself. She does not solve problems of utilization of free time. But computer games solve it. It is easier to turn off a person from life by giving him a joystick in his hands than to create a workplace for him.
What's next? Of course, the "Matrix". For its implementation, we need neural interfaces that transmit signals that imitate real sensations to the brain. Today, humanity is experimenting experimentally with vision, but already there is confidence in the solvability of the problem.
Optimization of hardware in the worlds of virtual reality will develop in the same way as modern data centers. General system of ventilation, energy and blood supply, blades for compact placement of many human brains in a confined space.
Social consequences? Weight. Peter Watts in "False Blindness" a person can go to the virtual world forever, abandoning the body. He equips the world in a virtual space, and his brain in a compact form is located in a special repository. In the Black Mirror series San Junipero, virtual reality serves as a refuge from death, but this is a slightly different story.
It is quite possible that the “life to order” service will appear - an opportunity to order a virtual fate from birth to death with a predetermined level of adventure in life, career, wish fulfillment. There will be a notion of educational life, during which a person will work out his life and professional skills. Perhaps there will be a special fate for the ascetics - going into virtuality to perform spiritual practices. As Pushkin used to say through the mouth of Mephistopheles:
"You desired glory - and achieved,
I wanted to fall in love - and fell in love.
You took a tribute from life
Was you happy? ”
Life is the third. Barankin, be a man (bio)
The news about printers printing human organs is no longer news. The world will reverse the ability to print DNA on a 3D printer .
We, IT-specialists, have already prepared everything necessary for this technological revolution. The first violin will be here for geneticists and physicians. You can read about this future with Paul de Filippo in the book Ribofunk. I hope that genetics will not rush things and will not force humanity to spawn instead of traditional methods of reproduction.
The world in this scenario will change gradually. At first, older generations will get used to the fact that they should go to the clinic and change their livers. Then middle-aged people will start to put in their limbs all sorts of useful devices like a multitool. Finally, young people will start having fun and easily changing their bodies in beauty salons every day. The body is a sheet of paper. Well, when friends do not recognize you tomorrow.
And the dinosaurs are extinct
I diligently bypass the topic "Avatar B" - transfer of human consciousness to another carrier. This task is even more difficult than creating artificial intelligence. And this is the answer to another philosophical question about the knowability of the world. Can we create a creature that can think for ourselves? And will this not end the role of humanity on Earth? What happens to the consciousness when copying to a new carrier - will it die or will it pass into an artificial brain? How will the more perfect beings created by us perceive us? 90% of human culture consists of discussing the issues of reproduction and sharing food. "Lyudenam" it will be just not interesting. Will they take care of unfortunate imperfect primates or will they discard us?
The singularity mentioned above is not a property of human culture alone. Life on the planet is also developing with acceleration. At first, the copy mechanism worked - each next individual was an exact copy of the previous one, except for mutations. Then sexual reproduction appeared, which greatly increased the speed of searching for combinations of genes. With the advent of mankind, the progress of life ceased to rely only on iron, the process of development began to be controlled by software — mind. At first it was a selection and eugenics. And finally, we come to the level of conscious programming of living beings - direct DNA printing. Or maybe the technology of transfer of consciousness to other carriers, the creation of a common swarm consciousness and the possibility of collective thinking will work? I do not know if humanity will survive in the era of singularity, but the world will change dramatically during our lifetime.
In preparing the article used the materials of the game live action "Deus Ex Machina" .
As is known, the fate of a person after death is in the jurisdiction of religion, and not philosophy. There are not so many options. At the conclusion of the process of life, the Abrahamic religions offer a choice of hell, heaven, and, in some versions, purgatory. Eastern religions believe that a person follows the path of rebirth - after death, the process is restarted with a higher level of privileges and, with due diligence of the individual, can become systemic - dissolve into nirvana. All religions, even the most pagan, agree with the thesis about the separation of the soul from the body. But some imply the presence of the root process init, which is the root cause of all things given to us in sensations. At the end of the system's life cycle, before the upgrade, an inventory of the processes that have been worked out is assumed - not everyone will be taken for the next release.
Philosophy is much more timidly invades questions of being after death. However, she voices her main question: “What comes first - the idea or the matter?”
Materialism believes that our sensations more or less adequately reflect the existing reality. The hard-nosed materialists believe that it is wasteful to keep the completed processes: so died, nothing after death. In the field of IT, the triumph of materialism is manifested in the principle of Wysiwig (what you see is what you get).
But in the 21st century, the balance has swung in favor of one of the branches of classical German philosophy — objective idealism. The world is filled with the consciousness of the Great Glittering Absolute, which forms the operating system. Living beings in it are processes that are born and die. On the way, a completely realizable technology of replacing real sensations with an arbitrarily wonderful virtual one.
')
After the implementation of virtual realities created by creative teams for consumer groups, no one bothers to implement the model of subjective idealism - an individual virtual reality capsule that can read clearly formulated thoughts directly from the brain. Everyone can become a demiurge and create their own world directly from the Big Bang (in our world, as we know, in the beginning was the Word). For lazy and / or novice gods in the online store will be sold blanks - mirobasov, pumped through a couple of billion years of evolution.
For philosophy, the trouble is that we are ready to accept any answer to its main question as the right one, and after a reasonable time - to embody the working prototype in software and hardware.
Singularity
The twenty-first century offers those who wish to reflect on the existence of many more modern worldviews and even synthetic religions. For example, astrology quite successfully replaces futurology - the study of predicting the future. This is a thankless task - it turns out badly. Futurologists have three main scenarios for the development of the future:
• Everything will be worse than it is now (apocalypse, catastrophe, the death of mankind).
• Everything will be approximately as it is now (the end of the history of Fukuyama and other conservative scenarios).
• Everything will be completely different, but change will not necessarily lead to the best.
Since futurology is a product of the industrial twentieth century, a favorite horror story in it is a technological singularity. The fact is that the accumulation of scientific knowledge goes with constant acceleration. Extrapolation tells us that by 2045 this process will accelerate so much that modern humanity cannot control and even be aware of it. From this it is concluded that either the initiative in the field of progress will turn to artificial intelligence, or humanity will change its form of existence. Strugatsky for posthumans used the term "ludeny".
Unfortunately, nobody is engaged in the purposeful social planning of the new society after the death of the USSR. Therefore, the most likely result of the development of our society is the easiest to study in the literature of the genre cyberpunk.
The only ones who are preparing the world to accept the achievements of progress are the adherents of the transhumanism movement. Philosophy can’t call this line of thought, it’s rather a world view - technological optimism. As an illustration of the difference between the worldview of transhumanists from the worldview of ordinary people, one can bring their attitude to doping. In the mind of the average person the word "doping" has a negative connotation. The transhumanist also welcomes developments in this area, as they expand the capabilities of the human body.
There is a religious context in transhumanism because of its attitude to death: the current generation of people is no longer obliged to die. The technologies of the future will provide physiological immortality to everyone, you just have to wait a bit, and work in this direction.
In Russia, transhumanists are most visibly represented by the “Russia 2045” social movement. This movement is not scientists, but social activists who defend the thesis that developments in life extension are the most important. They even have a calendar plan for the development of Avatar technologies.
www.2045.ru
Predicting the future is a thankless task, but we will try and discuss the main versions of achieving immortality already during our lifetime.
Life is the first. From neural interfaces to cyborg
The most obvious way to repair the human body is to replace the diseased organ with an artificial one. A hook instead of a hand, a wooden leg instead of a severed human, dentures and implants ... In the 21st century, intelligent mechanical prostheses, controlled by signals from a living brain through a neural interface, help a person. Now we have to go through a rather boring stage of deciphering the electrical signals of the brain and creating translators to control the prosthesis. The feasibility of reading brain signals was proven as early as the 60s of the 20th century: with proper training, the subjects transmitted verbal messages to Morse code through an encephalogram. Today, limb prostheses that are controlled through a neural interface are no longer fiction.
But what will happen next? The course of thought is pretty obvious. Than to produce multiple, incompatible parts to the human body, it is easier to immediately manufacture a life support system for the brain with a neural interface. This will immediately reduce the cost and simplify the process - it is enough to transplant the brain once into an artificial skull in the exoskeleton, rather than invent the modules of the liver, heart and other things that are embedded in the human body. Transhumanists call this device "Avatar B". As scientists timidly suggest, the brain is able to function for 200-300 years, so cyborgization will be a good investment in extending life.
The social consequences of this are pretty obvious. After a short period of experiments on the rich, artificial bodies will begin to produce in factories. A social standard will be quickly imposed on states - to provide those who suffered in wars, cataclysms or accidents with serial bodies at public expense (or for health insurance, which is not important).
20 years after the appearance, cyborgization will finally become the lot of unprivileged classes of society. It makes no sense to transplant the liver to someone who is still in a couple of years will bring it to cirrhosis, it is easier to replace the filter.
Nobody forces to make bodies necessarily anthropomorphic. Removable designs of life support modules will allow you to change the form of punishment for criminals - work for 20 years with a port crane without access to the Internet. For more socialized members of society, a business of leasing exotic bodies for extreme hikes and new sports will develop.
In general, everything is like in humans.
Not everything is so bad, the main mass will still be poor, but honest cyborgs, performing simple, useful work instead of current guest workers. Cyborgized retired soldiers will begin to form veteran unions and private military companies.
In 2055, Jean-Paul Dubois sued his spouse, Courtney Dubois, accusing her of criminal infiltration of personal information and unlawful access to the management of his ocular video camera implant. The court refused to Jean-Paul Dubois to satisfy the claim and prosecute Courtney Dubois on the grounds that the eye implant was a jointly acquired property, and not part of the body of Jean-Paul Dubois. The court then decided that the personal consciousness, and not the physical body, is a sign of an individual. The body and its improvements should be considered as property.
Second life. Virtual reality given to us in sensations
The social problem of unnecessary people is already realized by modern society. 20% of the population can produce everything you need for the remaining 80%. Capitalist society now uses, above all, social methods to solve the problem of utilizing the free time of these people. This is the creation of jobs in the service sector and an increase in the number of office plankton. A fresh idea, which is used only as an experiment, is a monthly basic income - a fixed amount that the state pays a person to find for himself. She does not solve problems of utilization of free time. But computer games solve it. It is easier to turn off a person from life by giving him a joystick in his hands than to create a workplace for him.
What's next? Of course, the "Matrix". For its implementation, we need neural interfaces that transmit signals that imitate real sensations to the brain. Today, humanity is experimenting experimentally with vision, but already there is confidence in the solvability of the problem.
Optimization of hardware in the worlds of virtual reality will develop in the same way as modern data centers. General system of ventilation, energy and blood supply, blades for compact placement of many human brains in a confined space.
Social consequences? Weight. Peter Watts in "False Blindness" a person can go to the virtual world forever, abandoning the body. He equips the world in a virtual space, and his brain in a compact form is located in a special repository. In the Black Mirror series San Junipero, virtual reality serves as a refuge from death, but this is a slightly different story.
It is quite possible that the “life to order” service will appear - an opportunity to order a virtual fate from birth to death with a predetermined level of adventure in life, career, wish fulfillment. There will be a notion of educational life, during which a person will work out his life and professional skills. Perhaps there will be a special fate for the ascetics - going into virtuality to perform spiritual practices. As Pushkin used to say through the mouth of Mephistopheles:
"You desired glory - and achieved,
I wanted to fall in love - and fell in love.
You took a tribute from life
Was you happy? ”
The high-profile case, which began to be heard in 2065, was the trial of Marie Le Bré’s claim to the Golden Gate state, demanding that she recognize her virtual program as a first-order relative, simulating her wife. As Le Bray stated in the courtroom: “I’m not crazy and I don’t consider Daisy a man, but I would be pleased if she’s the one who lived in our virtual house after my death”
Life is the third. Barankin, be a man (bio)
The news about printers printing human organs is no longer news. The world will reverse the ability to print DNA on a 3D printer .
We, IT-specialists, have already prepared everything necessary for this technological revolution. The first violin will be here for geneticists and physicians. You can read about this future with Paul de Filippo in the book Ribofunk. I hope that genetics will not rush things and will not force humanity to spawn instead of traditional methods of reproduction.
The world in this scenario will change gradually. At first, older generations will get used to the fact that they should go to the clinic and change their livers. Then middle-aged people will start to put in their limbs all sorts of useful devices like a multitool. Finally, young people will start having fun and easily changing their bodies in beauty salons every day. The body is a sheet of paper. Well, when friends do not recognize you tomorrow.
- Daughter! When will I have grandchildren ?!
- You know, papa, Vasya and I decided to create a shark with camel humps and a scorpion sting from our genes. She will have Vasina eyes and my gills.
And the dinosaurs are extinct
I diligently bypass the topic "Avatar B" - transfer of human consciousness to another carrier. This task is even more difficult than creating artificial intelligence. And this is the answer to another philosophical question about the knowability of the world. Can we create a creature that can think for ourselves? And will this not end the role of humanity on Earth? What happens to the consciousness when copying to a new carrier - will it die or will it pass into an artificial brain? How will the more perfect beings created by us perceive us? 90% of human culture consists of discussing the issues of reproduction and sharing food. "Lyudenam" it will be just not interesting. Will they take care of unfortunate imperfect primates or will they discard us?
The singularity mentioned above is not a property of human culture alone. Life on the planet is also developing with acceleration. At first, the copy mechanism worked - each next individual was an exact copy of the previous one, except for mutations. Then sexual reproduction appeared, which greatly increased the speed of searching for combinations of genes. With the advent of mankind, the progress of life ceased to rely only on iron, the process of development began to be controlled by software — mind. At first it was a selection and eugenics. And finally, we come to the level of conscious programming of living beings - direct DNA printing. Or maybe the technology of transfer of consciousness to other carriers, the creation of a common swarm consciousness and the possibility of collective thinking will work? I do not know if humanity will survive in the era of singularity, but the world will change dramatically during our lifetime.
In preparing the article used the materials of the game live action "Deus Ex Machina" .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/402907/
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