Ask Lemmy

I was just thinking last night about life a bit. It's a bit of a tangent on how I got there if you'll allow me.

I was following this little thought experiment about consciousness and uploading your brain to a digital format (for later downloading into a new body, or whatever normally happens in sci-fi) and about teleportation (break down and reassemble in the new location style, or copy and destroy style). In either case, since this new consciousness is a "copy" of the original, rather than a continuing of the original consciousness it's not really YOU. If either of these technologies truly existed in those ways you're really killing your current self in order to create some copy that fully believes it's the original you.

In order to not do that thing, obviously for teleportation it'd need to be the bending space or worm hole type thing but for the brain you'd probably have to do some sort of gradual synthetic replacement while maintaining consciousness and even then there's no way to 100% prove that the person is still their original self. Nevermind that this all hinges on the idea that you're even yourself every morning when you wake up. Are you actually that same consciousness or just a new one that wakes up each morning. Either way, that thought took me down the road of how it would probably start which is in the medical field for repairing brain damage and whatnot. Rather than full brain replacement it'd be something like, oh the part of your brain that's responsible for memory is damaged, here's a surgery where we replace that part with some kind of synthetic neuron shenanigan which can restore your ability to create new memories or whatever. THAT thought took me to the idea that, sure for something like that you're still you, just maybe with better memory - but what if we're talking about the parts of your brain that are related to your emotions. Maybe you know, logically, that you love your wife (or whoever) but you don't FEEL that love anymore. Or maybe your joy and happiness and anger are all dulled. When does that stop being YOU. I also had the side tangent thought that when this technology does ever exist, it's probably going to be used to treat mental disorders and probably not be done very ethically, at least at first.

Either way, the point of that is this tangent eventually brought me to the idea that this technology is likely only going to be in it's infancy during my lifetime and that's with an optimistic projection. At my age, and frankly my lifestyle, I'm not likely to survive to the point where there's some runaway longevity, where each year we're extending our lifespan by more than that year. I'm also probably not going to survive to a time where we CAN upload a consciousness, or replace our meat brain with a long lasting synthetic brain. Meaning, I AM going to die. I probably have another 30-60 years if I'm lucky and then I'm returning to the nothingness that I came from. I've already missed out on a ton of life, things I won't be able to ever do (and I'm not even old). I may spend that time working jobs I hate, never getting to some point of "financial freedom" where I can finally do the things I never had the means to do. Hell, I may never find the love of my life, or raise children, or have anyone remember me after I'm gone. Eventually I'm just going to run up against the unbreakable, immovable wall that is my own mortality, and for what?

So then I thought about how people cope with this idea. Eventually a lot of your hopes kind of go away as each thing becomes impossible. Some people find meaning in the finite life, that if you were to live forever then every day becomes meaningless, but that thought just doesn't do it for me. Some people seem to find comfort in just being a ripple in the cosmic ocean. I guess that's the point of something like stoicism, you know you can't control that this happens, you only control your reaction to it. No wonder people have created religions since the dawn of our existence, it becomes quite a scary thought as you get older and start facing the reality of it and the idea that there is some eternal happiness in the afterlife could be comforting. Or, at the least, that you're facing this wall with a bunch of other people. Of course this has also been used to control people. Sure, you're spending your life toiling away now for me, but don't worry! after this lifetime it's eternal happiness!

Anyway, I think I'm coming around to the idea that I'll have to drop some expectations I had about my life and just focus on enjoying the time I have left.

(By the way, despite this sounding depressing, I'm doing fine mentally. It was just a coincidence I was thinking about this last night, at 3am of course lol, and then saw this post the next day.)

"Sir, this is a Wendy's"