Anyhoo, I’m not convinced about this “live forever” science. As the T-Shirt says: “who wants eternal life, I’m bored enough as it is.”

S.

Much transhumanist thinking these days seems to centre on the possibilities in genetics and technology linking up to create a longer-lasting body, possibly infinitely longer-lasting. If we have already succeeded in lengthening the human lifespan many times, we should extrapolate those technological advances into the future and add an exponentially increasing pace of discovery to boot. In case it doesn’t come in time for us, there’s cryonics. This place near me has a good reputation.

S.

John: I’m not sure there is an engineering problem. There is a philosophical problem too: what is the mind? If the mind is inherently dependent on the body then surviving bodily death might be impossible. Perhaps our transhumanist friends will have to find a way of making the body live forever (or at least the brain). At least one major school of thought in philosophy holds that the minid is nothing other than the product of a brain – it doesn’t and can’t exist independently. For now, I agree with them.

S.

I too thought this was particularly reflective, and actually very optimistic about the law if not death itself. I should mention, at risk of alienating everyone, that transhumanists have shown that there’s good reason to believe death may NOT be inevitable. They describe it as an ‘engineering problem’, since the intact mind is simply stuck inside a body with a finite life, and thus technology is on a track to eventually solve the problem and allow people to live as long as they wish. That may colour this whole debate slightly differently someday! I interviewed Dr. Nick Bostrom on another matter and we touched on other transhumanist issues briefly (see here); it’s an area in which I have a great interest. Anyway liked this piece.