Four ways to achieve immortality

Herodotus

As I have explained in previous posts in this blog, some people believe that we are about to achieve immortality. Of course, depending on the way to do it, it might not be applicable to everyone, because it would be very expensive. Perhaps it would just be feasible for a few enormously wealthy people. Or maybe it could be done in a more democratic way, so that everybody would be immortal. Many journalists, politicians, tycoons, philosophers, futurologists, and even ordinary people are convinced that sooner or later all of us, or at least some of us, will be immortal.

This is not a new hope; it comes from deep in the past. One of the oldest known masterpieces of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written 4,000 to 4,500 years ago, deals with the quest for immortality. We also have the legend of the fountain of youth, which would give immortality to those who drink from its waters. According to Herodotus, it would be located in Ethiopia, although some say that Ponce de León searched for it in vain in Florida.

Plato (by Raphael Sanzio)

Almost all religions and some philosophies (such as Plato's) assume that man is immortal; if not the body, at least the soul. Christianity predicts a future resurrection of the body. But this kind of immortality would be obtained, either by means of reincarnation, or not in this life, but in another life. This is not what this post is about: immortality here and now, immortality achieved by means of science and technology.

Those who believe that we are about to become immortal have devised no fewer than four procedures through which this goal should be achieved. In this way, if one fails, we’d still have the others. Of course, immortality would have limits: an accident could still kill us. No matter how immortal you are, if your plane falls from 10,000 meters high, or you fall into an erupting volcano, or if the sun decides to become a red giant, it would be difficult for you to survive.

In this post I will list the four procedures. In subsequent posts I will analyze them one by one in more detail. These are the four procedures that have been proposed to achieve immortality:

1. Increased life expectancy. In the last two centuries, as a result of impressive advances in medicine, our life expectancy has been growing. At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy at birth was around 50 years in developed countries. Currently it exceeds 80. So, in 120 years it has increased by about 30, which is equivalent to an increase of 0.25 years per year. The supporters of this method believe that the increase in life expectancy is accelerating, and hope that it will soon reach a rate of one year per year, when a critical point will be reached and we will all be immortal.
2. A new immune system with nano-robots. It is hoped that we will soon be able to design tiny robots that, introduced into our blood, would be capable of attacking and destroying every pathogenic microorganism, as well as every cancer cell, leaving the normal body cells and the non-pathogenic bacteria intact. When all diseases disappear, we will automatically be immortal.
3. Hybrid human-robot beings. As our organs deteriorate, we would replace them with artificial organs, thus becoming a cyborg, an intermediate being between man and machine. The process could be repeated as many times as wished, potentially making us immortal.
4. Downloading our memory and our consciousness in a computer or a robot. Thus, we could go on living indefinitely inside the hardware. In this case, in addition, backup copies could be kept, so that, in the event of an accident, the dead person could be recovered and put back in operation with a minimal memory loss. As usual, science fiction had already predicted it. See Cory Doctorow's novel Down and out in the Magic Kingdom.

Is there any chance that at least one of these methods will work? We will talk about it in the next four posts.

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread on What is Immortality?: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca