Kinda reminds me of Star Trek, with the Trills, you know those people who have these huge slugs inside them and that was who they are. Or that movie "Transcendence" about the guy who had his personality and stuff downloaded into a computer before he died. That would be interesting but why? Idk I like the flow of life but idk if I would want to be immortal. Depends on how I feel 20 years from now I guess, if I live that long.
The idea of my consciousness in a computer scares me cause someone could so easily just come along and trash the hard drive. Would I have any means of defending myself? Maybe by that time, computers will have access to technology that protects it a la Smart House. of course the human body is already pretty vulnerable anyway; there is physically nothing protecting me from being slaughtered in public, just people's sense of ethics and social propriety. I think it will be more socially acceptable to trash a computer than commit murder, humankind's ethical thinking will have to change to recognize trashing a computer with a human consciousness in it as murder. Another science fiction show that covers this concept is Black Mirror. human consciousness is replicated, in several episodes, into things called "cookies" that then inhabit computers. In most episodes that feature them, the cookies are abused in various ways because those responsible do not view them as conscious beings that need to be respected, even though they are. People's consciousness replicated to live inside a machine as a slave, people's consciousness replicated to punish them by torture, a woman's consciousness stored in a. teddy bear that ends up abandoned.... There is one episode though that shows a positive side to this concept, San Junipero, where elderly and disabled people can escape into virtual reality for a few hours a week and eventually choose to stay eternally. But at the end of the episode I was like "some religious fanatic who is against this could just bomb the place where the cookies are stored and then what? do they cease to exist?"
Wow yeah I heard about Black Mirror, but I didn't know what it was about. That's sad though, damn. And it's a good point about someone trashing the hard drive. All the more reason to just let nature alone. Human beings have such huge brains we couldn't handle using all of it but the thirst for knowledge is also like quest for power. We have a lot of power as humans but we can't do everything. Many want to, though, many want to be God. The ego is tricky and insidious sometimes. Dying is not really death. I believe energy can go back to the earth and trees and all when people die. Who needs computers when you got that? Well, atheists believe when you die that's it, it's over, your whole soul, your essense, your energy dies with you. Probably why so many fear death. So many just can't handle not knowing everything. The uncertainty is scary. Religious beliefs like Heaven and Hell seem simple to those who believe that but not everyone does. It freaks people out to have "certainties" questioned and left unanswered. Everyone wants to feel safe with a sure thing. But that doesn't exist. Nahhh I will just go the way nature intended it, hopefully by natural causes... they can create computer games with characters in computers all they want lol but leave human souls alone. Makes for some entertaining shows and movies though!
We don't know that everyone has to die, but we know that so far, everyone has. My son is a IT geek and he's obsessed with what you talk about in the above posts. He's convinced that eventually there will be a way to transfer a persons consciousness into a computer.
False, not everyone has died so far. everyone currently alive has not died yet and might live forever. probably not but we don't know for sure. We have no way to be absolutely sure that all the currently living people will inevitably die, it is just the most reasonable assumption based on our observations of the human body and history.