having genetically modified human to become immortal sounds good

Not immortal, but virtually immortal. When the super-rich get these treatments and open the gates to live for ever. It will still be possible to kill them. They will not be immortal.

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pelagicAustral 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely, especially if you can mine them for electricity to keep datacentres going

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z3t4 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

probably easier to clone, and then somehow transfer memories to the new body. This made me think - is it our memories that create our consciousness?

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kakacik an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't get why many folks are missing the obvious issue - even if you manage all that, its at most a copy command, there is never actual move. You yourself would be staring at this other guy, probably being envious since form now on its him / her having the future, while the actual you who wrote that comment is about to be removed for disposal. And whole representation of universe and Earth you have in your mind would die with you.

You would have to move every electron traveling in between each neuron into exactly same place, same momentum etc. All of them in the same time obviously. I stress the word move. In a system that is constantly moving on molecular level at crazy speed. Even that is only valid in case our consciousness is just electron cloud at given moment travelling in the brain. Maybe its more, all interconnected.

How you want to move that. The science for that won't be around for millennia, if ever (there may be quite hard constraints on quantum level in similar way speed of light is hard limit for Star trek utopias, universe doesn't rearange itself and change its laws just because of our emotional wishful thinking). Once we can do that, it means we could mess with telomeres, DNA etc with 100% precision and knowledge so this will be a moot point. Don't hold your breath for this.

	▲	usrnm 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The simplest way to "fix" that is killing the original one as a required and atomic part of the process. Make it so that there is no moment in time when both are awake and concious

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RetroTechie an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really. Having offspring & re-mixing genes in them, is one way how species (not individuals!) adapt to a changing environment.

Bacteria do that in ~hourly intervals, humans take decades, some plants can span millenia.

So you could say the 'update interval' is tuned to how fast-changing a species' environment is. A balance between energy 'wasted' on re-building individuals from scratch, vs wasting energy by having poorly adapted individuals.

So 'immortal humans' to me reads as: humans optimized for a caveman hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while living in Star Trek like tech-heavy surroundings.

If anything, humanity would be served by shorter lifecycles, until tech advances stabilize somehow (?). Okay a few individuals living way longer could be good. Eg. billionaire tech bros taking that spot? Please nooo!!!