If such technologies appear with the help of which it will be possible to gradually replace parts of the brain with a cybernetic one, I will use these technologies on myself. I will replace the rest of my body with a cybernetic one. I don’t care whether it will be me or not. I don’t want to be a human. I want to be a machine.

There is no truth in flesh, only betrayal."

"There is no strength in flesh, only weakness."

"There is no constancy in flesh, only decay."

"There is no certainty in flesh but death.

Credo Omnissiah

I've read a lot of sci-fi about this.

First of all I agree, a copy is not you. Even if it's a perfect copy, which current science says is impossible, it's not the same person as you. I hate a story where somebody says "It's okay if I die, I'm backed up."

You're assuming that electronics are forever. Your brain has lasted your whole life. How many electronics have you owned? Of course you can copy the information to new electronics but there's still entropy. You can extend it for a long time but preserving information forever is really impossible.

The brain could be rebuilt and revitalized and expanded for a long long time if we had the biotechnology. You also assume you need to preserve a part of the biological brain to remain yourself. Eventually you could transfer your consciousness and memories to another medium or create technologies that are not too far from the human biological brain and body. You wouldn't be human anymore but living for hundreds or thousands of years or even more would change you so much it wouldn't even really matter if you were technically human anymore.

Also consider that if you're technically immortal you'd eventually die of a horrible accident, murder, or suicide.

Here's a really interesting video about it:

Though it is conceivable to extend our lifespan indefinitely with sufficiently advanced technology, as more time pass, it becomes inevitable that something will eventually kill you, as Fluttershutter noted. If an indefinite extension of your life is what you seek, then your answer lies within the domain of the empirical sciences. But indefinite is not the same as infinite. Ultimately, attempting to achieve immortality in the corporeal domain is futile, as everything that exists within it are contingent; the very fact that we exist in a domain of becoming, of change, death is inevitable.

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But then that brings us to, how much of the brain can you really replace before it ceases *to be* you? If you do it in intervals, piece by piece, until the entire thing is cybernetic, is that still you? Or do we end up at the issue of it just being a copy of your consciousness again? How would we even be able to tell until we undergo a procedure like that ourselves? Basically just end up with a Ship of Theseus type issue. I do think this way would have a higher likely hood of you retaining your consciousness versus computer upload at the very least. And if we were to use actual new, biological brain lobes that are grown in a lab, instead of cybernetics, I’m certain you’d retain your full consciousness so long as the lobe replacements are done in intervals.

Even as biological entities, we already face the matter of the Ship of Theseus, as the cells in our body gets replaced very regularly. I forgot what the length is, but after an interval of some timespan, every cell in your body gets replaced; strictly physically, you may be a completely different person from when you were born. However, it would be erroneous to say that the you of today and the you from when you were born are disconnected entities; you are definitely a continuation of the you from when you were an infant.

But while I consider the pursuit of immortality to be futile in the physical domain, it is a very different matter when one considers the metaphysical domain; to achieve true immortality, we must fundamentally transcend the realm of the corporeal domain. We, in the corporeal domain, are manifestations of higher principles. Here is a question. Consider the idea of the number "7", and consider a set of seven items. Is either one more real than the other?

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Perhaps if one is strictly concerned with the corporeal domain, the set of seven items may be considered more real with the idea of the number 7, because the former physically exists, whereas the latter is just an idea that has no physical properties. But, I think the idea of the number 7 is more real than the set of seven items, because the latter as a coherent whole is contingent on the idea of the number 7; put in another way, without the idea of the number 7, we would not even recognize the set of seven items as being united by the concept of 7 in the first place -- they would simply be seen as some random collection of items. So, while the idea of the number 7 itself does not physically exist, it is the principle by which all other set of seven physical items exists; while any set of seven physical items physically exists, they do not derive their source of reality (specifically as a set of seven items) from themselves, but from a higher principle (i.e. the idea of the number 7).

And so, I think that the idea of Iforgotmybrain, so to speak, is more real than the particular corporeal manifestation of Iforgotmybrain as a flesh and blood human being; no matter how the physical person of Iforgotmybrain may change through the course of his life, he is still recognized as Iforgotmybrain instead of some random aggregation of cells, because the idea of Iforgotmybrain has many contingent manifestations. To avoid potential misunderstanding, while I say that, for example, the idea of Iforgotmybrain is more real than the corporeal manifestation of Iforgotmybrain, this does not imply that the real Iforgotmybrain as a whole is him as an idea, and that his corporeal manifestation is somehow "fake". Wholistically, Iforgotmybrain is both the idea and the corporeal manifestation; Iforgotmybrain exists simultaneously in multiple levels of reality, of which corporeal reality is the lowest level, and is the one in which we obviously can most readily sense. 

To return to the question of immortality, we see here that there is relatively greater stability of the idea of Iforgotmybrain compared to Iforgotmybrain as a corporeal manifestation; the latter may go through many changes throughout time, but are all united by the idea of Iforgotmybrain which is fixed. This may be speaking roughly, but because the idea of Iforgotmybrain is not subject to change, hence not confined to the domain of becoming, it does not die (for dying is a type of change or becoming), and so it is immortal. And, because the idea of you is you who exist in a higher domain, that is where the source of your immortality lies (and in a domain where change does not happen, time does not exist as a limiting condition -- it is beyond time).

I could have spoke more precisely, but I hope I have sufficiently conveyed what I intended to convey. I say "idea", but, really, to say "essence", "soul" or "principle" would be more appropriate. Such things in themselves do not have physical manifestations much like the idea of the number 7. But, that does not mean that they do not exist; they do exist, but in higher domains that inherently cannot be sensed empirically, but can be understood (at least to an extent) intellectually.

While we can talk about extending the life of your corporeal body indefinitely with the use of science, immortality itself would require you to look beyond the preservation of your physical body.

Immortality can never truly be achieved, no matter how advanced science becomes, because as others have said the laws of entropy forbid it, and it is only a matter of time before something does kill you, it does not have to be related to something like disease, either, accidents where a fatal injury occurred would be sufficient enough to put a permanent end to you, and humans make mistakes, how often you make them is irrelevant because the fatal injury only needs to occur once for death to happen.

2 hours ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

I could have spoke more precisely, but I hope I have sufficiently conveyed what I intended to convey. I say "idea", but, really, to say "essence", "soul" or "principle" would be more appropriate. Such things in themselves do not have physical manifestations much like the idea of the number 7. But, that does not mean that they do not exist; they do exist, but in higher domains that inherently cannot be sensed empirically, but can be understood (at least to an extent) intellectually.

While we can talk about extending the life of your corporeal body indefinitely with the use of science, immortality itself would require you to look beyond the preservation of your physical body.

Unfortunately the soul or essence has not been proven to exist scientifically, some people of religious belief just assume that the human mind can transcend the limitations of the body, but there's not been one conclusive evidence to demonstrate it, assumptions alone are not good enough for science, because opinions need to be based on evidence in the world we live in.

That does not mean people should give up looking for answers, who knows, perhaps law of conservation could prevent consciousness from completely being wiped from existence, we just don't know that for certain. Energy itself being eternal and indestructible is not a good enough reason to make that assumption however, it would be the same thing as saying magic exists because some people claim prayers got answered. Things don't just happen for literally no reason, there is always a reason for why and how things are, we have a thing called cause and effect. Given enough time, science will explain the previously unexplainable, even in cases where it does not, the scientific method should still be a priority.

4 hours ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

Even as biological entities, we already face the matter of the Ship of Theseus, as the cells in our body gets replaced very regularly. I forgot what the length is, but after an interval of some timespan, every cell in your body gets replaced; strictly physically, you may be a completely different person from when you were born. However, it would be erroneous to say that the you of today and the you from when you were born are disconnected entities; you are definitely a continuation of the you from when you were an infant.

Actually a really good point I didn't think of. I believe it's something like 7 years for all our cells to be replaced. I suppose some form of cellular therapy could be used to extend our lives as well.
 

4 hours ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

Perhaps if one is strictly concerned with the corporeal domain, the set of seven items may be considered more real with the idea of the number 7, because the former physically exists, whereas the latter is just an idea that has no physical properties. But, I think the idea of the number 7 is more real than the set of seven items, because the latter as a coherent whole is contingent on the idea of the number 7; put in another way, without the idea of the number 7, we would not even recognize the set of seven items as being united by the concept of 7 in the first place -- they would simply be seen as some random collection of items. So, while the idea of the number 7 itself does not physically exist, it is the principle by which all other set of seven physical items exists; while any set of seven physical items physically exists, they do not derive their source of reality (specifically as a set of seven items) from themselves, but from a higher principle (i.e. the idea of the number 7).

And so, I think that the idea of Iforgotmybrain, so to speak, is more real than the particular corporeal manifestation of Iforgotmybrain as a flesh and blood human being; no matter how the physical person of Iforgotmybrain may change through the course of his life, he is still recognized as Iforgotmybrain instead of some random aggregation of cells, because the idea of Iforgotmybrain has many contingent manifestations. To avoid potential misunderstanding, while I say that, for example, the idea of Iforgotmybrain is more real than the corporeal manifestation of Iforgotmybrain, this does not imply that the real Iforgotmybrain as a whole is him as an idea, and that his corporeal manifestation is somehow "fake". Wholistically, Iforgotmybrain is both the idea and the corporeal manifestation; Iforgotmybrain exists simultaneously in multiple levels of reality, of which corporeal reality is the lowest level, and is the one in which we obviously can most readily sense. 

To return to the question of immortality, we see here that there is relatively greater stability of the idea of Iforgotmybrain compared to Iforgotmybrain as a corporeal manifestation; the latter may go through many changes throughout time, but are all united by the idea of Iforgotmybrain which is fixed. This may be speaking roughly, but because the idea of Iforgotmybrain is not subject to change, hence not confined to the domain of becoming, it does not die (for dying is a type of change or becoming), and so it is immortal. And, because the idea of you is you who exist in a higher domain, that is where the source of your immortality lies (and in a domain where change does not happen, time does not exist as a limiting condition -- it is beyond time).

I could have spoke more precisely, but I hope I have sufficiently conveyed what I intended to convey. I say "idea", but, really, to say "essence", "soul" or "principle" would be more appropriate. Such things in themselves do not have physical manifestations much like the idea of the number 7. But, that does not mean that they do not exist; they do exist, but in higher domains that inherently cannot be sensed empirically, but can be understood (at least to an extent) intellectually.

While we can talk about extending the life of your corporeal body indefinitely with the use of science, immortality itself would require you to look beyond the preservation of your physical body.

 

I think I get what you mean. It's sort of this idea of quantum immortality, I think? And also the concept of ideas and names outliving the person themselves. Although I think ideas and names would die off once there's no one left to remember or record them. Someone like Julius Caesar continues to live on in name despite being dead for thousands of years, but if humanity nukes itself into the stone age and we forget our own history, he'd cease to exist, no one would remember him.

I find quantum immortality really interesting to think about but quantum mechanics stuff overall goes a bit over my head so I don't have a ton to add. Plus I feel like everything I read about quantum immortality has a different interpretation of what it actually means.

On 2025-05-03 at 4:56 PM, Iforgotmybrain said:

Actually a really good point I didn't think of. I believe it's something like 7 years for all our cells to be replaced. I suppose some form of cellular therapy could be used to extend our lives as well.
 

I think I get what you mean. It's sort of this idea of quantum immortality, I think? And also the concept of ideas and names outliving the person themselves. Although I think ideas and names would die off once there's no one left to remember or record them. Someone like Julius Caesar continues to live on in name despite being dead for thousands of years, but if humanity nukes itself into the stone age and we forget our own history, he'd cease to exist, no one would remember him.

I find quantum immortality really interesting to think about but quantum mechanics stuff overall goes a bit over my head so I don't have a ton to add. Plus I feel like everything I read about quantum immortality has a different interpretation of what it actually means.

But, even here we are restricting ourselves to the corporeal domain, because we are still speaking of whatever it is that happens to our physical body. The question of whether one can physically live for millions, billions or even up until the end of the universe is a question for the empirical sciences. But, immortality itself is beyond the domain of the empirical sciences, for the proper domain of empirical science is the corporeal domain, and not to domains that lie beyond it.

When I speak of ideas, I am not speaking of merely people's understanding or memory of you, but rather the principle under which you happen to be a particular manifestation.

On 2025-05-03 at 2:06 PM, Dawnshine Wonder said:

Unfortunately the soul or essence has not been proven to exist scientifically, some people of religious belief just assume that the human mind can transcend the limitations of the body, but there's not been one conclusive evidence to demonstrate it, assumptions alone are not good enough for science, because opinions need to be based on evidence in the world we live in.

The empirical science cannot prove it because it inherently cannot be proved empirically as it lies in a domain that is beyond the corporeal, but our corporeal body definitely does exist, and it is a manifestation of this higher principle. I will make clear that I am not referring to the existence of some ghostly entity called the "soul" that exists somewhere in your body. Rather, I am referring to this enduring higher principle of which your physical body just so happens to be a particular physical manifestation of it at this very moment. While this could be interpreted through the lens of religious beliefs (something akin to a language), what I am most directly trying to convey is something that concerns metaphysics.

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The reason why I mentioned mathematics in my post is because mathematics itself does not physically exist, and yet it is definitely real. Mathematics does not rely on being empirically proven; we know that it is always true that 2 + 2 = 4 without needing to do a single scientific experiment to prove it. Or, even more simply, that the number 1 is real, despite the number 1 itself not physically existing anywhere, and yet we see one of something everywhere. There is the number 1 as a principle, and, in front of me as I type this post, there is one book, there is one pencil, and there is one bookmark. The one book, the one pencil, and the one bookmark are three examples of particular manifestations of the number 1, but they themselves are not the principle of the number 1. The principle itself has no manifestation, but other things can be a manifestation of it.

So, with the idea that mathematics is something that does not physically exist, and yet is very real, and that just about everything in physical reality can be seen as containing an indefinite amount of examples of mathematical principles "put into practice", I would suggest that something similar applies to your own existence: your physical existence is simply a particular manifestation of higher principles which exist in extra-corporeal domains. Given that the condition of change (hence birth and death) is inherent in corporeal domain, it strikes me that the pursuit of true immortality in this domain is a futile endeavor. With regard to immortality, I would be inclined to see that the proper study for this lies in the study of metaphysics: the study of existence itself.