What if... there were immortals?

[Tobiasly]

Originally posted by OnyxCougar
That many generations down it doesn't really matter, does it?

That sounds like the excuse of a guilty conscience, OC!

[juju]

Yeah, it probably wouldn't matter biologically, but remember that they would probably still have the morals that they grew up with. I guess some people wouldn't care, but I know lots of people who would be really creeped out.

[xoxoxoBruce]

One of my forbearers and about a dozen or so of his brothers and cousins came to the east coast between 1627 and 1640. Can you imagine how many distant relatives I have from just that group. Damn, I've probably had one.

[wolf]

Just one, Bruce?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Dunno.

[hot_pastrami]

I've always considered the tendency for people to become "set in their ways" to be mostly psychological, as you are assuming in your scenario... people find a psychological comfort zone, and they resist and resent anything that threatens to disturb that. People put themselves in a rut, and then fall in love with it. It can't be wholly biological, because people are capable of changing at any point in their lives, if they must.

But what of the biological limitations of memory? There is little understanding of how memory functions, but there is much evidence that even when we "forget" things, it's still stored up there somewhere, stuffed in a dusty old trunk which can still be opened and acccessed under the right circumstances. That being the case, it is very likely that there is a maximum capacity for human long-term memory. Once a person hit this barrier, they would be like an Alzheimer's patient, with only the temporary short-term memory to go on. Not much of an existence if you ask me.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sure Hot, but people who are immortal are different. Those differences would probably accommodate memory. And Libido.

[juju]

Well, what I was thinking is: What if we do find and defeat the cause of aging? Considering all the other things we've accomplished, it seems, abeit remotely, possible to me. There are even scientists working on that right now.

Given that thought, I thought it would be cool that all of the stuff we imagined might happen in a completly fictional scenario could still happen in reality.

The memory thing is a good point, I suppose, but I really don't see why you think there's an upper storage limit. Given that we have no idea how it's stored, how can you infer this? I'm not sure I understand your connection with forgetfulness.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by juju
Well, what I was thinking is: What if we do find and defeat the cause of aging? Considering all the other things we've accomplished, it seems, abeit remotely, possible to me. There are even scientists working on that right now.

Given that thought, I thought it would be cool that all of the stuff we imagined might happen in a completly fictional scenario could still happen in reality.

The memory thing is a good point, I suppose, but I really don't see why you think there's an upper storage limit. Given that we have no idea how it's stored, how can you infer this? I'm not sure I understand your connection with forgetfulness.

As far as my understanding goes, and it may be flawed, the cause of the degradation in aging is due to errors in the duplication of DNA. It's a bit like what happens when a document is copied, and then the copy is copied, and so on... the quality erodes away until what is left is a blobby mess. Of course the process of quality loss is much slower in DNA replicatoin, but every time an error occurs replication, the new cells are less perfect.

So, if that theory is accurate, then all we must do to extend our lifesan is to improve the body's DNA replication process. To stop aging, we must perfect the body's DNA replication process. This would be exceedingly difficult, and is not even close to being on the horizon, but not impossible. Shit, we don't even have the flying cars we were promised yet.

There are other secondary causes of aging, for instance the body produces most of it's disease-fighting T-cells very early in life, so the immune system fights new invaders less effectively as one ages. Also, we spend or lves introducing toxins into our bodies, which cause eroding damage. But these secondary issues are nowhere near as hard to solve as the DNA replication issue. Eternal youth, though not immortality, is a distant but real possibility.

I presume that there is an upper limit to memory based on the fact that there is limited real estate in the human skull, and a science indicates that memory is a chemical and/or hardware mechanism. Now if you believe in spirituality then you might surmise that the physical body is not a limitation, but that's a discussion for another thread. My understanding is that long-term memory is WORM storage (Write Once Read Many), like a a CD with an open session. Then there's short-term memory, which is like RAM (Random Access Memory) which is quick but limited, so old and/or less useful information is removed as needed.

Alzheimer's Disease is basically when one loses the ability to store information reliably in long-term memory. Patients don't typically forget what they already knew, but learning new information is near impossible. This is why I conclude that there is a limit to human memory capacity, and once reached, one must rely wholly on short-term memory, which is a huge handicap to a normal way of life.

Or maybe I'm wrong, it happens frequently.

[hot_pastrami]

...it is worth noting that Alzheimer's Disease (AD) includes other effects, such as dementia, so even if my brain-gets-full theory is correct, it wouldn't be exactly like AD. Just that particular symptom.

More info on AD

[Torrere]

Ideas change one death at a time, as new people come into the world and old people leave. I consider 'getting stuck in a rut' a consequence of becoming too comfortable with your life as it is; such that you are no longer prepared for your life's situation to change. Unless these immortals were open to change they would be lost in the past. Maybe immortals would all be cranky old drunks trying to forget the world because they are so confused by the modern world.

However, I also recall a conversation with my old Government teacher, who talked about how, when he was young and involved in the civil rights movement in the south, they were often helped by the elderly. The people had seen so much, he claimed, that they came to realize that what was happening wasn't right.

I imagine that immortals would have a tremendous cability for understanding, because they have seen so much. They could become wealthy because they could try, try, and try again. They could make all of the possible mistakes, then try yet again a decade later. They would be fascinating to talk to, I imagine. Maybe one or two of them would even get to the point where they could understand women!

It would suck if the whole population came too live too much longer. A world filled with perfectly viable bi-centarians would leave no room for the youth to get anywhere.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Maybe one or two of them would even get to the point where they could understand women!

Oh, that comes in time. But when you do, you don't like it and by that time it's too late to be of any use.

[Chewbaccus]

"They'd be reminded of the fragility of life every time one of their own died. It would be a huge deal, a great loss, on the news and everything."

The way I see it, one of two things could happen.

1) If the gene for immortality is present in all humans, we would see the eventual dying out of the homo sapien species. The presence of immortality among all sentient beings on the planet would result in an abandonment of the thought "leaving the world as a better place than when you found it" because, face it, you're not leaving any time soon. This would result in a change of the development pattern from the gradual increasing slope we have now as finite beings, to a period of stagnation interspersed with flurries of advancement whenever one immortal should meet his end - it would probably develop almost into a religious tradition, honoring the fallen with an improvement in the way the world is.

--OR--

2) If it is not present, then UT's theory of isolationism would kick in, and there would almost be a sense of a return to Greek mythology - a constant question of the sort that faced Prometheus. "Do we help them or not?" Millennia ago, the Great Library in Alexandria, Egypt held a copy of nearly every written scroll ever produced - literature, mathematics, philosophy, everything. There were scrolls outlining a theory that the earth revolved around the sun, long before Copernicus, and a working model of a steam engine thousands of years before James Watt. Most of all this knowledge was lost when Caesar, allied with Cleopatra against Ptolemy, ordered his troops to set fire to the Egyptian fleet anchored at Alexandria and the flames spread to the Library. Historians generally agree that this one act set back the species at least a thousand years, that if it hadn't happened, the Age of Exploration would have been centered on space and not North America.

If we had a clan of immortals in the world, this kind of thing would not be so devastating. Like the monks after Rome's fall, they would be living repositories of knowledge, a constantly updating biological archive. The trick is whether or not they would choose to divulge this information to us, if they think we can be trusted with the intellectual flames they bear.

[Undertoad]

Awesome post Chewie! (Where ya been?)

[juju]

Originally posted by hot_pastrami
As far as my understanding goes, and it may be flawed, the cause of the degradation in aging is due to errors in the duplication of DNA. It's a bit like what happens when a document is copied, and then the copy is copied, and so on... the quality erodes away until what is left is a blobby mess. Of course the process of quality loss is much slower in DNA replicatoin, but every time an error occurs replication, the new cells are less perfect.

So, if that theory is accurate, then all we must do to extend our lifesan is to improve the body's DNA replication process. To stop aging, we must perfect the body's DNA replication process. This would be exceedingly difficult, and is not even close to being on the horizon, but not impossible. Shit, we don't even have the flying cars we were promised yet.

From what I understand, there are enzymes in our cells which actually go over our DNA periodically and double-check to see if it's right. And if there's an error in the sequence, it actually fixes it! But the enzymes can only correct so much, though, and eventually the errors just overwhelm it.

Anyway, all we'd have to do is understand and perfect that already-existing mechanism.

I see what you're saying as far as there being limited real-estate in the brain. It seems like any storage mechanism must neccessarily have an upper limit. My problem with this is that I am loathe to guess about something that I know nothing about. In any case, it's very interesting.