Science Corner: I Wanna Live Forever … ?

Apparently, the Santa Fe Institute had a workshop on immortality last fall. There’s no evidence of a theological or religious or even much of a philosophical component to the proceedings. That’s maybe a little surprising, seeing as how SFI tends to be expansively interdisciplinary. But there’s plenty to discuss on the scientific side of things, so fair enough. I learned about it via Sean Carroll’s podcast (see below). In this special holiday episode, he shares a version of his contribution to the workshop and comments on a few of the other presentations. Give it a listen, or read the transcript here and then let’s discuss.

As a physicist, Carroll has the most to say about whether the universe can go on forever. The short answer is not really. Sure, it is consistent with our best models that space and time and matter and energy could exist indefinitely. However, that matter eventually will be so diffuse and homogeneous that nothing interesting can happen; certainly not anything as interesting as life, and really not anything as interesting as a rock or dirt. It’ll be there but it won’t be anything we’d recognize. Of course, you and I don’t have to worry about that, even if you are somehow reading this via direct brain interface or whatever in the far future; if there’s a ‘you’ and some way to read, the boring epoch of the universe is still a ways off.

Biologists naturally have something to say about human immortality as well. Obviously if the universe won’t be suitable for life indefinitely, no amount of medicine or biohacking can achieve true unending life. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t try to push the limit as far as we can, which means solving all sorts of questions. Some of them, like finding ever-more effective treatments (or prevention) for cancers, are worthwhile even if we don’t actually increase the maximum human life span. Other lines of longevity and anti-aging research may seem more esoteric. One might also be concerned that extreme longevity will only be available to the one percent of the one percent. Carroll mentions a book, How We Age, by Coleen Murphy; maybe we’ll come back to that for a more in-depth treatment of the topic.

Finally, there is the most speculative aspect, the possibility of merging with computers or robots, uploading our minds, etc. While a part of me finds this intriguing, it is hard to imagine as a practical possibility in my lifetime. Even if we assume that on the computing side it’s just a matter of scaling up the hardware we already have, I don’t see evidence that we understand memory and consciousness well enough to extract them from a brain and reproduce them. And that’s assuming the brain contains it all, an idea which grows ever more tenuous as we learn more about the relationships between our mind and our body (and the ecosystems we host). Plus it seems like it would have to be a destructive process, which is a good reason to have second thoughts. I can’t say for sure that it will never happen for anyone, but I’m not packing my own digital bags any time soon.

All of these topics tickle my scientific curiosity. At the same time, I don’t put any stock in them as ways to realize the kind of immortality I’ve been taught to expect from a religious perspective. I fully anticipate that some kind of divine intervention will be involved and that all the talk of resurrection bodies and new creation means there will be a discontinuity with the present physical reality and/or present natural laws. Some of the SFI crowd might get that, some might find it fanciful or worse, but it is what it is.

There is one point of intersection, however–what would the subjective experience of immortality be like? Whether we live a very long time thanks to biomedical innovation or a technological singularity or an act of God, we can imagine it would be a very different experience from living for a hundred years. And there’s a school of thought which supposes it would be not so great, all things considered. For example, Carroll mentions an informal poll at the workshop on who would want to live for 10,000 years, assuming peak physical well being and sufficient companionship that loneliness is not a concern. He says most people were against even living that long, with Carroll in the optimistic minority. He also cites some fiction which takes a similar perspective, presuming that eventually you’d run out of things to do or lose engagement with the world around you. I’ve read/watched at least some of these stories, plus others on the same theme, and I’ve always found them disappointing in that regard.

Let’s grant that there are some real issues to be considered here. After all, we live in a time when we frequently comment on the pace of societal change and how hard it can be to keep up. And there is evidence that as our options increase, our enthusiasm paradoxically wanes. But if we are challenging the biological limitations on life span or the boundaries between biology and technology, why would we just accept these psychological challenges as immutable limitations? Where is the curiosity to figure out how to keep life interesting after ten millenia? Are our imaginations so limited that we can picture getting our bodies to chug along, but not our minds? Human beings have been pretty creative so far in finding ways to be mentally stimulated. We’ve invented plays and books and poetry and novels and music and movies and video games. Why suppose we’re close to exhausting the well?

There could be immediate benefits, too. Already aging and retirement carry some association with mental health challenges. Alleviating those difficulties and improving the quality of life of our more experienced fellow humans could very well be the first step towards making immortality more attractive. And it’s probably worth doing for its own sake anyway.