Opening

Send your comments to the author... comments@eternal-life.us

Eternal life It becomes possible in the future to store all the information in a persons mind at a moment in time, thus bringing up the possibility of eternal life by instantaneously shifting all the info in your head to a new body--one that isn’t old or dieing. The possibility of having backups like on a computer, where in case of an accident you might only lose the results of say a week. The time between backups. Or is there more to eternal life than having your mind saved? What about the problem of that period of time when your mind is transferred and this picture of your mind exists in two bodies? How will the about to be body feel? And the new body-- will it feel as if life is just continuing? And how will the mind in the new body react to it’s new surroundings? How would you make it so that a person would regard this as if you went to sleep sick and woke up feeling better. Would it bother you if you knew what had been done to your old body? Or would you like to have a burial of your old body? Ecological Terrorists might object. Where are you going to get the new body? Would you be body farming? Would the healthy bodies object when they find out? Would they rebel? Who would tell them? Religious groups? Would there be religion left with such advanced science? Would religious groups regard such scientific research as a threat? Check currant groups protesting stem cell research. International fund to raise money for the research. $100 billion? Connect to non-controversial research. Need final transfer facility in friendly country- India, China, Russia? Put project on the web Ideas taken from anyone. Get lots of people talking about it. Maybe an “Eternal Life” club at every university. Start chapter at Cal. Talk to Brian and Josh about Web site. Find out if organization exists already. Google “Eternal Life”. Back up as name for the movie. Suggest ideas to Meetup Entrepreneurs. Talk to Ben about international fund raising. More talk about eternal life. As the science of mind transfer progresses along with other advances in memory storage and cloning the idea of the transfer would be obvious to others as not only possible but a certainty. So, in the beginning competing labs would work on the project financed by wealthy people all over the world with varying philosophies of life. And, I see no reason for competition because there is no reason to protect the secrets as everyone wants to live forever and the rich will soon realize that the profits from this venture are small when compared to eternal life. There are simply too many rich, powerful people involved to care if somebody becomes the first one. The important thing will be to reach eternal life even if it means through another company or using their method. This is perhaps the first example of world wide cooperation. And of course, there will be many religious organizations that will oppose all of these efforts, but as the methods near completion, these religious will realize the inevitability of this project and the followers will want in. They will want eternal life as part of Medicare or universal health insurance. All minds will want a backup program in case of accidental death. Will you only lose a week? Like going under anesthetic in a hospital and coming out. Things have to be explained to you, but it’ s a small price to pay for the guarantee of eternal life. The whole way of looking at things will be altered. If this is too be stopped or protested, it will have to start when the progress is being made. The first time a thought is stored? The first time emotions are injected into an individual? Has this got to do with stem cell cloning? Or any altering of human life? Cancer cures? The people opposing this would have to act early. And why would they? What have they got to gain or lose? Is it simply the currant religious power houses? They are not getting it so no on will get it. There’s bound to be some of that, but it seems like that’s bound to lose. And as I am writing this I can’t be the only one thinking of this. So who is thinking of this and acting against it? The concept of eternal life or mind storage/backup should not have to be the whole mind in the beginning. I think most of us would just go for consciousness, that is the knowledge or skills to write or kick a ball would be secondary to thinking. And it seems thoughts are distributed differently in the brain. Although in the beginning scientists might solve the problems of emotional “thought” through fMRI or many other brain functions distributed throughout the head. But as these are pinpointed scientists would become more excited about storing the knowledge of the brain and grants and interest would blossom throughout the world. The sciences would converge on this one problem of storing thought in the brain in another medium. Would the memory companies become the big players. Probably not as they all can be bought or even nationalized. Maybe the idea of scientists as slaves working on the problem is possible. Offered of course the big reward of their success. Because of this need, scientists or people with an ability to be useful to the success of eternal life would become favored in life. People at the level of technicians on the EL project would become favored. Enormous factories downloading and storing minds. Storage enough for a billion minds? How many minds are allowed? What about priorities? Surely not everybody gets to be saved. Maybe not even the minds that think it up. Who will be in charge of the list? Elected officials? Cousin Charles points out that how you feel and react depends on the physical state of your body; for instance, if you’re an 18 year old boy your hormones are in control of your body-- maybe not your mind. Would that make a huge difference if you woke up in a body with entirely different feelings? I don’t think so, but how can we tell. Maybe there will be tests before the ultimate transfer. Maybe the ability to transfer and store will be discovered way before the ability to transfer into a new body. A system would have to be set up where you would entrust the backup of your mind to people you felt could be counted on to download you when the technology was here. And also to cancel the transfer if things didn’t go right. Who would you trust to make that decision? Multiple copies would confuse things by making it possible to have duplicate copies of you made either by mistake or deliberately. All the problems of storage and copies are probable. The question of how many people should be allowed in the universe. How is the decision to copy someone made? What about forces trying to sabotage the process. Blowing up copy centers to make the world better for those who want less people. Who are these people? What do they really want? Also, Simon points out “I think, sometimes, that I use my time as if there were an endless supply of it. My sense is that many people feel rushed from the moment they hit puberty, whereas I am a late, late bloomer. So perhaps if the technology to extend our existence forever were readily available, people would be very lazy, or at least very unlikely to get much done. Hammock sales would skyrocket.” This is an idea perhaps for a sequel. What do people really do with their lives once they’ve got the assurance of eternal life. Would those who are in a second or third body segregate from those who are in there tenth? Will there be a feeling of wisdom having lived a dozen times. Will the concept of teenager die? What will the world be like populated by people who have lived many generations? Maybe it’s time to do a Blog. I can just post all these thoughts and see if there’s any interest in them for discussion. The progress towards the transfer might be preceded by a series of brain discoveries like how various pieces of info are stored and used. There may be intermediate steps that will show the way and encourage others to get into the business. As the knowledge base grows research should accelerate. What is the necessary knowledge to get the research bandwagon rolling? What is that critical point? Need to make a study of what is involved in thinking and what is the soul? The Bios of the mind. 10/19/06 More problems. Suppose you come back as a 25 year old. What is your identification? Do you tell people who or what you are? Do people become suspicious when your past doesn’t check out? What is your attitude now to the opposite sex? If they have the body of a 20 year old but the mind to go with it. Can you ever make a lasting relationship with someone who is on their first body? Can you tell them about yourself? Do you need a club for these clones? Do you recognize each other by a sign? What do you want to do with your days? How do you pretend about your new life? Isn’t this new life hard to pull off if you don’t need to work or take things seriously? Do you need to talk about college? Can you take courses without being a serious student? How much time to build up a portfolio so work is not necessary? What is your attitude towards backups. Are you constantly in touch with your backup centers? Do you trust them? Who is looking out for your own good? How many backups and where are they? Would anybody care about using these backups for some other means? Would they tape in and use the info to get to you? What about passwords and other info that you want to keep secret? How can you be sure of secrets? Suppose you find yourself in a situation that you want out of at any cost? Do you commit suicide? Who knows you’re dead and to start up another clone? Automatic check in? Polling? Who’s at the top of this pyramid? What about innocence and naivety? The feeling of experiencing something for the first time? Maybe coming out in your new body would be a little like that. Or maybe there’s a way to give you that first time feeling with selective memory loss? If you become bored with the lack of newness of things, is it time to give up or commit suicide? Or, is there a way to selectively make things new to you so you can experience their newness again? Security Security, that is steps taken to keep things secret yet at the same time keeping EL on track, is maintained now by having three agencies under the guise of official sounding offices with a coded question and response. If something is wrong, the agency will send someone around immediately. Everything is handled by secure wireless phones, and the timing is worked out carefully. These precautions are necessary in the early days of multiple bodies so as to keep the secrecy from those who don’t like the idea of being able to live forever. Family This is perhaps the weakest link in security, but necessary none the less. I have two children who are about 40 years younger than me. It was unlikely, and probably not desired, to keep them in the dark about my plans. Being my kids they have accepted this along with my other idiosyncrasies. That was sort of true in the beginning, but as science progressed it became obvious that the process was going to work if not now, soon. Both kids wanted in on it at least to try it out. My wife was more dubious but was willing to try it out anyhow. By necessity all three had to be let in on a lot of my transfer details and plans were included to meet after our transfers. Of course, I had to go first because my 1st body was falling apart first, and because it was more of my idea, I was more likely to want to be the guinea pig. And, of course, at the time of my transfer to the computer banks, the technology for retransfer back to another body wasn’t complete. I simply had to wait in storage while science worked it all out. And then time was needed to clone another body. Why use a clone? Well, it makes the arguments easier. I’m simply creating another me. What they did to the clone to make it amenable to being transferred to another mind, I’m not sure. They never really told me and I’m not sure that they want me to know or that I want to know. Maybe some day I’ll find out. But as you can see, all the questions about this kind of transfer are not solved. Workers in this industry are probably people who will be transferred or people who have been transferred. It does not at this time pay to ask too much. I have to put in my time in a short time working to pay off my upkeep. I’ll be called to go work wherever they want me to and do whatever they want me to do whether it’s technical or administrative. And it’s then I hope to find my wife and children. It’s not clear once I find them whether keeping the family unit close together is good or not. Surely we will swap stories, but will we have found anything out about this new life that will make us want to stay together? Who knows? Thus far have thought of security as outside forces trying to rain on my parade, but suppose the threats are from within? Either outside forces who have moled their way into the EL organizations or people who have a genuine reason for being in but have turned on me and others for some other agenda. So, in my search to find the villain, I have to distance myself from everyone. A paranoid existence. And if the enemy is within, do they have access to all the info about me? And couldn’t they just kill me if they wanted? It’s likely that they are not after me personally, but want to attack the method or the centers. Is this a selfish motive, and what is selfish in the world where everyone can live forever? The fear that someone could screw this up for everybody. Does there have to be a rational reason for this fear. Are the villains skitzo or crazy in some other way. Perhaps damaged by their transfer or angry at the results. Sort of a model of how society in general produces mal adjusted people. Start by building this character and make an outline of how he or she has gone bad. Maybe one of the first transfers where the process wasn’t yet worked out. Kind of like a cancer that grows OK but produces anti-social results. Why is this cancer angry and at who or what? What is the distortion in his or her perception? Is it a physical problem? Have they lost the ability to reproduce again. What a bummer. First to be promised eternal life. Then experience a “successful” transfer only to find out it’s your last. This could make you bitter. Is there something wrong with the info transfer, or some other logic problem that makes the new person wired wrong? Look for problem people in existing society. Homeless, war veterans, abused children, physically or mentally or psychologically disturbed. A search for causes of villainy. Try the pages of a newspaper. Why do people try to kill innocents? Maybe they were fucked up before transfer but had enough money so no one could object. Maybe they were criminals before transfer and just want to carry on their anti-social behavior? Lex Luthor. Maybe slightly disturbed people become more disturbed because of the transfer process. Maybe the hero feels something wrong with his own transfer which could indicate the reasons for this evil transfer. Suppose you feel dumber or clumsier or more musical or less of an athlete after transfer. Would this make you bitter. There are so many reason to complain. Are they enough to make you bitter at everyone or the process. What about people or organizations that are delusional about their slights? And maybe no one knows it. Make Believe History If you’re living in a new body twenty years after your old one has died, what will be your cover story? For you’ll need one pretty quickly. If you’re essentially in a witness protection program you’ve got to tell people about where you’re from, schools, friends, family, etc. in short everything that makes up a person. And all that info is eventually checkable. So, you’d better have a good story made up before you start telling everybody different stories. You have to have made up another person with good cover. With phone numbers of schools and other people who are willing to lie for you. Maybe a few different covers if you go from continent to continent. And what about blackmail and the police getting suspicious of you. Maybe one of the pluses for transfer is that you have a skill that will help the others. Maybe you have an in in police departments or international government where you can provide covers for others. Maybe years of working in security have given you these skills. Another source of potential security problems. Another source of cancer or fanatics? How do you sign up for anything when they want details of previous schools or living situations or parents. Who will be that family that will vouch for you. Maybe a whole section covering all sorts of ACs. People in phone bank rooms answering as if they are different people. This could be a training job that you take as your first job in your new body. Part of your training would be learning how to lie convincingly. Would training as a security risk. Multiple Storage Centers With the need to store your mind in multiple centers there should be a whole new industry popping up with centers opening all over the world all competing for new customers either in cooperation or as solo global businesses. Because of security and all the other services necessary there would be plenty of opportunity to compete and thus this could be the source of sabotage. With new businesses opening the competition could be fierce. But why would we have competition when everybody can live forever if we only cooperate? Old competitive instincts die hard. Is it for money or power over the souls? Would people want control over the people living forever and why? What can they do with this power? Answer this and you have a good driver for the plot. World Forces What I haven’t considered so far is the state of the world from 20 years from now forward. What I finally realized is that there are forces changing the look of the world. One world population is growing too fast for sustainability. More wars over water, energy in the guise of wars over religion and land. And the change of who is a world power. The rise of China and India. Attitudes about letting countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia dictate world policy are changing the way everybody views borders and interference in countries politics. Since all these countries have different moralities to other countries even to different groups within the countries the safeness of a haven for storing of minds becomes much more complicated. Where is a truly safe place to store your mind especially if this is supposed to last forever. The people you trust to be in charge must be very trustworthy and intelligent in moving your mindstores around the world. Are we talking about mountain hideouts? Can you successfully put minds on a few computers and think of that as being safe. As long as there is money in it, countries will tolerate the presence of these high tech factories but they are not small operations and can’t really be hidden. Here’s the need for another layer of cover. Like the “Island”. Plus there are support services like security that may have to be separate physically. Maybe corporate offices would be in the same country or different countries and flexible for movement depending on the whim of the various countries attitudes towards each other. Is there an industry like that now that I could model this after? Need to break down the various parts of this industry. Storage Security Contact phone banks Admin including future projection. Sales and new customers Training before and after transfer. Ongoing. Updates Should have all the departments that a current day software company has. Competition Would companies compete for your brain and maintenance? Of course they would. And it would divided up like current software sales and maintenance. Aftermarket updates. Mods. Compatibility. A source of tension or sabotage within the industry. You get transferred and spend 20 years in storage and wake up with your contract taken over by another company down the competition chain. Doesn’t sound very safe. How to make it secure? More need for backups. Compatibility. Who’s in charge of your brain and what parts? Do we need more lawyers for this and what does suing mean? Like going into a primitive country and trying to do business or science. Sounds like keeping on track is a full time operation. And what about detectives who will look into your problem? How can you go to sleep and let control of your backup to some possible strangers. Has to be a lot of duplication for any kind of security. Time is the big villain here. Need to be able to predict the future. Hackers as Villains Prediction of the state of the world for next 40 years Need for company So far the story is written as though the hero is alone checking back only with his guardians when needed to work or to keep up with his state of being, but really things would be much easier if the transfer was done in a group so that you would have other transfers to meet with and support. Maybe a transfer of ten together. Should they be selected for any properties or is it better to be random or is there any such thing as random? Would they all select new bodies of the same approximate age or would some want older or younger bodies? What are the disadvantages? Would each transfer generation want to try a new kind of body? Are the new bodies genetically related or would you want to chance new person’s body? If you didn’t like it, would you discard it and try a new body. What about scientific improvements to the new body? Would they be acceptable and would they change your point of view or consciousness? How much different would be OK. How close do you want your consciousness to your original point of view? What is eternal life? As long as you don’t feel a disruption then everything would be OK. Kind of like having anesthesia and coming out of it with some pain from an operation but still feeling like the old self and having confidence in recovery. Having a group do the transfer would allow the members to check each other on the smoothness of checking in. Is it the process or is just one person’s check-in going wrong. On the other hand, is one of the group a saboteur? Why would they want to sabotage only you or the rest of the group? Suppose everyone is having trouble. What would the group action be? Would they all be checking or going back to volunteer to see what is going on. Would they have a coordinated effort with everybody having a different mission and would this event be though out before hand? Wouldn’t they go through some kind of training for this and have a kind of automated response and wouldn’t the saboteur know this and have compensated for this? What if only one is having trouble? Would they all be concerned? Would they all want to investigate? Wouldn’t the trouble maker be waiting for them/him/her? 1/22/06 RELATIONSHIPS So, an even bigger question comes up. What about relationships after the download. Is it just one person and his/her group or can you make relationships with other people. This could be difficult with the need to make up your history all the time. On the other hand, people need people. You can’t go through life alone if only to have friends to talk to chums to play with, etc. pretty much all that you need going through life once or twice or a millions times. This brings on the need for a much more convincing background including contingencies for suddenly needing to go to your center or to disappear for a few years while you check up on things. How deep can these relationships really be? How deep do you want them to be? Marriage, children. Homes and a regular life? If you are young enough then much of this can be written off as youth. How old can you be and not be married or going steady or what? Of course, in 50 years attitudes towards these subjects may change radically. Maybe.