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If you could life longer by taking somone elses body would you?


Chocolatastic AroAce

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Chocolatastic AroAce
I've watch a pretty interesting Si-Fi recently
 
The premise is that in the future people have developed a way to live for longer by putting their consciousnesses into another body.
 
The only problem is that people don't always get to pick, as much like society now, people with money get better options and can also access other technology such as cloning.
 
So say the option was available however you could wind up  an opposite gender or older/younger then you actually are, would you still go for it?
 
Similarly there is the possibility that the body your consciousness is in could still have living relatives.....would you be able to continue on with your life knowing you are a reminder to someone else what they lost?
 
Anyone else watch the show? What do you think? I find it interesting and it does raise some interesting dilemmas that could potentially be within our future.
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Hmm...That's a toughie. If I had the option to wind up as a giant sentient virus, then hell yeah I would! Life goals! If I had to be human though...I don't think I would. I couldn't unintentionally hurt someone by inhabiting their child's, friend's, or parent's body.

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RakshaTheCat

Interesting concept. It misses one thing though, consciousness is a process, you don't just move processes somewhere else, you copy them from one media to the other (kind of like a software).

Unless you are talking about transplanting brain, since as far as we know, brain is a media for our consciousness. That would be certainly interesting and I would happily switch bodies that way whenever current one breaks down 😺

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I'd volunteer mine for someone else. :) ... beware the sugar addiction and hope you like the tattoos! 

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blunose2772

 don't want to live forever. I barely want to live now.

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Ace of Mind
55 minutes ago, Marcin said:

Interesting concept. It misses one thing though, consciousness is a process, you don't just move processes somewhere else, you copy them from one media to the other (kind of like a software).

Unless you are talking about transplanting brain, since as far as we know, brain is a media for our consciousness. That would be certainly interesting and I would happily switch bodies that way whenever current one breaks down 😺

Interestingly enough, this particular sci-fi addresses that... sort of. As far as I can tell from watching the pilot episode, consciousness is offloaded/backed-up from the brain to some sort of biotech implant shortly after birth. In order to switch bodies, this implant has to be removed by a third party and re-inserted into the brain plug-in socket of the new host body. So, theoretically, this could subvert the classic "you technically die and the new you is a copy" problem with consciousness transfer. 

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What happens to the person I took the body from and what happens to my old body? 

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45 minutes ago, blunose2772 said:

 don't want to live forever. I barely want to live now.

 

Spoiler

I'm honestly terribly sorry if my sense of humor doesn't hit home for you, and I debate on whether or not I should even say it, but bear with me here. I read that sentence of yours, and then looked at your avatar. A fellow in what appears to be a bacon costume. It could be you yourself, or somebody else. But imagining somebody coming up to me while wearing what (appears) to be a bacon costume and staring at me deadpan in the face with no expression and proclaiming that they don't want to live completely demolishes what's left of my sides.

 

On the topic at hand however, nope.

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RakshaTheCat
4 hours ago, Ace of Mind said:

Interestingly enough, this particular sci-fi addresses that... sort of. As far as I can tell from watching the pilot episode, consciousness is offloaded/backed-up from the brain to some sort of biotech implant shortly after birth.

Interesting, so this biotech implant basically replaces huge part of the brain that stores your memory? So technically it does kill you and replaces you with a 'parasite implant' that will be now in control, it is just done right after you are born so there isn't really much of 'you' yet 😸
 

4 hours ago, Ace of Mind said:

So, theoretically, this could subvert the classic "you technically die and the new you is a copy" problem with consciousness transfer. 

I feel that 'conscious transfer' makes no sense, what that is even supposed to mean? As far as I know, memories are the only way of knowing that you is actually you and not someone else, so it's more of a problem of transferring these.

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Never. I guess having a couple health scares in my life, have forced me to both be aware of my mortality, and eventually--accepting it.

 

I'm at a point in my life, I make the most of every single moment, aware I can go any day. Hopefully won't, but I'm okay with it. I think it brings an urgency to what I do with my moments, and how much passion I put into everything undertaken.

 

I'd honestly hate to lose that, with the comfort of knowing I could just switch up bodies, at will.

 

You lose enough loved ones, and realize, death (natural, of course) isn't so bad.

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Luftschlosseule

That's a good idea, do people get to volunteer their bodies either because they don't want to live anymore or because there may rewards for relatives?
What bugs me most about this is the thought that I'd be stealing another person's life. If that were not the case... probably still no. To depressed and suicidal. I'd probably fail a mandatory psychological evaluation which would say it would be a waste of money to help me as I am still not sure if I want to life.

 

Or. Another thought: Could the same technology heal depression? Like, when the brain is in this thingie, can we alter the chip? I'd have to think about that.

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That's just a little too creepy for me. I think I'll pass.

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Chocolatastic AroAce
6 hours ago, Luftschlosseule said:

That's a good idea, do people get to volunteer their bodies either because they don't want to live anymore or because there may rewards for relatives?
What bugs me most about this is the thought that I'd be stealing another person's life. If that were not the case... probably still no. To depressed and suicidal. I'd probably fail a mandatory psychological evaluation which would say it would be a waste of money to help me as I am still not sure if I want to life.

 

Or. Another thought: Could the same technology heal depression? Like, when the brain is in this thingie, can we alter the chip? I'd have to think about that.

In the show it is implied that some of the bodies belong to criminals. Instead of jail they essentially pop out the brain disk thing and have people in a suspended animation. So  in a way yes you are taking someone else's 'life' but I guess because of the way the society works people don't really pay mind to what body you have,  it seems to be liken to clothing that someone can wear and take off at will. 

 

The rich people can afford to just make clones of themselves or have bodies created for their use.

 

It is an interesting idea that does raise some complex issues which is why I like the show.

 

I think if I had the choice in what new body I would have I would probably go for it. I wouldn't want to wind up in someones recently dead grandma though.

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If it didn't involved killing / destroying the consciousness of the other person, yes I'd take another body.   I'd prefer to keep my gender and general body type but would pretty much take what I could get. 

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I saw the description and immediately thought of Altered Carbon. I guessed right. :D I haven't watched the series, but I tried to read the book once. I gave up after a few pages because it got difficult for me.  But I totally fell in love with the concept though. 

 

I wouldn't want to live in someone else's body though. I don't really have fun in living in my own body (Does that even make sense?) So living in someone else's body sounds like a nightmare to me.  

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Heck no. It's taken me over 30 years to like this one. I don't have time to get used to another one.

 

Personally I'd prefer to wander about a conscious omnipotent ghost.

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Retcon_Gecko

I would say yes to the concept of transferring consciousness to live longer, but not for myself. I'd say it more for other people who have life-ending diseases like Cancer and AIDS, or maybe people who have paralysis. 

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Retcon_Gecko
22 hours ago, Madao said:

I saw the description and immediately thought of Altered Carbon. I guessed right. :D I haven't watched the series, but I tried to read the book once. I gave up after a few pages because it got difficult for me.  But I totally fell in love with the concept though. 

 

I wouldn't want to live in someone else's body though. I don't really have fun in living in my own body (Does that even make sense?) So living in someone else's body sounds like a nightmare to me.  

I feel like stuff like that would probably cause disphoria or disassociation on the people who were transmitting their consciousness, since it wasn't the body they were originally born with.

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No because if my mind is being copied and placed into another’s person’s brain to override their’s it wouldn’t be me, it would be a copy of my mind. I would thus die for a duplicate of me to take away another person’s free will and opportunities. In the end, neither person would get anything out of this. If we are going to be immortal, we gotta do it with the bodies that we have now. (Personally I don’t see much point in life at the moment, so I don’t really care for immortality)

 

If I did take the chance, how I would act would depend on the person whose place I took. I would probably be annoyed with a lot of things and be extrenly awkward if I ended up in a female body. No clue what I would do if I ended up in he body of an older person. Hopefully who ever I took the place of wasn’t dating or married to someone (or hopefully both were asexual) because I’d probably want to get out of whatever relationship existed. Overall, I think that it would be better to just decline the opportunity to live longer through someone else’s body.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some elements of transhumanist philosophy appeal to me: I like the idea of humans being able to change our form based on our needs, of essentially transcending the limitations of the human body through our own efforts, so at least in theory, I do like the idea of being able to upload consciousness and move it between bodies.

 

So long as I'm not killing someone to get the new body, I would absolutely create a digital backup of myself to restore from in the event of my death, although I wouldn't change bodies unless I was dying/about to die (at least at first; I could see that changing as I adjusted to a world where doing so was possible.)  The problem I have now is that a copy isn't the original -- transferring bodies is essentially murdering yourself and letting a duplicate with all the same memories go running around.  Sure, there's continuity of consciousness of sorts, but that doesn't really matter to this instance of me that would end up dead.

 

That said, restoring from a backup is absolutely preferable to being perma-dead -- even if I'm not only an exact duplicate of the original, old me would be gone regardless, and new me would be me as far as he was concerned.

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FindingTheta

Not really.

 

I think one life is enough for me. While my life has been generally pleasant on the whole and I'm in no big hurry to die, once it's time for me to pass away I'll do so satisfied with what I've done with the time I had.

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