Ry and I have frequently discussed the topic of prolonging life to extreme lengths. We have both decided that we would love to achieve this. I want to talk about a few topics regarding which method would be best to achieve this and the various pro's and con's of each method.

One idea that we came up with (probably inspired from elsewhere) is the process of copying ones brain completely and running it as a program within a man made machine. A problem that arises from this method is the thought that the mechanized version would not be the same as the original human, and in fact they both may operate at the same time since scanning the humans brain may not necessarily mean killing him/her. This method is probably the easiest to keep running because the individual parts can easily be replaced and there would be little to no degradation over time like a biological body would have.

But I propose that it is probably impossible to avoid the problem of the biological human and the mechanized person being different and that any life form that is alive now in biological form could not possibly become electronic and keep the same consciousness.

I also put forth that no-one truly keeps the same consciousness anyway. I think that each time something in our brain changes states we are then a new copy of the previous state with just that one alteration. Assuming that you believe that the mind is all there is without any spiritual extension and that our behavior and thoughts are simply a result of complex computation imagine a computer. Imagine that at one moment you stop time and the computer is paused with all its bits in their current state. Now imagine you made a copy of the computer with the state of its bits as they would be in a single further iteration of the CPU. There are now two slightly different computers one as at one moment and another as at the very next. They are completely separate and frozen in time, they are not the same. I believe that the same ideas can be applied to a living entity, each time a state is changed within our brain we are like a copy with a single alteration made. Thus our illusion of consciousness is simply a construct within our brain, and our mind is constantly being copied and resumed every moment. So just because the new copy is in a new body it does not change the process at all, the only difference is that the previous iteration was not destroyed.

Another probably more friendly method to prolong life is to advance medical science so much that aging can be "cured" or at least slowed considerably. This approach would avoid the halted consciousness problem and it also partially avoids the problem of equal availability for everyone. We already have medical systems in place that ensure that everyone gets the same amount of medical attention and technology. The global problem of availability to third world countries is not worsened at all so it will be more readily adopted.

Other methods such as brain transplants, swapping bodies and things like that would be impossible to develop in todays society as they would involve moral leaps that people would not accept. Brain transplants require a living human sacrifice and swapping bodies as a means of prolonged life requires that one party loses out.

In my opinion I think that the electronic simulation of a brain is the best solution even though it doesn't actually allow the person being copied to become immortal. There would be no problem copying people and generating a large population of electronic beings however and this would provide a definite solution.

But there is no reason that both methods couldn't be developed so that people that cant become electronic can prolong their life by biological means anyway.