Russia 2045 project aims to eliminate death and disease

Next Big Future

This proposition is just plain wild.  It does make me go back and re-evaluate my idea of Kardashevian Aspirations.  Were men meant to be immortal?  There's a different frame of mind that is expressed in the song by Merle Haggard that I'd like to point to:

When the world wide war is over and done,
And the dream of peace comes true.
We'll all be drinkin' free bubble-ubb,
Eatin' that rainbow stew.

The song basically says that these ideals are ideals only and cannot be achieved by mortal man.  There's no such thing as free bubble-ubb nor any such thing as rainbow stew.  The dream of peace is just a dream.  Each is implausible as the other.

I would like to defend the idea of Kardashevian Aspirations, though.  I think it has some good logic behind it. I figure as long as there exists a radical abundance of everything, there is little need for warfare.  People don't fight over ownership of the air we breathe.  It is radically abundant and available to all.  Generally speaking, if all resources were as abundant as the air we breathe, there would be no incentive to fight over resources. That alone would be a great aid in achieving peace.  It wouldn't be a panacea, as people would still be people.  But it would reduce the motivations for fighting.  Prosperous societies don't go to war with each other.

But this idea of immortality strikes me as strange.  Yet, the potential of it is obvious, as people don't like the idea of dying.  I think this is even more true when you are younger.  As you get older, I think you just get tired.  Maybe if you can fend off aging long enough, you can maintain that youthful vigor- that life force.  But just staying alive for its own sake seems strange to me.  If you can't maintain youthful vigor, what's the point?

But this goes much further than that.  This goes all the way and have people escape their own bodies.  Now, that is really weird.  What kind of society would it be if all the people in it aren't even people, but just personalities transplanted into a machine?

The idea in the article is raising some issues about the meaning of life.  It isn't easy to answer those questions. In the end, can technology save us, or we at the mercy of own natures?  If technology can't save us, what does the future hold?  One shudders at the thought.  But if technology can save us, will this be a future that we could embrace?  People need to remain people, or it means little.  It would be hard to embrace a fellow machine.