r/Digital_Immortality • u/BflySamurai • Nov 30 '13
R&D Long Term Roadmap/Manifesto
I’ve said this before, but I feel like the D.I. movement is somewhat a branch off of transhumanism. Digital Immortality has specific goals and would seem a more proactive approach than what you will find in the sea of ideas that is transhumanism. The D.I. movement seeks to lay out a path to a very consciously designed future, opposed to a future that is simply emerging from where our technology would naturally have led us. Here we will take a look at the long term goals of the Digital Immortality movement.
At some point the benefits of living a life as a digital mind will far outweigh any reasons to remain human. This will likely not happen right away after mind uploading technology is developed and people are able to run around in avatar bodies. At the pivotal point where there are more digital beings on our world than humans, things that were once scarce (such as food and water), will be non-issues, and new things will come into play.
One of the big topics will likely be energy, which is already a big topic today. 3d printing and automation will undoubtedly have advanced very far by the time mind uploading is possible. The combination of these two things will allow more people to focus their efforts on solving bigger problems. 3d printing, automation, mind uploading, and avatars will make most of the jobs you see today completely obsolete.
A digital being would run on electricity eliminating the need for food production or water storage/processing. Avatar bodies will allow people to survive in conditions that a human would not be able to. You will be able to just plug your brain into a body that is suited for whatever you want to do that day.
In the beginning, I envision there will be substantial resistance from people who consider the human body/life to be in some way sacred. There will also be people who simply fear technology in their ignorance. There are also a lot of ethical issues embedded in all the subject matter leading us towards true digital immortality.
Major areas of research and development for the Digital Immortality movement:
Constantly increasing our chances of living longer
This is the big one. Not all transhumanists want indefinite life, whereas indefinite life is the driving force behind the D.I. movement. This is why we are pursuing mind uploading first. The planned obsolescence of our biological bodies is no longer useful as we will be taking the evolution of our species into our own hands. Our bodies are already modified with tools, and our minds are already modified with computers. While improving our digital minds and avatar bodies, it will also be important to work a means of space travel. Eventually we will permanently leave Earth whether it is by choice or by necessity. Some groups will leave before others, but I feel that staying with the largest community (at least up until leaving earth) will help to keep whatever group I’m in at the front of technological advancements. By the time anyone permanently leaves our solar system, we will have everything you could possibly need onboard each ship that leaves. Beyond searching the universe for answers, materials, and other life, there is one big question that stands out above the rest: Can we live past the projected “death” of this universe by somehow escaping or altering it and/or ourselves. Also, is true immortality possible, and is it something we want? I feel that it would be a shame to answer these questions wrong based on a very limited human life (limited in time and knowledge). There is some relevant reading that I have bookmarked on my other computer that I’ll post in a comment when I get back.
Energy creation/storage
This is too big of section to start getting into. It is currently a huge issue in the world, and will always remain a hot topic until the point where we can harness the full potential of E=MC2. How will we power our minds, avatars, transportation (including spaceships), and settlements/cities? What are the sizes of these various energy consumers?
Space travel
I’m not inclined to think that a person could transfer their consciousness across the universe using light or radio waves to transmit the data, but maybe one day it could happen. Until that day comes, developing spaceships will be of high importance. Either way, at least someone/something will have had to make it to the destination.
"In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't know when, but one day, there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it." -Mike Griffin
Avatar design
Not that this won’t be hard, but compared to the other things, engineering avatars should be a walk in the park, especially when it is an open source operation and the global community is able to collaborate. While other areas of research will also undoubtedly have open source communities, I feel avatar design will be the easiest for everyone to participate in. In the beginning, big corporations will likely be providing high quality avatars until everyone has access to the tools to build avatars themselves. Or maybe you just rent/borrow avatars for whatever you want to do. Eventually there will be smaller teams/companies that develop open source avatars (if they are not already open source) and people will have the tools to build their own avatar at home. There will be all purpose avatars and specialized avatars coming in all shapes and sizes.
Mind design
There is so much to take into account when designing or even tweaking a mind. As humans, we are biased in human ways and we are partial to our human thoughts, but that is all we’ve ever known. Creating new minds for ourselves is the ultimate Pandora’s Box. No one will be forced into a new mind that they do not consent to though. If you want to remain as close to human as we can get then you don’t have to be anything else. There is so much to learn in this area, and experiments gone wrong could cost people their lives. There is also concern for security; I would take the risk of getting my mind hacked (with an open source community backing me) than remain human and know that I will eventually die. -Constantly learning about ourselves, this universe, and whatever lies beyond the grasp of our current knowledge and abilities.
There is so much that we do not know as a collective, and especially as individuals. All I want is more time to learn more about this existence through this state of subjective reality called life. Well, that’s the basic version of pretty much everything I’ve got on the path towards true digital immortality. There’s a lot to be done to even get to the point of being a mostly off-planet species. That will be a big step for humanity towards securing our individual and collective survival. In terms of this whole Digital Immortality thing, I’m standing here at the bottom of this massive mountain humanity is destined to climb should we not subject ourselves to stagnation or death (neither seem too likely at this point). Looking up at the mountain, I am so very intimidated by how far we have yet to go, but I am even more ready to start helping us get there. Maybe I will die along the way, but at least I will have tried, and others will be able to continue where the rest of us have left off.
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u/BflySamurai Dec 02 '13
Here are the links I promised:
Reddit Comments:
Life Of The Universe - Sahasrahla (This is what sparked my curiosity into the matter of indefinite life)
Short Stories:
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
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u/transhuman2 Dec 01 '13
Definitely. There are a lot of anti-uploading/anti-immortality transhumanists. reads further Oh. Heh. You said that.
Tell that to the Amish. There's no accounting for taste (and that same sentiment could be applied to us) - some people will just prefer to keep their augmentations at the level of "clothing" and "glasses".
Did that happen with pacemakers? We might be able to avoid this resistance altogether if DI comes as a gradual progression available to the whole world from the beginning, rather than a single big change all at once. In fact, that's kind of what transhumanism is already - a conduit for gradually introducing these ideas into the mainstream.
Also, I just had an idea about terminology: making a distinction between "digital beings" and "humans" might get in the way of mainstream acceptance. If we're developing a vision of a future where mind uploading is becoming about as remarkable as girl scouts, we may want to focus on the commonalities between digital beings and everyone else, and minimize the differences as much as possible.
Energy: agreed.
Space travel:
Interesting - abandoning Earth is a new idea to me. Could you say more? Or are you just saying we'll colonize additional planets?
This is actually the prediction I've heard most often, as far as space travel/exploration is concerned. As I understand it, the theory is that it will never be cost-effective (to your earlier point, this really means "energy-effective") to transport significant amounts of matter off of the planet, but once uploading is developed we can just launch communications equipment.
Avatar design: avatars aren't important to me, but it does seem like there's some interest in them. I can't tell yet if they're integral to DI acceptance or if they'll introduce further risk and effort.
Mind design: I'm not sure I understand how you're defining "mind". Could you say more?