Human beings are part of a very complex industrial society that spans the globe, like a sort of meta-organism. This system has innumerable components that contribute to the whole. Agriculture, medicine and consumer goods are three of those components, and they take up a considerable amount of our industrial output to maintain. They also take a toll on the planet itself, robbing it of non-renewable resources. These products and services do not come from the ether; they are often shipped across vast distances and produced with the aid of complex machinery that also consumes natural resources to power and maintain. If human beings were made to no longer require such things – say, by giving up our wasteful bodies in exchange for substrate-independent minds living in a computer simulation practically indistinguishable from reality – the logistics involved in maintaining human society would be greatly simplified, allowing for increased growth without a commensurate toll on the environment. With the surplus power and industrial output, humanity would flourish.

In a world of complete automation, manual labor on the part of flesh-and-blood human beings would inevitably become entirely pointless – even counterproductive. If a machine can do the same job faster while consuming fewer joules over its productive lifespan, then it is a waste to employ people to do that work. Therefore, the only kind of work available will involve using one’s mind, and even that may become redundant with the rise of super-intelligent AI. There would be a renaissance of cultural achievement. Minds which would have been tied up in back-breaking labor would now have a lot of free time to ponder the nature of the universe and elaborate upon it at length in art, music, writing, poetry and so forth.

One of the accusations leveled against the singularity is that its very nature would lead to cultural stagnation; since death and risk of personal harm would no longer exist (save for destruction of the system in whole or in part by a natural disaster), those themes would no longer inspire authors of fiction. I argue the opposite. The depth of the simulation itself, and the opportunity to imprint one’s own thoughts upon it, would be a wonderful source of inspiration! You could experience things that would have been impossible for a flesh-and-blood human being to live to talk about. Basically, you could do anything. You could be Luke Skywalker for a day, or Hamlet. Or any figure from history, from the very best to the very worst. You could even write a book, feed it to a super-intelligent AI, and have it simulate your world and your characters for you, as per your specifications. I can imagine no better source of inspiration than a system able to manipulate data in so many ways.

The scientific and engineering applications of such a simulation are too great in number to list. Computer-aided design, architecture, stress analysis, modeling of neuromorphic systems, protein folding, the list goes on and on. Oh, but we wouldn’t need that, you say? Nonsense. Even substrate-independent minds living in a simulation need sturdy bunkers and capable drone servants, or perhaps places to house genetically-engineered experimental species constructed with the aid of synthetic biology. Yeesh, I make it sound so sinister. By the time we’re done, we won’t have any alien overlords to worry about, since we will BE the overlords. We will become utterly alien to our past selves.

Human beings will occupy a vastly smaller energy footprint per individual, thanks to hypothetical technologies like SIM. Even a small, airless moon could theoretically sustain billions of simulated human minds. That is, assuming the replacement substrate is made from sufficiently abundant forms of matter and is energy and space-efficient enough to be operated in large clusters. Asteroid mining could help sustain the process, at least until paradigm shifts in materials science allow for every component of the system to be made from even the basest of matter.

Whole industries will become obsolete because of disruptive technology. In fact, entire volumes of scientific research based around computer modeling of real-world physics will become redundant, as AI-driven supercomputers even thirty years from now will be powerful enough to complete demanding simulations which once took months of processor time in mere milliseconds.

Our society will produce more information in an instant than you’d find in a million copies of the library of congress, much of it useful, though most of it redundant. Such a world has the potential to be both highly alien and highly decadent in nature, but our industrial and scientific potential would be unmatched by anything save for an as-yet undiscovered extraterrestrial species that accomplished the same feats at an earlier date.

In other words, the philosophy isn’t important. The science behind the singularity is. Once we get there, we’ll have all the time in the world for philosophy, for philosophy is merely the art of hindsight. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, there will indeed be ungodly huge reams of philosophical banter everywhere. Speaking of everywhere, if you’re living in a simulated world, you don’t have to bring yourself to the information. You can bring it right to yourself. Filing cabinets? Bookshelves? Libraries? What for? No matter “where” you are in a simulated world, you can always reach up and pull a book out of thin air. Imagine that. A world where you can take the sum total of mankind’s knowledge with you wherever you go, and then give something back to it at your leisure. Incredible, isn’t it?

Right. I would like to suggest that part of the research be focused on how the (postmortem) immortality myth (in the sense of lacking in verification), aided by what some see as deathist religious beliefs that may interfere with funding and public support of research in “real” immortality (by marginalizing its value), and what actions would be most effective in countering such putative programmed beliefs. Such research might also help counter reasonable claims that the research is inherently biased, given the funding source and possibly Prof. Fischer’s own beliefs (I don’t know what they are, to be fair) and those of his institution, thereby calling into question the validity of any findings. I would like to suggest that the study would be enriched by funded participation by thoughtful philosophers, writers, and scientists with counterbalancing viewpoints, such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, and fully open discussion. I am also sending this comment to Prof. Fischer, should he wish to comment.

Amara D. Angelica, Editor, KurzweilAI

“One of the questions he hopes researchers will address is cultural variations in reports of near-death experiences.”

Dr. Stephen Thaler figured that out years ago.
See for instance: »http://www.initsimage.org/TCAIS%20Flash/Thalamocortical%20Algorithms%20in%20Space!.html«.

Generally, people experience what they expect to experience (what has been programmed into them culturally).

Allanx heat death of the universe was answered by M Theory.

What ignorance is this? One needs no “philosophical understanding” of immortality, one needs to discover the means to attain immortality. These fools are merely seeking “philosophical objections” to immortality. We do not require any more animalistic philosophy. This is a silly propaganda by religionist fools. I condemn this major failure of intellect, one day we will get rid of these folks wholesale, since we’ll outlive them.

1. No more disease and aging-related maladies, meaning no more hospitals and no more health insurance. No more spending two trillion dollars annually on health care in the US.
2. No more agriculture. Substrate-independent minds living in a simulated world do not need to eat. Say goodbye to topsoil depletion and drained aquifers.
3. No more wasteful, landfill-destined consumables like safety razors, plastic bags, plastic beverage containers, etc. Substrate-independent minds living in a simulated world do not need clothes or consumer goods made from actual matter, since their belongings exist only as information within the simulation. Since information is not scarce like real goods, every virtual avatar inside the simulation could theoretically live on an actual private island with their own yacht, if they so chose.
4. In fact, substrate-independent minds do not need to breathe, so they could theoretically colonize and safely inhabit extremely hazardous environments with no ill effects, such as gas giants and hothouse planets. All you need to live on Mars as a SIM mind is to have your core hooked up to a good fusion reactor, and you’re all set.
5. Instantaneous teleconferencing over great distances without wasting even a drop of petroleum to actually commute. Just a few joules of electricity, and you’re across the globe in a second. In a simulated world, distance is illusory, governed only by the limitations of the communications network (you can’t send information faster than light, obviously, so the only real delays are found in interplanetary communication).
6. No more wars, crime or physical injury. In a simulated world, avatars attempting to assault one another while in a “safe” zone would automatically have a literal barrier placed in their path, and theft of virtual “goods” would be utterly pointless, since copies of everything are freely accessible. Leap off a tall virtual structure, and your fall will be cushioned, and so forth.
7. More experts living longer. Imagine the kind of world we’d be living in if you could get all of history’s greatest scientists in the same room for an hour. Or a year. Or several thousand years. Though, by that point, the differences in intellect between people would probably be negligible, because their SIM minds – being bereft of physical flaw or neurological deformity – would quickly absorb and retain information far better than their organic counterparts. Also, even the brightest SIM minds would likely be greatly outstripped in power by AI, which would use the same substrate on a larger scale and in different configurations optimized for specific roles.
8. Information would be shared freely and infinitely elaborated upon. Free college-level educations for everybody, and that’s just to start. Imagine having a mind that could remember every little detail with photographic accuracy. You’d be able to correlate so much information in ways that mortals today can’t even dream of. That, in itself, could allow for a number of scientific and cultural breakthroughs. An eidetic memory is as useful to a researcher as it is to a painter or writer.
9. Sick of being human? Program your avatar to be a jet aircraft for a day, or a dolphin, or whatever the heck inspires you. The simulation allows for infinite possibilities, and provides for stunning, lifelike detail indistinguishable from reality.
10. Did I mention the entertainment? Reenact the battles of the Napoleonic era, or fly a helicopter gunship, or build the great pyramids by using telekinesis to manipulate each stone block by hand. Or, you can have a super-intelligent AI do the work of an entire game development studio and port a hundred-year-old vintage video game to the virtual-reality simulation in scant seconds, when it would have taken 300 people working round-the-clock about twenty years. Yay for productivity! Then, of course, there’s the porn. Do you have a fetish about being an amorphous blob of Strawberry Jell-O covered in genitalia? There’s an app for that. It’s sold for 99 joule-credits by Kraft, who now specialize exclusively in servicing such clientele now that nobody has to eat, drink, sleep or breathe.

Admittedly, such a system raises a bunch of questions:

1. What do you do if the power goes out?
2. How secure is it from hacking?
3. Isn’t living in a simulation with the rules set from the outside fundamentally totalitarian in nature?
4. How is it maintained? Where do the spare parts come from?
5. What do you do when the universe suffers its inevitable heat death? Oh yeah, that’s right. Here’s what you do: you reach your head down between your virtual avatar’s legs and kiss your own ass goodbye.

I really am looking for an answer to that last question, though.

The Universe is unimaginably huge, with unlimited resources, and will exist for billions if not trillions of years. We could spread throughout it and live very, very long and wonderful, but not eternal, lives. I say we should go for it but I doubt very much it will happen anytime soon.

Mind uploading and molecular assemblers remain science fiction in their eyes for now, though. We’ll see how they feel in another decade or two.

I did not post the link as a challenge to you of any sort, though I admit am anxious to see proof of your claims.

I understand the many issues with Randi’s set-up; it’s basically luring hacks out with a million dollar prize, for one. Whilst it would be hilarious to see him hand out that million, it would definitely be better if you could find a more ‘classy’ medium.

Ms. Angelica and Mr. Kurzweil would obviously be that. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope they will respond.

Ray could have saved these people $5 million dollars:

“A lot of people will disagree and say death gives meaning to life, and life wouldn’t have meaning and time wouldn’t have meaning if it wasn’t for the limitation of it because of death, but in my mind it’s life that gives meaning to life, and what we do with life, which is actually to create knowledge, and by knowledge I mean music and art and science.” (excerpt from a Raymond Kurzweil interview)

I’m going to go out on a limb by agreeing with what the bottom line of this article implies, and say there can be no truly scientific study of immortality until there actually IS observed immortality (which would be what? The end of time?). More accurately, it would be a study of extreme longevity in humans (perhaps 200 years or longer) once we gain that capability of longevity, which psychologists worldwide would already be all over.

“Near-death/out of body experiences” are the mind/brain acting on a different level of consciousness while it is still alive. There has already been plenty of research on brain wave activity during these episodes.

This just seems like a desperate attempt by people to “prove” an afterlife does exist so we can all just keep on being good little Christians(/insert whatever religion here) instead of preparing ourselves for the implications that the choice of living forever (or at least until the end of the universe) will bring, including some heavy editing or even elimination of many religions.

This is another failure with anti-immortalists/longevists, they always assume immortality/extreme longevity will be forced upon them and that no one will ever have a choice, and likely only assume that to weakly bolster an already weak argument.

Yes, it is Templeton Foundation money and they can spend their money any way they choose, even if it is a relative waste of money that could have been put to much better use for advances in regenerative medicine . Instead we get para-psychological research that proves nothing while millions continue to die every day. If you want to advance science, advance real science, not pseudoscience. Billions of lives could potentially be saved by making the distinction and focusing action and resources in the former, not the latter. It is a matter of life and death, not “near-death”.

More seriously, it should have been awarded IMHO to Brian Stableford, who already has done quite a remarkable work with his “Emmortality” SF series, especially for this very subject, volume V, “The Fountains of Youth”, see http://www.amazon.com/The-Fountains-of-Youth-ebook/dp/B004SPL1I8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344027602&sr=8-2&keywords=fountains+of+youth+stableford

Nevertheless, I’m eagerly looking forward to Mr. Fisher’s contribution.

Somewhere about the age of seven people accept they will die and dont question it again.
The paradigm shift Bob Ettinger had to effect in cryonics was massive, and not everyone is ato die is a futurist. Wanting to die is an imbalance of Thanatos over libido but it can be treated psychoanalytically.
NB we ARE aiming at immortality NOT extended lifespans.
What a ripplingly good project John Martin Fischer has been comissioned to do!
I wish him the best of luck.
Some of us also think resurrection is likely and I’ve set these ideas down under ‘quantum archaeology’ (google).
We are moving into a brave new world!

It could lead to a cure for kidney disease.

Immortality, heaven, God, UFO studies all have their place in humanity’s desire to know everything.

Capitalism is the biggest waste of humanity’s talents . Half the world that lives in capitalist- induced poverty cannot add their brainpower to the solutions we seek to our collective problems because they are too busy trying to get enough to eat .

The very wealthy sit on trillions of dollars that also could be used to find cures for cancer. It is only a small part of that wealth that finds its way into foundation spending to assuage the guilt of the oligarchy and to mitigate the inherent faults of capitalism.

Even if humans can’t figure out how to do this or cannot now envision the possibility, the super-human AI that eventuates from what we are now developing will have capabilities way beyond mere Einstein genius levels.

Virtual can be made to be as real as real.