Digital Immortality, Part Two

conversation between myself and Josh Clark. The bigger question, and this is something that like gets left out of all of this stuff, is if you say you could conceivably create a really a great simulation of an individual person's brain, and it started making connections and it became a better

version of the organic brain, that's a separate thing. How is it connected to the organic brain so that you don't just have the experience of the organic brain and the experience of the AI brain, right, How are they connected to that they're sharing experience because without that connection, without that shared experience, you have, for all intents and purposes, two separate individuals. It's bringing them together so that we

really are translated into a digital version of ourselves. That that is this this step that guys like curse while and everybody else is talking about this just completely walk past. Well, yeah, the the I mean, if you nailed them down and said,

can you explain this? I think the explaination would get would be kind of a non explanation, which is that at the time you reach the sophistication, the technological sophistication capable of simulating a brain to the extent that it would be useful in this way, we would have a brain computer interface that would allow for the bidirect sational communication. I realized that you do not curse on this show. We don't curse on my show either. Yes, yeah, that's

what they call Strickland magical thinking, I would argue. And I realized, I certainly can't go so far as to I wouldn't go so far as to call it magical thinking in the sense that we have brain computer interfaces now,

they're just very primitive. So the question is, could we get to a level of sophistication where it was where we shared consciousness, that's what we're talking about here, And and I realized that it would it would be a disadvantage of humanity to nail down the futurists and be like, no, no, no, don't you dare make a prediction unless you can exactly lay out how it's going to happen. That's not what they do. So I don't necessarily have a problem with futurists.

I have a problem with the people who write about what futurists are saying, as if it's going to happen regardless, because there's there here's one. This drives me crazy. It was a kurtswild prediction, just a random stuff. Like everything that guy says gets pressed right and understandably. So it's an interesting dude, and he has interesting thoughts and interesting visions. But he said recently that um by humans will be cyborgs.

Our brains will be jacked into the Internet, will be able to say, we want to think about Wikipedia page, we will be there. It will be in our minds that Wikipedia page. We will have that level of brain computer interface that we are the sum total of human knowledge. Yes, well, somebody did try to nail him down, or he he

volunteered it in this talk, whatever it was. I just read an article on it um and he says that there's going to be DNA based nano robots that will basically enter our core texas and connect us to um a an artificial cortex that the Internet is based on. That that's how it will happen. It's like, well, that

is really neat and dandy. How how if you put something, if you say that something's gonna happen fifteen years out, just just saying well, DNA nanobots, that's how Like that's at the same level as as taking a human brain now and plugging it into a USB cable and expecting something to happen. I would I would totally agree with you on that, absolutely agree with you on that because uh and and knowing what Here's another problem is that we've got people who are very brilliant. There there clearly

intelligent people. However, you know they're intelligent and focused on specific parts of general knowledge and don't necessarily possess other elements of knowledge that would be really important to have before you make definitive statements and predictions, Like neuroscientists will often say things that you know, the physicists may say one thing, but neuroscientists believe another thing, Like is just to say maybe there are some quantum effects going on

in the brain, and neuroscientists saying that's not really what we think is happening, and because there's so much we do not know, making any sort of prediction of something that is definitely going to happen when you say it's definitely gonna happen is kind of foolish. You know, it's it's it again, probably falls under the category of wishful thinking, particularly in the case with Kurtswild, who again, brilliant guy. But I agree with you. I think I think trying

to explain say it nanobots, it's almost akin to saying magic. Yes, it's the exact same thing, especially since right now, as far as we know, nanobots are probably well beyond our ability to make on any kind of truly sophisticated level, like the nanotechnology we talk about today. We're talking about nanoparticles that you can guide externally through stuff like ultrasonic

frequencies or magnetic fields. But they're not robots, like they're not auton missed or even remote controlled items that can go to where you want them to go and do what you want them to do. That level of sophistication, I think is well beyond fifteen years out. I can't imagine us getting there. And also I think another issue I have is that a lot of these futurists based their assumptions on things like Moore's law. And I could hug you right now, man, Yes, you can't base any

sort of arrogant prediction on Moore's law. It has as much veracity as Murphy's law. Yeah, man, I'm so More's law was originally just an observation. It wasn't and it was for a decade. Yeah, you got Gordon Moore who said, it looks like every two years what we're going to reach is the uh, the sophistication and the economic condition where it will be possible to half the size of transistors, double the number of transistors on a square inch of silicon.

And how you how you put that is whether you're a glass is half full or half empty kind of person. But and he was looking at it as saying, you know, it's not just the technological sophistication. It's also the fact that our our manufacturing ability will reach a point where it makes sense to do it. And it was never

meant to be something that would exist in perpetuity. It was meant that, I like, at least for the foreseeable future, this is going to continue until we run up to some sort of fundamental block, and we're getting real close to that fundamental block now. In fact, a lot of engineers, uh including More, have said that this is this is the days of Moore's law are close to an end. But they have been saying that for a very long time.

Now they have and when part of the reason that they've been able to to push it off is that we've kind of redefined More's laws. No longer the number of transistors. Now we sort of understand it as the processing power of a chip tends to double every two years, which you can do both with architecture and with the optimization of that architecture. So that's kind of what Intel does.

They'll they'll do things well, they'll shrink down elements in one move, and then the next move they figure out how the what's the best architecture for those elements to take the best advantage of what they've done. So it's a tick they called the TikTok approach. The tick is where they shrink everything down, the talk is where they optimize it, and then the next tick they shrink stuff

down again. Talk they optimize it. Yeah, so it helps extend More's law because they don't always have to get smaller and smaller, and once you get to a certain size, you run into quantum effects that totally ruin the way electronics work. So the reason why we're even bringing this up is that you cannot count on the technological sophistication

to continue at the same rate it has been going. No, but these guys who are all about digital immortality are basing all of their assumptions on the idea that Moore's

law will keep going like this. Yeah. Well, and not only that, they're they're applying the same sort of idea of Moore's law to other disciplines, and they're treating it as if it is an actual scientific law, and they're they're kind of banding it about as if it is and as if it proves that their predictions will come true, which I mean, like, I love Moore's law, but I would feel a lot better about it if it was called like Moore's really good idea or just or just

the general observation of more, you know, because it really again, it was an observation and then a prediction based on that observation. But it was it wasn't Gordon More who called it Moore's law. He doesn't. No, he didn't care for that. He was like, let's not called the law, guys, it's too late. Um well, that's That's one of the big things is that if Moore's law doesn't hold true,

then this sets everything back. And if Moore's law, and since you can't apply More's law to things like neuroscience, the discoveries and neuroscience happened on a totally different time scale. Yeah, like inspiration doesn't happen on any kind of plotted charge. So that that's another thing to keep in mind is that maybe their predictions are sort of accurate, but not for the time scale. It maybe that it's much further

out than what they anticipate. In fact, I would be shocked if that's not the case, based upon what little I know about these other disciplines. Okay, well, let's let's go ahead and just say, Josh, just for the sake of argument, let's say that this world does come about where digital immortality is possible. It's a thing, we can do it. The trouble doesn't stop there. There's some other big issues happening. So now can you imagine a world where there is now an option for you to move

yourself over into a digital immortality phase. Maybe it doesn't even involve leaving your body. Maybe it involves getting an implant, and then that takes over and your body will live for as long as it can. And then after that you could even port that intelligence, which is you, into some other body, whether it's a robot or maybe even sort of free form where you could flow into all

sorts of different electronics. I even saw one suggestion saying, like, in this science fiction future, you could get behind the wheel of a car, but you don't really get behind the wheel of a car. You become the car, like that sort of stuff. All right, do you imagine that that would be available to everybody day one? Yeah? Yeah,

And you make a good point in this article. It's like talk about some sort of disparity and experience here on Earth between the halves and they have not Yeah, and the halves and you talk about the huge gap and haves and have nots that already exists. Imagine a world where not only is that gap there, but it's exacerbated by the fact that now the halves live forever. Yeah. I think about the grumbling that people have every time Dick Cheney gets a new heart and gets to live

like an extra like ten twenty years. That's just a new heart. Like imagine if people like that, or anybody who's wealthy, was able to become immortal and it was only available to them because it was so prohibitively expensive, as I think you rightly point out, would definitely be the case at first. And you know, not to get too political, but I would imagine that this would be a world where you would see an even stronger push towards protecting the status of those who have things, because

now they're in it forever. Right. It's it's not even I want this protected for as long as I live now, it's I want this to be protected forever um. You could also make the argument that maybe that would mean those people would also become way more interested in taking better care of the planet because they're going to be there forever. I think it would be one of the benefits of this is that it would extend long term thinking about about the future of humanity, the future of Earth.

That I think that would just be an inevitable byproduct of Yeah, because you're going to experience it if you're in that if you're in that elite, then you are going to experience that. So therefore it does benefit you to think about these things. You can't just focus on the short term gain anymore. Now It's like I'm going to years, who cares about anything? After that, I'll be dead? Who cares? Yeah? Yeah? And and like for me, I'm like, well, I don't have kids, so I don't even have that

about You barely care about this moment. Honestly, I stopped caring about five minutes into this episode. But no, it's just kidding. But yeah, that's That's one of those things, is that we're talking about a potential divide, not just in uh in the haves and have nots as far

as like a single country. But let's say that this technology is developed in one part of the world that immediately is going to cause issues too, because you've got the rest of the world nobody wants to to I think it's pretty safe to say that most people don't

want to die. Most people like the idea of being able to at least live as long as they want to live, right, Like, they get the option to say, maybe maybe eternity is not what I really want, but I would like the opportunity to live as long as I I want to live before deciding to no longer live, right, Like, even that could be a case. It could be that when we talk about immortality, we're really just talking about

you get to decide when you go. Well, you know, I read an interesting article about that that's saying like, if we are going to do this, don't forget to also include some sort of suicide switch. Because if you become digitally immortal and you have no way of ceasing to exist, I mean, what happens when you want to cease to exist and you can't do anything about it? Yeah,

that that would be a totally new type of torture. Sure, And that was another part of that same article, I think it was in the Atlantic Um where they said, well, what does a life sentence look like? You know, and if you if you do something wrong in the future generation to sides that you've done something wrong and you should be punished, well, you're still around for that future generation to punish you. And how long will that last? And what does it look like? Other considerations? Who owns

the who owns the brain? Because if if you are comporting yourself over into some digital format, presumably there's some hardware and software involved. Who owns that experience? Does it doesn't revert to the person that was the original individual? Does it revert to the hardware that it exists upon. Does it revert to the software that makes it possible? That sounds like a silly question, but it's it's not.

In the age of people who are able to patent genes human genes, you have to figure out like, well, how how do you say, let me correct myself before you get a bunch of listener mail who are able to patent genetic processes that are the results of genes.

Because the human genes discussion was eventually said, no, you can't, you can't patent gene But if it's for the late eighties, I would have been right, yeah h. And also, going back to cultural issues, even if you assume that everyone has access to this, what does that mean for religions? A large part of many religions happens to be about the experience that comes after death. That that, in fact, a lot of religions suggests that the life here on

earth is merely preparation for what comes next. But if you extend that that life indefinitely, what does that mean from a religious standpoint. It's a tough question to answer. I can't answer it, but it's you know, it's another one of those things where we get these philosophical uh problems that come in. There are other ones to like, let's say that you are able to extend your life

span indefinitely, what happens to population? I saw you, I saw this in this article, and I don't think that there's that much of an issue here because think about it. If we all live in a non corporeal form, that's the key though, that's non corporeal, but digital immortality might be allowed if we have, like I said, an implant in our heads. Oh well, then there will be body. I mean that's what That will be your status symbol that you own your own body and there's not a

hundred other people in your body with you. Yeah, all trying to make decisions about where to go to dinner or what to get at It just becomes a really really extreme version of all of me another Steve Martin, Yes, and Lily Tomlin was in that. Um. Yeah, So it's it's there are a lot of philosophical questions that we would have to come to grips with if this were in fact ever to become a reality never happened. Yeah, And I'm not I'm not poo pooing the possibility. I'm

not saying that definitely is not going to happen. I don't believe that we know enough about things to say that it never will. I also don't believe we know enough about things to say it definitely well, or especially the definitely will by Yeah. Know, in his defense, he was saying that we would be cyborgs and that we would be able to interface with the internet just using our as opposed to being truly immortal. He's talking more about yeah, and even then, that's still one eight maybe

of that singularity right. Well, one, I ran into a couple of things that were kind of interesting while getting ready for this podcast. I kind of wanted to sort of conclude on this. So while we're nowhere close to the point where we can pour the brain over into some digital format and live forever, where continuity really isn't an issue yet because we don't have the we don't even have the basis to work with as let alone

the figuring out how to port stuff over. There are people working on ways to share who you are beyond uh, your lifespan, and one of them I ran into. In fact, I've signed up for the beta, but it hasn't it's still on the alpha park. The beta is a service called it turner dot me, so a turn and me is a website and it essentially is going to scrub your social presence on the web to get an idea

of who you are. The idea being that eventually it would create an avatar that could act as you do, you know, guided by all the experiences you share with it, as you as you just be you online. The person behind it I believe the name is Sunshine actually, Um says that it would probably take ten years for the algorithm to kind of learn your you know, how you are you before it could react in a way that seemed to be similar. At least ten years, I think

they they say the longer, the better. Is there And there's actually kind of a sad part of the story too, that that he's been contacted by a lot of people who Um are suffering from terminal illnesses and they're looking at this as a way of being able to share memories with other people after they have gone. He says, you know, it's really hard to deal with those requests because honestly, the technology isn't at a level of sophistication where it could just adapt that quickly. But it is

an interesting notion in this case. Obviously, the immortality is more about your your influence here on the planet. After you have gone, you are still gone, but what you leave behind continues to influence others. And that's very poetic way of looking at immortality. It's not the way Woody Allen looked at it, you know, he was always says, I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I

want to achieve it by not dying, um. But immortality through work or through uh, your interactions with other people. That is something. And you know, you could argue that, you know, like the poem was it as an asomandius, where essentially you're like, look at this enormous monument I built is going to stand the test of time and show how powerful I am. And now it's fallen over and it's crumbled and uh and and thus the hubrists

of the past proves to be unfounded. Uh. I still think that this is a very kind of poetic way of of at least showing people that you care for them, even if it, even if it is a little weird on the artificial intelligence doing it on your behalf, you will never get rid of me in my Facebook posts. Yeah, and I had posted in the in the or I wrote in the article about Brian Brushwood, and I even had Brushwood on this show and I asked him about this. Yeah, this was years ago, and it was an idea he

had had. I don't know that he ever actually implemented it, but his idea was to create a very simple algorithm that would copy previous posts he had made online and

post on his behalf after he dies. The idea being that every year, on his birthday, he would be prompted to send a message to this account, and if he did not do it within a certain amount of time, it would activate and start posting for him, so that even after he had died, the ghost in the machine version of him would continue to update Twitter or Facebook. So I wonder how often, like the appropriateness in the context of it would be so oft that it would

be like a Horsey Book's tweet or something like that. Yeah, where you you know, like especially you know, especially if something really tragic had happened, like big newsworthy tragic event happens, and then them yeah and like yeah exactly, or or you know, like let's say that there was a huge fire that broke out in Texas, which is where he lives. Like let's say there's an enormous fire and then it's just like, man, it sure is hot today, or something

like that. That would be it would be like, wow, that's an incredibly poor taste, although to be fair, Brian would probably think that was hilarious. There's there's already another service out there, or at least there was a few years back. I don't know if they're still around, but it was called Deaths which and it wasn't It wasn't

meant to keep going. But you write letters, emails, that kind of stuff, emails, I guess you think about it, Facebook post, that kind of thing, and they're all just held back because every year, much like what Brushwood was saying, you get an email that you have to like click and answer a little bit to prove you're still alive.

And the first year that doesn't happen, it gives you like two or three more chances over the next couple of days, and then it sends out these emails everything from like, dear boss, here's what I have always thought about you too, you know, your sweet wife saying I know I've died and I want you to remember I always love you. And you know, like there's sweet things you can do, there's mean things you can do, there's just whatever, like here's here's the combination to the fire

safe in the closet, all that kind of stuff. But it was all being held back by this one thing, which was every year you kept it from triggering, which is pretty cool. Yeah. No, it's an interesting idea. I like, not immortality at all. No, but it's again one of the idea of extending your presence digitally but is extinguished.

Isn't that extremely egotistical? I mean it could be, but it could also be that, you know, if you have the fear of what if this stuff I want to I want to express to somebody, you know, what if I what if I never get around to doing it? Because people say you wasted that part of your life. Yeah, that's part of life is you were given a finite amount of time, finite amount of time to make decisions.

There's also something where you might you might think I want the ability for this person's final memory of me to be this thing because they mean they mean whatever to me, and I want them to be aware of that.

And I like to think of it more on the sweet side than the nasty side, but obviously it would apply to both, and the idea being that, well, I can't guarantee that I won't get hit by a bus tomorrow, and so I want the ability for this thought I'm having, this, this expression to be sent to this person in that event. I have no problem with the death switch service. My problem is the idea of becoming immortal. Digital immortality is

a little pathetic and desperate. If you ask me, like, just the whole concept can't die, I can't possibly die. Don't let me die, Okay, so that's part one of it. But then a dumb down, watered down version of it to where an AI of you survives you. That, to me is is beyond egotistical, because if you think about it, our concept of immortality now strickland is what you leave behind in the form of your work and your memories, and you leave yourself to be judged and appreciated, hated,

whatever by the people who who come after you. By the people you've touched, have have who keep you alive with their thoughts. That's immortality. Now it's not. It's up to the people who are left to stay alive to decide how they think of you, or whether they even want to think of you. With this AI version of yourself, you're just insinuating yourself in their lives beyond your own physical death in a way that you're not even getting any sort of satisfaction. Have I ever told you what

my plan is after I die? Okay, so this is going to give you a look into my psyche and explain exactly why this kind of service is perfect for me. I've told my wife this. I didn't say this is my plan for after when you die. I got that plan to my plan for when I die. Uh, And

I I'm not being genuine when I say this. This was something I told my wife and just but I said, what I want to have happened is I want to be cremated, and then I want us to have part of my part of the stuff I leave behind is going to be a certain amount of money to hire somebody who, for the rest of my wife's life takes the urn of ashes that has me in it hides it somewhere in the house, and she cannot go to bed until after she finds me, because I want to

irritate her as much in death as I have in life. And she looked at me, She's like, the scary thing is I could totally see you doing I kind of can't too. Now. Honestly, I would never do that. I plan on donating my body to science. Yeah, you know, supposedly you have to make a note if this kind of thing bothers you that you don't want, um, say, like a rhino plastic practice to be carried down on your I don't care. I don't care. You know whatever,

Whatever helps people in the long run. Whether whether that help is is whether you judge it as being superficial, whether you judge it as being really meaningful. Ultimately, my goal is I want I want to I want to leave the world better than it was when I came in.

That's that's how my wife approaches that too. She wants to leave her body to science, and I'm like, plastic She's like, I don't, It's fine, Like if I'm leaving it to science, Well, the way I figure, what if there's someone who threw uh, you know, either an inherited defect or yeah, yeah whatever, Yeah they could, they could, truly, their lives could be transformed in that I cannot even conceive, up, I know what you mean. Or there's, of course there's

that option. I feel like like put down the dermatologists, like, oh, you saved lives, and she's like, yes, through skin cancer, because skin cancer. I didn't think of it well, Or what about the scenario there's a housewife in Beverly Hills and her nose is just a little too big, you know, actually her nose is a little too big. My nose is the last one in the world to look at. So I can't believe we've both been in here. I know. It's we almost had to build out an alcove in

this podcast studio just for the nasal passages. This has been a lot of fun, dude, Thank you for having Thank you for coming on. Of course, obviously, beat the heck out of the toilets episode. Yeah right, yeah, I didn't make any puns in that sense, like I didn't know. You know, there there are tons of immortality puns I could have made, but I didn't do it. I I speak for everyone listening. When I say we appreciate that,

I'm sure. So of course you can find Josh Clark's work on Stuff you Should Know and all things stuff you should know. Remember, you gotta you gotta check out the podcast. You gotta check out the site also, if you have the opportunity, occasionally, Josh and Chuck do live appearances.

You guys just finished a tour, a couple of tours. Yeah, we did one in the north West and then in the Northeast, and then we're going to do the northern Midwest, which is the thing I think, but like Chicago, I believe, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and either Milwaukee or Madison this this October. So you guys have got to check that out. If that's one of the If you live in one of those areas, are near one of those areas, look into it because the live events are a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.

And uh, I mean hopefully we'll be sending you internationally before too long because because Josh sits right next to me. U no, we get along really well. I really appreciate you being on the show. You guys. If you have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, you can of course, let me know. Send me an email. You know. It might be a specific type of technology, It might be a profile on a person or a company, or maybe you just have a preference for a particular guest

to interview or be guest hosts. Let me know, I'll make it happen. The email addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all three of those is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topic because it has stuff works dot com