Real Life

[edepot]

Although the meaning of life is given in terms of purpose in most contexts. Sometimes people forget that it may also be linked to time. A person who is young may have different ideas about the purpose in life than someone who is older. Experiences in life also tend to affect what one thinks is the meaning of life.

However, time is also important because our vehicle in this world is broken down into time and space. Thus, it is important to know how long our vehicle (flesh) lasts in this world in order to come up with the ultimate definition of the meaning of life.

Our lifespan can usually summed up as an average of 80 years. Some are able to achieve or 100+ years, while some don't make it past 60. But it can be taken as an average that normal people die at around 80 years because that is the age most organs develop some sort of problem or the immune system breaks down and we get illnesses that our body can't combat. While living our life, many cells die and regenerate. Sometimes certain areas of our body regenerated more rapidly, while some other areas regenerate slowly or not at all. The following is a breakdown of the average age of our cells, or how often they get turned over (regenerated).



Surface of stomach: 5 minutes
Neutrophils : Hours
Stomach lining: 4 days
Epithelial cell: 5 days
Platelets: 7-12 days
Skin: 5 weeks
Liver: 6 weeks
Skeletal structure: 3 months
Red blood cells: 4 months
Cerebrum grey matter: "Actual Age"-3 years
Occipital-cortex grey matter: "Actual Age"-10 years
Intestinal tissue: 11 years
Non-Epithelial intestinal tissue: 16 years
Skeletal muscle: 15 years
Occipital-cortex neurons: "Actual Age"

Although this seems to point to the Occipital-cortex neurons as cells that don't die and get regenerated, they do make new proteins and RNA molecules, and do constantly consuming carbohydrates and lipids. It has been said that on average we regenerate every thing in our body in about 7 years, but this may not be correct if you take into account the different areas, some parts do last longer than others, and are regenerated at a slower (or not at all) or faster rate.

So when someone wants to contemplate on the meaning of life, they may want to take into consideration the "life" they are seeking meaning for (the vehicle or flesh) and the time period or location they are trying to find meaning for. Because someone living in the past may have been exposed to different environments than today, in addition to how long they have lived and what "versions" or "parts" of their flesh that is producing the meaning. A stomach lining cell would have less of a time period for contemplation of life than the neurons in the brain.

[edepot]

Immortality possible?

Although life is a process of an aggregation of multiple types of cells assisting each other in survival (energy intake and waste removal), could it be possible that immortality can be achieved by slowly substituting biological cells with machinery that provides the same function at the same microscopic level?

We all know that amputees can survive without many limbs and parts of the body. Technology has gotten the point where artificial hearts, kidneys, liver, and others can substitute for the real thing. The only thing left, and the most important part is the brain that provides us with thought. Our brain provides us with the ability to live and feel alive, and it may be possible to substitute brain cells with miniature mechanical cells that operate the same way. For example, a nano-technology type of cell could be manufactured that would basically duplicate the exact functionality of the brain cell. It would fire signals given certain input signals based on statistics or algorithm. This mechanical cell would ideally target a brain cell, navigate towards it and connect its mechanical tentacles to the same connections of the existing brain cell. After being in place (and observing the signals of the current brain cell), it can destroy the brain cell it is replacing and basically be a permanent replacement. More and more mechanical cells would be inserted and slowly though months or years, all the existing brain cells would be replaced with mechanical ones. If done right, our thought processes won't be interrupted (many people have had half their brain destroyed and still survived).

A more advanced version will probably be an automated mechanical brain cell manufacturer. This machinery will produce miniature mechanical brain cells and send them to their destination. Slowly, an area of the brain will be totally covered by mechanical brain cells. If an area is all mechanical, then that area can be replaced by one super cell that duplicates the functionality of hundreds or thousands of smaller mechanical cells in software. As more and more brain cells are replaced, more and more are replaced by super cells that don't require all the synaptic connections because many are duplicated in function via software. Soon the whole brain will be covered with super cells, and these can even be merged into even bigger versions until it gets to the point where a computer that duplicates all the individual super cells, and our whole brain becomes mechanical.

Is it possible? Most likely yes. If you go into the miniature level and examine brain cells, they are no different from skin cells. Each basically gets nutrition from blood and fire signals through their connections. Destroying a brain cell has the same effect as if you were to destroy one skin cell (nothing happens, and mostly it gets replaced by those around it). How they fire their signals is also easily recorded. Using a statistical model, you can basically find out all the combinations that the cell will fire signals under given circumstances (inputs). Over a long period of time, you can probably duplicate the functionality of the cell exactly.

So theoretically, it may be possible to achieve immortality if the brain cell is replaced by a mechanical one slowly through time. Once the brain is duplicated the rest is easy... as the rest of the body can be emulated via software by sending the appropriate signals to the brain. Even a mechanical body is feasible, and would provide us with stronger, long lasting ones that is not hampered by old age, disease, and mortality.

[edepot]

Upon reflecting on the possibility of immortality through slow synthesis of bionic (or mechanical) parts as substitutes for our biological machinery, it has come to my attention that the brain cells would probably need to be analyzed cell by cell and duplicated mechanically in order to keep our consciousness and our memories intact. However as noted in the first post:

Cerebrum grey matter: "Actual Age"-3 years
Occipital-cortex grey matter: "Actual Age"-10 years

It seems two types of cells are almost the same age as our living body. These two types of cells happen to be part of the brain. Note that we cannot remember anything earlier than 3 years of age, and this seems to fit that the cerebrum grey matter stores our history. If immortality is to be achieved with remembrance of who we are and what we did in our past, then the data stored in the cerebrum grey matter needs to be duplicated. It would seem to be difficult to do unless the internals are examined, or some way to force patterns of input into a cell and observe the outputs (hopefully not introducing new behavior). Perhaps science will advance to the point of being able to retrieve the patterns inside these brain cells to be duplicated (perhaps there is a sequence of proteins built up that triggers certain synaptic patterns that would correlate to our memory when combined with other brain cells). Perhaps there is a simple "harddrive" of data that needs to be read in each brain cell, and their mechanism can be duplicated in software.