The Collective Body: Russian experiments in life after death | Hacker News Reader

The Collective Body: Russian experiments in life after death

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94 pointslermontov61 comments

The idea of individual immortality seems at odds with how the universe works. But the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter and energy is appealing, because it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.

What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe, and some philosophers like Spinoza have explored the idea of a "God" which is more or less defined as the empirical laws of this universe.

And sure, eventually this universe will also die. But that's okay, because it is also probably part of some larger entity which will also eventually end, and so on. That's how I choose to interpret the infinite, and it brings me comfort because it lets me see death as a change in perspective rather than a finality. It also helps me practice empathy, by not seeing much difference between what I feel and what others feel.

The idea of collective transcendence is also interesting. One work which explored it was Alpha Centauri, a Civilization-style game where the players' colonies crash-land on a planet which eventually turns out to be sentient thanks to global networks of fungus which act as neurons. If the player is eco-friendly, they can eventually communicate with the planet and dump their citizens' consciousness into the seemingly-immortal planet. Even that would only delay the inevitable, but to quote the game's CEO Nwabudike Morgan:

>I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.

Sound familiar, Thiel?

The special projects videos in that game are some of the best science fiction creative work ever made, IMO. Also, something I still think is predictive and sends chills up my neck, "as the Americans painfully learned in Earth's final century" (presumably the 21st):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY57ErBkFFE

Text of the whole spoken:

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights""

All special projects video text, starting with 0-24:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ

Cutscene vids start here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evs0nFCufNM&list=PL8407FAE1D...

Although a bit dated, I still don't see this kind of intellectual quality in most games. Paradox Interactive's Stellaris is about the closest thing to a spiritual successor to SMAC, but it's also its own beast and next-gen 4X.

> But the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter and energy is appealing, because it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.

I think it makes more sense if matter and energy emerge from consciousness though. If the universe is pure math, then only consciousness can make us think that there are real physical objects and energy. Put another way, if you think the basic explanation of the universe is consciousness, then you don't have to explain matter. If you think matter (and physics) is at the root of the universe, then you still have to explain consciousness.

> Put another way, if you think the basic explanation of the universe is consciousness, then you don't have to explain matter.

Of course you do. Consciousness observes some structure in its experience, so what is the origin of that structure? The consciousness itself? What is the nature of that structure? How does it behave if it interacts with other perceived structure?

These are the same questions that must be answered no matter what you take as ontologically fundamental.

That makes sense only as a solipsistic view. If there is only one consciousness, then it can dream up any reality it wants and it will be coherent. But if you allow for multiple conscious beings, they would agree on the existence and properties of matter and energy only if those things existed in some manner independent of those consciousnesses.

That idea assumes consciousness as emergent or made out of the energy and matter we perceive. While the content of our experiences obviously is, I'm not so sure about consciousness "itself". I personally feel it's self-evident the observer must be outside and cannot be made of what is being perceived. Like the dreamer is not made of dream "stuff", the gamer is not made out of video game code, the mirage in the mirror is not the mirror itself, etc...

So yes, "immortality" of "that which is conscious" is a given imho, because you cannot possibly be aware of non-existence (see: the thought experiment of quantum immortality). On the other hand, immortality of the individual and all its facets seems impossible given the constant change/entropy of everything.

> it opens the door to the idea that we are all facets of the same thing.

> What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe

> That's how I choose to interpret the infinite, and it brings me comfort because it lets me see death as a change in perspective rather than a finality. It also helps me practice empathy, by not seeing much difference between what I feel and what others feel.

I'm 100% with you on this. I've largely gotten there through introspection and "logical" thinking, but I'd love some more formal structure (or for some definition of formal). Any suggestions on other philosophers to read on this subject?

I think a lot of the desire for immortality comes from the understandable (and totally human) fear of the unknown / death. But if you change your perspective - that "me" is only "me" relative to, well, me -- and that if you go up a level in abstraction (look at all of humanity or, really, all of consciousness), you realize that any one "me" doesn't really matter all that much -- and that someone else experiencing consciousness is just as valid and relevant as your own experience of consciousness -- and that from that slightly higher level perspective, there's a LOT of consciousness happening, and it's all valid and relevant and interesting (and will continue for a LONG time!)

Just because your one perspective may disappear in N years doesn't mean there isn't a lot of other experience that will still be happening, and that, to your point, death is only a change in perspective.

You might enjoy Wait But Why's Religion for the Nonreligious post [1]. It gave structure to the thoughts I had for a long time.

I also say that my concept of God is explained in a Simpsons intro [2]. It is based on the Powers of Ten video [3], where the camera is looking down increasing its height exponentially. First at 1 meter, then 10, 100, 1000, and so on. By the end, after we pass by the planets, solar systems, galaxies, and on, we end up in Homer's bald head. In other words, we're all part of the same entity; just like the bacteria in our guts is part of us, we're part of what we call God. And Homer (aka God) is not alone, which fits nicely in the many universes theory.

Many religions came to this conclusion, but I'm yet to find a better way to explain it than that Simpsons intro.

[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEuEx1jnt0M [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

The Logos, according to jewish-hellenistic philosophy, was the eternal emanation of the One. Philo of Alexandria (b. 50BC) allegorically referred to the Logos as the son of God. Christianity claims to provide eternal life, simply through belief in the "Logos" (incarnated in Jesus).

So if one views oneself not as a separate person but as part of this eternal emanation, then by definition you do live forever.

> I think a lot of the desire for immortality comes from the understandable (and totally human) fear of the unknown / death

For me, it springs from a desire to experience absolutely everything, to leave no stone unturned so to speak.

I consider myself a pantheist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism

So this is all in line with what I think. We must remember that the human mind is not separate from the universe, it is part of the universe just like anything else.

So in essence, via your consciousness and mine, the universe is learning about itself.

Let that one sink in!

I do not believe that eternal life is something that is intended in this universe, but the Russian's are free to try.

Finite lifespan for an organism stems from the necessity to adapt to changes in the environment, thus -- generations with a cycle of life and death. Brains allow to adapt without physically having to upgrade to next gen. It seems logical that if or when we get to have updatable wetware (in software or somehow else, the options are open), the concept of individual immortality will make sense with how the universe works.

The computers would still stop working eventually; the universe as we know it also has a finite lifespan, and a machine will always require some amount of energy to function.

Well, there is a notion that there is a Darwinian evolution of the Cosmos (https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0205119.pdf), and one might argue that we can't be sure about the future of the universe (especially adding the unknowns regarding multiverse and that whole line of thought) and what future technology might bring, regarding even, let's be optimistic, potential changes to the fabric of timespace itself. Given the non-zero chance of a technological singularity happening even in our lifespan.

> The idea of individual immortality seems at odds with how the universe works

There are things that are "immortal" - https://physicsworld.com/a/electron-lifetime-is-at-least-660...

Well, an electron is not an "individuum" - in the sense that all electrons, being elementary particles, are exactly the same. In any case, though, should annihilation, then, be considered a fatal accident?

> the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter and energy is appealing

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

> In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our universe, that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Theoretically over a period of time on the order of hundreds of billions of years, by sheer chance atoms in a void could spontaneously come together in such a way as to assemble a functioning human brain. Like any brain in such circumstances, it would almost immediately stop functioning and begin to deteriorate.

> "What is 'we' to us (and whatever other life is out in space) could be 'me' to the universe..."

i'm skeptical of collective transcendence but it's pretty easy to see humans becoming the neurons of earth's brain over time. and as other planets become similarly sentient, they'd become the cells of an even larger galactic organism. and maybe galaxies form a universal being, and this universal being becomes a cell in a multiversal being.

it's cellular recursion all the way down.

Have you heard of Cosmism? It was a Russian art-cultural movement in the early 20th century with similar ideas.

Do you think any finite amount of time, no matter how long, will eventually seem too short? Even if you live a gazillion years, eventually you will reach the end, and you will yearn for immortality all over again. The only real solution is real immortality.

> The idea of individual immortality seems at odds with how the universe works.

If only as a matter of simple statistics: the average time from the birth to dying in a fatal accident is for a human today well under 1000 years.

Consciousness is emergent from Milky Way chocolate bars. Until the first one was made we were all chemical reactions going about nothing, and when the last one is eaten, that's what we'll go back to.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is basically a tautological truth.

`Sound familiar, Thiel?`

The only person that's seriously competent and taking immortality seriously atm.

This will sound odd to the vast majority but there are some who view the whole idea of their personal immortality as awful and the drive to obtain it incomprehensible. Even if it were in some harp filled cloud borne paradise let alone in the real word. To some, permanent existence seems unspeakably nightmarish.

I don't think most people advocating for, say, curing death through aging are advocating forced immortality. It's just a few years more- it's just not dying tomorrow, or next year, or next decade.

Yes, if you imagine an arbitrary boundless personal future, there are a lot more ways it could end up being on average a negative experience than a positive one. I've never heard anyone argue against having an exit plan for that eventuality (i.e., I've never seen anyone argue a 500-year old should be prevented from killing themselves).

I don't think you would turn down a magic pill that would extend your lifespan-with-a-21-year-old's-vitality tomorrow, would you?

I think all the 'immortalists' want is for everyone to live as long as they choose to, and not have the choice taken away from people as it is now.

One more feeling the same.

Permanent existence doesn’t have to be nightmarish. For instance, imagine simply reliving your current life forever. You don’t know you’re in a loop, but the feelings you had and the people you’ve known you will always feel again. So make it a good life, and make it good for others as well.

Fascinating review. But, honestly, I really wish these ideas were treated as derivative of the religious-cultural matrix they came from. Why is transcendence given such a high priority? Speculatively - I am not an expert - it is due to the regional influence of the "East" Orthodox church and the underlying notions of theosis and transcendent mysticism that threads it in ways that were less common for the West.

Ideas, particularly recurring and popular ones, do not arise _de novo_, but have an interlinking with a population susceptible to them.

Personally, while I believe (religiously) in an afterlife, I don't desire immortality. Long & healthy life would be nice; but my time in this universe has an end, and _that's ok_. Let my child be an adult free of my control.

Immortality == the end of childhood.

Yes, I'm referencing the title of the novel, Childhood's End. But it's true. If we lived 1,000 years, we couldn't have two children per-woman every 40 years -- we could only have two children per-woman every 1,000 years. That would yield a minuscule number of children at any time. A life expectancy of 1,000 years would require finding a way to extend fertility from ~35 years, otherwise many opportunities to reproduce would be missed completely and fertility would drop well below replacement rate, furthering the end of childhood.

No, we can have immortality, or we can have children, but not both.

I can't imagine a life without children. So I choose mortality. I want to die (in time) so that my children may have children. And my children too will have to die (in time). It's just how it has to be.

But we can talk about what would be a good life expectancy. 200 years would be fine, provided the first 160 of them one could have a young body and mind. And provided we can find a way to not get too bored :) Even 1,000 would be fine provided our bodies and minds stayed young for 850+ of those 1,000. In any case, I don't want to live 120 of 200 years in an old people's home.. Who would?!

If you haven't experienced 17776 yet, please do!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776

https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

Wow. That was beautiful. I just spent the last couple hours reading through it. Being stuck in my house looking at the world through a screen, I can empathize with that little trashcan hurtling through space. Thanks for sharing.

So people who choose not to have kids can have immortality? ;)

It would be pretty unethical to prevent people from getting the best available medical treatment just so there are more children, on the other hand giving people a choice would have many social implications.

The way the social dynamics would work is that everyone would have to get "immortality" and the total number of children at any time would have to be much smaller than today. Real immortality would literally require having zero fertility (or else a galaxy colonization program) for obvious reasons.

> The way the social dynamics would work is that everyone would have to get "immortality" and the total number of children at any time would have to be much smaller than today. Real immortality would literally require having zero fertility (or else a galaxy colonization program) for obvious reasons.

It depends. If by immortality you mean "each individual actually lives forever", then what you say is true. If it means "each individual could live forever," then you could have immortality and fertility... as long as you replaced death with literally murderous competition between the immortals for survival of themselves and their offspring. IIRC, that's part of the plot of The Mote in God's Eye (which has an alien society oscillating between relative peace and population-annihilating war).

Yes, indeed.

I would define "immortality" (i.e., with the quotes, so not immortality) as the ratio of average or mean life expectancy to years-to-maturity. Today our "immortality" is ~4.4. If we lived to ~200 years with adulthood still starting at 18 we'd have an "immortality" of ~11. If we lived to 1,000 with adulthood starting at 18 then we'd have an "immortality" of 55.56.

We could fix these problems by lengthening childhood by the same factor as life expectancy, but then the new thing wouldn't be very interesting.

I vote for the galaxy colonization program, thank you.

You'll probably also want cures and vaccines... for everything.

If you live forever, your chances of getting every un-fun STD out there, to say nothing of every flu-causing virus, are pretty good, and while Herpes won't kill you (hopefully), it might ruin your fun for the lion's share of your life.

I think the main hurdle that people seem to face when conceptualizing immortality is that they assume you would want to remain static throughout your eternity of existence. That's absurd considering no one stays exactly the same person as they live their current mortal life, why would immortality be different? No, immortal humans would continue to evolve along side their culture or would choose to splinter off from it to pursue their own developmental goals. An end to death is not an end to striving and changing, it would only be the beginning.

Huh that doesn't seem true at all. Even if you lower the amount of children 20 times then there still would be hundreds of thousands of them in the US. This doesn't seem like a problem at all. Actually it would be a blessing since those children could receive way better education compared to now.

There would hardly be any playgrounds or schools even.

There would be but 20 times less then now. For instance New York has over 1500 playgrounds. That would become 75. I wouldn't call that hardly any. I can't easily find the number but I bet there are far less Apple stores in NY for instance. And I wouldn't say there are hardly any of them. Besides imagine the godly playgrounds we could build of we had 20x the budget for each one.

I don't follow. How would it be any different than today?

The children a woman has, will in turn have children. So the rate of births would be exactly the same as it is now. The only difference is people would not die as quickly.

Fertility would stabilize around replacement rate once life expectancy stabilized too. The number of children in a population would still go down though, as for any one woman's 1,000 year lifetime, there would be two children.

Unless, of course, you mean that people who live to 1,000 would be children (immature) until they reached 180 years of age. I.e., just scale our perception of time along with our life expectancy.

But merely scaling time isn't interesting. People who want to live forever want to live forever as adults.

As adults frozen at about 25 years of age. Basically children. No one wants to be a decrepit old immortal man.

Right. But now we're talking about two very difficult to achieve things.

The religious view is the best of both worlds: immortality and children. No wonder religions are the most fecund, whereas atheism tends to sterility.

I don't think one has to be religious to prefer being able to have children to immortality. FYI.

sure, but it's easier

Is it? I don't want to live forever in a decrepit state. And I don't want child-rearing to be 1/100th of my life. No religion needed to get to that.

More than a few intrusive overlays covering an article largely about politics, a paragraph about NeuroNet, followed by talk of climate change.

I seem to have skimmed past the part about life after death?

"Life after death" sounds like an oxymoron to me (unless we are talking about revival, of course).

First they need to revoke mathematics, that less probable states will transition to more probable states.

Mathematics does allow for such things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theor...

Sure, there is always a possibility of return, at least on a 2d plane (not 3d), but still mathematics will have to be revoked to favor low probability macrostates. Certainly an ambituous goal!

I think you might be confusing this with the 2D/3D random walk in a discrete infinite space?

Poincaré recurrence is about exhausting the phase space in (discrete or continuous) bounded systems.

That's not what that theorem says. It says that there's a guarantee of return, eventually.

Life would not emerge at all if this statement would be that simple.

There is a hypothesis that life emerged because living things dissipate energy more efficiently[0]. As one possible implication, individual immortality given humanity as we know it might appear counter to that goal. As a more far-fetched implication, evolving humanity in a way that motivates accelerating efficiency of energy capture and dissipation even as individual longevity increases could theoretically unexpectedly inch us closer to immortality.

[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...

Or the source of life lies outside the physical plane. Modus tollens to the rescue!

Nah, you just account time to explain life

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