The Black Vault

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... minds.html

This is incredible. Just imagine, once the project is complete, we could transfer a human brain into a robot body, meaning hundreds of years extra life as the brain does not wear down as fast as other organs.

This has a lot of religious implications.

But will they be able to do it?

Well technically there should be no problem, so I think eventually it's basically a sure thing. How long will it take is the question.

I sometimes wonder if our current physical bodies are "avatars" for our "souls".

I wonder how long it would take to adjust to a robot body. Living an extra century or two in a robot body sounds like a good way to torture someone.

Assuming it is something that really could be done someday, raises questions about the ethical side of this, and many religious points of view. If they say discoving a alien civilization and life other places would have upset the entire reilgious world, imagine what this would do to religions? Imagine how we would use this if it became a reality, that if you had some incurable condition or disease, you could remove the brain and put it into a robot. What parent would agree to remove their childs brain and place it into a robot for life, if at age 5 had a incurable disease?

Should humans interfer with the natural cycle of birth, living, and death is a big philisophical question. What if it was controlled by the government and you were not given a choice. The future Obama care, allows the government controlled medical, be able to take your loved one, or yourself, and be forced into a robot body to rid the world of diseases. Keep the brain, and burn the bodies, and you have no choice in it. They use to give frontal lobodomy to people when people were committed and under government control.

greeney2 wrote:Assuming it is something that really could be done someday, raises questions about the ethical side of this, and many religious points of view. If they say discoving a alien civilization and life other places would have upset the entire reilgious world, imagine what this would do to religions? Imagine how we would use this if it became a reality, that if you had some incurable condition or disease, you could remove the brain and put it into a robot. What parent would agree to remove their childs brain and place it into a robot for life, if at age 5 had a incurable disease?

I would do it in a heartbeat if it meant the difference between life and death for him/her.

greeney2 wrote:Should humans interfer with the natural cycle of birth, living, and death is a big philisophical question.

I would say that humans are natural, and therefore robots by extension would be a natural creation. Most people don't agree with me there, but I think everything is natural, as it is all a product of nature.

How can something not be natural? It makes no sense to me.

People also say things like "this is not how nature intended", but unless we're going to give some kind of sentience to nature, then nature has no intention.

greeney2 wrote:What if it was controlled by the government and you were not given a choice.

That is a good point and definitely something to watch out for. Some day not being "roboticized" to save your life may be akin to suicide and could even be illegal, but I find it unlikely.

A bigger problem with anything like this is population control. The world is too full as it is, extending life too much before we have connolised other planets would warrant enforcing people to have less children, and would cause other problems. Personally, I would take having less children over death, but many others would feel otherwise.

At the end of the day, robots are fricking cool, and I want my robot body to have lasers to destroy my enemies with.

You say in a heartbeat, you would do that to your child, but that would apply only if the child was a heartbeat away from leaving this life IMHO. What about an incurable disease that was not terminal, that caused suffering and not death? A birth defect or other quality of life issue?

If death wasn't imminent I don't think I would do it, no, there would be no good point.

If this is possible, I wonder if one day we'd be able to download our brain/consciousness into a android, rather than placing our physical brain into it. That way we wouldn't have to worry about the deterioration of the brain, in effect giving us immortality...as long as the "batteries and oil changes" were kept up...or you could get a new android body if you wanted one. It would be like buying a new car.

I wonder if downloading all the data in our brains would transfer our sense of self to a new location or if it would just essentially make a copy.