The Quest for Individual Immortality
David Brin
2010-12-12 00:00:00
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Recently I was interviewed about the likelihood that human lifespan can be extended indefinitely, any time soon: "When Will Life Expectancy Reach 200 Years? Aubrey de Grey and David Brin Disagree."

dnaThis is a topic I've also covered in my article, "Do We Really Want Immortality?"

Funny thing about these immortalist fellows. Their calculations always seem to portray it happening just in time to save them! But in fact, the news from science seems to keep getting worse for them, not better... e.g. in recent insights into the vastly complex inner computation abilities of human neurons. It is a case where I'll be pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong. But I think grownups should focus on the guaranteed right bet... investing in our posterity.

To see how far back the immortality fantasy goes, read about Gilgamesh, or the Chinese First Emperor who drank mercury in order to live forever - and died in his forties. Or read the creepily familiar reasonings of very similar fanatics in Huxley's brilliant (if slow) After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, a book that you find out on the very last page was actually a sci fi novel, all along!

The quasi-debate between me and fellow IEET Fellow Aubrey de Grey provoked a firestorm of controversy over on my Facebook page, with many commenters urging me to BELIEVE that tech-delivered eternal life is just around the bend. Indeed, I was told that BELIEVING is essential to get there, and that NOT believing might prevent it from happening. One person wrote: "The power of your expectations is crucial."

Um, right. I get the same pitch from SETI zealots, who proclaim that detection of advanced alien civilizations will result in scientific leaps that may solve all our problems.

Now, bear in mind that I am a scientist and sci fi author and I have explored concepts both future and alien with far more eagerness, breadth, and relentlessness that any hundred others you will ever meet. I want us funding ten times as much scientific research as now. I support SETI and have served on some of the commissions, and my name is on the first contact rolodexes. I know all the Singularity guys and have listened to them for hours.

So why do I (like Vernor Vinge, coiner of the term "Technological Singularity") react with sighs and eye-rolls to all this fervent Hosanna! shouting over salvation from above or an imminent Day of Transcendence, when Death shall be no more and ye true believers all will be rewarded?

Because we've heard it all before. The terminology may be different, but the psychology is still the same as in every tent show revival meeting across six thousand years. It's not just the substitution of anecdotes for actual capabilities. (Lots of stem cell papers, but not one regrown nervous system, yet.) Nor the coincidence that Salvation Day always calculates out to be just in time for YOU!

None of that offends me. Heckfire, I hope you guys turn out to be right. It might happen. I think simplistic notions are stymied by recent results showing how vastly complicated the internal processes of a neuron are, that the intracellular automata interactions and computations going on in there are far more complex than just unrolling and charting the incredibly simple and easy human genome......but sure. Let's all hope. In fact, lots of stuff discovered along the way might be Earth-saving. Like cheap tissue culture meat. That'd be great.

But no, I'll tell you what bugs me. It's the psychology. The incredibly self-centered, solipsistic, self-serving, "I-am-soooooo-darned-important!" narcissism of the fantasy is what bugs me. The hand-rubbing, chortling, I-am-so-gonna-live-forever! zealotry that seems never to entail any of the virtues that we've long associated with adulthood.

Dig it, find me the extropian who understands how we stand on the shoulders of every generation of parents who tried to raise better kids than themselves, or who ever speaks about the beauty of that chain of pay-forward generosity, the most tragic/poetic tale ever told. Or the noble honor we'll all have, even if we die, if we can only be one of the most important of the pay-forward generations. ALL I hear is paeans to how grand it will be to receive the end result. Never anything about the obligation that falls upon us, from that great chain.

I see the quest for individual immortality as kinda cool, tempting... and fundamentally irrelevant to the Great Project that I have inherited - that WE have inherited. To build and improve the Enlightenment Civilization of Ben Franklin and the others. To ensure that we never slump back into darkness. To build something like Star Trek that deserves to move outward. To make kids who are better than us...

...so much better that they will have ideas about what's wise and good and proper - wisdom that's far beyond ours. (BTW, this is happening.) Building that posterity is a far greater challenge, yet one our ancestors were equal to. It is a project that is far more noble, precedented, and plausible than some grand leap to transcendent immortal supersmart godhood. It is the project that should have your loyalty.

And if we happen to get some of the other goodies while doing all that, well, then fine.