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You can 3D print robotic limb replacements so we're really not that far off.
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I do need more organs. I can never get enough of them. 3D printed organs would help stop the black market in China(The gov. kills prisoners for organs especially fuan gong practitioners).
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[quote]3D printing functional organs would be great.[/quote]
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Edited by LahDsai: 7/26/2016 6:19:11 PMIt really is exciting stuff. Just imagine, growing a younger heart. Physical aging would be severely less of an issue, although the mind is a different beast.
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That's where we start to figure out how to transfer the brain/conscious to a computer of sorts.
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The concern there is are you transferring consciousness or just copying thought patterns? It'd probably be more like cut & pasting a file from a computer to external memory What's essentially happening is you're copying the data the then deleting the original. It wouldn't work like [i]Chappie[/i]. It'd be more like [i]Invasion of the Body Snatchers[/i] except the "aliens" wouldn't realize they're copies and we're willingly giving ourselves to them.
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That is a valid concern, but it would seem like the logical next step humans would take after we master being able to replace our bodies.
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Personally, I think a better plan would be to outfit our biological brains with synthetic components. Over time, our brains could adapt to the new architecture and our consciousness could slowly seep from a purely biological platform to the new hybrid platform. As the biological components fail, they can be replaced with new, artificial components. Over time, the brain becomes entirely artificial but consciousness has transfered as a constant rather than a copy. It reminds me of an old philosophical question: A young sailor survives a war and, as a result, feels a close connection with his ship. Over time the ship receives all manner of repairs (new mast, rudder, sails etc.) After many years, the now old sailor replaces the final remaining plank from his original ship. Is this still his old ship that carried him through the war, or is this an entirely different ship?
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That's a good way to think about it. Don't know how we could do that without major consequences. And technically the sailor has a "new" ship, but memories of the old makes it the orginal to only him and who ever else was with him from the start to finish.
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There's also the question of when did the ship become "new"? When the first component was replaced? The last? Half of them? Did new components become part of the original when they were integrated (if 99% of the parts are original, does the 1% become "absorbed" into original status?). Maybe there was one key part that made it "new" (like how a new paint job can make something feel "new") Back to integrating components into our brain, do you ever stop being "you"? If so, when did "you" die and this new entity emerge?
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In a sense the ship would be "new" every time a new component was added, because it's not the same ship. Back to the brain portion. That'll stay more so to the orginal if done correctly, but issues could arse that makes it "new". Damage during replacement or installation ect... It could also make a new gap between people. Like some could not be compatible with it creating two separate classes. This is just one of those issues that will always be more complicated than we take at face value. Wheter it be from a physical or philosophical standpoint.
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There's also the question of what makes you "you". Is a 66 year old retired banker the same person he was when tripping on acid at Woodstock? Is a mother of three the same person who snuck of with her 20 year old boyfriend in highschool? Is a veteran the same person he was before experiencing the horrors if war first hand? Is the meth-head drooling into the carpet the same person as that little girl who loved singing in the school choir? We change all the time but we don't often consider ourselves to be seperate people from our past selves. Opinions change, habits are broken or made and experience is gained (and ignored). Has the older "us" ceased to exist to exist and, if so, when did that happen? If you "died" and a copy of you lived it's life believing it was you, living as you would have lived your life, would it matter? To my family, it's me. To my friends, it's me. To it, it's me. To the current me... "I" no longer exist, so it makes no difference. It reminds me of something someone (I believe it was Alan Turing) said about artificial intelligence. If a machine reaches the point that we can't tell if it's mimicking us so well we can't tell the difference or if it's actually thinking, does it matter anymore? Either way, the end result is the same from our perspective. Likewise, if I am replaced and no one can tell, does it matter that it's not the "real me" (assuming I, too, am unaware)? To everyone else, it might as well be.