Imagine the person you love, someone you have known for decades, someone who has become the very meaning of your life, suddenly, and unexpectedly has a stroke. Their body is crippled to near uselessness, relinquishing them of their dignity. And, having lost the ability to communicate with them, you’re not even sure if their mind is as it was, if they’re even able to recognise you any more. Your best friend has become a dependent.

Then, come and tell me that campaigns and research to cure aging are “against god’s will”.

Curing aging is not about “playing god”. It is not about living forever. It’s about freedom from the suffering of aging. It’s about doing what mankind has always done: using the tools of science and technology to ease human suffering.

If “god” had wanted us to grow old, frail, and crippled, he would also want us to continue to die of the common cold, diarrhoea, or dysentery. Instead, we have created the means to easily prevent death from these illnesses, allowing us to live longer and healthier lives than we did a century ago. There is no difference in curing the seven causes of aging.

There is absolutely no reason we should not take every step necessary to give us healthier, longer lives, free from the frailty of aging. In fact, just like those old illnesses, it would be cruel and irresponsible of us not to.

Being a future enthusiast, there are many things I am interested in. I often talk about gadgets, social change, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and space exploration. However, curing aging is by far the most important aspect of future technology. This is obviously so that we can have more time to explore all the other exciting aspects of the future.

Anti-aging must be our priority.

What if we learn to read human brains down to the most intricate details?

What if we learn to record, in detail, every action that occurs within the brain, every synapse firing, every cell interaction, every memory?

What if if all of this data could then be stored on a computer and used to re-engineer a new, identical brain?

What if this brain could then be put into a new body, thus creating a new version of us when we die?

What if we knew for a fact that there was nothing after death?

What if we gain the ability to live forever using this, or some other mind transfer technique?

What if we then discover another civilization on another planet, who is still too primitive to save minds, and who still believes that death is natural and essential?

What if we then engineer a situation, for example we send swarms of microscopic probes to their planet to monitor, transmit via microscopic satellites, and then record their minds on our computers?

What if we can then use this data to re-engineer the brains of these people back on our planet so that when they die they can be resurrected?


Would we?

More to the point, is there a civilization already out there that is doing this?