From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 04:36:53 MST
On Sunday, December 01, 2002 5:34 AM Avatar Polymorph
avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com wrote:
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> "There are two problems with this assertion. First,
> there is no "immortal maintenance" unless you can
> assert that protons do not decay. That is a
> fundamental question of physics currently unresolved."
>
> Robert, can you explain this further? Our bodies derive
> from information coding that has survived for billions of
> years: does the proton decay problem apply to us? [I
> would appreciate more info. on this, if it is something
> obvious tell me where to do some reading! Thanx.]
I'm with you here. Proton decay, in and of itself, only means that.
There's no reason to think there can't be information storage in another
substrate. To believe otherwise beforehand is sort of like thinking,
circa. 1900, that only biobrains can store minds -- and since biobrains
eventually die, there's no chance of immortality.
Also, I'm not sure proton decay would rule out proton creation. If
that's the case -- viz., protons can decay, but new ones can be
created -- then there's no reason to believe the substrate can't be
renewed. Other considerations might come into play here, but they would
have to be considered in turn.
If it gets out us to a a few billion years -- IIRC, models of proton
decay predicted tens of billions of years for decay -- I'm willing to
take the risk.:) Life extension science has only been around for a few
decades. We shouldn't be making too many bold claims about its limits
while it's still in its infancy.
Happy Holidays!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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