BioFixation

By Andrew Bengoku

“This idea of living for centuries or millennia is not for me. Even if I were kept in a young and healthy body, after a few centuries I might want to kill myself out of boredom or to avoid going crazy.” This is a common objection when presenting BioFixation’s ambitious goal of defeating biological death and allowing humans to live for planetary timescales, as long as the universe allows.

In this blog, we discuss what we think is an oversimplification behind this objection, which may conceal a deeper fear, the one about the loss of our identity and humanity through technology-enabled neuroevolution; yet another manifestation of the very human fear of the unknown.

The objection that “anyway, I might eventually kill myself” stems from the widely known awareness that as we age, we come to accept death. We recognize that everything comes to an end, that we’ve had our time, achieved some of our goals (or failed to), played the game, and now it’s okay to kick the bucket. This feeling is pervasive, growing stronger as we approach the (currently) inevitable end. It is such a common experience, observed across all countries and cultures, that one might suspect it is an evolutionarily adaptive process. Given that all living things eventually die, imagine how terrible it would be if, in their final moments, people had panic attacks, desperately begging doctors for just ten more minutes…

This acceptance typically comes with the steady decline of our bodies, gradually losing sensory and motor functions, and a weakening of our minds. We become cognitively impaired, struggling to think clearly, remember things, and sometimes even control basic bodily functions. Even before reaching this stage, the awareness of this inevitable acceptance is so ingrained that we incorporate it into our general reasoning. For instance, we might hear that rejuvenation science has made significant progress, with ‘escape velocity’ from biological death soon achievable. However, if offered the prospect of a young body and mind, we hesitate. As mentioned before, the objection is often centered on emotional and general mental challenges: we might welcome a few more decades of healthy life, but we fear we will eventually become bored, depressed, or slightly mad, if not completely insane.

As a side note, in the context of rejuvenation science, a common counter-argument is that, even if rejuvenated, it’s only a matter of time before ‘drunk Bob’ runs you over, splattering your brain like a tomato, or a meteor wipes out humanity—assuming we don’t self-destruct first—or a gamma-ray burst finishes the job by frying the entire solar system.

In summary, even if we are offered a longer life, there is only so much we might want to do or be capable of doing. The prospect of having a second chance, perhaps a third, is appealing, especially if given the option to come back with our friends and family, but after that, why keep going?

Here is where the concept of ‘naive’ thinking comes into play. In a future where our minds will be captured as storable information, a future that BioFixation advocates, our understanding of the workings of the mind relative to the functioning of the brain will be highly advanced. Neurotechnologies (referring here to a collection of approaches for modifying brain structures and functions) will be incredibly effective, for example, in curing currently devastating neurodegenerative diseases and a constellation of mental disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, PTSD). But that’s not all. We will have the ability to precisely modify our minds in any way we wish. This is because we will have gained a thorough understanding of the fundamental principles that enable the emergence of any mental process from its biological substrate. And this is both beautiful and incredibly scary.

With this powerful technology, we will be driving our own mental evolution, no longer at the whim of natural selection but deciding on the evolutionary pathways we find most appropriate and desirable. We will become faster, smarter thinkers with better memory, perception, and cognitive functions, and the list goes on. Then, among these modifications why not also include an unending desire to experience life, expand our knowledge horizons, and crave the possibility of existing for millennia and beyond?

And here is where the scary part of the story comes into play. It is a very small step from making a person slightly more optimistic to modifying someone’s core values in life. Whatever you believe in or consider a fundamental trait or set of values that define you will be changeable by this technology. This is because such personality features are electrochemical processes taking place in your brain (including the neural infrastructures that enable those functions). This technology will have the power to go far beyond the innocent alteration that lets you wake up each day feeling like a lion, full of hope and energy—it wouldn’t hurt to have more of those days. Rather, it could profoundly change the deepest, sacred moral pillars that define you, what makes you unique, your very core personality. It could be a ‘Clockwork Orange’ scenario, when Alex was conditioned against violence by being forced to watch hyper-violent movies. This time it would be through neurotechnology directly altering your brain structures and functions to modify your mind. This is a technology that could undo the hard work your parents did to educate you into the wonderful person you are today, turning you instead into a cruel, merciless hitman (there are nicer examples, but you got the gist).

This technology could enable a cognitive evolution of phenomenal magnitude. When looking back at our ‘non-evolved’ selves, we might perceive a mental distance greater than the one we now experience as adults looking back to our infant selves. The toddler version of us was still ‘us’ (at least legally), but we can hardly recognize any cognitive trait in common with our adult selves. Extrapolate this distance, make it hundreds if not thousands of times larger, and you get an idea of what this technology could achieve. It even raises the question of whether the term ‘human’ would still apply to this evolved being.

Any new powerful technology is a double-edged sword, and this is no exception. The technology that may allow us to live for millennia can also ensure we are glad to live that long. This is similar to what nature has done so far, making us accept our current lifespan of a few decades, and allowing us to accept that we can’t live longer. However, in the future, it will be technology created by us that will drive our cognitive evolution and lets us determine what is acceptable and what is not. Whether this scenario is frightening or beautiful depends on how we will use this technology. But what is certain is that objections based on the assumption that our future thinking will mirror today’s mindset are exceedingly simplistic.

So, how will our thinking evolve? Will we integrate with AI systems? Will we create collective minds, losing the concept of individuality? Or perhaps produce multiple copies of our minds to experience various life paths and periodically reintegrate to accumulate knowledge? Some might speculate that humans are already a form of “specialized divergence,” splitting from an initial entity we call the creator. We’re definitely drifting now… Time to let more creative sci-fi bloggers take over!