To be practically immortal, an entity must possess the following qualities:
a) it must be distributed across many semi-autonomous nodes; killing some nodes should not cause the death of the entity itself
b) the nodes must be distributed across vast distances; no natural disaster should be able to kill all the nodes
c) the entity should be able to create its own backups, hidden in many remote places; no system-level sickness of the whole entity should stop it from being restored from backups
d) the entity should be able to rapidly self-improve itself, to win against intelligent adversaries
If we consider only biological entities, the supercolony of ants in Southern Europe is the closest to being immortal. It consists of billions of semi-autonomous nodes distributed across a 6 000 km stretch of land. Of course, it still doesn’t possess all the 4 qualities, and thus is still mortal.
Although humans consist of individual nodes too, the described path to biological immortality was closed for them a long time ago. There is no way for the natural selection to take a human and gradually convert him into something like an ant colony.
And that’s the main reason why humans are not immortal (yet): our monkey bodies are not designed for immortality, and cannot be redesigned for that by the natural selection.
On the other hand, mind uploading could give us all the qualities of immortality, as listed above.
An entity with the described qualities cannot be outcompeted by your “Horde of Death”, as the entity can simply sit and wait until the Horde becomes extinct, which is inevitable for all biological species.
Thus, immortality is the final aromorphosis. Nothing can outcompete immortality.
The fate of the universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right
Our current understanding of physics is so ridiculously incomplete, it is safe to assume that every single law suggestion of physics eventually will be modified or discarded, in the same way as the theories of phlogiston, life force, and luminiferous aether were discarded.
After we gain a sufficient understanding of physics, we will see if the heat death is still a threat, and if yes, what tech we should build to prevent it.
To be practically immortal, an entity must possess the following qualities:
a) it must be distributed across many semi-autonomous nodes; killing some nodes should not cause the death of the entity itself
b) the nodes must be distributed across vast distances; no natural disaster should be able to kill all the nodes
c) the entity should be able to create its own backups, hidden in many remote places; no system-level sickness of the whole entity should stop it from being restored from backups
d) the entity should be able to rapidly self-improve itself, to win against intelligent adversaries
If we consider only biological entities, the supercolony of ants in Southern Europe is the closest to being immortal. It consists of billions of semi-autonomous nodes distributed across a 6 000 km stretch of land. Of course, it still doesn’t possess all the 4 qualities, and thus is still mortal.
Although humans consist of individual nodes too, the described path to biological immortality was closed for them a long time ago. There is no way for the natural selection to take a human and gradually convert him into something like an ant colony.
And that’s the main reason why humans are not immortal (yet): our monkey bodies are not designed for immortality, and cannot be redesigned for that by the natural selection.
On the other hand, mind uploading could give us all the qualities of immortality, as listed above.
An entity with the described qualities cannot be outcompeted by your “Horde of Death”, as the entity can simply sit and wait until the Horde becomes extinct, which is inevitable for all biological species.
Thus, immortality is the final aromorphosis. Nothing can outcompete immortality.
None of this is sufficient to survive the heat death of the universe.
As a wise man pointed out:
Our current understanding of physics is so ridiculously incomplete, it is safe to assume that every single
lawsuggestion of physics eventually will be modified or discarded, in the same way as the theories of phlogiston, life force, and luminiferous aether were discarded.After we gain a sufficient understanding of physics, we will see if the heat death is still a threat, and if yes, what tech we should build to prevent it.