Humans will never be able to truly bring people back to life. If digitization ever happens it will just be a soulless Frankenstinian Chinese Room.

atheists DNI

@georgia this is why regenerative technology is the future

@georgia prevention of the disease of death is better than searching for a cure

@georgia no information is ever destroyed so some day it may be possible to resurrect anyone

@Arcana @georgia are you an elf?

@georgia @Arcana > Humans will never be able to truly bring people back to life. If digitization ever happens it will just be a soulless Frankenstinian Chinese Room.

Sounds better than nothing.

Though I find making such a certain ascertion of it pessimistic and presenting an odd degree of certainty about the far future. Psyker detected?

> this is why regenerative technology is the future
> prevention of the disease of death is better than searching for a cure

It's interesting though that in this case one still gets the "frankensteinian" aspect anyway, because you can't regenerate data that was already lost ex-nihilo. Either you rebuild from scratch or you approximate it somehow.

Still, attaining the knowledge to manage this is probably a pre-requisite for the former option mentioned anyway.

@animeirl @georgia Such recovery sounds nontrivial.

@georgia DNI is often used as an acronym for digital-neural interface or direct neural interface in scifi and cyberpunk settings, where it's a piece of technology used to directly connect the brain to a computer. Considering that you're talking about mental digitization, I think that's a kind of funny coincidence.

@lispi314 @georgia better get to work

@georgia tfw that makes me wonder if I am one or not, usually I would say I'm atheist because no dieties/gods, but I do think there are souls/spirits (plus a whole bunch of other things from modern celtic folklore, most of those being more like head-cannons though).
An example of that being why I make the difference between a cyborg and a robot.

@georgia thank gods for that, just let me fucking die tbh

@Arcana unfortunately only rich people will get that and it will come from the blood of 20 year olds

@Arcana @georgia
such "regenerative immortality" is very nowhere near happening, if possible at all

"digitisation" is even more probably impossible though, the physical act of observing and recording relevant state when that would require (hopefully non-destructively) looking at individual molecules inside trillions of cells

@retropikzel_ @lanodan no

DEN WE WUSS LIVIN THERE N SHEEIT AND LEMME TELL YAW DAT SHEEIT WAS STRAIGHT BUSSIN NIGGIES I AIN'T EVEN CAPPIN DAWG

@georgia @retropikzel_ Yup, because souls aren't technology, you could say they're an unknown in current science, like as far as I know, we haven't managed to create or even duplicate one artificially, not even a bootleg like Frankenstein monster.
In fact one way I'd explain that is how "cloning" is more like creating artificial twins, so two very distinct beings, even if they had the exact same experience/memories.

@georgia @Arcana Which is why I tend to call them vampires.

@retropikzel_ @georgia Yeah, you could.
But "advanced technology" ⇒ "seen as magic by less advanced people" doesn't really goes the other way, unless you're saying there's more advanced people with said technology? :D (I don't btw, but I entirely can accept the idea, at least as long as it didn't get disproven)

@lanodan @georgia sounds basically like a kind of animism, similar to Shinto

@newt @georgia Animism yeah, which is part of most religions and folklore, in fact I'm not sure what kind doesn't have animism. Shintoism is polytheist though, including with worshipping and rituals, which is nearly unheard of on the Celtic side.

And I'd tend to take modern Celtism as nearly only folklore (as in lore by and for the people) with some bits having strong consensus on what's canon (say Arthurian mythology) and others where it's not so strong and more like fantasy material, allowing people to tell about beliefs and morals through existing creatures (most of them comparable to a trope, like a mischievous cat) and personifications (supernatural, mostly neutral like harbingers), plus some symbols ( is one) and music styles.

@lanodan @georgia welp... Abrahamic religions aren't animistic. They used to be, but not for the past 2000 years ever since Christianity was adopted by the state.

@newt @georgia "the state"? Aren't Abrahamic religions pretty different from each others?
And I guess what you mean is that Roman Christianism and similar others aren't animist because it only believes in soul/spirit from humans rather than all beings?

@lanodan @georgia yup, that. But also, Islamic Khalifate and modern Judaism. Basically, all instances where faith is coupled with a top-down hierarchy.

@newt @georgia Which seems to be a lot less top-down when it comes to Orthodox Churches although I'm not familiar with those.

@lanodan @georgia Judaism? Depends on the denomination. In the stricter ones, rabbies track mentrual cycles of women who attend their synagogues (see Mikvah).

@joey @georgia @newt Nope, I did not made it up, call it the "Roman Catholic Church" or the "Catholic Church" if you prefer you prick.

@joey @georgia @newt In fact nearly every-fucking-time the question of canon appears there's this kind of behavior, because of course for them any kind of stuff declared non-canon by whatever church is heresy.

@lanodan Do you have any good resources to learn more about the Celtic religions and animism and folklore? It seems like you follow it but it has been hard for me to find decent stuff on it. Although I have found a book on Irish folklore that I need to get around to reading.

@sim I remember seeing some online, specially somewhat academic but I don't think I could find them again. Also it's still a very oral tradition, at least on the Breton side of things, so it's the kind of thing you'd grasp via exposure of stories, most of the ones I know being in either French or Breton, which I guess you're not fluent in?

I think the only one I haven't got locally is "The Ancient Magus' Bride" anime serie, which at least to me is surprisingly accurate. Like two mistakes I can recall are on Crunchyroll's translators:
- calling Silver/Silky a brownie, which feels a bit like calling a dog a wolf;
- spelling Mórrígan (Irish war god) as Morgán which seems like a confusion with Morgan Le Fay (enchantress/fairy from Arthurian mythology), which at best is inspired from Mórrígan.
That said like most of the stories it adds it's own lore, so I would see it more as an example of that culture in action.

@lanodan Yeah. I was thinking about academic books or sources about it that can be trusted. Unfortunately, I don't know those languages. I was thinking more about Britain I guess. Not sure how much of that survives now.

@ageha @georgia why do you consider the regenerative technology impossible?

@40 @georgia you know what I am

@sim For the religious side I guess that trustworthiness would matter a lot, same thing for Historical events.
But for the folklore part I would say it would be very incomplete of a representation unless there's collections of stories, quite like the difference between music sheets and actually hearing the music.

i dunno, tech advances quite nicely

@Arcana @georgia
would not say "impossible" of such; just very difficult.

to begin with, you can't just inject stem cells into some tissue and expect them to properly integrate. human bodies grow stepwise all together all at once, so a cell needs all sorts of signals incoming to tell it what to do, which usually happen at specific times during development. some things are easier than others—e.g. you can kinda replenish hair follicles—but there are still issues with getting them to integrate properly. they'll be oriented wrong and you'll have hair grow out sideways. or, as in current experiments with cardiac muscle currently, it'll look ok but then beat arrhythmically. these level problems seem difficult, much more so than early researchers anticipated, but still might be tackled with simple chemical signalling or something. the bigger issues though are

- cancer and general mutative degradation, which happen everywhere diffusely and you can make worse trying to replace tissues this way, bumping them up the differentiation tree (not really a tree; much fuzzier)

- brains, the tissue you care most about for this problem and also the most difficult one to approach. for tissues generally there's the problem of getting them properly vascularised and ennervated ete (how?), and for a brain you can't even try some print-and-transplant method; it all has to happen in situ in the most complicated tissue you have, with all these subtly differentiated cells grown into an ad-hoc pattern and with long-range connections strung between them. drop new cells in here and it's easy to give yourself a tumour, but actually integrating and not just messily disrupting function of your ffa or something is a "who even knows" kind of problem

toss in several other side problems, like purging bioaccumulated toxins, and if it's ever to be done at all still regenerating so is nowhere near yet feasible and won't be for a long time

@ageha @georgia this is why a lot of experimentation, funding, and willpower is needed

Find a way or make one really

@ageha @georgia challenging yes, but not impossible in my mind, all things are possible with the willpower and leadership to achieve them

@georgia @Arcana if its thats the case then surfing the kali yuga is morally good.

@animeirl @georgia i will put you in balckhole stfu

@Arcana @georgia
a lot of experimentation, funding, and willpower is going into these problems already, which is why we know about all the difficulties above. such a project might be possible, but it will not come about for a very, very long time

see also integrated prosthetics, which, despite all the money and attention from whatever billionaires, have been stuck on the same prohibitive issue for decades: how do you "plug something into" a person without triggering scarring, tissue damage, immune response, and atrophy that makes it useless soon after. building fancy robotic limbs with ultrasensitive haptics and whatever is easy; interfacing with a billion years of randomly-evolved animalcule garbage soup is very hard

@animeirl @georgia https://www.digizyme.com/cst_landscapes.html
look at this and tell me we aren’t all insane ghosts steering meat fractals to work every day

@ageha @georgia a lot yes, but there can always be more, I know several people in the field and they all struggle with funding problems it seems and in some cases regulatory problems slowing them down

@mia @georgia @animeirl Default mecha (human body).

@Arcana @georgia
funding is an issue generally for academia sure, but plenty money-rich corpos working at this stuff too. and for regulation, of course stupid "ethical" issues of having to tiptoe around things that make the christians shout "sanctity of life", but other parts are just necessary so you don't kill a bunch of people during trials, even when your animal models aren't any use alternative

@nyx @georgia Yeah worst future imaginable is a deathless one tbh tbh

@ageha @georgia patents too can be an issue it seems, though regarding the don’t kill people part, I think people should be able to consent to potentially fatal occurrences if they want to

@Arcana @georgia

@tiskaan @georgia still not destroyed

@lanodan @mia @georgia

@animeirl @georgia keep coping

@lanodan @georgia @retropikzel_ > Yup, because souls aren't technology, you could say they're an unknown in current science, like as far as I know, we haven't managed to create or even duplicate one artificially, not even a bootleg like Frankenstein monster.
That's mostly because we haven't managed to measure one.

The first step in being able to do anything mechanistically is to be able to measure it.

@lispi314 @retropikzel_ @georgia I'd more say proper observation, like we probably got able to create fires artificially with the proper materials and techniques but no measurements beyond our eyes.

@ageha @georgia @Arcana Neurogenesis is a thing though.

One option would be to promote it sufficiently in conjunction with elaborating some treatment that can be used to re-encode most/all of the knowledge a person has (this would be complicated), so that it effectively prolongs useful life of the organ. Potentially indefinitely.

That would however also require handling the toxin problem. And then the problems with every other organ and the built-in timebombs like telomere degeneration.

@Arcana @ageha @georgia Abolishing patents is probably a requirement for any real progress to happen on a meaningful scale.

@lispi314 @Arcana @georgia
neurogenesis happens a bit in model species, like the rodent olfactory system, but searching for the same in humans, after some maybe false-positives, hasn't turned up much of anything. and it's suppressed in every brain, though, guess so you don't become a baby again with untrimmed axons everywhere mussing things up and making you unable to function

@hidden @nyx @georgia And how are the best ones?

I would expect they both present that characteristic, so its presence doesn't say much at all.

@ageha @georgia @Arcana Yeah. It still presents a possible path, though making it safe would be difficult.

@lanodan @georgia @retropikzel_ Well, there's no real difference between observation and measurement, in theory.

The practical difference is simply that measurement implies a sufficiently accurate observation to be useful for some given purpose.

@lispi314 @Arcana @georgia
when functionality has been shut off for millions of years it degrades, so you can't just turn it back on again. you can kinda get chickens to grow teeth again, but it doesn't work that well

@lispi314 @Arcana @georgia
(and in this case it's never functioned at all in a brain like human one

@ageha @georgia @Arcana Yeah, restoring it to functionality would be a problem.

Though it is probably still an easier path than doing anything from scratch.

I don't expect to see it happen in my lifespan, unfortunately.

@lispi314 @georgia @ageha agreed, intellectual property is a spook that prevents actual competition

@lispi314 @Arcana @georgia @ageha Won't that just encourage more closely guarded trade secrets?

@untyped @ageha @georgia @Arcana Somewhat, but if they don't benefit from any protections for those, it's basically inevitable they'll get leaked sooner than later.

@georgia @ageha @Arcana @untyped I also question the ability of megacorps to actually get anything done, so necessarily they'll need to share to some degree.

There is also precedent in open standards arising because simply reinventing the wheel and procedures around it ad nauseam is inefficient and cumbersome.

@lanodan @Arcana @georgia dont be mean to actual vampires like this

@retropikzel_ @nyx @georgia @hidden Forget or distort just enough memories to make it fun again, of course.

@retropikzel_ @nyx @georgia @hidden If nothing remains of one's memories, not even a distorted version, it is functionally indistinguishable from dying.

This is also why I do not see the point of reincarnation as it is stated to be in a large number of religions.

One's memories are one's self. To change oneself is relatively normal. To completely annihilate the self defeats the point of continuation.