star trek- immortality?

[prometheuspan]

Oh, I have no problem with the idea of absolute genetic knowledge, in the 24th century or the 21st. The hop from analysis to those full-replacement therapies of TNG still seems impossible to make.

I don't know why. Esp if we get ourselves nanites. I'm not sure where to
go with much of this other than to say my impression is that we have very different perspectives. I think its a fine thing to agree to disagree, esp over things so trivial.

I chose warp drive as the easier feat because it's flat out impossible, too - only, genetic replacement appears doubly flat out impossible in comparison. Not only is it complete nonsense from the point of view of today's science, it couldn't really work even under the rules of Trek itself.

I'm sorry, but, I just can't imagine what makes you think so. I'm tempted to start new threads on these technologies just to explore them. I think that
once you saw a list of base axioms for one problem and then the list of base axioms for the other, you'd realize theres just now way that the one problem could be nearly as complicated as the other.

As for the problem-solving estimate discipline, it suffers from unfortunate unreliability when it comes to these feats that require unpredictable breakthroughs or reversions of modern results. Warp drive might be trivially easy once we get through a single theoretical hoop and realize that most of the steps required beyond that have already been taken (see heavier-than-air flight and its propulsion systems), while replication might prove impossible in practice because every step in the way is an overwhelming engineering challenge. It's a big problem with a methodology that purpots to give order-of-magnitude results: misjudge one step and the result is, naturally, off by an order of magnitude...

well I certainly agree with you but i think theres a big difference between
gut guesstimate shots in the dark and rational guesstimates based on known fact and systems theory. For all we know bob indiana from pakistan
could figure out the simple method for graviton control tomorrow morning.
(and, maybe he already has.) And then I'd look stupid as we started zooming around the cosmos with medical technology still so barbaric that
some significant fraction of our explorers would end up dead from alien microbes.
I mean, all either one of us can do is create the best mental map we can and then guesstimate from there.

It's not required, though: the ship can depart, and the communicators or badges still continue to talk with each other. We see some of this in VOY, although IIRC not in TNG or TOS where the landing parties seldom are geographically separated when the ship is away.

dang. I thought i had you there.

The ones the size of a milk carton, yes (usually with the help of a backpack-sized battery). The slim pocket models still require a large building or five in order to access the satellites.

see uhmmm (shhhhhh...looks side to side...you can keep a secret?)
I didn't know that.
don't tell anybody. lol.

We're close, tho. The distance to Kirk phones is trivial when compared with the distance to something theoretically plausible such as replicators, or theoretically implausible such as warp drives, or conceptually absurd such as whole-body genetic transplants.

Well, replicators just require control of the weak and strong force in a manner not creating hot wild atomic events. And then control of those
quanta on the quantum scale. Replicators are theoretically plausible,
science fact predicts we will have them by kirks era... and that they will work a lot better than trek ones apparently do, because we will be able to make ANY substance out of any other substance.
That a high order holographics problem.

Conceptually absurd whole body transplants. Hmmm. Well, again, Its completely plausible as far as I know in theory once we learn to deal with
the cellular level, and frankly and easier problem to solve than those replicators. allthough i think the list of primary axioms is about the same length, the scale one is manipulating is the quantum level on the one hand and the cellular level on the other

 

[USS Kongo]

Avoiding death to live a feeble life seems a bit silly, given the alternative of
just letting nature take its course and having all the fun in the universe once you are free of a body.

That's assuming there's anything following this life, which I don't believe in.

Sean

right then. so. the cure for this is acces to waking theta conditions.

I dare you and triple dare you to ask.

Um, no, that's ok. I'll take your word for it.

Sean

 

[prometheuspan]

darn.

 

[Timo]

I think that once you saw a list of base axioms for one problem and then the list of base axioms for the other, you'd realize theres just now way that the one problem could be nearly as complicated as the other.

Actually, I'm not worried about the degree of complications at all. What irks me here is the basic concept, the expected outcome, of TNG-style "genetic resequencing".

No matter how this is accomplished, it essentially results in there now being a person B in place of person A. The genetic structure is what defines us, both as biological structures and as biological processes. There's nothing more to being me than being this particular biological structure and process, and said therapy would take that away from me. So it's not a problem of execution, but of, well, execution. Rather than therapy, the treatment would be murder most foul.

If things similar to what was achieved in "Identity Crisis", "Genesis" or "Threshold" were possible in the TNG universe, then we'd not only have immortality or the power to create humanoid life in the vat without the benefit of a template, we'd have complete arbitrariness of self. I'm sure technology will one day allow for that, but I'm equally convinced that TNG technology should not do that yet, for the disastrous effect this would have on drama.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[prometheuspan]

sure, okay, universe A; what is real VS universe B;
what makes for good drama.

Makes sense. something to think about.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

^^Oh yeah, nothin like characters changin' appearance, species and sex in between scenes.

 

[Forbin]

Not that there's anyhting wrong with that!

 

[Timo]

No, absolutely not! It's just a very demanding type of drama, and something that might work better in lit-scifi or in a very carefully structured scifi movie. For a TV show, going all John Varley with sex changes will lead to major problems...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Has anyone mentioned the example of DS9's Battle Lines yet? There's more fodder for the discussion.

 

[prometheuspan]

Has anyone mentioned the example of DS9's Battle Lines yet? There's more fodder for the discussion.

for those of us who don't have episodes memorized by name, would you care to fill us in?

 

[Timo]

In that ep, Sisko, Kira and Bashir take Kai Opaka to the other side of the wormhole on her insistence. Bad move, as they crash on a planet used as an exceptional punishment facility: nanotechnology guarantees that all wounds, even mortal ones (say, hacking off all limbs and grinding the head to mincemeat), heal in a few moments.

Not being able to die is a rather significant handicap, especially when the planet is no paradise and everybody there either hated each other to begin with, or has developed deep hatred during the centuries (millennia?) of their punishment.

Immortality as punishment is an interesting idea as such, as long as it's of the variety that is tied to a location. On the planet, these people cannot die. Off the planet, they cannot live. I'm not sure if eternal life of misery would be that much of a punishment if there remained a glimmer of hope of escaping, after which it would be an eternal life of the average mixture of bliss and disappointment...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[prometheuspan]

missed that episode. sounds like one of the THINKER kind of trekisodes, which is kewl.

not sure what kind of logic punishment by immortality is, but it sure is an idea to make ya go "HMMMMMMMMMMM".

 

[sojourner]

The ones the size of a milk carton, yes (usually with the help of a backpack-sized battery). The slim pocket models still require a large building or five in order to access the satellites.

see uhmmm (shhhhhh...looks side to side...you can keep a secret?)
I didn't know that.
don't tell anybody. lol.

Actually, Iridium satellite phones are not much larger than a cell phone. no "backpack-sized battery" and no milk carton form factor

 

[FordSVT]

..yet the humans considered themselves lucky if they made it to their eighties.

Did this happen? I thought modern Trek was pretty clever about this: the characters were indicated to be older than the actors (Picard vs. Stewart), they grumbled and complained when their bodies, due to some rare and exotic disease, did not allow for physically active careers at eighty (Mark Jameison, future Picard), and when they spoke about their preferred death, they said "in bed surrounded by loved ones, at 140", in the same way somebody today would use the realistic-optimistic figure 110, or 100, or even 90 (O'Brien).

Given all this, we might well assume that any or all of the graying admirals in TNG and DS9 were in their eighties or nineties rather than their sixties, and that some were significantly past that. And McCoy's hobbled walk at 137 might reflect his strenuous lifestyle and wild youth rather than his physical age.

Timo Saloniemi

Not canon, but the character of Commander Elias Vaughan is 100+ years old and still completing field assignments that have him fighting Klingons. He's probably an exception but would be a good example of a 100 year old person with the body of a modern 60 year old in good shape. Today's 100 would be 140-150 years.

In reality, 300 years from now we'll probably be living a heck of a lot longer than that.

 

[prometheuspan]

The ones the size of a milk carton, yes (usually with the help of a backpack-sized battery). The slim pocket models still require a large building or five in order to access the satellites.

see uhmmm (shhhhhh...looks side to side...you can keep a secret?)
I didn't know that.
don't tell anybody. lol.

Actually, Iridium satellite phones are not much larger than a cell phone. no "backpack-sized battery" and no milk carton form factor

see now, thats what i thought.