Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from housetk
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, they're in Welcome to tex Staff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Scripland. And if you listen to the previous episode,
Speaker 1: you heard Josh Bark join me to talk about digital immortality.
Speaker 1: Our conversation became epic, and so now I bring to
Speaker 1: you part two of digital immortality, and let's rejoin the
Speaker 1: conversation between myself and Josh Clark. The bigger question, and
Speaker 1: this is something that like gets left out of all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, is if you say you could conceivably
Speaker 1: create a really a great simulation of an individual person's brain,
Speaker 1: and it started making connections and it became a better
Speaker 1: version of the organic brain, that's a separate thing. How
Speaker 1: is it connected to the organic brain so that you
Speaker 1: don't just have the experience of the organic brain and
Speaker 1: the experience of the AI brain, right, How are they
Speaker 1: connected to that they're sharing experience because without that connection,
Speaker 1: without that shared experience, you have, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: two separate individuals. It's bringing them together so that we
Speaker 1: really are translated into a digital version of ourselves. That
Speaker 1: that is this this step that guys like curse while
Speaker 1: and everybody else is talking about this just completely walk past. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the I mean, if you nailed them down and said,
Speaker 1: can you explain this? I think the explaination would get
Speaker 1: would be kind of a non explanation, which is that
Speaker 1: at the time you reach the sophistication, the technological sophistication
Speaker 1: capable of simulating a brain to the extent that it
Speaker 1: would be useful in this way, we would have a
Speaker 1: brain computer interface that would allow for the bidirect sational communication.
Speaker 1: I realized that you do not curse on this show.
Speaker 1: We don't curse on my show either. Yes, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what they call Strickland magical thinking, I would argue. And
Speaker 1: I realized, I certainly can't go so far as to
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go so far as to call it magical
Speaker 1: thinking in the sense that we have brain computer interfaces now,
Speaker 1: they're just very primitive. So the question is, could we
Speaker 1: get to a level of sophistication where it was where
Speaker 1: we shared consciousness, that's what we're talking about here, And
Speaker 1: and I realized that it would it would be a
Speaker 1: disadvantage of humanity to nail down the futurists and be like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't you dare make a prediction unless you can exactly
Speaker 1: lay out how it's going to happen. That's not what
Speaker 1: they do. So I don't necessarily have a problem with futurists.
Speaker 1: I have a problem with the people who write about
Speaker 1: what futurists are saying, as if it's going to happen regardless,
Speaker 1: because there's there here's one. This drives me crazy. It
Speaker 1: was a kurtswild prediction, just a random stuff. Like everything
Speaker 1: that guy says gets pressed right and understandably. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting dude, and he has interesting thoughts and interesting visions.
Speaker 1: But he said recently that um by humans will be cyborgs.
Speaker 1: Our brains will be jacked into the Internet, will be
Speaker 1: able to say, we want to think about Wikipedia page,
Speaker 1: we will be there. It will be in our minds
Speaker 1: that Wikipedia page. We will have that level of brain
Speaker 1: computer interface that we are the sum total of human knowledge. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: somebody did try to nail him down, or he he
Speaker 1: volunteered it in this talk, whatever it was. I just
Speaker 1: read an article on it um and he says that
Speaker 1: there's going to be DNA based nano robots that will
Speaker 1: basically enter our core texas and connect us to um
Speaker 1: a an artificial cortex that the Internet is based on.
Speaker 1: That that's how it will happen. It's like, well, that
Speaker 1: is really neat and dandy. How how if you put something,
Speaker 1: if you say that something's gonna happen fifteen years out,
Speaker 1: just just saying well, DNA nanobots, that's how Like that's
Speaker 1: at the same level as as taking a human brain
Speaker 1: now and plugging it into a USB cable and expecting
Speaker 1: something to happen. I would I would totally agree with
Speaker 1: you on that, absolutely agree with you on that because
Speaker 1: uh and and knowing what Here's another problem is that
Speaker 1: we've got people who are very brilliant. There there clearly
Speaker 1: intelligent people. However, you know they're intelligent and focused on
Speaker 1: specific parts of general knowledge and don't necessarily possess other
Speaker 1: elements of knowledge that would be really important to have
Speaker 1: before you make definitive statements and predictions, Like neuroscientists will
Speaker 1: often say things that you know, the physicists may say
Speaker 1: one thing, but neuroscientists believe another thing, Like is just
Speaker 1: to say maybe there are some quantum effects going on
Speaker 1: in the brain, and neuroscientists saying that's not really what
Speaker 1: we think is happening, and because there's so much we
Speaker 1: do not know, making any sort of prediction of something
Speaker 1: that is definitely going to happen when you say it's
Speaker 1: definitely gonna happen is kind of foolish. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it again, probably falls under the category of wishful thinking,
Speaker 1: particularly in the case with Kurtswild, who again, brilliant guy.
Speaker 1: But I agree with you. I think I think trying
Speaker 1: to explain say it nanobots, it's almost akin to saying magic. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the exact same thing, especially since right now, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, nanobots are probably well beyond our
Speaker 1: ability to make on any kind of truly sophisticated level,
Speaker 1: like the nanotechnology we talk about today. We're talking about
Speaker 1: nanoparticles that you can guide externally through stuff like ultrasonic
Speaker 1: frequencies or magnetic fields. But they're not robots, like they're
Speaker 1: not auton missed or even remote controlled items that can
Speaker 1: go to where you want them to go and do
Speaker 1: what you want them to do. That level of sophistication,
Speaker 1: I think is well beyond fifteen years out. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine us getting there. And also I think another issue
Speaker 1: I have is that a lot of these futurists based
Speaker 1: their assumptions on things like Moore's law. And I could
Speaker 1: hug you right now, man, Yes, you can't base any
Speaker 1: sort of arrogant prediction on Moore's law. It has as
Speaker 1: much veracity as Murphy's law. Yeah, man, I'm so More's
Speaker 1: law was originally just an observation. It wasn't and it
Speaker 1: was for a decade. Yeah, you got Gordon Moore who said,
Speaker 1: it looks like every two years what we're going to
Speaker 1: reach is the uh, the sophistication and the economic condition
Speaker 1: where it will be possible to half the size of transistors,
Speaker 1: double the number of transistors on a square inch of silicon.
Speaker 1: And how you how you put that is whether you're
Speaker 1: a glass is half full or half empty kind of person.
Speaker 1: But and he was looking at it as saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just the technological sophistication. It's also the fact
Speaker 1: that our our manufacturing ability will reach a point where
Speaker 1: it makes sense to do it. And it was never
Speaker 1: meant to be something that would exist in perpetuity. It
Speaker 1: was meant that, I like, at least for the foreseeable future,
Speaker 1: this is going to continue until we run up to
Speaker 1: some sort of fundamental block, and we're getting real close
Speaker 1: to that fundamental block now. In fact, a lot of engineers,
Speaker 1: uh including More, have said that this is this is
Speaker 1: the days of Moore's law are close to an end.
Speaker 1: But they have been saying that for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Now they have and when part of the reason that
Speaker 1: they've been able to to push it off is that
Speaker 1: we've kind of redefined More's laws. No longer the number
Speaker 1: of transistors. Now we sort of understand it as the
Speaker 1: processing power of a chip tends to double every two years,
Speaker 1: which you can do both with architecture and with the
Speaker 1: optimization of that architecture. So that's kind of what Intel does.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll do things well, they'll shrink down elements in
Speaker 1: one move, and then the next move they figure out
Speaker 1: how the what's the best architecture for those elements to
Speaker 1: take the best advantage of what they've done. So it's
Speaker 1: a tick they called the TikTok approach. The tick is
Speaker 1: where they shrink everything down, the talk is where they
Speaker 1: optimize it, and then the next tick they shrink stuff
Speaker 1: down again. Talk they optimize it. Yeah, so it helps
Speaker 1: extend More's law because they don't always have to get
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, and once you get to a certain size,
Speaker 1: you run into quantum effects that totally ruin the way
Speaker 1: electronics work. So the reason why we're even bringing this
Speaker 1: up is that you cannot count on the technological sophistication
Speaker 1: to continue at the same rate it has been going. No,
Speaker 1: but these guys who are all about digital immortality are
Speaker 1: basing all of their assumptions on the idea that Moore's
Speaker 1: law will keep going like this. Yeah. Well, and not
Speaker 1: only that, they're they're applying the same sort of idea
Speaker 1: of Moore's law to other disciplines, and they're treating it
Speaker 1: as if it is an actual scientific law, and they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of banding it about as if it is
Speaker 1: and as if it proves that their predictions will come true,
Speaker 1: which I mean, like, I love Moore's law, but I
Speaker 1: would feel a lot better about it if it was
Speaker 1: called like Moore's really good idea or just or just
Speaker 1: the general observation of more, you know, because it really again,
Speaker 1: it was an observation and then a prediction based on
Speaker 1: that observation. But it was it wasn't Gordon More who
Speaker 1: called it Moore's law. He doesn't. No, he didn't care
Speaker 1: for that. He was like, let's not called the law, guys,
Speaker 1: it's too late. Um well, that's That's one of the
Speaker 1: big things is that if Moore's law doesn't hold true,
Speaker 1: then this sets everything back. And if Moore's law, and
Speaker 1: since you can't apply More's law to things like neuroscience,
Speaker 1: the discoveries and neuroscience happened on a totally different time scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like inspiration doesn't happen on any kind of plotted charge.
Speaker 1: So that that's another thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: that maybe their predictions are sort of accurate, but not
Speaker 1: for the time scale. It maybe that it's much further
Speaker 1: out than what they anticipate. In fact, I would be
Speaker 1: shocked if that's not the case, based upon what little
Speaker 1: I know about these other disciplines. Okay, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and just say, Josh, just for the sake
Speaker 1: of argument, let's say that this world does come about
Speaker 1: where digital immortality is possible. It's a thing, we can
Speaker 1: do it. The trouble doesn't stop there. There's some other
Speaker 1: big issues happening. So now can you imagine a world
Speaker 1: where there is now an option for you to move
Speaker 1: yourself over into a digital immortality phase. Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: even involve leaving your body. Maybe it involves getting an implant,
Speaker 1: and then that takes over and your body will live
Speaker 1: for as long as it can. And then after that
Speaker 1: you could even port that intelligence, which is you, into
Speaker 1: some other body, whether it's a robot or maybe even
Speaker 1: sort of free form where you could flow into all
Speaker 1: sorts of different electronics. I even saw one suggestion saying, like,
Speaker 1: in this science fiction future, you could get behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of a car, but you don't really get behind
Speaker 1: the wheel of a car. You become the car, like
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. All right, do you imagine that
Speaker 1: that would be available to everybody day one? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you make a good point in this article. It's
Speaker 1: like talk about some sort of disparity and experience here
Speaker 1: on Earth between the halves and they have not Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the halves and you talk about the huge gap
Speaker 1: and haves and have nots that already exists. Imagine a
Speaker 1: world where not only is that gap there, but it's
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the fact that now the halves live forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think about the grumbling that people have every time
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney gets a new heart and gets to live
Speaker 1: like an extra like ten twenty years. That's just a
Speaker 1: new heart. Like imagine if people like that, or anybody
Speaker 1: who's wealthy, was able to become immortal and it was
Speaker 1: only available to them because it was so prohibitively expensive,
Speaker 1: as I think you rightly point out, would definitely be
Speaker 1: the case at first. And you know, not to get
Speaker 1: too political, but I would imagine that this would be
Speaker 1: a world where you would see an even stronger push
Speaker 1: towards protecting the status of those who have things, because
Speaker 1: now they're in it forever. Right. It's it's not even
Speaker 1: I want this protected for as long as I live now,
Speaker 1: it's I want this to be protected forever um. You
Speaker 1: could also make the argument that maybe that would mean
Speaker 1: those people would also become way more interested in taking
Speaker 1: better care of the planet because they're going to be
Speaker 1: there forever. I think it would be one of the
Speaker 1: benefits of this is that it would extend long term
Speaker 1: thinking about about the future of humanity, the future of Earth.
Speaker 1: That I think that would just be an inevitable byproduct
Speaker 1: of Yeah, because you're going to experience it if you're
Speaker 1: in that if you're in that elite, then you are
Speaker 1: going to experience that. So therefore it does benefit you
Speaker 1: to think about these things. You can't just focus on
Speaker 1: the short term gain anymore. Now It's like I'm going
Speaker 1: to years, who cares about anything? After that, I'll be dead?
Speaker 1: Who cares? Yeah? Yeah? And and like for me, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have kids, so I don't even have that
Speaker 1: about You barely care about this moment. Honestly, I stopped
Speaker 1: caring about five minutes into this episode. But no, it's
Speaker 1: just kidding. But yeah, that's That's one of those things,
Speaker 1: is that we're talking about a potential divide, not just
Speaker 1: in uh in the haves and have nots as far
Speaker 1: as like a single country. But let's say that this
Speaker 1: technology is developed in one part of the world that
Speaker 1: immediately is going to cause issues too, because you've got
Speaker 1: the rest of the world nobody wants to to I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty safe to say that most people don't
Speaker 1: want to die. Most people like the idea of being
Speaker 1: able to at least live as long as they want
Speaker 1: to live, right, Like, they get the option to say,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe eternity is not what I really want, but
Speaker 1: I would like the opportunity to live as long as
Speaker 1: I I want to live before deciding to no longer live, right, Like,
Speaker 1: even that could be a case. It could be that
Speaker 1: when we talk about immortality, we're really just talking about
Speaker 1: you get to decide when you go. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I read an interesting article about that that's saying like,
Speaker 1: if we are going to do this, don't forget to
Speaker 1: also include some sort of suicide switch. Because if you
Speaker 1: become digitally immortal and you have no way of ceasing
Speaker 1: to exist, I mean, what happens when you want to
Speaker 1: cease to exist and you can't do anything about it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that would be a totally new type of torture. Sure,
Speaker 1: And that was another part of that same article, I
Speaker 1: think it was in the Atlantic Um where they said, well,
Speaker 1: what does a life sentence look like? You know, and
Speaker 1: if you if you do something wrong in the future
Speaker 1: generation to sides that you've done something wrong and you
Speaker 1: should be punished, well, you're still around for that future
Speaker 1: generation to punish you. And how long will that last?
Speaker 1: And what does it look like? Other considerations? Who owns
Speaker 1: the who owns the brain? Because if if you are
Speaker 1: comporting yourself over into some digital format, presumably there's some
Speaker 1: hardware and software involved. Who owns that experience? Does it
Speaker 1: doesn't revert to the person that was the original individual?
Speaker 1: Does it revert to the hardware that it exists upon.
Speaker 1: Does it revert to the software that makes it possible?
Speaker 1: That sounds like a silly question, but it's it's not.
Speaker 1: In the age of people who are able to patent
Speaker 1: genes human genes, you have to figure out like, well,
Speaker 1: how how do you say, let me correct myself before
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of listener mail who are able
Speaker 1: to patent genetic processes that are the results of genes.
Speaker 1: Because the human genes discussion was eventually said, no, you can't,
Speaker 1: you can't patent gene But if it's for the late eighties,
Speaker 1: I would have been right, yeah h. And also, going
Speaker 1: back to cultural issues, even if you assume that everyone
Speaker 1: has access to this, what does that mean for religions?
Speaker 1: A large part of many religions happens to be about
Speaker 1: the experience that comes after death. That that, in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of religions suggests that the life here on
Speaker 1: earth is merely preparation for what comes next. But if
Speaker 1: you extend that that life indefinitely, what does that mean
Speaker 1: from a religious standpoint. It's a tough question to answer.
Speaker 1: I can't answer it, but it's you know, it's another
Speaker 1: one of those things where we get these philosophical uh
Speaker 1: problems that come in. There are other ones to like,
Speaker 1: let's say that you are able to extend your life
Speaker 1: span indefinitely, what happens to population? I saw you, I
Speaker 1: saw this in this article, and I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's that much of an issue here because think about it.
Speaker 1: If we all live in a non corporeal form, that's
Speaker 1: the key though, that's non corporeal, but digital immortality might
Speaker 1: be allowed if we have, like I said, an implant
Speaker 1: in our heads. Oh well, then there will be body.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what That will be your status symbol
Speaker 1: that you own your own body and there's not a
Speaker 1: hundred other people in your body with you. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: trying to make decisions about where to go to dinner
Speaker 1: or what to get at It just becomes a really
Speaker 1: really extreme version of all of me another Steve Martin, Yes,
Speaker 1: and Lily Tomlin was in that. Um. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: it's there are a lot of philosophical questions that we
Speaker 1: would have to come to grips with if this were
Speaker 1: in fact ever to become a reality never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not poo pooing the possibility. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that definitely is not going to happen. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that we know enough about things to say
Speaker 1: that it never will. I also don't believe we know
Speaker 1: enough about things to say it definitely well, or especially
Speaker 1: the definitely will by Yeah. Know, in his defense, he
Speaker 1: was saying that we would be cyborgs and that we
Speaker 1: would be able to interface with the internet just using
Speaker 1: our as opposed to being truly immortal. He's talking more
Speaker 1: about yeah, and even then, that's still one eight maybe
Speaker 1: of that singularity right. Well, one, I ran into a
Speaker 1: couple of things that were kind of interesting while getting
Speaker 1: ready for this podcast. I kind of wanted to sort
Speaker 1: of conclude on this. So while we're nowhere close to
Speaker 1: the point where we can pour the brain over into
Speaker 1: some digital format and live forever, where continuity really isn't
Speaker 1: an issue yet because we don't have the we don't
Speaker 1: even have the basis to work with as let alone
Speaker 1: the figuring out how to port stuff over. There are
Speaker 1: people working on ways to share who you are beyond uh,
Speaker 1: your lifespan, and one of them I ran into. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've signed up for the beta, but it hasn't it's
Speaker 1: still on the alpha park. The beta is a service
Speaker 1: called it turner dot me, so a turn and me
Speaker 1: is a website and it essentially is going to scrub
Speaker 1: your social presence on the web to get an idea
Speaker 1: of who you are. The idea being that eventually it
Speaker 1: would create an avatar that could act as you do,
Speaker 1: you know, guided by all the experiences you share with it,
Speaker 1: as you as you just be you online. The person
Speaker 1: behind it I believe the name is Sunshine actually, Um
Speaker 1: says that it would probably take ten years for the
Speaker 1: algorithm to kind of learn your you know, how you
Speaker 1: are you before it could react in a way that
Speaker 1: seemed to be similar. At least ten years, I think
Speaker 1: they they say the longer, the better. Is there And
Speaker 1: there's actually kind of a sad part of the story too,
Speaker 1: that that he's been contacted by a lot of people
Speaker 1: who Um are suffering from terminal illnesses and they're looking
Speaker 1: at this as a way of being able to share
Speaker 1: memories with other people after they have gone. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard to deal with those requests
Speaker 1: because honestly, the technology isn't at a level of sophistication
Speaker 1: where it could just adapt that quickly. But it is
Speaker 1: an interesting notion in this case. Obviously, the immortality is
Speaker 1: more about your your influence here on the planet. After
Speaker 1: you have gone, you are still gone, but what you
Speaker 1: leave behind continues to influence others. And that's very poetic
Speaker 1: way of looking at immortality. It's not the way Woody
Speaker 1: Allen looked at it, you know, he was always says,
Speaker 1: I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I
Speaker 1: want to achieve it by not dying, um. But immortality
Speaker 1: through work or through uh, your interactions with other people.
Speaker 1: That is something. And you know, you could argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, like the poem was it as an asomandius,
Speaker 1: where essentially you're like, look at this enormous monument I
Speaker 1: built is going to stand the test of time and
Speaker 1: show how powerful I am. And now it's fallen over
Speaker 1: and it's crumbled and uh and and thus the hubrists
Speaker 1: of the past proves to be unfounded. Uh. I still
Speaker 1: think that this is a very kind of poetic way
Speaker 1: of of at least showing people that you care for them,
Speaker 1: even if it, even if it is a little weird
Speaker 1: on the artificial intelligence doing it on your behalf, you
Speaker 1: will never get rid of me in my Facebook posts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I had posted in the in the or I
Speaker 1: wrote in the article about Brian Brushwood, and I even
Speaker 1: had Brushwood on this show and I asked him about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was years ago, and it was an idea he
Speaker 1: had had. I don't know that he ever actually implemented it,
Speaker 1: but his idea was to create a very simple algorithm
Speaker 1: that would copy previous posts he had made online and
Speaker 1: post on his behalf after he dies. The idea being
Speaker 1: that every year, on his birthday, he would be prompted
Speaker 1: to send a message to this account, and if he
Speaker 1: did not do it within a certain amount of time,
Speaker 1: it would activate and start posting for him, so that
Speaker 1: even after he had died, the ghost in the machine
Speaker 1: version of him would continue to update Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: So I wonder how often, like the appropriateness in the
Speaker 1: context of it would be so oft that it would
Speaker 1: be like a Horsey Book's tweet or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you you know, like especially you know, especially if
Speaker 1: something really tragic had happened, like big newsworthy tragic event happens,
Speaker 1: and then them yeah and like yeah exactly, or or
Speaker 1: you know, like let's say that there was a huge
Speaker 1: fire that broke out in Texas, which is where he lives.
Speaker 1: Like let's say there's an enormous fire and then it's
Speaker 1: just like, man, it sure is hot today, or something
Speaker 1: like that. That would be it would be like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's an incredibly poor taste, although to be fair, Brian
Speaker 1: would probably think that was hilarious. There's there's already another
Speaker 1: service out there, or at least there was a few
Speaker 1: years back. I don't know if they're still around, but
Speaker 1: it was called Deaths which and it wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to keep going. But you write letters, emails, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, emails, I guess you think about it,
Speaker 1: Facebook post, that kind of thing, and they're all just
Speaker 1: held back because every year, much like what Brushwood was saying,
Speaker 1: you get an email that you have to like click
Speaker 1: and answer a little bit to prove you're still alive.
Speaker 1: And the first year that doesn't happen, it gives you
Speaker 1: like two or three more chances over the next couple
Speaker 1: of days, and then it sends out these emails everything
Speaker 1: from like, dear boss, here's what I have always thought
Speaker 1: about you too, you know, your sweet wife saying I
Speaker 1: know I've died and I want you to remember I
Speaker 1: always love you. And you know, like there's sweet things
Speaker 1: you can do, there's mean things you can do, there's
Speaker 1: just whatever, like here's here's the combination to the fire
Speaker 1: safe in the closet, all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: it was all being held back by this one thing,
Speaker 1: which was every year you kept it from triggering, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Yeah. No, it's an interesting idea. I like,
Speaker 1: not immortality at all. No, but it's again one of
Speaker 1: the idea of extending your presence digitally but is extinguished.
Speaker 1: Isn't that extremely egotistical? I mean it could be, but
Speaker 1: it could also be that, you know, if you have
Speaker 1: the fear of what if this stuff I want to
Speaker 1: I want to express to somebody, you know, what if
Speaker 1: I what if I never get around to doing it?
Speaker 1: Because people say you wasted that part of your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of life is you were given a finite
Speaker 1: amount of time, finite amount of time to make decisions.
Speaker 1: There's also something where you might you might think I
Speaker 1: want the ability for this person's final memory of me
Speaker 1: to be this thing because they mean they mean whatever
Speaker 1: to me, and I want them to be aware of that.
Speaker 1: And I like to think of it more on the
Speaker 1: sweet side than the nasty side, but obviously it would
Speaker 1: apply to both, and the idea being that, well, I
Speaker 1: can't guarantee that I won't get hit by a bus tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and so I want the ability for this thought I'm having, this,
Speaker 1: this expression to be sent to this person in that event.
Speaker 1: I have no problem with the death switch service. My
Speaker 1: problem is the idea of becoming immortal. Digital immortality is
Speaker 1: a little pathetic and desperate. If you ask me, like,
Speaker 1: just the whole concept can't die, I can't possibly die.
Speaker 1: Don't let me die, Okay, so that's part one of it.
Speaker 1: But then a dumb down, watered down version of it
Speaker 1: to where an AI of you survives you. That, to
Speaker 1: me is is beyond egotistical, because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: our concept of immortality now strickland is what you leave
Speaker 1: behind in the form of your work and your memories,
Speaker 1: and you leave yourself to be judged and appreciated, hated,
Speaker 1: whatever by the people who who come after you. By
Speaker 1: the people you've touched, have have who keep you alive
Speaker 1: with their thoughts. That's immortality. Now it's not. It's up
Speaker 1: to the people who are left to stay alive to
Speaker 1: decide how they think of you, or whether they even
Speaker 1: want to think of you. With this AI version of yourself,
Speaker 1: you're just insinuating yourself in their lives beyond your own
Speaker 1: physical death in a way that you're not even getting
Speaker 1: any sort of satisfaction. Have I ever told you what
Speaker 1: my plan is after I die? Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: going to give you a look into my psyche and
Speaker 1: explain exactly why this kind of service is perfect for me.
Speaker 1: I've told my wife this. I didn't say this is
Speaker 1: my plan for after when you die. I got that
Speaker 1: plan to my plan for when I die. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I I'm not being genuine when I say this. This
Speaker 1: was something I told my wife and just but I said,
Speaker 1: what I want to have happened is I want to
Speaker 1: be cremated, and then I want us to have part
Speaker 1: of my part of the stuff I leave behind is
Speaker 1: going to be a certain amount of money to hire
Speaker 1: somebody who, for the rest of my wife's life takes
Speaker 1: the urn of ashes that has me in it hides
Speaker 1: it somewhere in the house, and she cannot go to
Speaker 1: bed until after she finds me, because I want to
Speaker 1: irritate her as much in death as I have in life.
Speaker 1: And she looked at me, She's like, the scary thing
Speaker 1: is I could totally see you doing I kind of
Speaker 1: can't too. Now. Honestly, I would never do that. I
Speaker 1: plan on donating my body to science. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: supposedly you have to make a note if this kind
Speaker 1: of thing bothers you that you don't want, um, say,
Speaker 1: like a rhino plastic practice to be carried down on
Speaker 1: your I don't care. I don't care. You know whatever,
Speaker 1: Whatever helps people in the long run. Whether whether that
Speaker 1: help is is whether you judge it as being superficial,
Speaker 1: whether you judge it as being really meaningful. Ultimately, my
Speaker 1: goal is I want I want to I want to
Speaker 1: leave the world better than it was when I came in.
Speaker 1: That's that's how my wife approaches that too. She wants
Speaker 1: to leave her body to science, and I'm like, plastic
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't, It's fine, Like if I'm leaving
Speaker 1: it to science, Well, the way I figure, what if
Speaker 1: there's someone who threw uh, you know, either an inherited
Speaker 1: defect or yeah, yeah whatever, Yeah they could, they could, truly,
Speaker 1: their lives could be transformed in that I cannot even conceive, up,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Or there's, of course there's
Speaker 1: that option. I feel like like put down the dermatologists, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you saved lives, and she's like, yes, through skin cancer,
Speaker 1: because skin cancer. I didn't think of it well, Or
Speaker 1: what about the scenario there's a housewife in Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: and her nose is just a little too big, you know,
Speaker 1: actually her nose is a little too big. My nose
Speaker 1: is the last one in the world to look at.
Speaker 1: So I can't believe we've both been in here. I know.
Speaker 1: It's we almost had to build out an alcove in
Speaker 1: this podcast studio just for the nasal passages. This has
Speaker 1: been a lot of fun, dude, Thank you for having
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on. Of course, obviously, beat the
Speaker 1: heck out of the toilets episode. Yeah right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't make any puns in that sense, like I didn't know.
Speaker 1: You know, there there are tons of immortality puns I
Speaker 1: could have made, but I didn't do it. I I
Speaker 1: speak for everyone listening. When I say we appreciate that,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. So of course you can find Josh Clark's
Speaker 1: work on Stuff you Should Know and all things stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. Remember, you gotta you gotta check out
Speaker 1: the podcast. You gotta check out the site also, if
Speaker 1: you have the opportunity, occasionally, Josh and Chuck do live appearances.
Speaker 1: You guys just finished a tour, a couple of tours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did one in the north West and then in
Speaker 1: the Northeast, and then we're going to do the northern Midwest,
Speaker 1: which is the thing I think, but like Chicago, I believe, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and either Milwaukee or Madison this this October. So you
Speaker 1: guys have got to check that out. If that's one
Speaker 1: of the If you live in one of those areas,
Speaker 1: are near one of those areas, look into it because
Speaker 1: the live events are a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean hopefully we'll be sending you internationally
Speaker 1: before too long because because Josh sits right next to me.
Speaker 1: U no, we get along really well. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you being on the show. You guys. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, you can
Speaker 1: of course, let me know. Send me an email. You know.
Speaker 1: It might be a specific type of technology, It might
Speaker 1: be a profile on a person or a company, or
Speaker 1: maybe you just have a preference for a particular guest
Speaker 1: to interview or be guest hosts. Let me know, I'll
Speaker 1: make it happen. The email addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all three of those
Speaker 1: is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topic because it has stuff works dot com