Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: John and Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and how the Tech are Young. It's time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published on
Speaker 1: July two thousand and fifteen. It is titled Digital Immortality,
Speaker 1: Part to the Great Josh Clark of Stuff you should
Speaker 1: know joined the show for this one. Hope you enjoy. Say,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably create a really a great simulation of
Speaker 1: an individual person's brain, and it started making connections and
Speaker 1: it became a better version of the organic brain. That's
Speaker 1: a separate thing. How is it connected to the organic
Speaker 1: brain so that you don't just have the experience of
Speaker 1: the organic brain and the experience of the AI brain. Right,
Speaker 1: how are they connected to that they're sharing experience because
Speaker 1: without that connection, without that shared experience, you have, for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes, two separate individuals. Right. It's bringing
Speaker 1: them together so that we really are translated into a
Speaker 1: digital version of ourselves. That that is this this step
Speaker 1: that guys like Curse Wile and everybody else is talking
Speaker 1: about this just completely walk past. Well, yeah, the the
Speaker 1: I mean, if you nailed them down and said, can
Speaker 1: you explain this? I think the explaination would get would
Speaker 1: be kind of a non explanation, which is that at
Speaker 1: the time you reach the sophistication, the technological sophistication capable
Speaker 1: of simulating a brain to the extent that it would
Speaker 1: be useful in this way, we would have a brain
Speaker 1: computer interface that would allow for the bidirectional communication. I
Speaker 1: realized that you do not curse on this show. We
Speaker 1: don't curse on my show either. But that's the hockey. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they call Strickland magical thinking, I would argue.
Speaker 1: And I realized, I certainly can't go so far as
Speaker 1: to I wouldn't go so far as to call it
Speaker 1: magical thinking in the sense that we have brain computer
Speaker 1: interfaces now, they're just very primitive. So the question is,
Speaker 1: could we get to a level of sophistication where it
Speaker 1: was where we shared consciousness. Yeah, that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, And and I realized that it would it
Speaker 1: would be a disadvantage to humanity to nail down the
Speaker 1: futurists and be like, no, no, no, don't you dare
Speaker 1: make a prediction unless you can exactly lay out how
Speaker 1: it's going to happen. That's not what they do. So
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have a problem with futurists. I have
Speaker 1: a problem with the people who write about what futurists
Speaker 1: are saying, as if it's going to happen regardless, because
Speaker 1: there's there here's one. This drives me crazy. It was
Speaker 1: a kurtswild prediction, just a random stuff. Like everything that
Speaker 1: guy says gets s right and understandably. So it's an
Speaker 1: 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 in this talk, whatever it was. I just read
Speaker 1: an article on it um and he says that there's
Speaker 1: going to be DNA based nano robots that will basically
Speaker 1: enter our core texas and connect us to um A,
Speaker 1: an artificial cortex that the Internet is based on that,
Speaker 1: that's how it will happen. It's like, well, that is
Speaker 1: really neat and dandy. How how if you put on something,
Speaker 1: if you say that something's gonna happen th teen 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 uh,
Speaker 1: and and knowing what Here's another problem is that we've
Speaker 1: got people who are very brilliant there. They're clearly intelligent people. However,
Speaker 1: you know they're intelligent and focused on specific parts of
Speaker 1: general knowledge and don't necessarily possess other elements of knowledge
Speaker 1: that would be really important to have before you make
Speaker 1: definitive statements and predictions, Like neuroscientists will often say things
Speaker 1: that you know, the physicists may say one thing, but
Speaker 1: neuroscientists believe another thing, Like physicists say maybe there are
Speaker 1: some quantum effects going on in the brain, and neuroscientists
Speaker 1: saying that's not really what we think is happening. And
Speaker 1: because there's so much we do not know. Making any
Speaker 1: sort of prediction of something that is definitely going to
Speaker 1: happen when you say it's definitely gonna happen is kind
Speaker 1: of foolish, you know, it's it's it again, probably falls
Speaker 1: under the category of wishful thinking, particularly in the case
Speaker 1: with Kurtswil, who again, brilliant guy. But I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think I think trying to explain say it nanobots,
Speaker 1: it's almost akin to saying magic, Yes, it's the especially
Speaker 1: since right now, as far as we know, nanobots are
Speaker 1: probably well beyond our ability to make on any kind
Speaker 1: of truly sophisticated level, like the nanotechnology we talk about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about nanoparticles that you can guide externally through
Speaker 1: stuff like ultrasonic frequencies or magnetic fields. But they're not robots, like,
Speaker 1: they're not autonomous 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 sophistic case.
Speaker 1: And I think as well, beyond fifteen years out, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine us getting there. And also I think another
Speaker 1: issue I have is that a lot of these futurists
Speaker 1: based their assumptions on things like Moore's law. Yes, strictly,
Speaker 1: And I could hug you right now, man, Yes, you
Speaker 1: can't base any sort of arrogant prediction on Moore's law.
Speaker 1: It has as much veracity as Murphy's law. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm so More's law was originally just an observation. It
Speaker 1: wasn't and it was a decade long observation prediction for
Speaker 1: a decade. Yeah. You got Gordon Moore who said, it
Speaker 1: looks like every two years what we're going to reach
Speaker 1: is the uh, the sophistication and the economic condition where
Speaker 1: it'll be possible to half the size of transistors, double
Speaker 1: the number of transistors on a square inch of silicon.
Speaker 1: And how how you put that is whether you're a
Speaker 1: 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 in
Speaker 1: hell does They'll they'll do things well, they'll shrink down
Speaker 1: elements in one move, and then the next move they
Speaker 1: figure out how the what's the best architecture for those
Speaker 1: elements to take the best advantage of what they've done.
Speaker 1: So it's a tick they called the TikTok approach. The
Speaker 1: tick is where they shrink everything down, the talk is
Speaker 1: where they optimize it, and then the next tick they
Speaker 1: shrink stuff down again, talk they optimize it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it helps extend More's law because they don't always have
Speaker 1: to get smaller and smaller, and once you get to
Speaker 1: a certain size, you run into quantum effects that totally
Speaker 1: ruin the way electronics work. So the reason why we're
Speaker 1: even bringing this up is that you cannot count on
Speaker 1: the technological sophistication to continue at the same rate it
Speaker 1: has been going. No, but these guys who are all
Speaker 1: about digital immortality are basing all of their assumptions on
Speaker 1: the idea that Moore's law will keep going like this. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and only that they're they're applying the same sort of
Speaker 1: idea of Moore's law to other disciplines, and they're treating
Speaker 1: it as if it is an actual scientific law, and
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of bandying it about as if it
Speaker 1: is and as if it proves that their predictions will
Speaker 1: come true, which I mean, like, I love Moore's law,
Speaker 1: but I would feel a lot better about it if
Speaker 1: it was called like Moore's really good idea or just
Speaker 1: or just the general observation of more, you know, because
Speaker 1: it really again, it was an observation and then a
Speaker 1: prediction based on that observation. But it was it wasn't
Speaker 1: Gordon More who called it Moore's law. He doesn't. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't care for that. He was like, let's not
Speaker 1: called the law, guys, it's too late. Um well, that's
Speaker 1: That's one of the big things is that if More's
Speaker 1: law doesn't hold true, then this sets everything back. And
Speaker 1: if Moore's law, and since you can't apply More's law
Speaker 1: to things like neuroscience, the discoveries and neuroscience happen on
Speaker 1: a totally different time scale. Yeah, like inspiration doesn't happen
Speaker 1: on any kind of plotted charge. So that that's another
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind is that maybe they're predictions
Speaker 1: are sort of accurate, but not for the time scale.
Speaker 1: It maybe that it's much further out than what they anticipate.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would be shocked if that's not the case,
Speaker 1: based upon what little I know about these other disciplines.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff after this quick break. 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 it's 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 experience here on
Speaker 1: Earth between the halves and they have not yea and
Speaker 1: the hals, and you talk about the huge gap and
Speaker 1: haves and have nots that already exists. Imagine a world
Speaker 1: where not only is that gap there, but it's exacerbated
Speaker 1: by the fact that now the halves live forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about the grim thing that people have every
Speaker 1: time Dick Cheney gets a new heart and get to
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 is wealthy, was able to become immortal and it
Speaker 1: was 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 it 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: I think that would just be an inevitable byproduct of Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're going to experience it if you're in that
Speaker 1: if you're in that elite, then you are going to
Speaker 1: experience that. So therefore it does benefit you to think
Speaker 1: about these things. You can't just focus on the short
Speaker 1: term gain anymore. Now It's like I'm going to years.
Speaker 1: Who cares about anything? After that? Dead? Who cares? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah right? 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: I think about you barely care about this moment. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I stopped caring about five minutes into this episode. But no,
Speaker 1: it's 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 I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty safe to say that most people don't want
Speaker 1: to die. Most people like the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to at least live as long as they want to live, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they get the option to say maybe maybe eternity is
Speaker 1: not what I really want, but I would like the
Speaker 1: opportunity to live as long as I want to live
Speaker 1: before deciding to no longer live, right, Like, even that
Speaker 1: could be a case. It could be that when we
Speaker 1: talk about immortality, we're really just talking about you get
Speaker 1: to decide when you go. Well, you know, I read
Speaker 1: an interesting article about that that's saying like, if we
Speaker 1: are going to do this, don't forget to also include
Speaker 1: some sort of suicide switch. Because if you become digitally
Speaker 1: immortal and you have no way of ceasing to exist,
Speaker 1: I mean, what happens when you want to cease to
Speaker 1: exist and you can't do anything about it? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: 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 there where they said, well,
Speaker 1: what is a life sentence? Like, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: if you if you do something wrong in the future
Speaker 1: generation decides that you've done something wrong and you should
Speaker 1: be punished, Well, you're still around for that future generation
Speaker 1: to punish you. And how long will that last? And
Speaker 1: what does it look like? Other considerations? Who owns the
Speaker 1: who owns the brain? Because if if you are comporting
Speaker 1: yourself over into some digital format, presumably there's some hardware
Speaker 1: and software involved. Who owns that experience? Does it? Does
Speaker 1: it 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: This sounds like a silly question, but it's it's not.
Speaker 1: In the people who are able to patent genes human genes,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out like, well, how how do
Speaker 1: you say, let me correct myself before you get a
Speaker 1: bunch of listener mail who are able to patent genetic
Speaker 1: processes that are the results of genes Because the human
Speaker 1: genes discussion was eventually said no, you can't, you can't
Speaker 1: patent gene but through the late eighties I would have
Speaker 1: been right, yeah uh. And also, going back to cultural issues,
Speaker 1: even if you assume that everyone has access to this,
Speaker 1: what does that mean for religions? A large part of
Speaker 1: many religions happens to be about the experience that comes
Speaker 1: after death. That that, in fact, a lot of religions
Speaker 1: suggests that the life here on earth is merely preparation
Speaker 1: for what comes next. But if you extend that that
Speaker 1: life indefinitely. What does that mean from a religious standpoint.
Speaker 1: It's a tough question to answer. I can't answer it,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's another one of those things
Speaker 1: where we get these philosophical uh problems that come in.
Speaker 1: There are other ones to like, let's say that you
Speaker 1: are able to extend your life span indefinitely, what happens
Speaker 1: to population? I saw you, I saw this in this article,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that there's that much of an
Speaker 1: issue here because think about it, if we all live
Speaker 1: in a non corporeal form, that's the key though, that's
Speaker 1: non corporeal, but digital immortality might be allowed if we have,
Speaker 1: like I said, an implant in our heads. Oh well,
Speaker 1: then there will be body. I mean, that will be
Speaker 1: your status symbol that you own your own body and
Speaker 1: there's not a hundred other people in your body with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be trying to make decisions about where to go
Speaker 1: to dinner, what to get at. It just becomes a
Speaker 1: really really extreme version of all of me. Another Steve Martin, Yes,
Speaker 1: that was a good one. Lily Tomlin was in that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's there are a lot of philosophical questions
Speaker 1: that we would have to come to grips with if
Speaker 1: this were in fact ever to become a reality. They
Speaker 1: never happen. Yeah, And I'm not I'm not poo pooing
Speaker 1: the possibility. I'm not saying that definitely is not going
Speaker 1: to happen. I don't believe that we know enough about
Speaker 1: things to say that it never will. I also don't
Speaker 1: believe we know enough about things to say it definitely will,
Speaker 1: or especially the definitely will by Yeah. Now, in his defense,
Speaker 1: he was saying that we would be cyborgs and that
Speaker 1: we would be able to interface with the internet just
Speaker 1: using our as opposed to being truly immortal. He's talking
Speaker 1: more about Yeah, and even then, that's still one eight
Speaker 1: maybe of that singularity. Right, We've got more to say
Speaker 1: in this classic episode of tech Stuff. After these quick messages,
Speaker 1: I ran into a couple of things that we're kind
Speaker 1: of interesting while getting ready for this podcast, and I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to sort of conclude on this. So
Speaker 1: while we're nowhere close to the point where we can
Speaker 1: pour the brain over into some digital format and live forever,
Speaker 1: where continuity really isn't an issue yet because we don't
Speaker 1: have the we don't even have the basis to work
Speaker 1: with as uh let alone the figuring out how to
Speaker 1: port stuff over. There are people working on ways to
Speaker 1: share who you are beyond your lifespan, and one of
Speaker 1: them I ran into. In fact, I've signed up for
Speaker 1: the beta, but it hasn't it's still on the alpha
Speaker 1: part yet, so it's down. The beta is a service
Speaker 1: called it turna 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 the impression.
Speaker 1: And there's actually kind of a sad part of the
Speaker 1: story too, that that he's been contacted by a lot
Speaker 1: of people who UM are suffering from terminal illnesses, and
Speaker 1: they're looking at this as a way of being able
Speaker 1: to share memories with other people after they have gone.
Speaker 1: He says, you know, it's really hard to deal with
Speaker 1: those requests because honestly, the technology isn't at a level
Speaker 1: of sophistication where it could just adapt that quickly. But
Speaker 1: it is an interesting notion. No, in this case, obviously,
Speaker 1: the immortality is more about your your influence here on
Speaker 1: the planet. After you have gone, you are still gone,
Speaker 1: but what you leave behind continues to influence others. And
Speaker 1: that's very poetic way of looking at immortality. It's not
Speaker 1: the way Woody Allen looked at it, you know, he
Speaker 1: was always says, I don't want to achieve immortality through
Speaker 1: my work. I want to achieve it by not dying, um.
Speaker 1: But immortality through work or through uh your interactions with
Speaker 1: other people. That is something And you know, you could
Speaker 1: argue that, you know, like the poem was it as
Speaker 1: it Azimandias, where essentially you're like, look at this enormous
Speaker 1: monument I built that was going to stand the test
Speaker 1: of time and show how powerful I am, and now
Speaker 1: it's fallen over and it's crumbled and uh and and
Speaker 1: thus the Hubrists of the past proves to be unfounded. Uh.
Speaker 1: I still think that this is a very kind of
Speaker 1: poetic way of of at least showing people that you
Speaker 1: care for them, even if it, even if it is
Speaker 1: a little weird on the artificial intelligence doing it on
Speaker 1: your behalf, You will never get rid of me in
Speaker 1: my Facebook posts. Yeah, and I had posted in the
Speaker 1: in the or I wrote in the article about Brian Brushwood,
Speaker 1: and I even had Brushwood on this show and I
Speaker 1: asked him about this. Yeah, this was years ago, and
Speaker 1: it was an idea he had had. I don't know
Speaker 1: that he ever actually implemented it, but his idea was
Speaker 1: to create a very simple algorithm that would copy previous
Speaker 1: posts he had made online and post on his behalf
Speaker 1: after he dies. The idea being that every year, on
Speaker 1: his birthday, he would be prompted to send a message
Speaker 1: to this account, and if he did not do it
Speaker 1: within a certain amount of time, it would activate and
Speaker 1: start posting for him, so that even after he had died,
Speaker 1: the ghost in the machine version of him would continue
Speaker 1: to update Twitter or Facebook. So I wonder how often
Speaker 1: like the appropriateness in the context of it would be
Speaker 1: so off that it would be like a Horsey Books
Speaker 1: tweet or something like that. Yeah, where you you know,
Speaker 1: like especially you know, especially if something really tragic had happened,
Speaker 1: like like big Newsworthy tragic event happens and then yeah
Speaker 1: and like yeah exactly, or or you know, like let's
Speaker 1: say that there was a huge fire that broke out
Speaker 1: in Texas, which is where he lives. Like let's say
Speaker 1: there's an enormous fire and then it's just like man,
Speaker 1: and it sure is hot today, or something like that.
Speaker 1: That would be it would be like, Wow, that's an
Speaker 1: incredibly poor taste, although to be fairer, Brian would probably
Speaker 1: think that was hilarious. There's there's already another service out there,
Speaker 1: or at least there was a few years back. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're still around, but it was called
Speaker 1: death Switch and it wasn't it wasn't meant to keep going.
Speaker 1: But you write letters, emails, that kind of stuff, emails,
Speaker 1: I guess you think about it, Facebook post that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and they're all just held back because every year,
Speaker 1: much like what Brushwood was saying, you get an email
Speaker 1: that you have to like click and answer a little
Speaker 1: bit to prove you're still alive. And the first year
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen, it gives you like two or three
Speaker 1: more chances over the next couple of days, and then
Speaker 1: it sends out these emails everything from like, dear boss,
Speaker 1: here's what I have always thought about you, your sweet
Speaker 1: wife saying I know I've died and I want you
Speaker 1: to remember I always love you. And you know, like
Speaker 1: there's sweet things you can do, there's mean things you
Speaker 1: can do, there's just whatever, like here's here's the combination
Speaker 1: to the fire safe and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But it was all being held back by this one thing,
Speaker 1: which was every year you kept it from triggering, right,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Yeah. No, it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: I like, not immortality at all. No, but it's again
Speaker 1: one of that the idea of extending your presence digitally
Speaker 1: but life is extinguished. Isn't that extremely egotistical? I mean
Speaker 1: it could be, but it could also be that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have the fear of what if this stuff
Speaker 1: I want to I want to express to somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: what if I what if I never get around to
Speaker 1: doing it? Because some people say that you wasted that
Speaker 1: part of your life Yeah, that's part of life, as
Speaker 1: you were given a finite amount of time, finite amount
Speaker 1: of time to make decisions or let them pass by.
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. Yeah, digital immortality
Speaker 1: is a little pathetic and desperate. If you ask me, like,
Speaker 1: just the whole concept really can't die, I can't possibly die.
Speaker 1: Don't let me die, Okay, I guess where that's part
Speaker 1: one of it. But then a dumb down, watered down
Speaker 1: version of it to where an AI of you survives you. Definitely,
Speaker 1: that to me is beyond egotistical because if you think
Speaker 1: about it, our concept of immortality. Now, Strickland is what
Speaker 1: you leave behind in the form of your work, in
Speaker 1: your memories, and you leave yourself to be judged and appreciated, hated, whatever,
Speaker 1: by the people who who come after you, by the
Speaker 1: people you've touched, have have who keep you alive with
Speaker 1: their thoughts. Sure, that's immortality now, it's not invasive. It's
Speaker 1: up to the people who are left to stay alive
Speaker 1: to decide how they think of you, or whether they
Speaker 1: even want to think of you. With this AI version
Speaker 1: of yourself, you're just insinuating yourself in their lives beyond
Speaker 1: your own physical death in a way that you're not
Speaker 1: even getting any sort of satisfaction. Have ever told you
Speaker 1: what my plan is after I die? Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is going to give you a look into my psyche
Speaker 1: and explain exactly why this pipe kind of service is
Speaker 1: perfect for me. Just lock the door. I've told my
Speaker 1: wife this. I didn't say this is my plan for
Speaker 1: after when you die. I got that plan to my
Speaker 1: plan for when I die. Uh, And I I'm not
Speaker 1: being genuine when I say this. This was something I
Speaker 1: told my wife and just but I said, what I
Speaker 1: want to have happened is I want to be cremated,
Speaker 1: and then I want us to have part of my
Speaker 1: part of the stuff I leave behind is going to
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of money to hire somebody who,
Speaker 1: for the rest of my wife's life, takes the urn
Speaker 1: of ashes that has me in it, hides it somewhere
Speaker 1: in the house, and she cannot go to bed until
Speaker 1: after she finds me, because I want to irritate her
Speaker 1: as much in death as I have in life. And
Speaker 1: she looked at me, She's like, the scary thing is
Speaker 1: I could totally see you doing I kind of can't now. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I would never do that. I plan on donating my
Speaker 1: body to science. Yeah, you know, supposedly you have to
Speaker 1: make a note if this kind of thing bothers you
Speaker 1: that you don't want, um, say, like a rhino plastic
Speaker 1: practice to be carried out on your I don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't care. You know whatever, whatever helps people in
Speaker 1: the long run. Whether whether that help is is whether
Speaker 1: you judge it as being superficial, whether you judge it
Speaker 1: as being really meaningful. Ultimately, my goal is I want
Speaker 1: I want to I want to leave the world better
Speaker 1: than it was when I came in. That's That's how
Speaker 1: my wife approaches it too. She wants to leave her
Speaker 1: body to science, and I'm like, plastic. She's like, I
Speaker 1: don't It's fine, Like if I'm leaving it the science. Well,
Speaker 1: the way if you're what if there's someone who through
Speaker 1: uh you know, either an inherited defect or whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could, they could, truly their lives could be transformed
Speaker 1: in I cannot even conceive up, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: Or there's, of course there's that option. I feel like
Speaker 1: put down the dermatologists, like, oh, you saved lives, and
Speaker 1: she's like, yes, through skin cancer, you could skin cancer.
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it well, Or what about the
Speaker 1: scenario there's a housewife in Beverly Hills and her nose
Speaker 1: is just a little too big. You know, actually, if
Speaker 1: her nose is a little too big, my nose is
Speaker 1: the last one in the world to look at. Son both.
Speaker 1: 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 the toilets episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Yeah, I didn't make any puns in that sense,
Speaker 1: like I didn't know you know, there there are tons
Speaker 1: of immortality puns I could have made, but I didn't
Speaker 1: do it. I I speak for everyone listening when I
Speaker 1: say we appreciate that. I'm sure well, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that episode. I might not be digitally immortal, but
Speaker 1: I sure hope my show is, because then a little
Speaker 1: part of me will live on forever irritating people with
Speaker 1: puns and if they go back far enough with loud
Speaker 1: loud listener male sound effects. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The best way to do
Speaker 1: that is to send me a message on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.