Does Russia need immortality?
Why immortality will not become our new national idea
Sergey Petukhov, RIA Novosti columnist.
Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov presented a program for extending the life of the human brain at the Lincoln Center in New York. This is only the first stage of a more extensive program to create virtually immortal beings by 2045.
By this date, the public movement "Russia 2045" has been offering to solve the problem of immortality for two years. These ideas did not find a noticeable response in their homeland, and they did not make a sensation in New York.
What's the matter here: people's disbelief that they can easily turn into cyborgs, or the fundamental impossibility for a person to become immortal?
Who promises us immortalityThe plan to transfer the personality to a "more perfect non-biological carrier and prolong life up to immortality" by 2045 belongs to the public movement "Russia 2045", founded by Russian entrepreneur, CEO of the Internet company Newmedia Stars Dmitry Itskov.
The scientific council of the movement, which probably developed the details of this plan, includes 23 people. If we exclude from them Mr. Itskov himself, an economist by education, of the 22 other members of the council, 12 are professional philosophers (one was also an astronaut in the past), three psychologists, three physicists, two engineers and two biologists.
It is clear that in such a composition it is easier to develop a plan more philosophical than technical.
When should immortality be expectedThe complete replacement of the imperfect, prone to wear, up to the complete unsuitability of the natural human body together with its brain is planned until 2045.
At the first stage (2015-2020), an artificial copy of the human body ("avatar A" in the terminology of movement) will be created, which this person will be able to control with the power of thought (using a neurointerface) from his own decrepit body.
At the second stage (2020-2025), at the end of a person's life, his brain will be transferred to an artificial body, the vital activity of which will be artificially maintained. This cadaver is called "Avatar B".
At the third stage (2025-2030), the brain together with consciousness (avatar B) will be transferred to the artificial body. It is not entirely clear what this means, but it is clear that the brain is transferred to the previous avatar ("B") simply as an organ of the body, like the liver or the heart, and whether memory is preserved at the same time is not so important.
At the fourth and final stage (2030-2045), the brain with consciousness will be transferred to a hologram body, and this will be "Avatar G", or Eternal Man.
The fate of intermediate, imperfect avatars B and C is not spelled out in the technical task of the project. It remains to be hoped that, out of a sense of humanity, they will not be left in their former form, but will try to modify them in G.
Who will finance the creation of immortalitySo far, this question remains open.
According to media reports, Dmitry Itskov has already invested his own $ 3 million in the project.
In July last year, he addressed the participants of the Forbes list with an offer to invest in the "new industry of immortality". "I am even ready to become the coordinator of your personal immortality project for free, just so that the world will see these technologies as soon as possible," he promised potential investors. It was not possible to find any results of this appeal in open sources.
A similar request for donations to ordinary citizens hangs on the website of the movement "Russia-2045" and also contains a promise to develop an "individual project" if the donor so wishes.
According to Dmitry Itskov, there is no question about the state financing of immortality yet. But he hopes that "Russia will be one of the first to announce the Avatar megaproject, like Obama about the BRAIN Initiative" (an American program to map all the neurons of the human brain worth $300 million a year for 10 years. – S.P.).
Is it possible to create an immortal copy of a personThere are no theoretical obstacles to this.
It is enough to make an exact copy of the human body with a life support system for the human brain. Moreover, such attempts have already been in the past.
For example, Professor Sergey Bryukhonenko in the 1920s and 30s created an artificial blood circulation device connected to the lungs and heart cut out of a living organism. The whole structure was crowned by the head of a dog, which opened its mouth in a silent bark and made such an impression on the Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev that he wrote the story "Professor Dowell's Head" in 1935.
Earlier achievements of surgery made an equally strong impression on H. G. Wells and were reflected in his fantasy novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau". In it, Dr. Moreau collected more perfect organisms, as from a Lego constructor, from body parts of less perfect organisms, from his point of view. And even earlier, the compatriot of Wells, the writer Mary Shelley, described the assembly of a superman from the body parts of corpses by the student Victor Frankenstein.
It was not yet known about antigens, antibodies and tissue incompatibility, so it seemed that there were no theoretical obstacles to creating an immortal being by replacing old organs with new ones.
Now, with new technological opportunities, it also seems that there are none. This has happened many times in the history of mankind, and each time it ended with the fact that the task, unattainable at this level of technology, was then solved in a completely different way than the one that seemed the most obvious. That is why airplanes now fly not with a steam engine, but with an internal combustion or jet engine.
With modern technologies, it is probably possible to copy the human body in synthetic materials until 2045. But following this path, it is unlikely that it will be possible to endow him even with purely human senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch), not to mention more complex communications with the surrounding world, as a result of which such experiences as joy, pain, etc. arise.
Imagine, for example, a person without immunity who never gets sick, and therefore does not suffer from illness and does not recover, experiencing the joy of recovery. The immunity of the synthetic man Dmitry Itskov is not provided, because plastic does not get sick. That is why the result will again be either Professor Dowell's head (at best) or Frankenstein's monster (at worst).
In any case, it will be a copy of a person, not a person. More sophisticated, more technologically advanced than could have come out from under the knife of Frankenstein. But a copy.
Does Russia need immortalityRussian Russian media associate the project of the new cyborg personally with Dmitry Itskov as a "Russian oligarch" or "Russian multimillionaire".
The name of his movement "Russia-2045" is generally absent in American publications. So if the New York conference of Mr. Itskov's movement was aimed not only at finding potential sponsors, but also at PR of Russia as a high-tech power, then the latter clearly failed. And this is more good than bad.
Russia really occupies a leading position in the world in the field of programming, bioorganic synthesis chemistry and physiology of higher nervous activity. We don't know much about this, although we can be rightfully proud of it.
But in the field of social projecting, our country lost its indisputable authority back in 1991 – along with the collapse of its largest utopian project called the Soviet Union. And it is probably not worth reviving the reputation of "Kremlin dreamers", especially with such strange projects as the promise of immortality.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.06.2013