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What if We Could Live for a Million Years?
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The Risks Of A Life Spanning Centuries
With the rapid advancement in bioscience and technology, it is likely that most ailments will be cured in the future and our life span would increase considerably.
With increased lifespans, there are new challenges that would need to be overcome. One could plan ahead and accomplish tasks that would take decades or centuries, unlike our current mindset of relatively short-term goals. An extended period of existence would make us wiser and afraid of taking risks.
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The Challenges of The Future
As the human life span increases to span centuries, the planetary environment, along with the collaboration and cooperation among nations would come to the forefront, as hostile people and chronic pollution are extremely dangerous in the long run.
While our survival would still not be a guarantee, there will be a new challenge of overpopulation, which could be moderated by sending people into space to colonize other places, and by limiting the birth rate.
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The Long Journey
As inter-galaxy travel becomes a reality, there could be many spaceships which would be able to take us to nearby habitable solar systems, setting up for new adventures, challenges and a completely radical lifestyle.
The changes in Earth’s biosphere could also be a concern, as new technologies and constant harvesting of resources (like deforestation) can lead to dangerous environmental changes.
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The Future On Earth: The Long-Term Perspective
When we look at the problems we may face if we live a million years, we start to realize that the current problems and concerns are nothing when compared to the long-term perspective of our planet and the universe which we inhabit.
The constant injury humans cause to our home planet would seem childish and stupid, when seen alongside the larger picture of where we are in the universe.
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Near-death experiences (NDEs)
NDEs are triggered during a life-threatening situation when the body is injured by blunt trauma, e.g., a heart attack or shock.
Many survivors tell of leaving their damaged...
Negative NDEs experiences
Not all NDEs are positive - some can be frightening, with intense terror, anguish, loneliness, and despair. Distressing NDEs are underreported because of shame, social stigma, and pressure to conform to the positive NDEs.
A close encounter with death reminds us of the fragility of life and can reveal the layers of psychological suppression that prevents us from these uncomfortable thoughts.
The NDE phenomenon
A 2017 study found that NDEs were recalled with greater clarity and detail than either real or imagined situations were. In other words, NDEs were remembered as being more real than life itself.
NDEs are no more likely to occur in devout believers than in secular or nonpracticing subjects.
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About Consciousness
Consciousness is everything you experience - taste, pain, love, feeling. Where these experiences come from is a mystery.
Many modern analytic philosophers of mind either d...
Searching For Physical Footprints
What is it about brain matter that gives rise to consciousness? In particular, the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC) - the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any conscious experience.
Consider this question: What must happen in your brain for you to experience a toothache?
Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)
The whole brain can be considered an NCC because it generates experience continually.
- When parts of the cerebellum, the "little brain" underneath the back of the brain, are lost to a stroke or otherwise, patients may lose the ability to play the piano, for example. But they never lose any aspect of their consciousness. This is because the cerebellum is almost wholly a feed-forward circuit. There are no complex feedback loops.
- The spinal cord and the cerebellum are not enough to create consciousness. Available evidence suggests neocortical tissue in generating feelings.
- The next stages of processing are the broad set of cortical regions, collectively known as the posterior hot zone, that gives rise to conscious perception. In clinical sources of causal evidence, stimulating the posterior hot zone can trigger a diversity of distinct sensations and feelings.
- It appears that almost all conscious experiences have their origin in the posterior cortex. But it does not explain the crucial difference between the posterior regions and much of the prefrontal cortex, which does not directly contribute to subjective content.
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The natural preferences of our brain
In a perfect world, we would use both success and failure as instructive lessons. But our brain doesn't learn that way. It learns more from some experiences than others.
Confirm...
Choice influences our decision-making
A study found that choice had an apparent influence on decision-making. In the studies subjects learned more when they had a free choice and when the choice gave a higher reward.
However, when participants were forced to select a specific choice, they were less invested in the outcomes, similar to a child mindlessly practicing to please a parent.
Choice-confirmation bias
When people can make a free choice, they embrace positive or negative outcomes that confirm they were right.
Studies show that this tendency persists in both poor and rich conditions. This means the brain is primed to learn with a bias linked to our freely chosen actions. The brain learns differently and more quickly from free choices than forced ones.