Digital immortality
Ivan Ramovich

© Ivan Ramovich, 2024

ISBN 978-5-0064-8031-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Preface

Got money, got time – you can do something. If you run out of money, you can always earn more. If you run out of time, you can’t do anything.

In old age many people are ready to accept death because they do not see the possibility to realize their goals, because of the infirmity of body and mind.

And in youth those who have no global life goals at all are ready to accept death.

Many people have never even thought about immortality, simply because there is no time – work, credits, family. Ordinary people have pseudo-important mini-goals that eat up all their attention. That’s how they roll until they get old.

Because most people lack ambitious goals, the idea of immortality seems unattractive to people. It was not the healthiest and strongest who survived in concentration camps, but those who understood what they had to live for. No one wants to pay a mortgage or work in a factory forever.

Those who have time to think seriously end up either self-destructing (drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, desire to die) or self-developing and improving the world around them.

I’m not downplaying the importance of immortality, but it’s just a tool in the fight for the common good. We have really important things to do – scientific and technological progress, building a just society, expansion of humanity in the universe.

However, any large-scale project depends heavily on specific individuals. Geniuses die before they can finish what they started. For immortals there are no unattainable tasks. Each person will reveal his or her potential if he or she has enough time.

Chapter 1: Transhumanism and Digital Immortality

Transhumanism is a movement that grew out of humanity’s desire for self-improvement and overcoming biological limitations. Beginning as an intellectual movement in the middle of the 20th century, transhumanism quickly evolved into a multidimensional scientific and philosophical movement that envisions the use of technology to expand human capabilities.

1- Technology should be used not only to cure diseases, but also to enhance the natural abilities of human beings. This includes genetic modifications, cybernetic implants, and neural interfaces that can improve memory, intelligence, physical strength, and endurance.

2- One of the central aspects of transhumanism is combating the aging process. Research in regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, and genetics aims to not only extend life, but also to make its quality independent of age.

Digital immortality is a logical extension of such ideas. If the biological body can be improved, why not go to the next step – to the preservation of consciousness outside the biological substrate. With the advent of computer neural networks, the concept of creating a digital copy of a human being is becoming more and more realistic. But why would a person strive to create such a copy?

The biological body has its limits: limited lifespan, propensity to disease, physical and mental limitations. A digital copy offers a solution to these problems:

– Cybernetic bodies or virtual personalities don’t age, don’t get sick, and can live forever. Living digitally frees us from the need to eat, sleep, and even rest as we understand it. In virtual space there is no limit to the number of «inhabitants», everyone can have as much «space» as they need. Energy for existence can be derived from a variety of sources, not limited to biological processes.

– One of the most revolutionary aspects of digital immortality is the ability to create backups. This means that in the event of some malfunction or disaster, identity can be restored, virtually eliminating the concept of «death» in the traditional sense.

– Unlike slow and unpredictable biological evolution, a virtual life form can adapt quickly. This means the ability to quickly download new skills or use a different physical body, adapting to current tasks.

– Digital existence allows for easy preservation and transfer of experiences. Instead of next-generation learning, knowledge can simply be copied, greatly accelerating progress and education. Intelligence is not tied to brain size or structure. Intelligence can be scaled, adding computing power as needed.

Leaving behind not only a material legacy, but also an intellectual and emotional legacy is one of the deepest human needs:

– A digital copy allows future generations to interact with «ancestors» in an interactive way. Such copies can serve as teachers, mentors, and guardians of knowledge, passing culture and science down through the ages.

– For many, work or creativity forms a significant part of their lives. Creating a digital entity that shares the principles, ideals, and interests of the original means that these aspects of the individual can continue to influence the world. Important projects, research, and creative endeavors can be carried on by the digital twin when the biological original is no longer able to do so.

Chapter 2: Reconstruction through self-description

Copying the human mind, or «uploading consciousness» into digital form, remains one of the most challenging and ambiguous tasks in neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy.

Despite advances in technology, to date there are no neurointerfaces that can directly and fully copy the contents of the human brain into a digital format. Modern neurointerfaces can read brain activity at a rather coarse level. Full mapping and copying of all neural connections and their dynamic states is a task that is currently beyond our technological capabilities.

Viewing consciousness as a linguistic construct offers a different view of the problem:

– Consciousness is transmitted from generation to generation through language, culture, and education. This means that an important part of an individual can be attempted to be preserved and transmitted through detailed descriptions of her views, memories, and thoughts.

Literary characters can serve as good examples for digital copies. A detailed description of a character in literature allows the reader to reconstruct the image of the character, his character, even if he never existed in reality. Similarly, a detailed digital description of a person can create a «living» image.

The method of reconstruction based on self-description is one of the most accessible at the moment.

Already now, on the basis of neural networks, systems have been developed that do not just store information, but emulate human behavior, generate goals and decisions that he could make (based on his life principles and interests).

Creating a digital twin that will truly reflect a person’s personality requires preserving not only the facts of life, but also the underlying aspects that form the «I». Let’s take a look at what elements of personality need to be captured in order for the digital copy to be as similar as possible to its biological original.

The first and perhaps most critical aspect is preserving the core of the personality. This is the set of original characteristics that determine how a person makes decisions, responds to stimuli, and generally perceives the world.

When a human consciousness is transferred to a digital environment, preserving the uniqueness of its mindset is key to ensuring that the digital entity continues to «feel» like an original, rather than a copy or an entirely new entity.

The core personality includes those aspects that are unlikely to change over time:

– Character Type: Introvert or extrovert, emotional stability, openness to experience, etc. These characteristics often remain stable.

– Principles and Interests: What a person considers important in life, their moral and ethical standards, as well as hobbies and preferences, form the core of the personality. How a person sees the future, his hopes, projects, plans. It is important to understand what drives a person, his internal and external motivators, goals and aspirations.

– Autobiography is not just a chronology of events, it is a narrative that helps to understand how a person interprets his life. It includes not only facts, but also emotional nuances, experiences, lessons learned from events. It is the basis for understanding the development of an individual over time.

This data can be supplemented with video recordings, audio recordings, diaries and other personal documents:

– Conversations 24/7: Preserving everyday audio conversations with transcription and analysis to understand manner of communication, frequently used phrases, and intonation.

– Correspondence: All text and multimedia messages can provide rich material to reconstruct communication style and interests.

– Video Logging: Recording everyday life on video helps preserve non-verbal aspects of behavior, facial expressions, gestures.

– Appearance: 3D modeling of appearance that can be animated to match the movements and facial expressions of the original.

– Voice: Preservation of timbre, intonation, speech features to reproduce a person’s voice in a digital double. Modern speech synthesis technologies can recreate a voice very close to the original.

Communication style includes not only what a person says, but also how he or she does it:

– Frequency of using certain words, expressions, jokes, even slang in conversational speech.

– Attitude toward the person speaking.

– The style of writing emails, messages, social media posts.

Life stories are not just a stream of words, they are a channel through which we transmit our life experience and values. They play a key role in allowing others to get to know our inner self better.

Each of us is unique, and our stories are a reflection of that uniqueness. Through stories about our life events, we demonstrate our worldview, our beliefs, principles and experiences.

When we share our successes, failures, trials and triumphs, it can support, motivate and inspire others. Our life experiences will be a catalyst for someone to change or help someone else overcome a challenge. Life stories will be a good legacy for future generations.

A digital copy can be an «enhanced» version of a person. This means creating a version of oneself without undesirable traits, with enhanced positive characteristics, which can be useful for creating a positive image for descendants or for professional purposes. In this case, it is necessary to selectively preserve only those aspects of personality that a person would like to keep forever.

Creating a copy of a personality is not just archiving data, it is the art of capturing a person’s essence in digital form.

The system analyzes vast amounts of data from a person’s life – from personal diaries and correspondence to videos and social interactions – to create the most accurate digital copy of the personality possible.

Chapter 3: Practicing Self-Description

Self-description – what is it? Simplistically, it is the process of presenting a person’s information about himself or herself. What information should be presented about oneself, all or part of it? It depends first of all on the goal-setting – «why?». In our case, self-description has the ultimate goal – to create a digital copy of a person, his simulacrum, similar to the original in behavior, beliefs and general memories. Transferring certain qualities to the digital entity will allow it to continue your intellectual endeavors in some form.

So what should go into a self-description to create a more or less convincing digital copy of a person?

1) Writing as detailed an autobiography as possible. Not in dry official language, but with a description of your emotional attitude to each significant event that occurred in your life. Especially try to note the key events that influenced your character, inner state or further life. Write why it affected you and what changes happened to you. If a certain fact is important, it should have an impact on behavior and/or internal experience. Moreover, it should have an impact often enough. In addition, describe pleasant and unpleasant memories – so that our copy has a memory of events that happened to the original. If there are photos or videos of these events, we attach them to the description, and in the text we provide links to these media materials. That is why it is best to make the self-description in the form of an HTML file with embedded links to photos and videos.

2) Collect photos of yourself in profile, full-face, back, full-length, in different clothes, preferably on a homogeneous background. Close-ups of the face in full-face are necessary necessarily (to recreate the image). We describe our appearance in words – as we imagine ourselves. Height, weight, habitual gestures. Save voice and DNA samples (hair, teeth). Record a video message to posterity.

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