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Canada2068 Posts
On January 25 2013 06:02 Veldril wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 05:52 CountChocula wrote:On January 25 2013 05:38 grush57 wrote:On January 25 2013 05:37 Vandrad wrote:On January 24 2013 13:38 Tenshix wrote:
Next step: Japan develops immortality to prevent their entire population from dying off. Sounds funny. But we are actually heading this way. lol yea because immortality is possible Have you seen singularityhub.com? Ray Kurzweil and his followers believe being able to upload a scan of your brain into a computer will be achieved in our lifetime and people will achieve immortality, so theoretically it's possible. It is still not immortality because if someone pull the plug out of the computers or erase the data or the computer goes broken, then they still die.
immortality isn't about being invincible and unkillable. it's about being able to "live" forever granted you weren't killed by someone since you can't die from old age like every other human.
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On January 25 2013 06:02 Veldril wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 05:52 CountChocula wrote:On January 25 2013 05:38 grush57 wrote:On January 25 2013 05:37 Vandrad wrote:On January 24 2013 13:38 Tenshix wrote:
Next step: Japan develops immortality to prevent their entire population from dying off. Sounds funny. But we are actually heading this way. lol yea because immortality is possible Have you seen singularityhub.com? Ray Kurzweil and his followers believe being able to upload a scan of your brain into a computer will be achieved in our lifetime and people will achieve immortality, so theoretically it's possible. It is still not immortality because if someone pull the plug out of the computers or erase the data or the computer goes broken, then they still die.
........except you can upload your consciousness, copy it into nearly infinite amounts of clones, and spread all of them out to a vast array of servers and processor units. You can even transmit random beam pulses of information containing all the data of your personality into random directions in the universe so that one instance of your existence is hurtling at light speed through the void of space. You may not be 100% guaranteed immortal, but it would mean you have a vastly greater life expectancy and level of redundancy than a flesh body.
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On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old.
Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare.
The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare.
So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price.
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On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price.
AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities.
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On January 25 2013 06:08 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price. AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities.
Food is an essential good, and is one of the best examples of a free market system solving the distribution and production problem.
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On January 25 2013 06:08 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price. AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities.
To piggy back on samsungstar's point, here's an excellent study published in the archives of internal medicine on why healthcare makes for a poor "market good".
Society in general encourages the public to be savvy consumers, shopping around for the best values. But the health care industry is a unique one, the study’s scientists say, where traditional market principles do not apply. Patients — particularly those in pain and in need of swift treatment — are often in a poor position to gauge the appropriateness of their care, instead relying on the advice of medical professionals.
“Price shopping is improbable, if not impossible, because the services are complex, urgently needed, and no definitive diagnosis has yet been made,’’ the researchers wrote.
Link
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On January 25 2013 06:12 ControlMonkey wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:08 SamsungStar wrote:On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price. AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities. Food is an essential good, and is one of the best examples of a free market system solving the distribution and production problem.
....Agriculture is one of the most regulated, subsidized, and protectionist industries out there. There is absolutely nothing free about it. The reason countries regulate and maintain agriculture is exactly because it is a necessity good. Just because a few megacorps do the actual operating and management does not make it in any way free.
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I think the best system is have a certain amount of money that can be spent on health care per person per year. Say 50k or 100k a year, and be allowed to use the money up to two years in advance, if you have a serious injury etc. The rest of your health care, if you so desire can be funded by you if you can support that. If you can save 10 million by the time youre 60, well you'll be very well off.
The other thing that needs to be done is expand the health care system, to raise the supply, therefore making it cheaper, and lowering wages, because currently the salaries are very high etc, costs of health care can certainly be lowered, and that is crucial for our current society.
If this is done, many problems would be fixed, and only real consequences would be very very sick old people who can't afford it, but hey neither can we, its not like we'd be killing them.
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5003 Posts
the rational, utility-maximizing, economic agents that macroeconomic history has demonstrated we often are
This is so utterly wrong I have no idea where to begin.
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On January 25 2013 06:21 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I think the best system is have a certain amount of money that can be spent on health care per person per year. Say 50k or 100k a year, and be allowed to use the money up to two years in advance, if you have a serious injury etc. The rest of your health care, if you so desire can be funded by you if you can support that. If you can save 10 million by the time youre 60, well you'll be very well off.
The other thing that needs to be done is expand the health care system, to raise the supply, therefore making it cheaper, and lowering wages, because currently the salaries are very high etc, costs of health care can certainly be lowered, and that is crucial for our current society.
If this is done, many problems would be fixed, and only real consequences would be very very sick old people who can't afford it, but hey neither can we, its not like we'd be killing them.
How does this make sense though? I can't speak for Canada, but in the USA the average male adult makes roughly $33,000 a year.
Yet, on top of all the other gov't services and benefits this citizen receives, we're supposed to credit him/her $50 - $100,000 a year in possible health services? Of course, a person should not be using $50K every single year, but say for instance they have a terminal illness and start doing exactly that. $50k a year will eat into their total net contribution to the system extremely fast. Within 5 years, the health care costs being proposed alone would pretty much eat up all the taxes the average person has paid in their entire lifetime of working.
So who is footing the bill for this?
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On January 25 2013 04:57 zev318 wrote:
i voted no. but would vote yes if the patient paid for the cost themselves.
So you value human life by his luck of being born into a wealthy family?
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On January 25 2013 06:15 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:12 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 06:08 SamsungStar wrote:On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price. AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities. Food is an essential good, and is one of the best examples of a free market system solving the distribution and production problem. ....Agriculture is one of the most regulated, subsidized, and protectionist industries out there. There is absolutely nothing free about it. The reason countries regulate and maintain agriculture is exactly because it is a necessity good. Just because a few megacorps do the actual operating and management does not make it in any way free.
Governments regulate, subsidise and maintain agriculture because they want to keep jobs in their country, not because people would starve if they didn't. It is not free, but it is certainly more free than many other industries like healthcare, air travel, education, finance, oil, housing, communications and electricity,
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On January 24 2013 13:39 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 13:37 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
People should only have the "right" to live in these latter stages of life if they can afford it. Lord knows we can't. Keeping everyone's grandma on chemo is just becoming impossible. I mean, it would be nice if extremely expensive life-prolonging operations and medicines were available to everyone, but as life goes on these procedures become more and more expensive and give less and less time to the patient. So life-prolonging healthcare is the right of the rich? Try suggesting that in a democracy, and watch as those old people vote you out of office
life prolonging healthcare is already the right of the rich. In the United States the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 10% male longevity is now up to 10 years.
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I find that question impossible to answer, therefore you've done very well.
I believe that as long as the majority of humanity believes that there's no way round the concept of money, capitalism and unequality of wealth distribution, so long will we be forced to make heavy decisions like if we should make some individual live longer and lower the financial life quality of the general public.
If one day the majority actually realizes that we'd be better of without the concept and supremacy of money, the endless possibilities of life on earth that allows people to do things because they're useful, rahter than because they pay off, that day we will have solved questions like the one you asked.
I dont see the utopy i described happening though, and i don't know any intellectual or politician who has developed a reachable concept of a world without money yet. I'm optimistic that humanity has the intellectual capabilities to change human nature for the greater good of all or that this capability will one day be developed, even if it might require something really bad happening.
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On January 25 2013 06:44 ControlMonkey wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:15 SamsungStar wrote:On January 25 2013 06:12 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 06:08 SamsungStar wrote:On January 25 2013 06:05 ControlMonkey wrote:On January 25 2013 01:27 SirKibbleX wrote:
If the costs of healthcare are rising, that just means that supply and demand will fulfill those needs by creating more jobs for people in the healthcare industry. There are plenty of human activities that aren't really 'productive'. But why not gradually slow down the social contract with people. Let the free healthcare have finite limits and let the old who wish to take care of themselves use some of the money they are saving by not spending.
In other words, the free market will take care of things as long as the government doesn't bankrupt itself trying to redistribute all the wealth of the young towards the old. Actually when price goes up, two things happen. More people become suppliers of healthcare, and people demand less healthcare. The problem is that supply of healthcare providers is extremely inelastic in the short run (and not exactly elastipc in the long run) because there are huge barriers to entry (10 years of medical training in some cases). The other problem is that demand is also very inelastic, price needs to go up significantly for them to demand less healthcare. So when increasing demand pushes up prices, all that really happens is that prices go higher. Overall supply of healthcare is determined by the capacity of the system to produce more providers rather than price. AKA healthcare doesn't really work well according to the principles of free market efficiency, just like every other necessary good. Except for some retarded reason, the US political discourse keeps trying to pretend like it should be run by the free market, whereas nearly every other necessary good is managed by public utilities. Food is an essential good, and is one of the best examples of a free market system solving the distribution and production problem. ....Agriculture is one of the most regulated, subsidized, and protectionist industries out there. There is absolutely nothing free about it. The reason countries regulate and maintain agriculture is exactly because it is a necessity good. Just because a few megacorps do the actual operating and management does not make it in any way free. Governments regulate, subsidise and maintain agriculture because they want to keep jobs in their country, not because people would starve if they didn't. It is not free, but it is certainly more free than many other industries like healthcare, air travel, education, finance, oil, housing, communications and electricity,
Just no. Protectionist policies and heavy subsidization cannot exist in a free market. Maybe AUS is different, but US agriculture is not remotely free.
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On a related note to the OP, let's pose the relevant question:
Your parents are dying, they have a terminal condition that is partially treatable, but they are incapacitated so it is your choice. Their accumulated savings are not enough and they need to put you in substantial debt to pay for it. Or you can let them die (paying just enough for a painless death) and inherit their wealth. What would you do?
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United States41980 Posts
On January 25 2013 07:10 coverpunch wrote:
On a related note to the OP, let's pose the relevant question:
Your parents are dying, they have a terminal condition that is partially treatable, but they are incapacitated so it is your choice. Their accumulated savings are not enough and they need to put you in substantial debt to pay for it. Or you can let them die (paying just enough for a painless death) and inherit their wealth. What would you do?
Ask them for advice?
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On January 25 2013 06:00 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 05:31 7mk wrote:On January 24 2013 20:37 SamsungStar wrote:On January 24 2013 20:08 7mk wrote:On January 24 2013 20:01 NightOfTheDead wrote:On January 24 2013 20:00 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:On January 24 2013 19:57 50bani wrote:On January 24 2013 19:43 Gimmeurladderpoints wrote:EDIT: also no one is proposing no health care AT ALL to old people, just that the government should not subsidise it. In fact, old people / their families spending out of their own pocket on health care is a good thing for the economy I mean. Look at this. Some people are literally saying. Human life should end at the point where it's no longer good for the economy to exist. That's ludacris. It would lead to a world where you're bank account determines the right to life. (I know that in some extreme situations that's already the case, but in general it's not. And holy Fuck. It should not be the case) But do you agree that old/disabled can be a resource drain? + Show Spoiler + Do you agree that old/disabled people were not always old and disabled and many of them have contributed more to society than you or I ever will, so it maybe a bit ungrateful to just let them die, when they can't look out for themselves anymore? Yes, and are you aware that many of them want to pass away, because they are losing sanity/having constant enourmous pain? I dont know about your country, but in most developed countries usually doctors arent supposed to extend life at any cost, and palliative medicine in particular is all about relieving the patient of pain in his last weeks / months before death, so your question is rather irrelevant. If a patient doesnt want his life extended artificially all he needs to do is state so / have his will written down On January 24 2013 14:08 sths wrote:
The biggest problem with today's mainstream economic thought is the belief that a nation's actions are limited by the amount of dollars (yen,rmb etc) it has access to. This hasn't been true since the gold-standard days.
A sovereign nation with a free floating exchange rate (ie: US, Japan, Australia, NOT EU countries or countries with pegged exchange rates) can never run out of its own currencies. The limiting factor for a nation is never the amount of its own currency it can get access to but the productive capacity of the population.
Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care......The health and welfare ministry, he added, was "well aware that it costs several tens of millions of yen" a month to treat a single patient in the final stages of life.
Statements like the above shows a lack of understanding of what money is. Japan's problem isn't that they don't have the "millions of yen", its that they don't have enough doctors, hospitals, nurses etc to care for their ever growing senior population. The real cost to a nation is how much productive capacity do we dedicate to taking care of our elderly, NOT how much yen this will cost. The good news is that productive capacity can be grown. The bad news is that everyone seems to think that the government is just like a household or an individual and must "save currency" to pay for stuff.
If you ask me, dedicating a large portion of your economy to taking care of your elderly is a lot better compared to how much we currently dedicate to the entirely parasitic financial sector.
Oh and who else thinks Shady should stop making these discussion threads and go back to writing about Chinese/Japanese james bond shit. Or perhaps another chapter from his life story.
thanks for writing one of the few smart posts in this thread, so many people here have this image of "oh if you let this elderly person die, you could save a young childs life!!" which is just hilariously naive. Btw. why dont we also stop treating all disabled people in the world? And all people who cant work because of their psychiatric illness. They dont boost the economy, so we might as well just let them be in their misery without wasting money on them, right. Utterly wrong. Money and labor productivity are intrinsically connected. Money is the incentive for labor. Without money, you have no production. Wtf would people work for no money? Productive capacity is nothing but an abstract ideal. Reality doesn't work that way. A society rarely, if ever, operates at maximum productive capacity, so no, it still boils down to money because that is the most accurate representation of resources and labor supply. You can't just force people to become doctors and nurses because they have the ability. You have to grow the sector through normal economic activity and market pressures. I'm pretty sure I could handle a nurse's job, but it would take a ridiculous amount of money to convince me to become one. At the end of the day, labor markets are driven by supply and demand and those both function using money. And the logic of putting more money into elderly care because the financial sector sucks too is terrible. Two wrongs don't make a right. Youre kind of just affirming his point that you dont really understand how money, or the health system works "Money is the incentive for labor" - nobody said otherwise. People wont become a doctor if they dont get proper pay, sure, noone said otherwise. This doesnt mean that if you would put twice as much money you would have twice as many doctors, likewise would not treating elderly people not mean that you would save more childrens lives. "You can't just force people to become doctors and nurses because they have the ability. You have to grow the sector through normal economic activity and market pressures. I'm pretty sure I could handle a nurse's job, but it would take a ridiculous amount of money to convince me to become one." Valid point, except it has nothing to do with what he is saying " And the logic of putting more money into elderly care because the financial sector sucks too is terrible. Two wrongs don't make a right. " He didnt really say that. He just said that this is money better spent. Besides, what is talked about in this thread is against the ethic standard that doctors have had for thousands of years Just what? He tried to divorce the buying power of a nation from its labor market, and then he tried to make a claim that the labor market, and the health industrial complex in particular, could simply be grown by printing more money to do so. All that supposedly mattered was the net "productive capacity" of the nation and how it was allocated. Completely ignoring the fact that nations do not live in vacuums and their labor and financial markets are integrated into a world economy, so that a nation's "productive capacity" is pretty much impossible to quantify seeing as a nation could use their money to buy the productive capacity of other nations (such as outsourcing), and export their own productive capacity to other nations in exchange for hard currency(such as trade surpluses). AKA his entire theory makes absolutely zero sense. Oh then he decided to end his post with the claim that the financial sector is more parasitic than healthcare and therefore spending additional money (or productive capacity) on health care is justified. The most ironic thing about his whole post is that it's couched in a patronizing manner as if nobody else understands what fiat currency is. Which is now followed by your post... that doesn't seem to understand anything that's been said before it.
OK you're right, a good part of his post is flawed, my bad. My main point and the part of his that I supported was that it's just not as simple as "save money not treating elders, use that money to save children" - it just really really doesn't work like that.
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On January 25 2013 06:05 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:02 Veldril wrote:On January 25 2013 05:52 CountChocula wrote:On January 25 2013 05:38 grush57 wrote:On January 25 2013 05:37 Vandrad wrote:On January 24 2013 13:38 Tenshix wrote:
Next step: Japan develops immortality to prevent their entire population from dying off. Sounds funny. But we are actually heading this way. lol yea because immortality is possible Have you seen singularityhub.com? Ray Kurzweil and his followers believe being able to upload a scan of your brain into a computer will be achieved in our lifetime and people will achieve immortality, so theoretically it's possible. It is still not immortality because if someone pull the plug out of the computers or erase the data or the computer goes broken, then they still die. ........except you can upload your consciousness, copy it into nearly infinite amounts of clones, and spread all of them out to a vast array of servers and processor units. You can even transmit random beam pulses of information containing all the data of your personality into random directions in the universe so that one instance of your existence is hurtling at light speed through the void of space. You may not be 100% guaranteed immortal, but it would mean you have a vastly greater life expectancy and level of redundancy than a flesh body.
That's sort of false by definition isn't it? By making it a copy of you, you're not that person, and therefore you're not going to live forever. Though I guess that brings up the question: If there were an exact replica of you, is that person you?
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On January 25 2013 06:05 SamsungStar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 06:02 Veldril wrote:On January 25 2013 05:52 CountChocula wrote:On January 25 2013 05:38 grush57 wrote:On January 25 2013 05:37 Vandrad wrote:On January 24 2013 13:38 Tenshix wrote:
Next step: Japan develops immortality to prevent their entire population from dying off. Sounds funny. But we are actually heading this way. lol yea because immortality is possible Have you seen singularityhub.com? Ray Kurzweil and his followers believe being able to upload a scan of your brain into a computer will be achieved in our lifetime and people will achieve immortality, so theoretically it's possible. It is still not immortality because if someone pull the plug out of the computers or erase the data or the computer goes broken, then they still die. ........except you can upload your consciousness, copy it into nearly infinite amounts of clones, and spread all of them out to a vast array of servers and processor units. You can even transmit random beam pulses of information containing all the data of your personality into random directions in the universe so that one instance of your existence is hurtling at light speed through the void of space. You may not be 100% guaranteed immortal, but it would mean you have a vastly greater life expectancy and level of redundancy than a flesh body.
That's stretching it. I wouldn't call that immortality.
Although, I guess an author can be immortal through the books they write, but I wouldn't classify that as immortality either. I would call that a "personal legacy" or something to that effect.
My definition of immortality, and I'm guessing many other people's definitions, is prolonging the lifespan of the original vessel to ceaselessness.
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EPT
