For example, theres this sea slug that I found out eats algae, which is normally exactly what you think is usual for an underwater marine animal, but guess what?
IT USES THE CHLOROPLASTS FROM THE ALGAE AND THEN GAINS THE ABILITY TO USE PHOTOSYNTHESIS AS A SLUG VIA ABSORBING PLANTS
As much as I’d love to be functionally immortal, I highly doubt that the technology and scientific backing for it will be invented and solidified before capitalism is overthrown, and I won’t hold my breath that I’ll be able to “live forever” one day, and I’m trying to make peace with the fact that I will likely die before immortality is possible.
I like the Everett principle interpretation of consciousness, but I’m first and foremost an analytically-minded strict scientifically based person, and I think that the idea of consciousness persisting is merely wishful thinking and not exclusively indicated by anything other than human philosophy, perception and anthropocentric points of view, and a form of psychological death denial.
I’d love to be proven wrong though.
I’m basing this on David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality”. One thing he does is he combines the concept of time and “parallelity” of universes in a single entity: the multiverse is a bunch of frames (a 3d snapshots of a universe in a single moment), and time is just a select sequence of frames within the multiverse. He barely touches the concept of consciousness though, most of these are just my extrapolations.
In physics, he bases his reasoning on quantum mechanics, which doesn’t really specify anything strictly about time, like e.g. General Relativity does. It seems natural to me to define time as a subjective perception of “subsequent” frames of a multiverse by a consciousness though. Which is equivalent to defining a consciousness as a sequence of perceived frames of a multiverse, connecting the concept of consciousness to physics.
With this definition, there is complete freedom in hypothesizing about the laws of
consciousnesssequencing of the frames to be perceived, but all in all the proof of immortality lies in anthropic principle. I.e. if death is actually final, I can never possibly know that, assuming there is no breakthrough in scientific understanding of consciousness. This can be interpreted as that the theory of death being final is unproofable, until the said breakthrough happens.It’s not necessarily “true” immortality though, the memory can get completely wiped, and you’ll have no idea that you’ve been someone before, unless someone tells you.
What multiverse interpretation gives to it is this: if immortality of my consciousness can physically be achieved, say, by year 2100, it is achieved in one of the universes by 2100 (this is the definition of “physically achievable”). Which is a theoretical explanation of inevitable immortality, which was lacking without multiverse interpretation. And now anthropic principle goes from “well, if you actually die, you won’t notice this, so why care?” to “well, if there is a 0.0000000000001% of you never dying, you’re definitely never dying”.
The same with “true” immortality: If there is a 0.00000001% of you never dying while also keeping your identity via memories, you’re definitely never dying and keep your identity via memories.
I understand that, I still think its a bit too much metaphysical woo without evidence, and it wouldn’t be “truly” you so to speak.