José Luis Cordeiro writes in an h+ piece that “indefinite lifespans should be possible in a few decades.” Sounds swell! Until that fine day, however, he suggests we opt for cryopreservation, a relatively inexpensive process that even the most fabulously wealthy among us seldom choose, which shows either a lack of sense or lack of gullibility. In the near future, Cordeiro writes, the frozen ones may be reawakened into eternal life. 

An excerpt 

Toward Immortality

We might soon reach what I call the “death of death”, when death will be basically optional. We might never be completely immortal, since we might always die from accidents, or be killed in many ways, but the objective is to kill involuntary death. Living indefinitely will be possible from both the hardware (biological) side and the software (mental) side.

On the hardware side, English biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes that we will soon reach “longevity escape velocity”, which basically means that with continuously increasing lifespans, we will be adding more years to our existence for every additional year that we live. This idea has also been called the “Methuselarity” or “Methuselah Singularity”. Many experiments are currently being done to extend the life, and also rejuvenate, little mice that actually share a big part of our own genome.

On the software side, American engineer and futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that by 2029 an artificial intelligence will pass the Turing Test, and by 2045 the so-called “Technological Singularity” will be reached. That means that artificial intelligence will reach and surpass human intelligence levels, and we will augment and complement with such additional intelligences. We will then connect our biological neocortex to an artificial exocortex, and we will be able to upload and enhance our minds.

Either through our hardware, our software, or both, we will be able to advance towards the idea of the death of death, at least as much as possible, escaping any accidents and avoiding to be killed.

The Bridge Toward Immortality

As discussed earlier, indefinite lifespans should be possible in a few decades, but what can we do until then? The sad truth is that people will continue dying for the next few years, and the only way that we know today to preserve them relatively well is through cryopreservation. Indeed, cryopreservation can be considered as Plan B until we reach Plan A of indefinite lifespans.•