My first name is Atanas, and it means immortal. But is immortality possible?
We know that matter degrades over time. Flesh ages and withers, mountains erode, stars die.
The human body is inevitably perishable.
We can hope that science will one day advance to a point where an individual’s mind (or soul) can be transferred from an obsolete body to a new, vital body, created one way or another. Those of us unwilling to wait for science’s solution to the perishability of the human body might entertain various reincarnation ideas, which essentially mirror what science might accomplish in the future.
It seems that since our bodies can be renewed, there is no principled obstacle to our minds being eternal, having unlimited lives.
But is this the case?
We can only say that we live limitlessly if we remember limitlessly. In other words, regardless of the number of N years we consider—be it a million, a trillion, or, for example, a pentillion (10^15)—there must come a day in our lives when we recall something—anything—that happened N years ago. (Note that this doesn’t imply we must remember everything.)
Therefore, unlimited life necessitates unlimited memory for each of us. This is because if our memory is perpetually confined to a finite span, the life of our mind will also be confined to a finite span, rendering it not truly unlimited, even in an endless series of reincarnations.
Now, let’s acknowledge that storing and processing information consumes energy. Landauer’s principle in particular offers a formula for the minimum energy required to erase one bit of information. It’s likely that similar principles exist for retrieving a bit, comparing two bits, etc.
So, our unlimited memory will require unlimited energy. And not only energy—it will also occupy unlimited physical space (not some human skull, of course). Information processes, however, proceed at a limited speed, no greater than the speed of light. Therefore, as our unlimited memory expands, so too will the space in which thought processes occur, and our thought speed will decrease correspondingly.
Consequently, if our minds live indefinitely, the speed of our thoughts will decrease indefinitely, converging to ZERO!
So, the longer we live, the more we’ll know, but the slower we’ll think, converging to a stall. Then, what is unlimited life if not unlimited death?
Thus, we understand that unlimited life, considered as an information process, is practically impossible. Rebirth, then, is pointless.
These considerations are not limited to us humans. Let’s assume there is a Creator. He is either not eternal, or—if he is—his thought speed converges to zero with time.
Even God, it appears, would not be immortal.
Intelligent life of any type seems inevitably confined within a finite time-space continuum, while infinity remains merely a conceptual abstraction. I don’t know about you, but I personally find this “finite world” view heartwarming.
Image sources:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_computer/
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_computer?file=PC.jpg
