Myself I’d rather not have an after life, but considering the question i imposed, i would probably try to make my life count just a little more, and as for heaven and hell , try to be really bad or really good, hoping of course if i was really bad id end up as a devils minion or some high place in hell where im not tortured, although the worse i am the more id probably be tortured of course, as is the the view of the christian society. but the general public tend to beleive that the worse you are the higher up in hell you’ll be, like a general or something. But i’ll stop my babbling.

(and just for clarification i am in no way emo or suicidal just contemplative)

Just as a thought experiment, assume you upload your mind to a neural network. Obviously, “you” won’t be experiencing the thoughts and feelings of your uploaded mind, as you’ll still have your own, which is operated by your brain. In this sense, you can ask, is the neural network really me? What sense does it make to say something is you if you can’t have access to its subjective, phenomenological experiences?

How does anyone who ISN’T you have access to your subjective experiences?  They can only tell what you say and do.  If the upload’s behavior looks like meat-you, there’s going to be little dispute that there is, if not identity, a large amount of commonality.

I’m not that much into the idea of uploading, but I do recognize that neural interfaces are going to be too useful to be just one-way portals to cyber-existence.  Nothing says you have to upload once and that’s it; you can put an increasing amount of yourself into cyberspace, doing things that meat-you finds it difficult or impossible to do through the old channels and communing with your meat-portion (or compensating for its loss of performance by taking over functions).  That will be your subjective, phenomenological connection to the part of you that exists as bits.

I’m far from fixated on the idea.  Quite the contrary; I was looking at a burial plot the other day.  My attitude about death at this point is shrug.  I’ve enjoyed myself, I intend to enjoy myself more, leave some work behind, and others will get to pick it up and see it with new eyes as I have seen the work of those who came before me.  And so it goes.

Thanks for the Carrier link urbster, I’m a fan-boy.

I have great faith in Tipler’s Omega Point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler)

I also have my doubts that any form of life extension will occur within 50 years. This sort of prediction makes sense in the context of more predictable technological areas like computers, but the biological and medical sciences do not move ahead in such a consistent, predictable manner. In the 80s, for instance, it was thought AIDs would be cured by now, as well as cancer. I do believe, of course, that eventually we will achieve several of these life extension milestones, but I highly doubt this will occur within my lifetime, even though I very much wish it would!

At any rate, even these life extension technologies would not guarantee us the immortality we seek. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to overcome entropy and its ultimate culmination in the heat death of the universe. At best we can probably expect life spans that last thousands of years, potentially.

And mortality doesn’t have to be scary - even if you lack any hope for anything beyond it. I’ve been unconcious, and I don’t honestly remember being terribly concerned with whatever oblivion I was dealing with - since really, I didn’t register anything. I figure we live while we’re alive, and if I feel/think/know nothing when I’m dead, then I won’t be around to care, so it won’t really matter. (That being said - I, too, enjoy life very much and would appreciate it being longer rather than shorter.)