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Some people believe that such treatments will not be available in their natural lifespan. Cryonics is the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped. Ideally this would allow clinically dead people to be brought back in the future after cures to the patients' diseases have been discovered and aging is reversible. Modern Cryonics procedures use a process called vitrification which creates a glass like state rather than freezing as the body is brought to low temperatures. This process reduces the risk of ice crystals damaging the brain structure. Many people who wish to become physically immortal think of cryonics as a backup plan in case the emerging life extension technologies don't develop rapidly enough.
Some believe that biological forms have inherent limitations in their design--primarily, their fragility and inability to immediately morph to fit the environment. A way around that predicament may someday present itself in the ability to "exist" outside of the biological form. Over the long term, the biological nature of humanity may only be temporary; should technology permit, people may circumvent death and evolution, simply by taking artificial forms. One interesting possibility involves uploading the personality and memories via direct mind-computer interface.
Some futurists propose that, thanks to exponentially growing computing power, it will someday be possible to upload human consciousness onto a computer system, and live indefinitely in a virtual environment. This could be accomplished via advanced cybernetics, where computer hardware would initially be installed in the brain to help sort memory or accelerate thought processes. Gradually more and more components would be added until the person's entire brain functions were handled by artificial devices, without any sharp transitions that would lead to some identity issues mentioned below. At this point, the human body would become only an accessory and the mind could be transferred to any sufficiently powerful computer. A person in this state would then be essentially immortal, short of cataclysmic destruction of the entire civilization and their computers. However, some argue that although the computer consciousness would be an exact copy of the original (and thus undetectable to others), the original mind would no longer exist.
Quantum immortality is the name for the speculation that the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that a conscious being cannot cease to be. The idea is highly controversial. Theoretically given any potentially fatal event that could happen to, say, a quantum physicist, there will be possible universes in which the physicist indeed dies and other possible universes where the physicist somehow survives. As time goes on the physicist is dead in more and more of all possible universes due to random accidents and aging, however because there are infinite possibilities, there will always be at least one universe in which the physicist miraculously lives another day. The idea behind quantum immortality is that the physicist would only be able to experience the universes in which he survives, even though they may be an increasingly small subset of the possible universes. In this way, the physicist would appear from his own standpoint to be living forever. Some of the potential ultimate fates of the Universe could present an eventual death with no means of avoidance no matter how unlikely, but even then in an infinite universe there could be some means of working around such a limit.
Long before modern science made such speculation feasible, people wishing to escape death sought what we might term mystical immortality, turning to the supernatural world for answers. Examples include the medieval alchemists and their search for the Philosopher's Stone, or more modern religious mystics such as Sri Aurobindo, who believed in the possibility of achieving physical immortality through spiritual transformation.
Rastafarians believe in physical immortality as a part of their religious doctrines. They believe that after their God has called the day of judgement they will go to what they describe as Mount Zion in Africa to live in freedom for ever. Instead of having everlasting life, which implies an end in the word last, the rastas look forward to having everliving life. Another group that believe in physical immortality are the Rebirthers, who believe that by following the connected breathing process of rebirthing they will live forever physically.
Some people believe physical immortality would not be possible or even desirable. Jacques-Yves Cousteau, in the preface to his book The Ocean World, expressed his meditations on physical immortality, as a part of life and its adaptive processes: 'Death,' Cousteau states, 'is fundamental to evolution;' and 'evolution is fundamental to survival'. He concludes that, biologically speaking, 'immortality does not present a possible means to avoid death': "Mortal or immortal, [an organism] must die." Michael Shermer believes there is no significant scientific evidence for the proposed methods of achieving physical immortality. He says about them, "All have some basis in science, but none has achieved anything like scientific confirmation."
In Hinduism, one feat that advanced Yogis (practitioners of Yoga) can supposidly perform is "body jumping" - the ability to jump into another host and therefore live a longer life. Many Indian fables and tales include instances of this, and some believers treat the frequent recurrence of this idea as evidence that such an "immortality" method cannot be dismissed outright. There are also entire Hindu sects devoted to the attainment of physical immortality by various methods, namely the Naths and the Aghoras.
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