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Future_Ad8697 t1_j222iem wrote

Reply to comment by WeCanDoThisCNJ in One thing people often forget about immortality is that the effects of dementia will render you useless sooner rather than later by exmxn

This interpretation of immortality is not consistent with reality. Surely your skin cells could still die and be replaced, right?

I think a reasonable interpretation of immortality is one in which the cells and/or functional cellular aggregates in your body are all capable of indefinite regeneration (e.g., "immortal" jelly fish).

Dementia wouldn't be an issue here, but you'd still be capable of dying.

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WeCanDoThisCNJ t1_j226hn7 wrote

Immortality isn’t reality for complex organisms like vertebrates, so you lost us with the first sentence.

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Future_Ad8697 t1_j22bkxd wrote

My point was that a realistic definition of immortality is having the capacity to live forever, rather than necessarily living forever.

I understand that humans aren't capable of reverting to an embryo and redeveloping endlessly, in a manner analogous to a jellyfish.

But maybe it's possible that there exists some sequence of nucleotides which would enable some human-like species to naturally regenerate specialized cells/extracellular structures, and avoid or repair life-cycle dysregulating mutations associated with aging, to approach something like immortality in a complex organism.

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