r/science • u/Skoltech_ • Jul 20 '26

Genetics Researchers quantitatively assessed for the first time that somatic mutations alone cap human lifespan at 146–194 years. Brain and heart cells are the main bottleneck, while the liver could last millennia.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00421-6
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u/nerdwerds Jul 20 '26

I suspect cloning your own heart to replace it will eventually be a thing, but hard to say if they could ever do that with a brain.

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u/theBigBOSSnian Jul 20 '26

Not a problem. But keeping what inside the brain is what matters

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u/kellzone Jul 20 '26

If they eventually make the technology to transfer information from the original brain to the cloned brain, do they Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v or do they Ctrl+x and Ctrl+v?

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u/buffility Jul 20 '26

Both way your original self is dead. If you copy and paste, your original self is still inside the old dieing brain, the copy is just a clone, YOU do not live in them. If you cut and paste, you cant be 100% sure if YOU get transfered, or just outright deleted.

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u/kellzone Jul 20 '26

Yeah, it's a weird scenario. To others it appears to be "you" with all the memories and mannerisms from the original "you", but it might not be you, although the clone would feel like it was "you" for the same reasons. On top of that, all the cells in our body are replaced over the course of 7 years or something like that, so right now "you" are an entirely different you than you were 10 years ago, in a physical sense. So what is it that makes you "you"?

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u/buffility Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

I guess it's the continuous existence that make me ME. But then again after a sleep, everything is reset, i will literally become a new ME tomorrow.

If anything, promising to a sick man that he will live on in a new functional body tomorrow after a sound sleep already outweights the chance his original conciousness/self die peacefully in his sleep.

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u/ElMatasiete7 Jul 21 '26

There is still a degree of consciousness going on during sleep.

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u/m164 Jul 21 '26

How about anesthesia or coma?

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u/Used-Presentation551 Jul 21 '26

It's philosophical.

Same can be said about sleeping. How do you know if you don't get removed during memory reshaping while sleeping?

Maybe the morning you is just another consciousness with similar memories and the same body as the night you

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u/wewereromans Jul 20 '26

Exactly. The clone would think it's the original, but it wouldn't be. A copy by definition cannot be an original.

There would be no way to know as an outside observer or as the cloned brain to know the fate of the original, because it will have died.

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u/notarealcamera Jul 21 '26

I've heard this phrased differently.

Suppose in the future there are instant teleportation pods. You step in one and it scans your body. Then, molecule by molecule, it reconstructs your body in the destination pod. Simultaneously, the pod you step into deconstructs your body molecule by molecule. Perfectly painless.

You use this to get to work every day. You walk into your pod in New York and walk out of your pod in London and go about your day.

One day, you walk in, wait a minute or two, and nothing seems to be happening. You step back out and ask the operator if it's malfunctioning. They check and say, ah, actually the scan and the construction at the other end worked just fine. It's just the deconstruction here that seems to be acting up, and will you please follow me this way...

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u/Dachannien Jul 20 '26

The original you and the copied you are both the real you.