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Immortality

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Shanadeus

Banned
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Immortality (or eternal life) is the concept of living in a physical or spiritual form for an infinite length of time.

As immortality is the negation of mortality—not dying or not being subject to death—it has been a subject of fascination to humanity since at least the beginning of known history. The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first literary works, dating back at least to the 22nd century BC, is primarily a quest of a hero seeking to become immortal. What form an unending human life would take (as well as whether it is subject to incapacitation), or whether the soul exists and possesses immortality, has been a major point of focus of religion, as well as the subject of speculation, fantasy, and debate.

It is not known whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering. As of 2009, natural selection has developed potential biological immortality in at least one species, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula.

I believe that we will in the near future be able to sufficiently extend what natural lifespan humans have now to allow for further application of technological and scientific advances - in essence making us immortal as our lifespans are continuously extended as science advances. This idea has been espoused by many life-extension proponents and transhumanists such as DeGray and kurzweil who believe that this technology will arrive before they die.

Regardless of how you want to extend life the goal is essentially to be able to live on indefinitely, with death becoming a choice rather than a consequence of your physical structure.

Think about that for a second, life eternal until you pull the plug.

And if you don't end your life and plan on living on forever then you're in for a whole bunch of potential problems. First of all, you'll have to deal with the end of the universe itself.

Which is the least of your concerns.

You'll also have to somehow help create or hope for there being some sort of civilization continuing it's existence alongside you, or modify yourself so that your psychology doesn't require outside input from a greater society (but that might leave you a rather empty husk with no more awareness than a plant), or community of other immortals to aid you in this task.

But just interacting with other beings pose a danger to your existence, there is always the possibility of someone at some point in time not approving of your continued existence - and if you plan on living forever then such a being or group of beings will inevitable pop up.

The very technology required to keep you alive might lead to your eventual downfall, by the time we can avoid universal death and keep a mind functioning for aeons you better have access to a great deal of power to protect yourself from dangerous use of the future technology and science. And if our world and past is anything to judge from then it seems that attacks always precede defense (we can barely protect ourselves from nukes and it's been how long?)

Immortality seems like a really big hassle, and in the process of becoming and being an immortal you might nave changed so much that you can no longer be considered you in any meaningful sense. Sure, that's the case today but in our relatively short lifespan it's not that big of a problem. While I'm a different person when compared to me as a child I still posses a great number of traits from then that let me at least rationalize that I'm the same person. But over the course of millions and billions of years I'll probably have completely changed all my traits a million times over or more.

So with all that in your mind I have a couple of questions for you:

Would you like to be immortal?
And if so, how long do you think you'd like to live?
 
Being immortal would be cool as long as I could cope with losing people over and over. 1000 years sounds like a cool place to stop, but it depends on what's going on at the time.

I would just reinvent myself every 100 years or so like the Highlander, or Keanu Reeves.
 
with immortality your faced with an infinite amount of choices. With mortality your choices are limited to the span of your life. I'll choose a finite life thank you its a better test of character. :D
 

Thriller

Member
WyndhamPrice said:
Being immortal would be cool as long as I could cope with losing people over and over. 1000 years sounds like a cool place to stop, but it depends on what's going on at the time.

I would just reinvent myself every 100 years or so like the Highlander, or Keanu Reeves.
:lol :lol
 

Tieno

Member
spiderman123 said:
with immortality your faced with an infinite amount of choices. With mortality your choices are limited to the span of your life. I'll choose a finite life thank you its a better test of character. :D
fuck that shit, i want to live forever so i can experience everything. Not enough time for so much awesomesauce
 

GatorBait

Member
WyndhamPrice said:
Being immortal would be cool as long as I could cope with losing people over and over. 1000 years sounds like a cool place to stop, but it depends on what's going on at the time.

I would just reinvent myself every 100 years or so like the Highlander, or Keanu Reeves.
Exactly what I would do.

I hear a lot of people say they wouldn't want to be immortal because they would get bored. I think that is ridiculous because you could essentially create a new life for yourself every few decades since you wouldn't be deterred by lack of time or money.
 

comrade

Member
I'd choose to be immortal in a heart beat. And I'd live until the Universe ended. I'd also like to play the lotto everyday and see how long it takes for me to win.
 

Alucrid

Banned
Immortality only to ensure that I live a long enough finite lifespan. 100 years or so is nice. You didn't even go into how you feel pain, how you heal, etc. etc.

But really, immortality is (would be) unnatural and would only bring problems.
 

curls

Wake up Sheeple, your boring insistence that Obama is not a lizardman from Atlantis is wearing on my patience 💤
WyndhamPrice said:
I would just reinvent myself every 100 years or so like the Highlander, or Keanu Reeves.

Yes.

I would also choose to change my gender every 100 years as well, using one of Shanadeus's gender bending machines.
 

Carlisle

Member
GatorBait said:
Exactly what I would do.

I hear a lot of people say they wouldn't want to be immortal because they would get bored. I think that is ridiculous because you could essentially create a new life for yourself every few decades since you wouldn't be deterred by lack of time or money.
How do you figure?
 
I wouldn't mind living to be 200 (given that I'd age at a slower rate) or so, but immortality? No. Life would lose its luster if you couldn't die. Time would be meaningless, and I feel like I'd be overwrought with ennui.

Gimme my mortality, plx.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
If I could choose to die when I tire of life then an unlimited lifespan would be awesome. Otherwise...not so much.


In three hundred years our brain-dumps will read this thread using the cameras in our robot bodies and we'll laugh.
 
GatorBait said:
Exactly what I would do.

I hear a lot of people say they wouldn't want to be immortal because they would get bored. I think that is ridiculous because you could essentially create a new life for yourself every few decades since you wouldn't be deterred by lack of time or money.
Yeah, I can only imagine that immortality would be liberating. The concerns of family, finances and time no longer mean a thing. A big universe like this one is ripe for exploration and the Earth itself is full of so much wonder that five centuries wouldn't be enough to decipher it all.

A quick google here and a little wikipedia there is no substitute for climbing the highest mountain in the world, visiting ancient cities and or even immersing yourself(for fifty years!) in alien cultures. The range of human understanding and empathy can just grow as easily as it can falter under the indefinite lifespan of an immortal.
 

madara

Member
Cure cancer. Cure centuries old MS. Until then it the equivalent of the flying car. Its great to dream but just dont waste your day away worrying about things you can't control.
 

Dascu

Member
Given that I do not age (considerably) or contract some kind of foul disease, then I would sign up for complete immortality, even without an option to kill myself. At worst, you become insane but then you wouldn't even realize it.
 

kamspy

Member
Thank god. I thought this was an Immobilarity thread.

So yeah, I think Highlander is the best TV show ever.
 

Zenith

Banned
150 years is more than enough for me. the idea of living for thousands and thousands of years sounds something you'd want to actively avoid.
 

Shanadeus

Banned
Alucrid said:
Immortality only to ensure that I live a long enough finite lifespan. 100 years or so is nice. You didn't even go into how you feel pain, how you heal, etc. etc.

But really, immortality is (would be) unnatural and would only bring problems.
I kinda touched on it with the danger of technology advanced enough to maintain your life forever. If you have nanites that can repair your body and brain cells then someone will eventually create hostile nanites that only destroy.

And in general it is much easier to destroy than protect, so that might cause a problem down the line as it gets easier and easier to destroy.

But for the purpose of this thread we'll assume that you won't outright die and you'll be kept in pretty good condition regardless of what technology you choose to extend your life.
 

JGS

Banned
I could easily live forever and find stuff to do the whole time.

Now being immortal (i.e.- impossible to die) may be a different story, but i lean toward not minding that either.
 
demosthenes said:
I like the idea that a finite life leads to finite choices, gives meaning to the choices we make.
I saw a lecture on youtube given by Lawrence Krauss the other day and he touched on the subject of infinity in a way that really stuck with me. He asked the audience to imagine an infinitely large hotel in Los Angeles with an infinite amount of rooms. Whenever anyone wanted to come in they could move every person in order to accommodate the new individual. The real twist is that the infinite number of rooms allowed an infinite amount of arrangements or accommodations for the individual(They could move everyone back by one room, they could make everyone move into rooms that are numbered by prime numbers, they could make everyone move by even numbers, by odd numbers, or by numbers that are only divisible by ten, etc.). This would mean that an infinite amount of time and space would allow for an infinitely large amount of possibilities(It takes a long time for humans to arise but 14 billion years in an expanding universe permits our existence).

The concept of immortality allows us to transcend our currently small perception of the universe and I for one would love to test it(maybe not for infinity... but a few thousand to see how it goes :p).

Edit:
Here is the video if you are interested...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
 
WyndhamPrice said:
I would just reinvent myself every 100 years or so like the Highlander, or Keanu Reeves.

This is pretty much the only way I'd be able to handle immortality. Even more so if I'm able to transfer my consciousness into a new body genetically engineered to my choosing. This way it'd be like creating a new character in Oblivion/Fallout/Mass Effect, except I'd want it to be more of a New Game+ character where certain things (money, items, etc) carried over.

I'd also make sure that each of my New Game+ lives were spent in different cultures. For instance, I'd really like to live 100 years in Japan or something, then another 100 in France, and so on and so forth. I'd still travel a lot, but I'd rather integrate myself into a particular society for as long as possible until I've experienced it all.

Then, by the time I come back to where I started (USA), it'd have changed so much that it'd be like I'm starting a bran new game anyway. Now that's what I call unlimited replay value. :D
 
I just wanna live long enough to witness a star go supernova...

/checks how long that could be

Well, damn. 200,000ish years? Why not :lol
 

Mana Sin

Member
Immortality is one of my greatest desires. I feel that I could cope with the loss of others, I just want to be eternal. You can always make new friends, have new lovers; you cannot replace your life.
 
why fear death? death can be a beautiful thing. now i'm not saying that i'd like to die right now, i'm young and feel like there is still so much to experience and learn. but life is a constant struggle, filled with pain. sure, it's peppered with amazing moments, moments that i am grateful for and are completely beautiful, but think about it, we live, learn, and grow through our struggles and pain, and when we die, we have hopefully been able to sort through all the bullshit, and can finally let go and rest in peace.

edit:
the sooner you figure out that life IS limited, and the sooner you begin to let go of your attachments and living a life of constant fear, can you then really appreciate the present, what you have now, and start to love yourself. and is there anything more important than that, because you definitely deserve it.
 

Jasup

Member
Immortality sounds like a torture.
It'd be fun for the first few hundred years I'd gather. But with limitless time but limited opportunities, you'll run out of thing to do eventually. Boredom starts to settle in.

You'll withness the rise and fall of empires, the end of humankind, the end of the world, the end of the stars and the completely dark, ever more expanding and cooling universe. And after everything's gone, your first day of the eternity has passed.
 

Alucrid

Banned
Shanadeus said:
I kinda touched on it with the danger of technology advanced enough to maintain your life forever. If you have nanites that can repair your body and brain cells then someone will eventually create hostile nanites that only destroy.

And in general it is much easier to destroy than protect, so that might cause a problem down the line as it gets easier and easier to destroy.

But for the purpose of this thread we'll assume that you won't outright die and you'll be kept in pretty good condition regardless of what technology you choose to extend your life.

So limbs can be replaced? Bodies and heads can be reattached? No limitations? You could swim to the deepest depths of the ocean and come out fine?

Okay, I'll keep immortality until man develops intergalatic space travel, stay there for a bit, then die.
 

Shanadeus

Banned
Alucrid said:
So limbs can be replaced? Bodies and heads can be reattached? No limitations? You could swim to the deepest depths of the ocean and come out fine?

Okay, I'll keep immortality until man develops intergalatic space travel, stay there for a bit, then die.
Sure, none of that sounds very challenging to a future society. You could probably also get uploaded into a virtual environment and take on a variety of shapes and do everything you've dreamed of.

cmonmanreally said:
why fear death? death can be a beautiful thing. now i'm not saying that i'd like to die right now, i'm young and feel like there is still so much to experience and learn. but life is a constant struggle, filled with pain. sure, it's peppered with amazing moments, moments that i am grateful for and are completely beautiful, but think about it, we live, learn, and grow through our struggles and pain, and when we die, we have hopefully been able to sort through all the bullshit, and can finally let go and rest in peace.

edit:
the sooner you figure out that life IS limited, and the sooner you begin to let go of your attachments and living a life of constant fear, can you then really appreciate the present, what you have now, and start to love yourself. and is there anything more important than that, because you definitely deserve it.
I didn't really bring up fear of death in my opening post because I figured that it was kind of a moot point. If you want to live forever then you should be doing it because you want to live, rather than not wanting to die - the latter will probably impact the quality of your life in a negative way.

But I don't really agree with the rest of your post. I'm young and there is much for me to experience but despite the hardships and struggles I've been through I've never really thought of life being filled with pain, or merely peppered with amazing moments. So far it's been a moderately pleasurable experience peppered with both amazing moments and painful memories but whether this would continue forever without this balance being disrupted is of course not certain.

I guess I might have been lucky, or just gone through things with a different and more positive outlook but at the moment I don't have any need to sort through bullshit or letting go.

Maybe it will change as I grow older, maybe it won't.
 
the_log_ride said:
I just wanna live long enough to witness a star go supernova...

/checks how long that could be

Well, damn. 200,000ish years? Why not :lol

Mmm stars are going nova all the time, just not around us :lol And our Sun isn't large enough to undergo a supernova - it will eventually get really large (frying the earth) and then shrink into a dwarf but that's in like 100's of millions of years from now before even the first phase of that begins.
 

Veelk

Banned
I'm curious to see whats on the other side. Eventually dying interests me more than living forever.
 

TL4E

Member
Generic said:
I'm curious to see whats on the other side. Eventually dying interests me more than living forever.
I bet you could do that once (or soon after) immortality is essentially feasible. That is to say, a body properly stored using e.g. cryonics after death can be revived at a later time... once you wake up again, you'll know what the other side was like. :lol

Unless God is a tricky bastard and doesn't let you see the other side unless you truly die.

But then again there's nothing on the other side.
 

Veelk

Banned
TL4E said:
I bet you could do that once (or soon after) immortality is essentially feasible. That is to say, a body properly stored using e.g. cryonics after death can be revived at a later time... once you wake up again, you'll know what the other side was like. :lol

Unless God is a tricky bastard and doesn't let you see the other side unless you truly die.

But then again there's nothing on the other side.
None the less, I'm far too interested not to die. Curiousity and cats and all that. I'm not even remotely religious, I just want to know. :lol
 
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