Do you want immortality?

Immortality would only be boring due to lack of imagination.

There are 191 countries in the world (I'm not counting the Vatican). If you live 10 years in each capital, and then move on to the next, you will occupy two millenia.

You can then start over, and things will definetly not be the same.

Imagine being able to master all the professions you want, from carpentry to physics. All the knowledge you can achieve, and forget, and re-learn.

And if you are really imortal (in the "the universe might die but I don't give a damn" style), then you'll go insane, and live inside your own mind. You'll be Iachus' god :)
 
Carn said:
Immortality,
It's more risk and more fun, i want to see an exploding sun.
Even if eternal madness is the price.

Carn

And there's always the possibility to kill some time by insulting every living being - in alphabetical order.
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Carn, you're an idiot. Now who's next. :)
 
Godmode said:
I think immortality would be more appealing if only I, or a limited amount of people had it. If EVERYONE had it, it WOULD get boring, there would be little social change, no new ideas, ect. But I'd love the opportunity to see how humanity will evolve (or not) and to explore everything there is to explore.

Probably, by the time you were done exploring all that could be explored, you'd have forgotten what happened in the beginning, so you could just start all over again. :)
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Well, of course, everything would change a bit when we all become robots... that'd liven things up for a bit...
 
Megalodon said:
Immortality would only be boring due to lack of imagination.

There are 191 countries in the world (I'm not counting the Vatican). If you live 10 years in each capital, and then move on to the next, you will occupy two millenia.

You can then start over, and things will definetly not be the same.

Imagine being able to master all the professions you want, from carpentry to physics. All the knowledge you can achieve, and forget, and re-learn.
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I'm with Megalodon
 
Pah! When you've done this fifty million times, it will all get a little samey.
I agree there's a failure of imagination here.
How about fifty billion times?
Fifty trillion?
How high is your boredom threshold?
Im-mortality. You can't die. Even if you want to . Think about it. No matter how much pain you are in, how dreadful existence becomes, there is no escape, ever.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Pah! When you've done this fifty million times, it will all get a little samey.
I agree there's a failure of imagination here.
How about fifty billion times?
Fifty trillion?
How high is your boredom threshold?
Im-mortality. You can't die. Even if you want to . Think about it. No matter how much pain you are in, how dreadful existence becomes, there is no escape, ever.
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I've been using immortal in the sense of never having to die. The choice would still be there. But, I should have made that clearer. Regardless, it's hard for me to imagine that human existence would be anything like it is now in 50,000 years. Even 5,000 years. I find it hard to believe that we would still have all the hardships (pain, hunger, exhaustion, etc...) that we have today. Science is moving at a very fast rate and 50,000 years is a very long time. I guess, I see immortality as a given in that world. And I think we (although anyone alive today) will eventually get there. I just will I was born 200 years later.
 
Paul made it clear near the start of the thread that what's on offer is immortality with no get out option.
It's Paul's thread, so that's what I'm going by.
I note that your assumption that everything in the future will be great is shared by most of those who are happy with the idea of immortality.
Clearly, I share neither the assumption nor the happiness. (I'm a True Scotsman.) I just think nobody on the pro side appears to have a serious grasp of how long "forever" actually is.
Still- the question is fantasy, so it's ok to have fun with the idea.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Paul made it clear near the start of the thread that what's on offer is immortality with no get out option.
It's Paul's thread, so that's what I'm going by.
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Fair enough.

Soapy Sam said:
I note that your assumption that everything in the future will be great is shared by most of those who are happy with the idea of immortality.
Clearly, I share neither the assumption nor the happiness. (I'm a True Scotsman.) I just think nobody on the pro side appears to have a serious grasp of how long "forever" actually is.
Still- the question is fantasy, so it's ok to have fun with the idea
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I'm not saying it will be universally happy, but I think the nature of our problems will be very different. Still, I think an opt-out immortality is a much more likely scenario. And I do want that type of immortality. But I'll shift discussion to one of the other threads.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Pah! When you've done this fifty million times, it will all get a little samey.
I agree there's a failure of imagination here.
How about fifty billion times?
Fifty trillion?
How high is your boredom threshold?
Im-mortality. You can't die. Even if you want to . Think about it. No matter how much pain you are in, how dreadful existence becomes, there is no escape, ever.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this, if you can't die, immortality is like hell. Or maybe hell with a nice lead up before it. Even if the good part lasts a billion years, you've still got an eternity of hell to deal with afterwards. No thanks.

There might be ways around this. Maybe you can clear out all your memories so that you never get bored of the repetition. Maybe as Paul suggested, you can spend eternity high. Okay.
Even then, though, if I were to end up spending eternity floating around in a void, giggling to myself... well, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer death to that.

ETA that said, as most posters have pointed out, a few hundred or a few thousand years would probably be nice, even in this screwed up world.
 
Hello Paul,

Please count me with yourself, in the dissenters' column. I can think of some possibilities that I'd find far more attractive than the Christian proposal (endless blissful contemplation of the Divine Presence) or the Muslim proposal (endless deflowering of virgins*) but I have a feeling that even the best would only be fun for a million years or so.

As to what the best would be, I'd go for stoppage of my ageing clock, and access to a 'ship' that could travel in all four dimensions of spacetime. There are a hell of a lot of people, scattered back over the past 3000 years, that I would really love to be able to talk to (Russell and Voltaire at the head the list). There would also be the great library at Alexandria, and plenty of time to learn Latin and Greek. Looking forward, I'd love to know whether - and if so, with what changes - we are going to make it through the 'bottleneck' that E. O. Wilson and Martin Rees have so clearly delineated in their latest books. And then there would be all of the bigger stuff outside our familiar little chunk of spacetime. Exactly when and how did life on earth start? Does it exist on other planets, and if so, in what forms? What would it be like to look back at Earth from our asteroid belt, or to slingshot around a black hole, or to ride the expanding shockwave of a supernova?

Like I said, give me a million years or so. But eventually I'd necessarily run out of storage and processing capacity. Even if these could be continuously upgraded the basic system architecture (in the absence of which I would no longer be 'me') would set limits. I'd have seen enough, and be ready for a rest.



* I'm sure that this question must have been raised before, but if so then I haven't seen it. What, exactly, is the Muslim deal for women? Do they get Chippendales?
 
Carn said:
But i'm a serious idiot, immortlity with a way out would be best, but immortality without escape i'd still prefer over dying in 100 years.

Carn
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Even if it included a trillion (or a limitless number of) years in the abyss of space with literally nothing to do?
That seems to be paul's question.
 
So, what do you think? Immortality? Or death?
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Immortality. I've experienced enough throughout my life to not want to repeat it again, so I take responsibility for it by being mindful of all thoughts and actions, keeping vows, overcoming my base nature, as well as studying the lives and traditions of others in the past on this path. Most people I'd guess are of the latter persuasion, though, given the "You only live once" consumerist sensibility in the West.
 
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