If I was a plain old normal human with immortality slapped on top, no.
But I wouldnt turn down becoming a god.
But I wouldnt turn down becoming a god.
Immortality...
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You hope it is an experience. If death is truly the end, then I'd rather not have it at all. I think being immortal, while having downsides, would probably be preferable to death. I mean, as long as you are alive, you can at least complain about it.lotrfanatic1 said:
I'd love to live for a long time (assuming no aging and reasonably good health). Hundreds of years at least, probably thousands, but beyond that I really don't know. I get excitable as to choice, so I'd hate to have the option of dying removed forever. A human brain can't really comprehend any length of time much longer than a normal lifespan, so at some point the awesomeness of watching things develop and having as much time as I wanted to do things in might be overshadowed by the boredom or cynicism of thousands of years watching people be stupid. And at some point, unless you assume a constantly and infinitely increasing quality in games and books and such over time, you're going to reach a point where you've seen the best of everything and nothing else can really compare. Given the sheer volume of stuff, that would probably take thousands of years, but it will eventually happen. probably.
So yeah, assuming that the technology is developed fast enough and within my grasp once it appears, I plan to have my brain removed and put into a full cyborg body. I will then do everything possible to keep my brain from decaying/developing cancer/whatever to ensure that I survive for centuries at a minimum. But if someone/something offered me full immortality, making it impossible to ever die? I'd refuse, because there's a good chance that it'll be more of a curse than a blessing eventually, and there's no way out. Locking yourself into living forever is as stupid as killing yourself now, in my opinion. They're both absolutely permanent decisions with completely unforeseeable consequences.
The best option would of course be to be immortal and unkillable (assuming invulnerability/regeneration, rather than being chopped up and left as sentient bits...) except by yourself. All the upsides, none of the downsides.
Or maybe some monumentally unlikely scenario that would be inconvenient and slow but not very hard to self-engineer in the future, like being dropped in a black hole naked except for a chicken taped to your scalp. That way you don't have to worry about temporary insanity or a short bout of depression making you kill yourself when you still have things that you want to do.
So yeah, assuming that the technology is developed fast enough and within my grasp once it appears, I plan to have my brain removed and put into a full cyborg body. I will then do everything possible to keep my brain from decaying/developing cancer/whatever to ensure that I survive for centuries at a minimum. But if someone/something offered me full immortality, making it impossible to ever die? I'd refuse, because there's a good chance that it'll be more of a curse than a blessing eventually, and there's no way out. Locking yourself into living forever is as stupid as killing yourself now, in my opinion. They're both absolutely permanent decisions with completely unforeseeable consequences.
The best option would of course be to be immortal and unkillable (assuming invulnerability/regeneration, rather than being chopped up and left as sentient bits...) except by yourself. All the upsides, none of the downsides.
Or maybe some monumentally unlikely scenario that would be inconvenient and slow but not very hard to self-engineer in the future, like being dropped in a black hole naked except for a chicken taped to your scalp. That way you don't have to worry about temporary insanity or a short bout of depression making you kill yourself when you still have things that you want to do.
Immortality is a fate worse than death.
If I live forever, the chances of me being somehow immobilized jump to 100%. What happens if I'm in an earthquake and get trapped under a building? I will literally be trapped until the planet explodes.
Even if I'm absurdly lucky and don't get stuck somewhere, I'm not going to be able to tell anyone I'm immortal. Every government, criminal agency and billionaire will come after me under the assumption that somewhere in my physiology is the key to eternal life. And I would really like to not end up vivisected by some lunatic.
But let's say I avoid notice through a series of false identities, over thousands of years. No matter what stupid people would like you to believe, humans are still evolving. In a few millennia I would be to super evolved humans, as neanderthals are to us.
Someday Humanity will become extinct. What happens then? I wander the earth alone for eternity? What happens when the world explodes? I just float around in the infinite vacuum of space forever?
What kind of life is that?
If I live forever, the chances of me being somehow immobilized jump to 100%. What happens if I'm in an earthquake and get trapped under a building? I will literally be trapped until the planet explodes.
Even if I'm absurdly lucky and don't get stuck somewhere, I'm not going to be able to tell anyone I'm immortal. Every government, criminal agency and billionaire will come after me under the assumption that somewhere in my physiology is the key to eternal life. And I would really like to not end up vivisected by some lunatic.
But let's say I avoid notice through a series of false identities, over thousands of years. No matter what stupid people would like you to believe, humans are still evolving. In a few millennia I would be to super evolved humans, as neanderthals are to us.
Someday Humanity will become extinct. What happens then? I wander the earth alone for eternity? What happens when the world explodes? I just float around in the infinite vacuum of space forever?
What kind of life is that?
With all the time in the Universe, I'd put my time to makeing video-game entities real.
The Portal gun, I'd make it.
Space travel, I'd perfect it.
Nuclear fallout, I'd live it.
The Portal gun, I'd make it.
Space travel, I'd perfect it.
Nuclear fallout, I'd live it.
I agree with the basic principle, mostly, but the logic you use to get there is flawed. Mainly, you're still thinking in the short term (relatively speaking), when the big problem is the concept of Eternity.Dorian6 said:
I'm sure that some archaeologist will dig you out soon enough. Just sit tight for a few thousand years. Whatever is imprisoning you is not eternal, you are.
Well yeah, if you're dumb about it. But there are a lot of ways to avoid anyone noticing that you're eternal. Simplest way is to fake your own death, move somewhere else, and claim to be as young as you can get away with in your new identity. Big Brother makes it impossible to hide? Hack the system. You've got time to learn how. Also, money = power, time + intelligence = lots of money from long term investments. After a lifetime or two you should be powerful enough to stop or take over any group that tries to capture you for study. And in the event that you do get kidnapped and vivisected even with your safeguards, wait it out. Sure it'll be unpleasant, but whatever is holding you is not permanent. You are. If nothing else, after a few decades of failure the lab will get shut down, or the researchers will give up.
You might be physically inferior (though I doubt it, given that modern humans tend to breed for beauty or occasionally intelligence, rather than strength), they might have psychic powers, whatever. But you have millenia of experience, and thus will never be worse off intellectually, financially, or any of the other ways that really matter. And you can always fill any gaps in your capabilities with cybernetics (regeneration screwing with your new metal arm? spend a century or two figuring out how to avoid or bypass that problem).
Humanity extinct, despite (or because of) your best efforts? Find a new species of sophonts to be your friends. No way to find or get to them? You have infinite time to invent and build the right tech. They don't exist? Make your own.
Any specific, quantifiable problem can be solved with sufficient application of time. The reason that you shouldn't want to live forever any more than you want to die right now is the big unknown: Eternity. A human mind is finite, and thus fundamentally incapable of comprehending something infinite. We can talk about where you'll be in a hundred years, a thousand, a million, a billion, but infinite time from now? That's a bigger and much more frightening unknown than death, and dooming yourself to it is at least as stupid. Death either leads to an infinite afterlife (in which case the choice didn't really matter), a cycle of some sort (in which case you get to try again), or nothingness (in which case at least you aren't suffering). But eternity we can't even guess at, and if you don't like it you'll be wishing for a death that you know cannot come, just for a change of pace if nothing else.
Forever.
Right. You two fight over the beta release, I'll be back here waiting a few years until everything's patched properly.Aprilgold said:
I would see immortality as a curse, for the reasons I will shortly provide. For the sake of simplicity I?ll assume one is also invulnerable in addition to being immortal.
We are currently in the Stelliferous Era. As star formation ceases we will move into the Degenerate Era where the universe is populated almost exclusively by objects comprised of degenerate matter. During this era matter will start to degenerate. On this note, matter is inherently unstable, the fact that we even exist is testament to the fact that antimatter and matter was not generated in equal proportion during the early history of our universe. This instability during creation has caused the proton itself to be unstable, with a half-life somewhere north of 10 to the 34th years. Neutrons should have a similar half life. After all the matter is gone we will move into the Black Hole Era, but even these are impermanent. The end result (and the point of this rather long explanation) is this: Eventually it will be only you. There will be nothing for you to create as there will be no medium for you to create or even interact with, just you and infinity with no ability to escape or experience anything new. Even a trillion+ years of experiences won't keep you entertained forever.
Sounds like a special brand of hell to me.
We are currently in the Stelliferous Era. As star formation ceases we will move into the Degenerate Era where the universe is populated almost exclusively by objects comprised of degenerate matter. During this era matter will start to degenerate. On this note, matter is inherently unstable, the fact that we even exist is testament to the fact that antimatter and matter was not generated in equal proportion during the early history of our universe. This instability during creation has caused the proton itself to be unstable, with a half-life somewhere north of 10 to the 34th years. Neutrons should have a similar half life. After all the matter is gone we will move into the Black Hole Era, but even these are impermanent. The end result (and the point of this rather long explanation) is this: Eventually it will be only you. There will be nothing for you to create as there will be no medium for you to create or even interact with, just you and infinity with no ability to escape or experience anything new. Even a trillion+ years of experiences won't keep you entertained forever.
Sounds like a special brand of hell to me.
I would only want immortality if i had the ability to die if i wanted. think about it, it would be great for a long time, but what about after the humane race dies off, after the earth stops sustaining any life. then what? an eternity of loneliness. would it really be worth it?
what he said,Deneb said:
You're making a lot of vague assumptions here.Suncatcher said:
"oh yeah. Someone will probably dig you out from under that building eventually"
"Just Hack the system! Hacking will solve all your problems"
"The guys studying you will get bored eventually"
"You'll totally be able to hide the fact that you're basically a neanderthal from the hyper evolved humans with the help of implants that will absolutely exist in this future world"
"Being immortal means you could have stopped human extinction if you wanted to"
"If you live long enough, you'll be able to learn to do everything! It's not like the human brain's capacity for knowledge is finite."
"Find a new species to be your friends. It's not like living for millions of years will affect your perception of time in such a way that will make it impossible for you to form any sort of emotional attachment with the fleeting lives that seem to blink in and out of existence before your eyes"
I'd like immortality, but I'd also like a way to die when I want, because otherwise I'm gonna have to live through the sun exploding, then be flying throughout space for all eternity, until the big crunch or everything in the universe dies apart from me, who will have been sucked into a black hole
I would say watch The man from earth[footnote]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/[/footnote]
Imho it can be a blessing and curse at the same time, you could be witness to a lot of things and do a lot of things you wouldn't be able to do in just one lifetime but you always have to leave everything behind at a certain point.
Imho it can be a blessing and curse at the same time, you could be witness to a lot of things and do a lot of things you wouldn't be able to do in just one lifetime but you always have to leave everything behind at a certain point.
I would be very happy to live until I choose to not live. I could probably pack in at least a couple thousand years.
I dont think its a false dichotomy. You missed out truly in your other examples. So yes, in order to truly appreciate food you must be hungry, and in order to truly appreciate sex you must be horny.Tanakh said:
