The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Immortality: would you do it?
Qingu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The New York Science Times today had a feature about futurists, transhumanists, and the technological singularity. According to one Ray Kurzweil, technological progress is accelerating at such a fast pace that immortality might be within our reach in the next few decades, either through bioengineering or some AI shit.
Discussion topic: If you could bio-engineer yourself to live forever, would you do it?
Caveats:
• You wouldn't be magically invulnerable. You could still be killed, like the elves in LoTR. You just wouldn't age.
• The process would be reasonably non-invasive and affordable—you would have to take a pill every year or so to reverse cellular aging, or go in for a short procedure. We're not talking about Bioshock shit or drinking virgin's hymen blood or anything.
• Let's also leave aside computer-assisted immortality, such as transferring your consciousness to a computer and shit like that. You stay in your body!
My position: I would definitely become immortal. Why the hell not? I'm incredibly interested to see what happens in the next few centuries, and I can't even imagine what the world is going to be like after that. History is a story, and I want to see what happens next.
I also think that the world has steadily been getting better. People's lives have been getting progressively more comfortable, more filled with wonder and joy and creativity. If this trajectory continues, I want to be around for it, purely for selfish reasons.
The only con I could see would be if my loved ones didn't take the immortality pill. Even then, mortals have to deal with loss of loved ones; I don't see how dealing with such loss as an immortal would be fundamentally different or harder to deal with.
Discussion topic: If you could bio-engineer yourself to live forever, would you do it?
Caveats:
• You wouldn't be magically invulnerable. You could still be killed, like the elves in LoTR. You just wouldn't age.
• The process would be reasonably non-invasive and affordable—you would have to take a pill every year or so to reverse cellular aging, or go in for a short procedure. We're not talking about Bioshock shit or drinking virgin's hymen blood or anything.
• Let's also leave aside computer-assisted immortality, such as transferring your consciousness to a computer and shit like that. You stay in your body!
My position: I would definitely become immortal. Why the hell not? I'm incredibly interested to see what happens in the next few centuries, and I can't even imagine what the world is going to be like after that. History is a story, and I want to see what happens next.
I also think that the world has steadily been getting better. People's lives have been getting progressively more comfortable, more filled with wonder and joy and creativity. If this trajectory continues, I want to be around for it, purely for selfish reasons.
The only con I could see would be if my loved ones didn't take the immortality pill. Even then, mortals have to deal with loss of loved ones; I don't see how dealing with such loss as an immortal would be fundamentally different or harder to deal with.
Qingu on
0
Posts
Although I wouldn't want a lot of other immortals.
You could just stop taking the pill and die when you get bored enough.
A better question would be some sort of procedure that permanently alters your chemistry so you will live forever and you can't go back to aging.
That would force you to stick it out, and your only option then would be to kill yourself. See, that would be a question.
People enter and leave my life all the time - it'd suck for a while, but one thing you'd gain is perspective.
My religion tells me not to fear death though.
That said, Robert Heinlein's novel "Time Enough for Love" is a really awesome exploration of that idea.
I am no retarded poet. Yes.
Also, I think we would become very paranoid, death would become something that stalks you and steals you away from your immortality rather than a natural part of life.
Also, overpopulation would become an issue and we would have to start colonizing space, (Spreading like a virus?)
But, I would do it. I'd like to hang around for another 4 or 5 hundred years.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I think there's been a few recent books and studies out that say, contrary to popular belief, having kids actually makes you less happy. Kids are a huge resource drain. And personally, I fucking hate kids, disgusting little retard-homonculi that they are.
Declining birth rates seem to coincide with long-lived (and nonreligious) cultures. And I also think a lot of the rationale, possibly in a very deep-seated, genetic sense, for having kids is that biological propogation is our "version" of immortality. But if you had real immortality, what would be the point?
Now that I reread the topic correctly (there are two 't's, not just one) my answer is "I'm not sure."
But if its affordable, then everyone else would do it as well. Leaving to a population crisis to end all population crises.
And this is a question that is going to stop being purely academic relatively soon. I think a couple decades is optimistic. I expect to see it in my lifetime, although I wouldn't be surprised if I was too old to take advantage of it when it first starts becoming available.
I'd be all over the transfering consciousness to a computer though. I'd think that would be preferable in many ways to the biological option, especially if the bio one was less than perfect (as medicine always is). And something running off a computer doesn't need to consume any resources except electricity and a minute amount of hardware.
Kids can be something to focus effort on, like a career, or a hobby, or whatever. My 6 year old kid sister is basically my stepmother's little pet really. She does all the things my stepmother never got a chance to do, and my stepmother gets to live vicariously through her.
I guess if you stopped your aging at the right point, you could just do everything then get really bored with life.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Live to be 75-95, but look and feel 25 until the end.
I also think that, eventually, like in a few hundred years, I'd be tempted to jump in to whatever giant AI hybrid extraplanetary hivemind ends up existing. That could always be another option to immortality, apart from "stop taking the pills and letting yourself die."
This. I'd also go for it. In fact, just the knowledge that in 20 or 30 years I could do it would change what I do right now in my life.
But, I think the real change would be in the value we place on children/life in general. Look at the outrage we have right now when one child or one person dies unneeded. Look at all the outrage we have over casualties in Iraq. Imagine how much different the meaning of 'life' would change if instead of "A life tragically cut short at 25" it was.
I also think the "child" phase would become much more prolonged. People would have to go to school for much longer and become much more skilled to advance. And forget about moving up the corporate ladder or anything like that. I do think that people could retire earlier in life though, and just live off of the interest of their debts.
Also, I think children would be pampered much more. If you're 200-300 and you finally decide to have a kid. You're probably not working anymore. So you can afford to spend your time during the day raising the child yourself, instead of sending them to day care.
Would killing brain cells by drinking actually become an issue?
Another good point. Will there be cool swords?
Isn't that basically "Interview with a Vampire", but without the vampire part? Though I do agree.
See, I dunno about this. If there's a bunch of people doing it, inflation's probably going to be a bitch.
But yeah, I'd probably do it.
Yes, of course. I'd be down with most versions of immortality, and this is one of the most pleasant ones. I'm simply too curious about what humanity will do in the future. (We are a pretty difficult lot to predict.)
Because everything happens in a vacuum and changes never beget further changes?
There's a bunch more people now than 100 years ago, but our inflation is much lower.
I agree with whoever said that death would become much scarier, and I imagine that things like safety and drunk driving would be of much more concern.
I'm not too big on the thought of immortality.
</rant>
I never finish anyth
Unless this "live forever" pill also repairs the non-age-related damage to your body (not even considering if things like Arthritis is considered age-related), life would likely become a bit of a chore after a couple hundred years.
I would take it if it worked for a while. Stop when I get bored.
If it's permanent just take it. If you don't want to live anymore, start doing dangerous shit you always wanted to do. Go out with a bang.
But maybe a reason that history repeats itself is because it is new people making the same old mistakes? If the same people are alive then maybe we wouldn't make the same mistakes over and over and over.
This reminds me a little of Down and Out the Magic Kingdom. I know you aren't talking about post-scarcity in the sense of food and money and stuff like that, but still.
I would take the pill, no question. I would have to think long and hard about an irreversible operation.
You don't think that in a few hundred years medical science would advance enough to fix a limp or a back ache? o_O
I think there's a difference between not fearing death and taking advantage of opportunities to live longer. Do you eat at all ever?
I see no disadvantages to this, especially as I can always opt out at any time. That pretty much eliminates the only downside to immortality as if the loss of loved ones, retained non-aging related damaged etc. starts getting to me I can always just choose to die.
It hasn't yet.
History hasn't proven that science will give us the ability to live in absolute comfort, even though we seem to be trending in that direction. People still go crazy, lose their hair, get muscle aches and migraines and sometimes their hearts just give out.
We haven't really been able to fix any of those things with much certainty yet.
Look back only a hundred years ago.
And yet other things that were once considered irreversible death sentences are now completely treatable, often with something as simple as a short course of medicine or relatively straightforward surgery.