The problem with immortality

[Coombs]

I feel like half the people are talking about Highlander immortality and the other half are talking about life extension and aging reversal. None of you are on the same page with one another lol. The former, everyone around you would die, would be sad, but it would be worth it. The latter, your loved ones would be immortal alongside you, but after achieving this freedom from the ravages of time at the ripe age of 148 while looking 25 some piece of shit 17 year old kid would kill you in a car accident while driving drunk. He'd then get off with the affluenza plea.

[Theodarzna]

I think it would work in this fashion

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That line represents time and memory

-- --- ----- --- ----- ----- ------- ------- ---------

What we now have are gaps with hours, days, and months missing. I think it would just extend to where entire decades would be lost in the gaps.

In a sense, if a gap encompassed the entirety of your say first 100 years of life, would you still be you? At what point does the loss of memory simply erase you as a person as you currently are?

[Thoughtcrime]

I feel like half the people are talking about Highlander immortality and the other half are talking about life extension and aging reversal. None of you are on the same page with one another lol.

Yeah that's why I don't usually go in for conversations about it. Immortality has a very specific definition, and for me that definition followed to it's logical conclusion can only lead to a terrifying existence. But people tend to add all these caveats when they're talking about this topic so you end up talking about something completely different (biological immortality).

[Tempguy]

I feel like half the people are talking about Highlander immortality and the other half are talking about life extension and aging reversal. None of you are on the same page with one another lol. The former, everyone around you would die, would be sad, but it would be worth it. The latter, your loved ones would be immortal alongside you, but after achieving this freedom from the ravages of time at the ripe age of 148 while looking 25 some piece of shit 17 year old kid would kill you in a car accident while driving drunk. He'd then get off with the affluenza plea.

This mad me laugh and feel sad at the same time.

[May90]

I think it's safe to assume we'll begin planetary terraforming and colonization in the next few decades / century.

It almost certainly isn't going to happen. The costs of such a project would be astronomical (pun intended), and it would take thousands, maybe millions, years to terraform even Mars to the point of us being able to walk on it unshielded - no government or private corporation would invest in something that only will be beneficial to our grand-grand-grand-(100-100,000 times)-children.

[Coombs]

In a sense, if a gap encompassed the entirety of your say first 100 years of life, would you still be you? At what point does the loss of memory simply erase you as a person as you currently are?

People have this idea of identity to who they are, but are you ever who you were from another time in your life? You're right identity is nothing more than a string of memories. It would be irrelevant if you forgot the first 100 because the past 400 would be what would define you. It's nothing more than personal growth on a larger scale.

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This mad me laugh and feel sad at the same time.

It's going to happen. Like losing an elf at Helm's Deep to a 4 month old Orc.

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It almost certainly isn't going to happen. The costs of such a project would be astronomical (pun intended), and it would take thousands, maybe millions, years to terraform even Mars to the point of us being able to walk on it unshielded - no government or private corporation would invest in something that only will be beneficial to our grand-grand-grand-(100-100,000 times)-children.

You'd need to be shielded no matter what. You can't terraform a magnetic field.

[Theodarzna]

People have this idea of identity to who they are, but are you ever who you were from another time in your life? You're right identity is nothing more than a string of memories. It would be irrelevant if you forgot the first 100 because the past 400 would be what would define you. It's nothing more than personal growth on a larger scale.

When Immortality is sold to people it is sold as "You will live forever!" not "Your body will live forever!"

I think that is my sticking point.

[Coombs]

When Immortality is sold to people it is sold as "You will live forever!" not "Your body will live forever!"

I think that is my sticking point.

Did you feel your death from being 10 to being 20?

[May90]

You'd need to be shielded no matter what. You can't terraform a magnetic field.

I suppose you could install a man-made magnetic field generator that would shield the surface from cosmic radiation... Although such a project is unlikely to be realizable in the foreseen future.

[Yvaelle]

So the problem with immortality lies in the fact that were social animals. You may live forever but the people around you wont. Your family and friends will all die. You could make more friends but again they would all day. Then there's the end of the world. Assuming you would survive the apocalypse there would be no one left.

Immortality is not worth it.

People die anyways. You know all your family and friends, you know the friends you have yet to make? In time, they will all die - unless they are immortal.

If the loss of loved ones is the only measure of pain in life, and the pain of that loss outweighs having known them while you did - then you shouldn't make any relationships: immortal or not, because you are losing net happiness when you lose them.

And again, everyone dies.... except the immortal.

Flipping it all around the other way, from the perspective of your non-immortal friend, who will lose everyone they ever love in time anyways - except you - your choice to be immortal has spared all of your loved ones, all the people who love you - the pain of your loss - because they may die in time, but you will live on: and they will never have to mourn your death, and you will carry on their memory into perpetuity.

Immortality is worth everything.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Your friends and family die anyway, and depending on your luck you are the last one standing today as well. People had to overcome that part about life since we as a species came to be. Not really seeing the issue .. gimme my immortality.

[Yvaelle]

You'd need to be shielded no matter what. You can't terraform a magnetic field.

Sure we can, we just need to fire up the Martian core again so the ferromagnetic field generator comes online, then wait for the magnetic energy shield to recharge.

Simple in science fiction terms, Geordi LaForge could make it so by brunch - we just need to wait for him to arrive

[Goldielocks]

Immortality can become a reality if we can control the telomeres in each cell. However, we would need a way to control the cancerous elements that can break out.

That aside, it means that we would stop aging. It's not Immortality like in fantasy per say. Decapitation would still kill us. I'd say invincibility is a better word for what we'd never have.

[Lethora]

I'd take immortality over anything else, really.
Because when you are immortal, nothing really matters, you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want.

Also, LOL at those ridiculous hypothetical situations described earlier in the thread. You can avoid them if you want to by simply not climbing Everest or doing extreme sports or whatever else.

[Yriel]

It almost certainly isn't going to happen. The costs of such a project would be astronomical (pun intended), and it would take thousands, maybe millions, years to terraform even Mars to the point of us being able to walk on it unshielded - no government or private corporation would invest in something that only will be beneficial to our grand-grand-grand-(100-100,000 times)-children.

And since Faster-Than-Light travel will probably never happen there are not that much planets available to begin with.

[shadowmouse]

The problem of immortality can be extrapolated from hot peppers.

You know how it goes. You start with a couple of drops of hot sauce, nothing terribly strong. You start to get comfortable with the sensation of it, and over months or years you start using more. Somewhere down the line you are complaining to your friends that pepper spray on your burrito just doesn't have enough kick.

Yep, there you'd be. A century or two on and you'll have found out that midget porn with trained acrobats dressed as Draenei is just not doing it for you. Pretty soon, you've turned to wombat porn, and it is all down hill from there!

Save yourselves! [Well, except for that guy over there Googling wombat porn. It may be too late for him.]

[Yvaelle]

And since Faster-Than-Light travel will probably never happen there are not that much planets available to begin with.

In 1902, hundreds of the world's foremost engineers came forward to claim that powered flight was an unrealistic goal due to the lift/weight ratios involved, and balloons should be enough for anyone.
In 1903, the Wright Brothers flew the first plane.
When asked what they thought the limits of their new technology would be, they responded that while it may work over short distances, and on land, for example, it would be at least a thousand years before any plane could have the capability to fly across an ocean.
In 1919 (delays due mostly to WW1), Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight.
By 1961, Yuri Gagarin flew the first orbital space flight.

The point is, that we don't know what we don't know.

When you say it will never happen, what you mean to say is, "It will never happen with today's technology". Which is exactly the same sort of claim the engineers were making in 1902 in the WSJ, because what they basing their assumptions on was the lift required to put - effectively - a train engine in the air. What the Wright Brothers did, was build an engine that was only a couple orders of magnitude lighter than they had in mind.

We know things can communicate faster than light, and we're pretty sure that things can travel without accelerating toward light (ex. wormholes) - so what you're saying sounds more to me like, "we will never accelerate a chemical rocket beyond lightspeed", then I absolutely agree - but to say we will never travel faster than light is hubris.

[Zecora]

I think it's safe to assume we'll begin planetary terraforming and colonization in the next few decades / century.

I think it's safe to say that we won't be doing that for several centuries, and even without anyone cooking up the no-death pill, we'll be in dire trouble LONG before that.

[Jonnusthegreat]

There is nothing wrong with immortality. I'd rather exist than not exist.

[uiemad]

This argument is always so dumb. The only truly irreplaceable person in your life is you. You can always find new friends, new family, new 'soulmates'.

The only true problem with immortality is it is not paired with invincibility. Which means if something extreme happens like being stuck in the sinking titanic you get to go through all the pain and discomfort of drowning at the bottom of an ocean for years and years and years. Or if you get beheaded, awesome you're now a sentient head.