Who wants to live forever?

[Walsingham]

I was just reading an article about ageing, and how it all means we're going to have to give up beer, not just for the effect on our arteries, but also because we'll have to save half our income just to eat in our dotage.

 

Then a perhaps more interesting (read less mathematically involved) question struck me.

 

Hypothesis 1: Mankind is too short lived to achieve real wisdom, or plan sensibly for the future because we're already dead by the time it gets here. (John Wyndham)

 

Hypothesis 2: Through the course of life opportunities naturally occur for making immoral decisions and acts. Extend the timeline far enough, and one could expect all persons to have done some absolutely ghastly things. In short, your only hope of dying without sin is to die before you are propositioned by [censored].

 

Thoughts?

[Gorth]

Life is like a badly paced game, you get the sword of dung beetle slaying as a reward for slaying the last dung beetle in the game. Sounds familiar?

 

Did your article mention anything about life quality in general? Would we spend 500 years with the physique of 30-40 year olds or would it be like 920 years with the bodies of 80 year olds?

[Walsingham]

Assume for the purposes of this discussion that we would live with the gorgeous bodies of twenty two year olds.

[Humodour]

Well I'd have to put on hold my plan to start taking drugs at age 70.

 

Damn, I was really looking forward to that mixed cocaine & acid trip, too.

[Humodour]

I ticked the goldifsh and "try everything" option. A good combination in my books; it allows for infinite fun given a sufficiently long gap between repeating something.

 

But I don't believe I'd become a bastard, I'd like to hope.

[Walsingham]

I ticked the goldifsh and "try everything" option. A good combination in my books; it allows for infinite fun given a sufficiently long gap between repeating something.

 

But I don't believe I'd become a bastard, I'd like to hope.

 

I meant everything. Like swinging a donkey into a box full of kittens.

[Guest The Architect]

You'd get both your 1000+ year old saints and a-holes I reckon. My argument is just the laws of probability: just like you get your saints and a-holes these days, you're likely to get the same result, regardless of age, although far more saints, since you don't really find too many old jerks around. And to be 1000... well who knows. I'd only want to live for that long if my family and friends could too.

[Gorth]

I would probably ending up getting myself killed "prematurely" as I would give in to greater and greater excesses to avoid boredom.

 

I am a person that experiences the world through doing things. There are only so many things you can do within reason. Then you start doing unreasonable things. I've managed to get myself run over by cars, falling down cliff sides, drowned (twice, once in ice water), electrocuted, survived pneumonia, earthquakes, fires, car crashes and floodings. And that in slightly more than 40 years. Just imagine the odds over a time span of 1000 year :ninja10:

[Guest The Architect]

Good God! Well, glad you're still around to tell the tale, Gorth.

 

I have no evidence to support such a theory, but to throw the idea/claim out there, taking this concept from Lost; maybe when your number's up, your number's up, and there's no living forever or for a thousand years, because even if you were capable of living for centuries... which obviously none of us are, maybe we're all destined to live till a certain time no more than say 150 years, and when that certain time is up, you'll be taken down, one way or another.

Edited March 2, 2008 by The Architect

[Nick_i_am]

I'd give myself amnesia so that I could be the star of various RPGs.

[thepixiesrock]

Well, if we did live forever I wouldn't feel so bad about playing so many videogames.

 

Also, I really hope this doesn't turn into some kind of faux-philisophical discussion where everyone reaches to sound enlightening.

[Gorth]

Good God! Well, glad you're still around to tell the tale, Gorth.

 

I have no evidence to support such a theory, but to throw the idea/claim out there, taking this concept from Lost; maybe when your number's up, your number's up, and there's no living forever or for a thousand years, because even if you were capable of living for centuries... which obviously none of us are, maybe we're all destined to live till a certain time no more than say 150 years, and when that certain time is up, you'll be taken down, one way or another.

Thanks, but I am probably such an old SoB that Death doesn't want me

 

I once scared the crap out of a couple of colleagues by crossing a heavily trafficked road, elegantly avoiding the cars. I told them that I was perfectly safe, as I got statistics on my side. "How so?" they asked. "Well, how many people do you know who has been run over by a car twice?"

 

On a more serious note, I am not sure the human brain has the capacity to process the information of such extended lifespans. Is there really a point in living so long that you start "pushing out" old memories, losing who once was? Or will you hit a wall where you brain deadlocks and refuses to process new impulses?

[Sand]

I wouldn't mind living forever. What's the alternative? Death?

[theslug]

My outlook on people is "Once a d*** always a d***." And theres no one who has never not been one at one point in time which is why I hate most everyone. People don't change, extending everyones lifetime just gives them more time to perfect their, pardon my French, douchebaggery. People are sadistic aholes who can never be trusted, even if they live for a million years they won't understand.

[Dragon Lord Jones]

I once scared the crap out of a couple of colleagues by crossing a heavily trafficked road, elegantly avoiding the cars. I told them that I was perfectly safe, as I got statistics on my side. "How so?" they asked. "Well, how many people do you know who has been run over by a car twice?"

 

damn and I thought I was the only one to get run over ... I was run over by a city bus, dual-wheeled. went right over my chest without brusing the ribs, just a small fracture in the right shoulder, just missed my head. lol

 

had over 75 pounds of steel bounce of my head, shot once, poisoned, almost crushed by a punch press, almost drowned once, cycle accident, car crash, od'd twice (man the eighties were fun) and various other stuff in a 40 + years ...... Yes I too would hate to see what would happen in a 1000 years.

 

 

no major floods, fires or acts of nature ... so I have a few things to still experience I guess.

 

 

still it's just get up in the morning, get dressed and see if I make it through another day.

[Krookie]

damn and I thought I was the only one to get run over ... I was run over by a city bus, dual-wheeled. went right over my chest without brusing the ribs, just a small fracture in the right shoulder, just missed my head. lol

 

had over 75 pounds of steel bounce of my head, shot once, poisoned, almost crushed by a punch press, almost drowned once, cycle accident, car crash, od'd twice (man the eighties were fun) and various other stuff in a 40 + years ...... Yes I too would hate to see what would happen in a 1000 years.

 

 

no major floods, fires or acts of nature ... so I have a few things to still experience I guess.

 

 

still it's just get up in the morning, get dressed and see if I make it through another day.

 

Your close encounters with death arouse me

Edited March 2, 2008 by Krookie

[Dragon Lord Jones]

well it does kinda give one .... A Don't Sweat the Little Stuff Attitude.

 

also don't know whether to have an arrogant or a more spiritual out-look. like I dare you to take me or my time will come when it's due.

 

 

i'm leaning more towards my time will come when it's time

[Musopticon?]

I've been hit by a car(first time was 4o km an hour, second was around 50 km) twice with no fractures, but a bent and broken bike both times. The occasion usually consists of me flying through the air a couple of meters, doing a somersault and landing on the ground with enough force to momentarily pass me out. I sually see my bikes flying around a meter higher and landing in a head of junk couple of seconds before I lose the feel of the world.

 

I freaking hate old people in wheels, if they're not trying to drive over me, they are giving the middle finger and trying to scare me off pavement with their cars. I hope they alzheimerize themselves off a rail bridge into a vat of indrustial oxidant. Cool enough to be taken apart with icehooks.

 

Besides getting hit by cars and constantly ballasted by senile imbecils, I've had a brush with fatal injury a couple of times, but nothing that would have actually got me into intensive care. People with knives, chairs, shopping carts and chains(that was awfully painful), skiing tracks and resorts with fake summits, frozen pathways and almost daedalically planned ways to get skiiers killed, and the killing fields called "burger stall lines".

Edited March 2, 2008 by Musopticon?

[SteveThaiBinh]

There's already far more to do, read and enjoy than can possibly be done, read and enjoyed in one lifetime, and that's not even counting what current and future generations will produce and what I myself might produce. I can't imagine how one could get bored living forever.

[Tigranes]

I always thought one of the things that isn't considered so much, about these things, is the social effect. Generational gap, and all that. To an extent, we die so that new ideas, new cultural norms may come into the fore, and older ideas and practices may die out. If we lived for a thousand years, with the gorgeous, supple bodies of twenty-year-olds, wouldn't some of them definitely hold on to power and money and prestige for decades or even centuries? I wonder if that may mean that society begins moving at a much slower pace (sort of an Elf effect), because if you try to do funny things like gay rights, you'll have politicians saying BACK IN MY DAY WE BURRRRNT WITCHES ON THE STAKE, NO GAYS, NO SIRREE.

 

Personally, well. I don't think it's possible to run out of things. You could lead so many lives. You could live lives anew in places like Greece or India or Japan; move around countries every few decades and get fully immersed. You could try different professions, wacky ones you always wanted to do like, uh, bakery or something. And oh dear, all those media products to consume.

 

Looking at it from now, I'd probably choose death in a few hundred years; certainly before the 1000-mark. (And before the robots rule the world.) But who knows. It's probably for the best that we cannot choose the date of our death - though it'd certainly help if we lived a bit longer than, oh, 80.

 

Personal experiences with death? Zero. Hell, the worst I've ever had is being hit by a car at 20km/h (the tofu i was carrying went splat and I, uh, had a sore bum), pneumonia (out of hospital in a week), smashing into a sharp column and getting a scar on my eyebrow.

 

Oh, and a pine cone fell from this really high tree while I was walking down the road once. I'm convinced it would have destroyed my skull had it struck.

[Tale]

I don't know where people get the notion that people retain information indefinitely and with perfect clarity. If you live to be 120, why should we think you recall something you experienced at 20 to a satisfactory degree? You'll never run out of things to do because by the time you would, you'll have forgotten enough things to do them all over again!

[Pop]

If living forever entailed the failures of mind and body that accompany old age, but with no impending death, nobody would want to live forever. Even if you were spared the mental deterioration and achieved clinical immortality as a brain in a jar, it's a pretty tough sell. I think the implication is that we live forever without going senile or frail.

[Walsingham]

I don't believe any of this nonsense about having a specific time to go. But I do think that the majority of people die for reasons beyond their control. It's just more comforting to think of it in terms of some external Fate than random roulette.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Who cares about living forever?!?! We have the afterlife in heaven after that!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...right?

[Humodour]

You guys should read some books by Peter F Hamilton.