Immortality - what would it be like?

Quoting Benj96

What are your thoughts on immortality and which type/ variation appeals or disturbs you the most?

I never understood the desire for immortality. If you have 80 years and think something is undone, they you wasted your 80 years.

Quoting Benj96

What are your thoughts on immortality and which type/ variation appeals or disturbs you the most?

I'm afraid it would take me a lifetime to answer that. :D

Merely thinking out loud here, but.. how do you really know you haven't always been alive and just, forgot or something? Science is already talking about the possibility of consciousness surviving in a mechanical host so this is far from an explicitly spiritual concept.

All in all, I'm sure it hinges heavily on whether or not the person has a "good life". Perhaps beyond that, an unrealistically fortunate life. Where you can't wait to get up in the morning, whatever the reason be. Food, family, friends, games, work (lol), shoot even if you just enjoying getting drunk. The base argument would be something along the lines of "If you're having a good time, why would you want it to end?", I imagine.

I like the religious idea of immortality, where you acknowledge the body will die and while you are in your body, you are not your body. Sort of like when you enter your car. You don't "become" a Toyota lol. "Hold on honey, I'm a Toyota right now, I'll call you back." :lol:

Like I've posted before wishing for immortality for your body is a very foolish thing. You could be tortured for millennia by a currently non-existent totalitarian super government. Or trapped in a cave or something. I think there's a Twilight Zone episode like that actually.

One problem would be you would eventually have to outlaw having children without government approval. For obvious reasons. Another problem would be, yeah, why do anything? Not sure if you imply we wouldn't hunger or thirst period or if hungry or thirsty we'd still feel that way until we eat or drink? That's a big factor in how society would change.

Quoting Outlander

"If you're having a good time, why would you want it to end?"

The issue here is that... the human body and mind is exceptionally good at adapting a new base level, a new norm.

Consider two people: person one has only ever been offered the most basic mundane and bland meals for their entire life up until this point.
Person two has had a top Michelin star group of chefs cook all meals at their mansion since they were born.

Now let’s bring them to a fancy dinner. The first is blown away by how good it is and is quite literally living their best life, the other recalls how their family chefs made the same meal to a better standard a month ago.
If you wine and dine the impoverished person (person 1) for long enough... the difference in pleasure between them and person two gets smaller. Until person one is just like person two - privileged and unaware of it/ with very high expectations.

To loop back around to the immortality - an “unrealistically fortunate” life is just that. Unrealistic. Sustained happiness is impossible because happiness without its contrasting or opposing feeling loses all meaning. Even novelty gets boring - people tire of constantly being exposed to new and novel experiences - thats why avid travelling is exhausting, sometimes they want to sit around and do nothing or something that’s mundane and familiar.

Quoting Outlander

Another problem would be, yeah, why do anything? Not sure if you imply we wouldn't hunger or thirst period or if hungry or thirsty we'd still feel that way until we eat or drink? That's a big factor in how society would change.

I agree... if you can still die from hunger and thirst or even suffer endless starvation without dying from it (probably worse) then there is still a fear of death or suffering.

Tbh immortality or mortality I think there’s no getting around the fact that a portion of either timespan will be spent suffering. So the question of desire for immortality is no longer positive but neutral. You will have more time for more good stuff and more sh!t stuff.

Quoting Benj96

Immortality and or eternal youth to me seems like my personal hell.

Imagine yourself as an immortal person waking up in a coffin just about so big that you can lie and not even change your position. Welcome to eternity! After a million years, you're still in the same predicament. Had enough? After another 5983775 quadrillion years, sorry to say, nothing has changed. How's immortality for you? Having fun? Wouldn't you rather be a robot with no trace of consciousness? Consciousness in a way makes us potentially horribly vulnerable. Some may think they live in a relatively safe anvironment where the worst that can happen to them is the death of their physical body and then maybe they simply cease to exist. Or worst case scenario spend 30 or so years trapped in their body before they die as a result of accident/illness. But how can we be sure what's in store for us when we die? How can we be sure that the (autors of the simulation we live in)* have not already programmatically taken care of it?

* - pure speculation not based in facts whatsoever

The universe is a big place. If we had increased longevity, were much more robust and could travel faster, we could see a lot more of it and truly break into the final frontier. Where no one has gone before certainly does interest me.

Quoting Benj96

What are your thoughts on immortality and which type/ variation appeals or disturbs you the most?

(Below see excerpts from my posts on old threads.)

Something subtle and spiritual/ metaphysical? Perhaps technological dissolution?

Physical – (gradually) post-biological.

An elixir of youth you can choose or not choose to drink? Genetic perfection and the absence of disease and decay? What about children? Wealth and possessions?

N/A.

Boredom? Suicide? How would the meaning of life change? How would society change?

(Below see excerpts from posts on old threads.)

Quoting 180 Proof

I imagine that immortality (if it even became a bio-technological thing) would be exclusive to the 1% (or 0.1%) capitalist class and not available to the masses for the 'Malthusian problem' you're suggesting; therefore, procreation would be tightly controlled by cloning instead of sexual reproduction and each immortal (whether mortal-born or a clone) would have to be made sterile. Also, immortality ideally would be developed for long-duration space travelers and exoplanet colonists. Such an elite, I imagine, would gradually eliminate the mortal population as the world becomes more and more automated and re-wilded, eventually with only a few to several million immortals living on Earth (maybe some millions more scattered throughout this solar system in orbital space habitats or on other planets & moons). Absent fatal misadventure, each immortal would live as long as she wishes to and then at some point centuries, even millennia, hence voluntarily die in her sleep (and more likely, when it's all said and done, having lived a more fulfilled and more meaningful life than the most fulfilled and meaningful life ever lived by any mortal human being). So yeah, immortality could be an 'existential nightmare' but, like mortal life (which all too often for far too many has been nightmarish), does not have to be.

Quoting 180 Proof

Immortality, in order to be fully livable, would have to consist in a memory limit of a mortal human lifespan – maybe a maximum of 100 years – new memories "rewriting" over +100 year old memories (regardless of their emotional weights) continuously. Such an immortal might want to offload her memories in journals, photos, videos, digital files, etc throughout centuries and millennia before she permanently loses the ability to recall them subjectively. Also, to keep track of lost friends and current rivals, stashes and secrets, etc. She will be a perennial stranger to the more-than-century-old aspect of her past self, living in a perpetual hundred year bubble of self-awareness. This might maintain an immortal's sanity and motivation to 'create new memories' – feeling alive "full of value and joy" – across endless millennia.

Reply to Benj96

Doesn’t life already feel unending? I don’t remember being born, and I have a hard time imagining not existing.

Quoting Benj96

Immortality and or eternal youth to me seems like my personal hell.

Careful what you wish for!

[quote=Tennyson]Me only cruel immortality
Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East[/quote]

I think Aldous Huxley's After Many A Summer is an interesting answer to the question. He tends to the view that immortality would be disgusting, vices would become magnified and ossified and bodies would slowly rot, not being made of stone or steel. Tennyson wasn't a fan. There is also a view that we will rise from the grave and get new bodies and live on a new earth under a new heaven. In that case a lot of people will be walking around smugly saying - 'Told you so, and you mocked.' That in itself would be quite hard to bear.

This is one of the oldest tricks in religion's playbook. Tell people that they are immortal (souls) - that takes care of Thanatos. However, this is the part that really makes me all excited, tell 'em there are things worse than death - hellfire/eternal suffering - Algos is a tough nut to crack.

Depends on our circumstances, oui? Those who are happy fear Thanatos (multivitamins, weight control, walks, swimming, and so on) and those who are sad fear Algos (suicide).