Suicide? Immortality isn't the be all and end all, you know. Eternal life is only a means to something else which is happiness on most occasions. Hell is a place you live forever but nobody wants to go there :smile:

The segment on religion was just a cultural example and not remotely what I had in mind... You’re clearly not being serious.

I am serious. Hell is not meant literally but is a metaphor for suffering - nobody would want to live forever if it meant one has to suffer while doing so. Suicide is unequivocal proof that people would agree with me. After all, if even a finite lifespan of suffering is undesirable, surely living forever in suffering, which is worse, is infinitely more repugnant a proposition.

The best thing I can say about immortality is in a hedonistic context. There are 4 possibilities:

1. Happy + Immortal
2. Happy + Mortal
3. Sad + Mortal
4. Sad + Immortal

I ordered them in terms of desirability. As you may have already noticed, the key parameter is hedonistic - happiness/sorrow. Immortality is only important after happiness has been achieved; in fact immortality is a major disadvantage if you fall in category 4. Sad + Immortal.

The best thing is choice. To be able to live forever is good. To be forced to live forever is bad.

And because dying removes choices -- you can't change your mind when you're dead -- for someone to want to live, to desire life, for life to seem good, which is basically what it means to be happy, is good. The highest good is for life to be worth living and available to be lived.

Also, so long as you're alive, there's always the possibility of changing from sadness to happiness. The same is not true when you're dead.

I'm for "immortality" but only under the following conditions:

[Organic]

• voluntary "shapeshifting" control of bodily features from the cosmetic (e.g. facial & vocal mimicry, pigmentation, teeth, conceal scars, add tattoos, etc) to the anatomical (e.g. genitalia, scent/phermones, limb-torso ratios, head shape, etc)

• complete, very rapidly, regenerative healing of injury and amputation (including decapitation - severed head decomposes rapidly whereas new head grows from severed neck (which requires something like "holographic memories" retained throughout nervous system, etc?))

• inhumanly high pain, fatigue, sleep-deprivation, extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, g-forces & vertigo, drug & alcohol (always euphoric but never addicted), hunger, thirst, blinding light, deafening noise, vacuum & radiation tolerances

• peak "olympic ironman" human fitness and physical performance

• complete memory suppression and eidetic recall (continual pruning of memory to extend capacity for a few human lifespans)

• complete immunity to decrepitude, diseases and contagions

• voluntary year-to-decade-long hibernation (i.e. "suspended animation") with minimal awareness of any environmental or kinetic changes in immediate vicinity to my hibernating body and the ability to awaken rapidly (otherwise appear dead to the untrained observer)

• "immortality" cannot be extracted from my body and transfered like a drug or gene therapy to make mortals "immortal"; also, all offspring are mortal (though perfectly healthy with peak human functioning in all measures and only resembling the mother)

OR

[Digital]

• (A) my self-aware, affective, sapience (somehow, 3rd text-block from the bottom :nerd: ) transferred - not merely "copied" - onto a quantum computing diamond-like substrate wherein I "inhabit" a community/group-mind (with other discrete, once biologically human, minds and an AGI 'facilitator-servant') free of my organic body (à la "the Matrix"); (B) with complete executive control of selectively suppressing/archiving (not deleting) my own memories and retrieving/reviewing them when needed; and (C) with complete agency in a simulated universe/virtual reality (e.g. 'Bracewell probe with VR avatars' in David Brin's novel Existence (2012))

The best thing is choice — Pfhorrest

And because dying removes choices -- you can't change your mind when you're dead — Pfhorrest

A very crucial observation in my humble opinion. There's no such thing as a second chance once we die, no reconsidering the decision to die - death is final and once it occurs, your options run out.

Therefore, if one is ever put in a position in which dying becomes an option, one has to be extremely careful not to goof up.

That said, to be asked to choose between an eternity of suffering and death is going to be extraordinarily easy. Right?

Like a breath of fresh air

Tithonus Ring any bells?

I don't like the idea of immortality. A life that is free of pain and is completely pure bliss would rob humans of anything that makes them human. I can only think of the universe; science agrees (from what I've been able to gather, I'm an economics teacher so what do I know) that the universe will eventually end. If what we consciously perceive will at one point be over, what is the point of living forever? Further, an infinite life only makes doing human things- looking out for one another, taking care of yourself, all things that give us meaning- less desirable, because there is no incentive to do them.

:up:

inhumanly high pain... — 180 Proof

I read this and thought - but why not just choose mortality if you're a masochist?

tolerances — 180 Proof

And then I thought: oh.

Yep, immortality and eternal youth are two different things.

The Malthusians would be really pissed about immortality, btw. Talk about a problem with the limited resources on this planet.

And even without immortality, but only a longer life span it would be different. Let's say that people would become adults as they do in 18 years or so, but after that they would get older in twice the time as now meaning that a current 30-year old would be an 60-year old, a 50-year old would be 100 years and the oldest people would live well over 200 years.

Not only there would be a lot more people, but think about what our society would be like. Likely the current political leaders of the US would have been born in the 1880's and only some time ago the last soldiers that fought in the Napoleonic Wars would have died. Some old Americans would still remember the time of the Civil War and slavery and many WW2 veterans would be still in the workforce.

So for times to change and people to make the same errors again as previously, we do need generations to die away and new ones to replace them.

If things go as they have gone, then it's likely that the average life expectancy will increase and it's very likely that the present children will live on average to 100 years or so. Not immortality, but better than at the time of our grandparents.

Yeah that’s not really immortality anymore... just because I said perfect immortality doesn’t mean you get a plethora of powers that go along with it with perfect immortality you either get perfect regeneration or complete indestructibility but no shape shifting lol I’ll give you the high tolerance, immunity to disease and what not as well as the Olympian body. No memory suppression and you can’t choose to look dead. You can pass down your immortality gene to your offspring if you were dumb enough to procreate, your immortality can’t be extracted from you but it can be replicated if your studied.

Ok, got me on the first "organic" option. I actually prefer the "digital" (which I believe is plausible).

I wouldn't want to be immortal, but I would like to be able to decide when my life will end. It would be nice to not have to stave off death, nor endure a pointless and drawn-out decline, and instead live exactly as long as I wish. At the end of the day though it doesn't matter how long your life is, what you did in it or even that you existed at all, except for maybe the legacy you leave behind for everyone else (whose lives are equally meaningless).

At the end of the day though it doesn't matter how long your life is, what you did in it or even that you existed at all, except for maybe the legacy you leave behind for everyone else (whose lives are equally meaningless). — darthbarracuda

True.

:death: :flower:

That reminds me of that "Twilight Zone” episode in which this hypochondriac makes a deal with the devil, although that guy was in idiot I’d take that deal.

Imagine having "some immortality". You'd probably be able to get someone "a little bit pregnant" while you're at it.

A true classic. Would you now? You enjoy life that much? I'd suggest perhaps it's rather favorable circumstance you enjoy more so than anything, which comes and goes.

Besides. Along the lines of what the episode suggests, what if you become trapped in a cave or sunken ship underwater?

The idea of such an entity making a deal with a human being seems obscenely cruel. Beyond taking candy from a baby. Hardly any worse tyranny could be imagined.

You don’t have a very prolific imagination then.

I'll agree there's shortsightedness somewhere in this interaction. Meanwhile. What do you mean?

Immortality with the conscience and perception of finite human existence - full of errors and anguish -? No thank you. If - and only if - transcendence came with immortality, then I'd agree, because what human would not want to be the maxim of the metaphysical absolute - god -?

What would such "transcendence" entail? What does a "god" do that's different in kind from what any 'immanent non-god' does (or must do)?

As a said "god” you’d be able to throw pagans, jews, atheists, etc. into a forever burning burning pit of fire (make it an assembly line, just keep em coming) and have a few of your disciples shoot up schools because how else would you be able to provide you’re most devout with 72 virgins? You can give babies malaria and altar boys to priests. See there’s so many more things to fill your everlasting schedule as a "god” that you wouldn’t be able to do as an immortal human! It’s all about priorities man. Ah yes! God bless America! Hey does all this 'holier than thou’ make anyone else horny?

This is right up your alley, mate: Boredom

The French term for boredom, ennui, is sometimes used in English as well, at least since 1778. The term ennui was first used "as a French word in English;" in the 1660s and it was "nativized by 1758".[7] The term ennui comes "from French ennui, from Old French enui "annoyance" (13c.), [a] back-formation from enoiier, anuier.[7] "The German word for "boredom" expresses this: Langeweile, a compound made of lange "long" and Weile "while", which is in line with the common perception that when one is bored, time passes "tortuously" slowly. — Wikipedia

If boredom is a pain and if it means "...time passes tortuously slowly." what can be said of immortality when time actually comes to a grinding halt?

What would such "transcendence" entail? What does a "god" do that's different in kind from what any 'immanent non-god' does (or must do)? — 180 Proof

God is all-powerful, omniscient and omnipresent. If you had immortality but still was a finite mind, you would still suffer existence - Being -. Through transcendence, infinite is achievable, and through infinity, Men is not necessary - Being would become retrograde -.

What is meant by immortality? I think in the context of this discussion, it seems to mean ‘existing for ever’. But time is an aspect of this universe, so a being we might call a god, that can exist outside of the limitations of time (and space), would be considered immortal by our time-limited perceptions. And yet one could also argue that they exist for an infinitesimally small amount of time as well.