Immortalist Parents?

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Your theory opens the doors to a demographic and ethical problem:
Say your pecker grows back thanks to fancy pecker culture technology (sorry, I don't know the scientific latin name for it), you are likely going to use it, perhaps get some girl pregnant, and oops, another immortal is born. How many billion people do we have right now on planet Earth? Now let's say a quarter of them remain youthful looking and immortal forever, should they all stop having children? Who's going to force them to do that? And how? And if you start putting out young immortals all over the place, you better have to technology to colonize alien planets then or the only population control you will have is war, assuming killed bodies don't regenerate. Another way is to turn all males into eunuchs, and so you'll lose your pecker anyway. People have a tendency to settles into a comfort zone. If they can't die, entrepreneurship and creativity will be the first casualties. And since your @$$hole of a boss will never retire now, you're in for quite a fun immortal time.
That concept of prolonging life forever seems to be a genial idea, but it does not come without a price, a price you cannot pay off with money. We all know what happens when people sell out their conscience. Remember Hilter's Nazis? Nothing good came out of these people and they also thought they were absolutely right.

Not smoking it! Read up on this stuff, it's entirely possible to do. They are freezing the innards of animals to be stored and used at a later date for replacement parts, they will be doing the same with humans soon. They have pretty good methods of cryonic preservation for humans already... it's only a matter of time and science. Immortality is completely possible.

The population won't be a problem, it's just a matter of getting priorities right. Young immortals don't get age related illnesses, so 17% of our GDP on healthcare becomes 1% and science and money gets devoted to humanity spreading out through space. Immortality is the lynch pin to so much more and such a brighter future.

Immortals already have a different way of thinking. We would simply solve all of those issues because we know we'll be around for what happens next.

Oh and lapinmort. One of the reasons I want to be immortal is because I have an insatiable appetite for entrepreneurial pursuits. Immortality is just the facilitator. No one wants to live to be lazy.

Assuming the technology and a myriad of other things, you would still have to have the economics and hence the peace and stability to sustain it.

Like DW was saying, nature attempts to return to equilibrium. If you have a bunch of immortals that the earth or heck just the economy cannot sustain, you will have war and chaos, while the system attempts to reduce the population by other means. This is what happens in various developing countries all the time. The natural system will also evolve new diseases through pestilence, and evolving microbes. Science would have to play catch up, as it is now with all the anti-biotic resistant bacteria that is already increasing. Also, if there are not enough resources to go around, governments will fall, warlords will rise up as will ensuing death and destruction and chaos.

I would way rather die a natural death that we know how to manage the pain of than get violently killed by some petty warlord's minion or something. Just my opinion.

I agree that no one wants to live to be lazy. That's why we spend a lot of time working on technology that will make our life easier right? In any case my friend the subject you breached relies on a heck of a lot of assumptions that are not vindicated by human history. And furthermore you will not resolve the Utnapishtim problem with mere assumptions and "immortals think different" as the basis of your quest. Gilgamesh also had pretty wild entrepreneurial pursuits, not unlike yours in fact. Just to give you an idea how old that particular pursuit of yours is (hint: begining of first human civilizations).

Not today, Galvatron.

I don't see immortals as being willing to go to war. Why die? That is our mentality, so war, murder and the death penalty are out of the question. Instead life will be filled with other pursuits, namely providing for all the people, and as I've said, that means expanding into space. Nature won't have to kill us, because we'll just manage our own population by moving people into space and to other planets... we'll have plenty of time for the travel after all. Why see the stars and not seek them out. Science moves faster than most people keeps up with, so what makes you think it will continually lag? Like I said, it's all about priorities and the value of human life. Not one of us is worth death.

If you feel the need to die however, I'm sure we will be able to let you age the old way. But I have a feeling you'll find there is more to life than waiting for death.

Please don't compare me to gilgamesh. He was a murderous rapist IIRC. Mankind has the history it does precisely because we don't live forever. People want so much and have such short lifespans that they are willing to do what we have done in history. If We were all immortal, don't you think we wouldn't worry so much about conquering things? Age is the disease from which many others come. Remove it, and life becomes much more peaceful. Who would die for a cause if they never accepted the notion of death or if they didn't know they had to die someday? Would Saddam Hussien have been able to motivate his people to the atrocities they faced if they were immortal? What could be promised to people in the afterlife? Simply because what we have now teaches us to separate and devalue the existential value of a person does not mean that this would be the case in an immortal society. Instead we would be forever young without the dire circumstances people face today, nothing could be lost that could not be gained again. Eventually technology will be able to take us anywhere we want to go, anything could happen, we could have a world in which no one suffers, and even if someone does, they will have a near infinite lifetime to recover. Your argument lacks the assumptions of progress. I don't think we make things to make our lives easier, we make these things to make our lives that much more efficient. It comes from the fundamental drive to live and make the best of life.

Imagine two people are immortal, describe a situation that assumes continuous technological progress and something that will show the limitations of immortality. Let's discuss.

Anyways, I didn't come here to argue the merits of immortality, I posted here in order to find a way to prepare the next generation for what I intend to provide them with. I don't mind discussing it, but think about it a little more. I don't mind dissent, but it should at least be well thought and make positive assumptions and not assume immortality won't change the nature of a man.

I didn't mean it as a provocation, sorry. I meant for it to be a question of motives and/or a challenge of your standpoint. Of course I could have read you wrong as you could have meant that something will eventually kill you if you live long enough. I however assume, that life can be preserved and repaired up until the time when the universe blinks out of existence or something which physicists predict will occur in enough years to fill a book with a one and a bunch of zeros. So there is plenty of time. Still however I don't think we can be sure... their's may be nothing more than the new Mayan apocalypse. I say we wait it out for a few trillion years of technological advancement before we make that assumption.

I agree that no one wants to live to be lazy. That's why we spend a lot of time working on technology that will make our life easier right? In any case my friend the subject you breached relies on a heck of a lot of assumptions that are not vindicated by human history. And furthermore you will not resolve the Utnapishtim problem with mere assumptions and "immortals think different" as the basis of your quest. Gilgamesh also had pretty wild entrepreneurial pursuits, not unlike yours in fact. Just to give you an idea how old that particular pursuit of yours is (hint: begining of first human civilizations).

Duplicate post? If not:

Oh and earlier societies have not had immortality. Believing in something isn't the same as having it and seeing it all around you. People struggle to believe in the lie we call religion, no one will struggle to believe what exists. They will just live with it

Please don't compare me to gilgamesh. He was a murderous rapist IIRC. Mankind has the history it does precisely because we don't live forever. People want so much and have such short lifespans that they are willing to do what we have done in history. If We were all immortal, don't you think we wouldn't worry so much about conquering things? Age is the disease from which many others come. Remove it, and life becomes much more peaceful. Who would die for a cause if they never accepted the notion of death or if they didn't know they had to die someday? Would Saddam Hussien have been able to motivate his people to the atrocities they faced if they were immortal? What could be promised to people in the afterlife? Simply because what we have now teaches us to separate and devalue the existential value of a person does not mean that this would be the case in an immortal society. Instead we would be forever young without the dire circumstances people face today, nothing could be lost that could not be gained again. Eventually technology will be able to take us anywhere we want to go, anything could happen, we could have a world in which no one suffers, and even if someone does, they will have a near infinite lifetime to recover. Your argument lacks the assumptions of progress. I don't think we make things to make our lives easier, we make these things to make our lives that much more efficient. It comes from the fundamental drive to live and make the best of life.

Imagine two people are immortal, describe a situation that assumes continuous technological progress and something that will show the limitations of immortality. Let's discuss.

Anyways, I didn't come here to argue the merits of immortality, I posted here in order to find a way to prepare the next generation for what I intend to provide them with. I don't mind discussing it, but think about it a little more. I don't mind dissent, but it should at least be well thought and make positive assumptions and not assume immortality won't change the nature of a man.

I suppose my mind is trapped by the fact that I have never met an immortal, and thus don't know how an immortal could possibly live in a world made up of mortals and other cyclical systems rather than linear ones. It's the cycles that don't die. People die, other people are born. In order to become immortal, you will have to break that cycle and a heck of a lot of other things. And you will likely have to hurt and possibly kill a lot of people in the process. I can only rely on what I know about my own kind. Being immortal is an interesting concept, but I don't see it as something I would aspire to. Then again, I wouldn't do it on principles, just knowing what I know about my own kind and what it's capable of. My own kind for one, though capable of good and amazing things, is also known to be able to make someone's life pretty miserable, immortal or not. The only immortal said to have roamed the Earth I know of, as a baptized but not so religious Christian, was Jesus the son of God, and all Christians were brought up to know how that ended up, and were made to feel guilty about it, so that they could be bent under the will of some old guy in a robe, and pointy red hat with a fancy ring on his sausage finger.
If you indeed find a way to make people immortal, guess who will be the first people to approach you? I say good luck dealing with government agents, evil people, greedy people and cowards who are afraid of death. You'll have the Saddams of the world trying to take it from you. Our own government might convene Congressional committees or military operations to take it from you in the name of American freedom and national security (as if there was such a thing as security to start with), which is an oxymoron we hear every day in the news.

I was explaining the sarcasm which I found amusing. I personally think Its sad to tell your children that they can not die....wouldnt it be horrible if the parent or sibling died and the child was waiting for them to come back. I worked in the medical field for years and my husband is a Biologist and a Genetics professor...its not possible....maybe some day, doubtful, but certainly not in our lifetime. Besides there are hardly enough resources to sustain the people on this planet, can you imagine if we were immortal....wed be in trouble then...the seas would be dead as they are dying now, as humans we tend to ignore what we dont see! We would eat and drink all that we could and rape the world of all its natural resources. Wed die from immortality, how ironic would that be?

I don't think we currently possess the technology to revive people that are cryogenically frozen. Won't ice crystals rip up your cells?

Killing won't have to happen to achieve immortality and as I've said we don't kill people, we don't believe in it in any form. We don't have to kill people to maintain room for ourselves, we just need get our priorities straight as I said before. We need to move into space and put every available resource into the immortalist transformation. The resources we need are out there, we have perhaps the best solar system for what we want to do, everything we need to expand, we have right here. There will be no need for killing of culling of any population. Perhaps fewer children will be born, but when we are healthy enough to have kids at 200 that are just as healthy as the kids we would have at 20, why not work longer and prepare more for having them? Imagine being able to stop working for 20-40 years to raise a family on the interest from your investments. No need to ever worry or stress about money, no compromises involved in spending time with your family, you just have kids and devote most of your time to them and personal enrichment. We're all in it to make a community, some of us to raise a family.

Sure, not playing religion is refusing to play ball with DHS, but DHS has no right to make any of us play religion. IMHO, no one has a right to propagate a lie that will determine how one chooses to lives their lives and nearly leads to suicide for some. Religion as a whole will be the murderer of the this century if it gets in the way of immortality. The next genocide may be of immortals or those seeking it. In any case, DHS could just change religion to make it immortality friendly. We could write a new one that doesn't have a god, something like taoism, confuscionism, or buddism. Base the religion around our immortality and hand it out to the people who still believe in god to let them know that you don't mean to exclude them anymore. In essence, general amnesty. Once immortality brightens everyone's future, we won't need nearly the amount of protection as we once had. Immortality and perpetual youth will prevent people from flying planes into buildings and blowing themselves up for whatever their purpose... I doubt that it is about dieing to go to heaven. At that point they must already know that heaven is just an understanding we have about the life we live right now. It seems that only because of wars and the need to interfere with other countries that we need it. If we were like the rest of the world and just lived and let live without forcing our ways on others, we'd be fine. Of course all of the things we are fighting against are motivated by death anyways... so why not just remove death from the equation so people stop feeling the way they do about things based on their mortality. When we stone someone proverbially, we take an irreplaceable part of their life from them. How can we possibly compensate them for their suffering and sacrifice but by providing immortality to them? Who gave anyone the right to devalue another person's life like that? Can one's father or grandfather or great great great great great grandfather do that and have it not considered to be child abuse? Some of our best are some of the worst. IMO, the system we have creates ignorance and leads to our problems, so we say that because we know what the problems are going to be because of the system we've created is transforming all problems into a format, it is now manageable. It works, but at a cost. Let's stop paying the price, these are people in our families that we are talking about. People that decide to take their lives and never really know why they even did it. The knife in their hearts for a world they never even knew. It is just too ironic. If you like that it happens, there is something wrong with you. If you play like it's okay to fit in to an evil society that doesn't even exist for your own survival, isn't that pretty messed up? Let's be done with this silly system and all its sacrifice and pain and having to watch and be fearful of one another... Let there be immortality!



Exactly how immortals might contribute to the social pretense of the DHS isn't something I know anything about. But if no one chooses to play religion we will just have to find another way to protect our country. I see social pretense to be a limiter of freedom personally. It is the antithesis of what I believed America was growing up. It seems that only because of wars and the need to interfere with other countries that we need it. If we were like the rest of the world and just lived and let live without forcing our ways on others, we'd be fine. But instead we have the massive failures we have in the world today and reserves around the world are getting ready to collapse. I've seen nothing but the failure of the US economy for my entire life, there were some good parts and some bad parts, but the management has failed to bring about American prosperity. What we have today just doesn't work. It's time for something new and immortality comes with it's own economic benefits.

Right now it looks to me like the economy is being manipulated to put money in the hands of a group chosen by the government and religion in an attempt to change the nature of the USA and ensure their place at the head of it. It means that not everyone has the same inherent opportunity, we are moving towards a caste system where social class will be determined by those in power of either government or religion, not by one's entrepreneurial drive. I've thought other things in the past, but I don't think I've ever been as close as I am now to having it figured out.