Immortality

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I'm already really board after the first 20 years....

I'm with NeoPlatonist. I am bored after 53 years.

I look on death as an ecological necessity, because without death there will be none of the cyclical mechanisms that work on our biosphere. If there were a cure for death, the earth would become seriously over-populated, and will soon only go so far before the whole ecosystem crashes. So our "cure" for death would only be short lived.

I'm immortal, the only way I will die is if someone takes my head. Then The Quickening will happen to that great warrior.

I'm the same as Kamex, I would love to live forever and indeed I plan to. With science evolving as it is, I'm betting there will be life-extension to be able to live to say 120 within the next 40 years (which I would otherwise have left on average). So within those 50 years that are then left up to 120, I'm betting there will be further life extension, etc etc etc etc ad infinitum. Eventually it will be possible to get transferred to a computer, but why would you want to? Much better to just have a regular biological body that re-generates itself (and there is nothing in the natural laws against that). As a lizard can regenerate its tail, we will eventually be able to regenerate everything.
I want to learn all there is to learn and experience everywhere.
If death was 'cured' in this way, we wouldn't necessarilly overpopulate the earth, all we have to do is colonize other planets...

This post is for eipsa:
Right you are! Assuming that we're not too stupid (as a species) to avoid blowing ourselves to atoms, that is.
Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity is Near

I expect to die. I am at peace with this. Many old people (>65yrs) that I've talked to look forward to death as being rest. Interestingly, their peace with the matter is often inversely correlated with their degree of belief in an afterlife. I have comments on this that I will withhold.

I also expect that science will cure death. I have many secular ethical questions as to whether or not a human psyche can handle immortality, but I'll be damned if we refuse to try. (Lots of word-play in there)

Oh no's! My MRI read your mind!
We move closer every day to the ultimate goal of Mind-transfer.

We live in exciting times, friends.

i don't want to live forever as I'm not sure i will like the world in the future. i don't like change and I'm used to the way we live.

I remember when my parents frequently speaking of "old times". Times before they had ever met and got married. What upset me was the notion that I did not exist in those "old times" and it kind of put a chill up my spine. So I found not existing for an eternity into the past upset me far more than not existing for an eternity into the future. The future was a mystery to everyone one, but the past was rich with events which I was denied a part. I did not desire to by immortal so much as being innatal, as I dreaded the thought of my life terminating at my birth and going no further.

I think it's a matter of being mature, knowing that there are more important things then ONE persons life. i.e. a balance between the human beings as a race living, versus one individual or individuals pitting themselves against one another foolishly in contests of domination that costs more resources, and suffering... instead of being rational and taking their lives peacefully.

Nature is evil, just because nature is evil doesn't mean men have to be. But most men are trapped in their primal instinctual psychology, their automatic biological systems through up "walls of emotional fire" that control their behaviour automatically against a persons wishes.

I know this because I've attempted suicide before, and I broke through my psychological barriers. Most people never will.

Some people say that death is a sickness, and that there's a cure for it. I actually kind of believe that with how medical technology is making people live longer.

But like you, NeoPlatonist, I don't want to live forever either. Hell, I don't want to live past my usefulness. Once I'm an unemployed octogenerian living off of social security (or lack thereof) who's no longer contributing to society AND can't take care of myself anymore, that's when I want to die.

I think once people start living to be 120 on average, that's too old. We'll have too many old folk on our hands...

Fair enough. And reasonable too.
But what if you could live as intelligent software in a simulated world? What if you didn't require any more resources that 100mA trickling into a CPU somewhere?

Your quality of life could be whatever you wished it to be, and your usefulness might be enriching your culture, discovering new science, exploring the Universe, or simply being a living memory-source for younger historians.
People may very well choose to end their lives (or sleep on a hard disk for a millennium), but why waste all the effort that went into making a sapient life?

I don't believe in God; I cannot believe in a god no matter how hard I try, but I do believe the universe because there was no designer to guide the way it instead simply stumbled across every possible error and in doing so stumbled on a means to be aware of its own existence and be not so oblivious to any era of time no matter how long. Even with the 13.7billion years of time preceeding your birth.
So I think you must exist in one state or another and you are alive in this world because you are dead or yet to be born in millions of other alternative worlds.

You bastard! You lucky, lucky bastard!! !

Pratchett rocks, nuff said.

But anyway, immortallity i would dispise, but a tripled, even quadtrupled lifespan? Yes please. I think anyone who would want to become immortal should read Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire: Before i read it, i wanted to become immortal. However, there's always a price to pay, and as Rice hypothesises, that price is often one's own humanity.

Put it this way, we grow, develop our personalities in and become who we are in the light of a particular situation, a particular society. That way of life gradually shifts and changes, but think about how over time people become more and more locked into that time frame, that way of thinking as the world gradually moving onwards. We'd become alien to the world we live in (as if it wasn't alien enough already), losing everything we cared about: family, friends, favourate actors/authors, archetecture, stuff we feel at home with. It would be like a divorce with reality: we'd be so locked in the time period encompasing our first 50/60 years of life that we could never truely adapt to the world around us.

And that would be maddening.

But certainly an increased life-span. I mean i believe we reincarnate anyway, so death's a bit of a moot point, but i'd certainly like a long and furfilled life before i pass on.

Been there, got three books signed: The Colour of Magic, Reaper Man and The Science of Discworld II: The Globe. His signature in Reaper Man was the funniest: To **** (my name, censored for my privacy), Read it and Reap, Terry Pratchett

Nice one. Personally i have managed to meet him once when he was doing book signings for Night Watch, got a picture of him and me up on my wall.

But damn lucky :p. It's good that we love an author who's also a keen booksigner

Oh man, I'm happy as hell that life isn't infinite. When the end comes, I'll have freaking earned it.