If you could live forever...

[Tenebrous]

As scary as the subject is about death, mortality is the way I would take. Imagine being alive forever, and those friends that you had? Replaced by new ones. By some point, Earth would only be a birthplace of a species that had no right to become immortal, rather than a mix of a burial grounds.

This question makes me bring this topic in relationships: If you knew Hitler would kill millions of people, would you kill him as a baby?

It would be impulsive for someone to say yes, but tbh if he didn't do that then the world would be way different, possibly to the point where you don't exist

 

[Tenebrous]

I don't see it ever happening, for many reasons. There's just too many conflicting things - greed, space, anger, so it wouldn't be good for the world. This is the kind of thing Vsauce would do a video on, I don't know if he's already done it xD

It'll be for the rich at first

Russian Billionaire right there^

 

[KiDD]

It'll be for the rich at first

Russian Billionaire right there^

Definitely interesting, and if it were to ever happen, it would be long in the future. The fact that it'd be an option part also seems like a problem because what if a relative does not want one of their relatives to die, but that relative no longer wants to live? I see issues with it that way.

 

[LilBub]

I'd love to live forever, learning all languages, eventually see the day humans evolve to use other parts of their brain, travel the world, try different careers Would be very interesting

 

[Tenebrous]

Definitely interesting, and if it were to ever happen, it would be long in the future. The fact that it'd be an option part also seems like a problem because what if a relative does not want one of their relatives to die, but that relative no longer wants to live? I see issues with it that way.

Within our lifetime imo.

 

[KiDD]

Within our lifetime imo.

I meant it as when it's fully integrated, as a normal thing, if that made any sense. xD Like, if someone said one day "I don't want to die," they could become immortal, without it being a quite awkward, and scary. When it first happens, it'd be really scary, in my opinion.

 

[Yamori]

For me, living forever would be pointless. I'd sit around and watch my friends perish, whilst I wouldn't be at all. I think that I would reach a point where I would not have a purpose to live anymore. I think we would all reach that point if we lived forever.

 

[Lebron12]

Overpopulation would become a problem if everyone was given this option ^.^

 

[Tuatara]

For some people, it’s easy to dismiss the concept of immortality as fantasy. Or to believe that, even if it were a possibility, they wouldn’t want it. Call it arrogance. Or anxiety, maybe.

Recent biomedical advancements in the research spheres of stem cells, molecular repair, cloning, synthetic organs and cybernetics are already improving people’s life expectancy. Now scientists are daring to believe those developments could soon stop ageing decisively. Life extension. The end of death, bar fatal trauma.

The initial therapies are the hard bit: tissue engineering (creating organs in a lab and transplanting them), stem cell therapy (injecting ‘repair’ cells into the patient) and molecular regenerative medicine (repairing cells within the body). Current thinking is that there’s a 50% chance of getting it all done within 25 years.

Those therapies would be applied to middle-aged people, whose bodies haven’t suffered any serious damage. It would grant another 30 years of healthy life. Then when the patient comes back after 30 years the new therapies would have improved. The patient would be rejuvenated for longer. Therapies would improve again. The patient would not age. In the business of beating death, this is known as ‘longevity escape velocity’.

Even if you don’t escape and fatal trauma shuts the gate before we’ve all bolted, it’s not the end. You can come back. In the past two years, improved availability of cryonic techniques have sparked a price-war between clinics all over the world. From those in the US offering eternal-life insurance for $30 (£20) a month, all the way to a centre outside Moscow where they’ll preserve your head for as little as £6,000, coming back from the beyond is suddenly far less far-fetched. However much or little you pay, the promise is the same – suspension of your being until a time when death isn’t death any more.

We’re used to death, though. It’s ‘just a part of life’. Death has a psychological stranglehold over us; we’ve convinced ourselves it’s good because we think we can’t do anything about it. We’re afraid of immortality because it’s unfamiliar. We come up with ‘crazy’ reasons why it would be bad. We say we’d be bored; there’d be too many of us; dictators would terrorise forever. We want death instead.

But immortality is too important to sweep under the exisistential carpet. After all, billions of lives are at stake. Your life is at stake. Mine is too. For me , a history of early strokes in the family, atheist – death is increasingly real and terrifying. The scientists are claiming that it needn’t be the former; the philosophers say the latter shouldn’t worry you. Who should you believe? If the scientists are right, why don’t we embrace them as the saviours of a world’s worth of existences? Are we more scared of their eternal life than our own death? It’s immortalists vs deathists. Whose side are you on?

 

[Braden]

Losing loved ones/friends and getting extremely bored is just too much for me. I would never take immortality. That's just me, though.

 

[Mamiamato24]

Like 95% of people who reply to this thread wouldn't want to live forever. What's the point of this thread?

 

[Tenebrous]

Like 95% of people who reply to this thread wouldn't want to live forever. What's the point of this thread?

To discuss, personally I would.