Poll: What's the attraction to being immortal?

[Zaverexus]

I would have zero desire to be immortal unless I had at least one other person to be immortal with me. And even then its hazy. I'm not one to say everything is as it is for a reason, but I don't think anyone could really enjoy living for thousands of years. At some point it becomes pointless: why do anything if you have an eternity to get it done and everything is just going to change or die anyway? A short life gives us motivation to live.

 

[KelsieKatt]

One of the problems I see with someone wanting to be immortal (assuming we're going with the "they're special" theory and not everyone gets it) is that eventually your legal records are going to catch up to you and someone is going to notice that your age doesn't match your appearance which will lead to all kinds of legal trouble.

Then eventually when they realize you actually are immortal, you'll likely get tracked down and potentially experimented on and if the general public finds out, you'll be outed as a freak and subject to all sorts of hate crimes and protest, and religious fanatics following you around on a regular basis trying to steal your hair/clothes/etc so they can tell everyone how they "touched god" and have some of his/her stuff.

 

[Jack O'Shea]

for me the attraction to living for eternity is funnily enough living for eternity. As a lazy person without any great ambition, i fear that i will pass on before i could do any of the things that interest me, but with all of time i could be as lazy as i want and still not run out of time. (unless the world explodes but by then i think i would have resigned myself to death). The outliving all your friends and family would be hard but as the youngest of my family that is technically my fate anyway. As to friends, people don't always keep the same friends, do you have al your childhood friends with you now and do you think you will stay as close in the future.

also the language thing is fine so long as you dont cloister yourself away for a century

 

[Gecko clown]

After watching Dr who AND the montage from the Lord of the Rings where Arwen stands over Aragorn's dead body for eternity I never want to be immortal.

 

[Jake the Snake]

I love this world, I am wondered by it, and I want to spend so much more time on it than what I've been given. If I could live forever, I could do it all. See it all. And that would make up for the heartache.

 

[Hazy992]

I've noticed on these forums that a lot of people seem to like the idea of being immortal. So I was just wondering; why? I mean think about it.

First off, you've got the fact that you have to watch every single one of your loved ones die.

Then you've got the fact that within a few hundred years you'd be unable to communicate with anyone due to language changes, and eventually you wouldn't even look human anymore thanks to evolution. You'd be treated like a freak and likely ostracised by everyone. Although it's not like you'd be able to actually form relationships with anyone as by this point time would be moving so fast for you entire lifetimes would be gone in the blink of an eye.

Then there's the prospect of you inevitably being trapped somewhere for an eternity. And what happens the earth eventually blows up? Do you just float through space forever?

I know this is a bit of a rant and it's not like it can ever happen, but I was just curious.

TL;DR Why do you want to be immortal? There's some major drawbacks to it.


EDIT: There should be a poll here. Just say if you would be immortal or not I guess

Why don't you just directly link the Cracked article next Time? You pretty much made a 1 to 1 copy of it.

People like the idea of being immortal because most of them aren't thinking it through.

With immortatility the probability of something happening to you will become 1. It will be inevitable. Cracked illustrated that with being trapped.

Cause I forgot about the Cracked article, alright?

 

[HimochiIsAwesome]

I suppose, people who wish to be immortal don't think things through. Wishing to live until you wanted to die would be best, because then, when you've had enough of life, you can die, but, bah~

 

[Old Father Eternity]

Simply just cause. People come and go, as they would in normal life, though it helps if you do not get attached easily. Language is no problem in itself, although, there is a limit as to how much information your brain can coherently process(why do you think most seers are depicted with a few loose nuts and bolt spewing out riddles and seemingly incoherent mumbo-jumbo)granted you remember everything that has come to pass. As pointed out, human evolution is not that fast, true, over a extremely elongated period major physical changes can occur but things can also change internally, so the visual differences may be negligible. Then again there is also the possibility that while you are immortal(you don not die of old age or diseases), your body could still adapt and change according the the conditions, although granted it might much slower then normal people, or part of the reason you are immortal is in fact advanced evolutionary mechanisms which render you basically immune any sort of contagion and probably most toxins(would also help with the information overload induced insanity issue). True, this race of blundering apes could fade before reaching space,leaving you alone, to wither slowly, however that would be a risk One would be willing to take considering the nigh infinite possibilities.

 

[pendragonown]

My want for immortality? The games. Being able to live through all the advances in the gaming industry would be a dream come true. Sure it would be slightly sad that loved ones would pass away but come on. You live forever. You'll find new loved ones over the years.

 

[mad825]

Some are people delusionally overoptimistic about the idea of immortality as they don't take into account how much a mortal life can be just a grind in-itself, even through you are physically immortal you are not psychologically immortal meaning that you can break yourself in a mental state. You still die.

 

[mad825]

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

TL;DR Why do you want to be immortal? There's some major drawbacks to it.

EDIT: There should be a poll here. Just say if you would be immortal or not I guess

Also, ignore the language thing. Probably didn't think that one through.

Our only real opportunities to have a go at immortality are limited:

1) get down, exchange bodily fluids, impregnate, rinse, repeat
2) be really, really good at writing smart stuff
3) paint things people want to look at and pay money or get criminal to obtain and own
4) ?

People approaching the notion of immortality in a Highlander kind of way amuse me. If the Highlander, although an entertaining movie, portrayed our immortal bro numero uno as a cross-eyed frenchie with not too shabby a bod, I feel an urge to ask the following:

Would you want to be immortal with annoying physical or mental defects? Probably not. In my books, true immortality would take note of things the Axolotl, some lizards and amoebas seem to do right. But I would probably not enjoy being an Axolotl, a lizard or an amoeba much, so it's mortality all the way for me. Except the part where we get down and dirty and make babies. I enjoy that one quite a bit.

 

[cannot_aim]

It depends partially on how you define immortal or how you come to be immortal, I think that technology will advance to the point where everyone becomes immortal but for the sake of this thread lets assume its only me who becomes immortal, its by magic, and that no one else will ever be immortal. Of course there are drawbacks to being immortal but all the ones you listed, except for watching everyone you love die, are totally incorrect.

If you went back 300-400 years you could still communicate with people who spoke english so why do you think the language would change so significantly in the future and why couldn't you pick up the new words as they popped up in your own language just like we do now?

As to humans not recognizing you because they evolve, do you have any idea how evolution works? It wouldn't fundamentally change the look of humans in 100 years, hell not even in 1000 years. You could easily stay in public for that time and as technology and evolution slowly start to change how humans look you could easily incorporate the new technology into your body or just get surgery to make you look like other people, something which we can already do today.

Time wouldn't speed up for someone who doesn't die they would experience all the same things that we do, the good and the bad. The person could still get to know people and have real and meaningful relationships, the real question is would they want to. Anyone you became close with would eventually die and you couldn't do anything about it. I believe that the fear of loss or the pain of losing everyone you care about would be the thing that keeps them from developing relationships not because of

time moving so fast for you entire lifetimes would be gone in the blink of an eye.

I obviously cannot prove this because I'm not actually immortal but this is what makes the most sense to me.

 

[MrThisguy978]

i'm not really sure where you're going with that evolution thing, things dont evolve within a hundred and if they did it probably wouldnt be anything clearly visible or even matter that much.

As for the world exploding, I've always seen i9mmortality being you cannot die of age or even disease, but if something explodes in front of you immortality isnt going to stop the skin from being ripped off your face. And immortality is going to stop your atoms from being separated if you happen a across a black hole to closely.

OT:Yes, because of all the things you can learn, all the experiences you can go through. Even if all your loved ones die they will probably have children and they will have children themselves etc.



Also whether the earth gets destroyed by some mean or another the milky way is going to collide with another galaxy far far in the future, so we're screwed either way.

 

[Agow95]

What do you mean "we wouldn't look human anymore"? Evolution is through genetic mutations through the generations, in other words, my descendants and other humans will eventually no-longer be human, that's why I can't develop down's syndrome or ADHD, they're genetic and my DNA doesn't change or mutate, my cells may mutate, and become tumours, but that's entirely different, and about the time thing, that's just relativity, if I get buried in concrete then yeah, I will lose track of time, and sure when you age time seems to pass by faster, there is a limit, I still have bodily functions, I won't just sit down to have a nap and a year passes by because I still have stuff to do, I would be Immortal because I don't want to die, I'm atheist so when I'm floating through space undying, not needing to eat or whatever, the only difference between that and being dead with no afterlife is that I am conscious.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

As to humans not recognizing you because they evolve, do you have any idea how evolution works? It wouldn't fundamentally change the look of humans in 100 years, hell not even in 1000 years. You could easily stay in public for that time and as technology and evolution slowly start to change how humans look you could easily incorporate the new technology into your body or just get surgery to make you look like other people, something which we can already do today.

This almost feels like open discussion groups on logic. Or a brainstorm on theoretical mathematics.

Let's have a closer, more discriminating look at the surgery option.

If your body is, per definition, immortal, it would repair damage caused by outside forces, even the usually lethal ones, say, a high-calibre bullet travelling relatively unhindered through your flesh and bones, rupturing blood vessels, causing quite a mess. Being immortal, your body would just patch those up very quickly; it can do this because you are immortal.

If your body can do that, what makes you think surgery is an option? The moment the surgeon cuts you up using a scalpel or some LASER or a chainsaw, your body will just patch itself up again. So, going with this still very basic understanding of the ever-healing immortal body, which is of course heavily against the laws of nature and physics and rotting flesh, surgery is not really in the cards. Have a look at all the scars you've accumulated so far. There's the burn from saving last weekend's almost charcoaled pizza form the oven. There's the bit where the dog bit you. There's the little scar you got from the appendectomy. If you were proper immortal, your body would be much better at regenerating itself, and these flaws (scar tissue) would not exist. However, to reach 100% regeneration skill, you would have to change the way how blood works not only on a cellular but probably at a sub-atomic level. The only way to do that is, to my knowledge, magic. We can do great things with our minds, such as withstand tremendous amounts of pain, regenerate somewhat faster and overcome extreme trauma. But those tricks have also been played out by dogs and other creatures with less bloated brains. Mind over matter does work in many ways, but making us immortal seems ludicrous beyond the fishbowl heads in Futurama, really.

 

[Arina Love]

you can become observer of humanity, well and live forever, there will be no problem with language and i don't care about friends and family.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Think about it. Time is the most important resource any of us have. You can't trade it, buy it (directly), and you don't even know how much left you've got. We all try to figure out if something is worth doing by how much time it takes. You're usually not paid by how much work you do, but how long you work. People worry about things 'taking years off' their life. Everyone rushes about and multitasks because we all know we have a limited time on this Earth.

Now insert immortality into the equation and the whole thing changes. You have infinite time. No biological clock ticking down to your end. You can slow down, focus on whatever you want, and take it easy. Why? Because you know you'll have more time. You're removed from the rat race of life and have unlimited access to the most important resource of life. Time.

 

[Dan Steele]

I would not want to live forever for pretty much the reasons that you stated, lets not also forget you would always be on the run because some country is going to want you for military research if your immortal. Plus I'm curious to see what happens after death, before you ask no I am not religious.