A green kool-aid man from the future shows up at your front door. You let him in (he seems trustworthy enough) and he gives you a box. Inside the box, there is a magic gummi bear that, when eaten, gives whoever ate it immortality. You live forever and cannot be physically harmed or killed. You feel pain, but it is greatly nulled and maxes out at like a 3 on the 1-10 pain-o-meter. Do you eat the gummi bear?
Now at first the answer may seem obvious. "Why wouldn't I eat it?" you may ask. However, I reccomend reading this Cracked article. If your too lazy to read it I will provide a short summary.
1. Evolution will turn you into a freak: Over thousands of years something better, stronger, faster, and smarter will likely develop from humans, leaving you left behind as a freak.
2. Nobody can ever find out: If you've got immortality then everybody will want it. Governments, CEO's, the masses, you name it. And they don't care what they have to do to get it.
3. You're still getting older (mentally): You will be forced to remember everything that happens over the course of infinity, which your brain just isn't built to do.
4. Time speeds up till you're insane: As time flies by, your different friends, loves, and lives slowly fade from your memory, making 50 years seem relatively equal to a saturday night.
5. You will eventually get trapped there forever: Eventually, you will get trapped in a pile of rubble, or the rest of the human race gets wiped out, and you till be trapped there forever.
If you have any questions about that list, read the article. It is way more detailed and well written than the above summary.
1. Evolution will turn you into a freak. At the moment it kind of seems like humanity has gone from physical evolution to more of a mental one, since we build tools to help us do things that we would have had to evolve to do previously (like fly). Humanity might actually become mostly immune to physical evolution in the long run, so I'm willing to take that chance.
2. Yeah, that might kind of suck, but on the other hand it gives you incentive to constantly move and see new places, and if you keep doing that no one will find out that you're immortal.
3. You'd be surprised as to what your brain can do. If it finds something to be unimportant, it'll forget it, so I won't ever actually be remembering all of eternity. Once it's 2500 I probably won't remember much from 1990 because it would no longer be relevant to me, past a few key memories.
4. Again, not necessarily true. This would require that the human brain work in a way that it doesn't.
5. If I'm immortal then the rubble will deteriorate before I do, so all I have to do is outlast it.
Also, just to point out, even if the rest of the human race ends up getting wiped out, it would mean very little to me over all. The universe it vast, and I would have all of time. If I have eternity I would be able to one day figure out how to build a space craft, and would leave earth to seek out new planets. Wouldn't have to worry about ever running out of air, food, or water, and wouldn't have to worry about landing on planets with inhospitable climates since I would be immortal. Just think about it. Even with the human race gone, you'll always have something to do.
The bad thing about going to space is that it's very plausible that you could be sucked into the gravitational field of a massive planet like Jupiter which has a surface that is covered in liquid metallic hydrogen. Not only would you be in liquid metal, but the intense gravity would pull you down to the bottom and you would never be able to even lift a finger. Sure its possible that someday the something crazy could destroy the planet and free you, but then what if your pulled into a star or worse a black hole?
I would still eat the gummy bear, but there are some scary things that could happen on earth and some far scarier things that could happen in space. You would be insane by then for sure anyway, but it would still suck balls.
But we don't even know what's inside of black holes. Think about it, you'd be the first person to survive and see what's on the other side. Maybe there's cake!
I'm pretty sure that when your being sucked into a black hole and you get to the event horizon surrounding it you will be able to see all of the past and future at once, so that will be fun. Also it may be that on the other side of a black hole is a white hole that is spewing matter into a new universe and that would be awesome to see. Still things could go wrong what if you find that a black hole is really just a giant alien spider pit.
Then you fight your way out of the spider pit with your bare hands, like a goddamn man! Remember, you're immortal, there is absolutely nothing to fear, the spiders can't hurt you.
That cracked article is silly. I have few memories from a decade ago, I'm not going to get overloaded by memories from a thousand years ago, I'll just forget them.
As for the end of the world... all I'd have to do is earn shit load of money during my endless life and build a spaceship. I'd need no life support except maybe heating and some kind of atmosphere, no food, no water and it doesn't matter if it was slow as all hell because I'm going to live forever anyway. Solar sails my friend. Solar sails.
That way if the world ends before feasible inter stellar travel is invented then at least one of our species is going to go to another solar system. Even if it takes bloody ages. I'll just sleep or something
Or I could get a swimming pool's worth of anaesthetic and knock myself out for the duration of the trip and/or forever.
I was suprised to read the poll results showing 67% of the escapist taking immortality. You're basically buying a few short decades (or centuries, or millenia whatever) of time that you wish death hadnt robbed you of for INFINITE years of time you don't want to be alive for. It would be tormented living death the likes of which are little exceeded by christian images of hell. I guess that means two thirds of the escapist are composed of morons.
Live for several centuries? Sure. No way to die at all? No thank you.
Don Savik said:
What kind of hipster douchebag answers no? Seriously? LIVING FOREVER. You could rule the world by default, no questions asked. Could get boring? Did imagination die in the past 5 years and I just haven't noticed it or something? Too much depression on this forum. Lighten ups.
You call it being a 'hipster douchebag', I call it having foresight. Boredom is actually the least of the problems. Now, I wouldn't mind living for a few centuries, or even a few millenia, but the 'cannot die' clause is a dealbreaker for me. Some day, many years down the road, life on Earth will cease to exist. Inevitably, this will happen before our sun stops shining (when it hits its Red Giant phase (which is estimated to occur in 5 billion years) it will be large enough to engulf the Earth). In a best case scenario, you'll have started planet hopping by then. Worst case scenario, you'll be stuck on the sun for all eternity. Now, in the best case scenario you're looking at finding a new planet to either colonize (assuming you weren't the only escapee) or take you in as a refugee, which you'd better hope happens before you run out of fuel, or else you'll again find yourself stranded. Either way though, you'll last until and beyond the time where every star in the sky stops burning. At which point you're faced not only with the rest of eternity alone in total darkness. It is this endgame that makes me despise the concept of immortality. I don't hate the idea of living for a very long time, I hate the idea of seeing the last of the stars themselves die while I continue to endure, unable to die myself. If you'd been absurdly good at rationing resources and repairing/inventing tech, you might be able to stave off that result for a while, but it's a losing battle against inevitability.
Also, if you cannot be injured at all, you wouldn't be able to put on muscle. Muscle growth is caused by micro-tears in the muscular fibres due to working out being repaired and healed. If you can't get injured, you can't tear your muscle fibres, and you can't put on muscle mass.
A green kool-aid man from the future shows up at your front door. You let him in (he seems trustworthy enough) and he gives you a box. Inside the box, there is a magic gummi bear that, when eaten, gives whoever ate it immortality. You live forever and cannot be physically harmed or killed. You feel pain, but it is greatly nulled and maxes out at like a 3 on the 1-10 pain-o-meter. Do you eat the gummi bear?
Now at first the answer may seem obvious. "Why wouldn't I eat it?" you may ask. However, I reccomend reading this Cracked article. If your too lazy to read it I will provide a short summary.
1. Evolution will turn you into a freak: Over thousands of years something better, stronger, faster, and smarter will likely develop from humans, leaving you left behind as a freak.
2. Nobody can ever find out: If you've got immortality then everybody will want it. Governments, CEO's, the masses, you name it. And they don't care what they have to do to get it.
3. You're still getting older (mentally): You will be forced to remember everything that happens over the course of infinity, which your brain just isn't built to do.
4. Time speeds up till you're insane: As time flies by, your different friends, loves, and lives slowly fade from your memory, making 50 years seem relatively equal to a saturday night.
5. You will eventually get trapped there forever: Eventually, you will get trapped in a pile of rubble, or the rest of the human race gets wiped out, and you till be trapped there forever.
If you have any questions about that list, read the article. It is way more detailed and well written than the above summary.
1. Evolution will turn you into a freak. At the moment it kind of seems like humanity has gone from physical evolution to more of a mental one, since we build tools to help us do things that we would have had to evolve to do previously (like fly). Humanity might actually become mostly immune to physical evolution in the long run, so I'm willing to take that chance.
2. Yeah, that might kind of suck, but on the other hand it gives you incentive to constantly move and see new places, and if you keep doing that no one will find out that you're immortal.
3. You'd be surprised as to what your brain can do. If it finds something to be unimportant, it'll forget it, so I won't ever actually be remembering all of eternity. Once it's 2500 I probably won't remember much from 1990 because it would no longer be relevant to me, past a few key memories.
4. Again, not necessarily true. This would require that the human brain work in a way that it doesn't.
5. If I'm immortal then the rubble will deteriorate before I do, so all I have to do is outlast it.
Also, just to point out, even if the rest of the human race ends up getting wiped out, it would mean very little to me over all. The universe it vast, and I would have all of time. If I have eternity I would be able to one day figure out how to build a space craft, and would leave earth to seek out new planets. Wouldn't have to worry about ever running out of air, food, or water, and wouldn't have to worry about landing on planets with inhospitable climates since I would be immortal. Just think about it. Even with the human race gone, you'll always have something to do.
The bad thing about going to space is that it's very plausible that you could be sucked into the gravitational field of a massive planet like Jupiter which has a surface that is covered in liquid metallic hydrogen. Not only would you be in liquid metal, but the intense gravity would pull you down to the bottom and you would never be able to even lift a finger. Sure its possible that someday the something crazy could destroy the planet and free you, but then what if your pulled into a star or worse a black hole?
I would still eat the gummy bear, but there are some scary things that could happen on earth and some far scarier things that could happen in space. You would be insane by then for sure anyway, but it would still suck balls.
But we don't even know what's inside of black holes. Think about it, you'd be the first person to survive and see what's on the other side. Maybe there's cake!
I'm pretty sure that when your being sucked into a black hole and you get to the event horizon surrounding it you will be able to see all of the past and future at once, so that will be fun. Also it may be that on the other side of a black hole is a white hole that is spewing matter into a new universe and that would be awesome to see. Still things could go wrong what if you find that a black hole is really just a giant alien spider pit.
Then you fight your way out of the spider pit with your bare hands, like a goddamn man! Remember, you're immortal, there is absolutely nothing to fear, the spiders can't hurt you.
I picked yes.
Conditions for eating this gummy bear:
Everyone who picked yes also becomes immortal with me.
Abnormal human traits (like less fatigue, not eating, not breathing, and so on)
And for the reason of picking yes, living longer let's you experience more, meet new people, learn new things. And since the human race always create new crap, you can't really get bored. And being immortal and gaining all this knowledge can help a person change the world for the better...or worse.
Now it would suck if someone shoved me into a safe (unbreakable) and then tossed it into the ocean....
Live for several centuries? Sure. No way to die at all? No thank you.
Don Savik said:
What kind of hipster douchebag answers no? Seriously? LIVING FOREVER. You could rule the world by default, no questions asked. Could get boring? Did imagination die in the past 5 years and I just haven't noticed it or something? Too much depression on this forum. Lighten ups.
You call it being a 'hipster douchebag', I call it having foresight. Boredom is actually the least of the problems. Now, I wouldn't mind living for a few centuries, or even a few millenia, but the 'cannot die' clause is a dealbreaker for me. Some day, many years down the road, life on Earth will cease to exist. Inevitably, this will happen before our sun stops shining (when it hits its Red Giant phase (which is estimated to occur in 5 billion years) it will be large enough to engulf the Earth). In a best case scenario, you'll have started planet hopping by then. Worst case scenario, you'll be stuck on the sun for all eternity. Now, in the best case scenario you're looking at finding a new planet to either colonize (assuming you weren't the only escapee) or take you in as a refugee, which you'd better hope happens before you run out of fuel, or else you'll again find yourself stranded. Either way though, you'll last until and beyond the time where every star in the sky stops burning. At which point you're faced not only with the rest of eternity alone in total darkness. It is this endgame that makes me despise the concept of immortality. I don't hate the idea of living for a very long time, I hate the idea of seeing the last of the stars themselves die while I continue to endure, unable to die myself. If you'd been absurdly good at rationing resources and repairing/inventing tech, you might be able to stave off that result for a while, but it's a losing battle against inevitability.
Can I also teleport at will? If not, then no. It would be a case like in the original Twilight Zone. A guy gets this exact power, and is bored. Then someone dies, and he lets himself be caught because he can't be killed even though that's the punishment. He's given life in prison.
I am extremely sure that would happen with me. With no fear, I'd immediately be seen as a bad guy since I would no longer restrain myself from trying to make the world a better place. Then get thrown in jail. If I can't escape that at a whim, then I'd say no.
I'd still probably say 'no' since no matter what I do, I doubt I'd ever get people to make the world an idyllic dreamland like some optimistic futurists imagine. I wouldn't want to stick around this world forever.
But then I also might say yes, and protect a forest or other place of natural beauty, knowing no one could stop me from protecting nature. Then again, over time, I'd probably only be able to protect what I'm standing in front of at the time, if that. So I guess no.
Screw it, yes. Something awesome might happen and I wanna see it. Curiosity killed... curiosity made the cat invincible.
I was suprised to read the poll results showing 67% of the escapist taking immortality. You're basically buying a few short decades (or centuries, or millenia whatever) of time that you wish death hadnt robbed you of for INFINITE years of time you don't want to be alive for. It would be tormented living death the likes of which are little exceeded by christian images of hell. I guess that means two thirds of the escapist are composed of morons.
Who says I wouldn't want to be alive for eternity? What a$$hole made the arbitrary decision that eternity was bad? After all, isn't that what the religious will preach to you in almost ALL of the world's major religions?
I personally would love it, an eternity to learn new things, meet new people and constantly experience life! Hell, if / when humanity wiped itself out I'd start exploring the rest of the galaxy. The one man SETI project begins now!
Don't apply your narrow personal view of eternity to the rest of us
Without a moment's hesitation. I understand the consequences and pitfalls of such a life, but I maintain that I can do a world of good with the time I have - and I have a damn lot of it. I can become an expert in any field, an athlete in any sport and a master of any craft.
More than anything I can be the most reliable and accurate source of history humanity has in the next thousand years. I can tell children what the world was like before neuro-projection online game worlds, radiation-based performance enhancers, teleportation and ultra-porn.
That's a pretty big gamble though, and relies not only on the existence of other universes but that you discover and become capable of entering another universe. Personally, I don't view that as a safe bet. If there are other universes then your reward is to repeat the process again...and again. If there are not, then that's one heck of a penalty you've incurred.
I believe I've said no to the immortality question many times when asked...but when you put it that way, I'd do it and then start my life as a super hero....with the possibility of being an epic villain sometime in the far flung future.
I like Hob Gadling from Sandman. He made a deal with Death and/or Dream to be able to just not die, and so he doesn't. He actually outlives the incarnation of Dream itself.
He lived through watching his loved ones die, of course. He once got so hungry he almost wished he could die. Things have gone up and down for him over the course of his lifetime. But he keeps it in perspective, and when given the chance to move on (because in this series there is definitely an afterlife, although the series is somewhat obtuse about what exactly it might be)... he says no, he'd much rather stick around and enjoy life some more. At least for the moment.
As for me, in reality? If I thought this life was all there is, I might take the bait. But I believe there is something after the body falls away, something as far beyond this mortal life as we are beyond the amoebas. And I'd hardly trade a future that fantastic for a few more lifetimes on this earth.
That said... I want a mortal life that's full and well enjoyed, and not cut short. Because I hope to leave something good behind me, for others to benefit by, when I go.
About being caught by someone who would want to lock me up for study or being caught under some rubble:
It depends on how "immortal" the gummi bear will make me. Obviously I wouldn't die from starvation, but could I become weakened from it? What about injuries, do they heal rapidly and if so how fast? These, and other questions like it, would make those two problems go away quite quickly. The reason being is a person with unlimited energy and healing could wiggle out from under any pile of anything and could pound her/is way out of any prison.
That's a pretty big gamble though, and relies not only on the existence of other universes but that you discover and become capable of entering another universe. Personally, I don't view that as a safe bet. If there are other universes then your reward is to repeat the process again...and again. If there are not, then that's one heck of a penalty you've incurred.
If there are other universes finding them and finding a way to get to them is not such a long shot considering the amount of time you will have. Of course like you said there may not be any other universes out there and if that's so you are pretty much screwed. Still I would take the chance even though I'm almost certain I would eventually regret it.
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