Poll: Would you accept immortality?

[Slowpool]

If the immortality had those specific limitations? No. If it was the GOOD kind of immortality, like the ones everyone ELSE has, then yes- like being able to choose to die when everything finally collapses. You are, for all practical purposes, immortal, until you no longer want to be.

 

[BakaSmurf]

There is nothing that I would love more than to see technology evolve to the point of being funtional magic and mankind expand into the stars, so yes, I would take the damn gummy bear without a second thought.

 

[Slowpool]

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.

With the limitations posited by the OP, you would not be able to do all of this. Your brain can only store so much information before you simply cant think the way you used to, and time will skew your memories long before then.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

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.

But you won't atrophy and lose muscle either, so prior to ingesting the gummy bear just work out until you're in peak physical condition and you're golden.

 

[rednose1]

Yep, I would love to. One thing you forget to mention is that with infinite life, you'd have all the time to aquire infinite wealth. talking so much money, you make Bill gates your butler wealth. Once you got the money, the power comes easily. Inifinite power seems pretty awesome.

 

[ronnom 666]

Once you become bored as you inevitably will, there are many ways to experience things. Go into cryo-stasis for 3 years then as you are immortal you can defrost with no downside. Use your Immortality and some creative surgery/therapy to erase your memories and start anew. Things will never get old as long as you have creativity.

Also as a secondary thing, if you become insane where is the downside. Insanity is only looking at the world in a way different then other people.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Live for several centuries? Sure. No way to die at all? No thank you.

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.

If the universe is constantly expanding like Einstein believed, then you'd never run into a scenario where all the stars would burn out and die and you'd be alone in the universe.

 

[cswurt]

I would definitely take it.
You enjoy the ride as long as it goes and then when it gets boring, you have a hell of a lot of fun trying to kill yourself (even if it will never work).
That weak crap you can find on YouTube of people skateboarding off the roof of a two story house and landing nut-first on a handrail won't have anything on the kind of shit I'd post on YouTube.
This week's upload: I'm going to hurl myself directly into the sun. I set cameras up on both sides so you can see me shoot out the other end butt-naked.

 

[thePyro_13]

I'll eventually reach the pint in time from where the kool-aid man came from. Since they'll understand how immortality works, they'll be able to make an antidote, if by that point I really did want to die.

Every second of life is worth all the pain in the world.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

If Highlander has ever taught us anything, it's that immortality with eternal youth is pretty sweet. Quite frankly, with all that time on my hands I could amass fortunes easily and use it to fund my quest for knowledge and any other activities that interest me. I could do anything I want (within reason) with all the time to do it, and although eventually my friends and family would pass away there would still be a world of new and interesting people to meet and experience life with. I can't imagine life getting too boring either. In the past hundred years alone the human race has done so many things collectively that I can't imagine the future slowing down any time soon. I don't even need to mention the possibilities that will arise when we master space travel and colonize other planets, do I? An eternity's worth of knowledge, wisdom, and wealth... think I'll buy a planet or two and see where things take off. There is NO guarantee that humanity will die within the next thousand years, just as there is NO guarantee that you'll run out of new things to experience.

Death means the end, nothing that ever happens will matter to you. You simply cease to exist except as an insubstantial memory of those close to you, which will too fade in time. You will have no stake in life or identity, nothing. A whole lot of boring, unsatisfying, empty nothing. I say screw that! Eternity is where it's happening, daddy-o! Anything that isn't death is a victory within its self!

Kiss today goodbye, and point me towards tomorrow!

 

[beniki]

Live for several centuries? Sure. No way to die at all? No thank you.

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.

You're thinking with a relatively young brain though... no matter how old you may be right now!

Who knows. Maybe a human aged to above a thousand years would have a different perspective than one simply aged to about a 100. Watching stars fuse together and slowly wink out might be the most satisfying experience ever had.

Long stretches of boredom might seem trivial, and after all the excitement of galaxies wizzing around and exploding occasionally, a nice uniform universe could be nice.

Social interaction of any kind might be completely secondary to the cataloguing and analysis of millions of years of memories.

So yes... I'd take the gummi bear. Only one way to find out, right?

 

[Danglybits]

Probably not. Don't get me wrong; I'm pretty sure that dying (or being dead) is gonna suck but I don't want to live so far past my loved ones; but if I didn't have any then I might. I would just try and form simple and fluid bonds. I wonder just how much of my life I could remember, or if it would all get really hazy after 100 years or so.

 

[Asita]

If the universe is constantly expanding like Einstein believed, then you'd never run into a scenario where all the stars would burn out and die and you'd be alone in the universe.

Well for starters that doesn't follow. Constant expansion does not equate to constant formation. Expansion requires only an increase in total volume, what you describe (or at least what I think you're saying) would require an increase in total mass, namely that new material be forming constantly, giving you an infinite supply of new stars and new worlds. That is not part of the constant expansion premise. To give you an analogy: Imagine you have 12 marbles. You place them in a circle and then apply a constant force to push each outwards. They will proceed in that exact direction for all eternity (for the sake of example they are limited by neither gravity nor collisions) and thus the area they collectively cover is constantly expanding. The universe can be viewed similarly, with the total area constantly increasing as matter continues in the directions that the Big Bang pushed it.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

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.

I don't want to outlive all my friends and family sorry.

Life is a beautiful precious thing partly because it is fleeting. Life with no end is almost empty. Eternal existence is only an attractive idea because of our natural fear of dying, but in reality without death life is nothing.

 

[YunaX]

I would take it. not for the fact of youth or anything,but with it I could help the world more efficiently. I've always felt that I'm never going to have enough time in my life to do what I want to. so I'd rather keep living on,no matter how difficult, than die without leaving my mark here.

 

[SinisterGehe]

If I wouldn't suffer from pain condition and severe neurological condition (Dystonia) then I would. But every day I am alive is horrid fucking pain to begin with so, I wouldn't want to feel this for eternity. Tho if the pain is reduced to 3 on pain scale.

I would take it if I would be healthy, but at my current situation... no. I barely want to live now to begin with.

 

[thiosk]

Yeah I'd eat it. I do SCIENCE just by waving my arms around and slapping younger students. Imagine what I could do with a billion students to slap.

 

[tobi the good boy]

Snip

I'd slip it under my tongue wait until the cool-aid man leaves and then sell it to the government.