Would you like some immortality maybe?
Throughout the ages immortality has been a along sought human endeavor playing a major role in our society. Many religions subtly revolve around the idea of eternity in the forms of souls going to heaven or hell which I dare say is a form of pseudo immortality, remaining conscious after death. Many of our stories utilize the concept of immortality creatively adding and twisting, branching off different concepts of immortality giving each one different rules and regulation. Sometimes immortality is a curse such as the events with Cain the first murderer doomed to roam the earth for ever neutered of his fertility in more ways than one. But in many cases immortality is something to be gained, a reward for effort. To cut to the chase, perfect immortality for or against? If you are for it then I agree but why? If you choose the ladder do you have moral qualms? Or are you just afraid of being alone?
Comments (26)
The best thing I can say about immortality is in a hedonistic context. There are 4 possibilities:
1. Happy + Immortal
2. Happy + Mortal
3. Sad + Mortal
4. Sad + Immortal
I ordered them in terms of desirability. As you may have already noticed, the key parameter is hedonistic - happiness/sorrow. Immortality is only important after happiness has been achieved; in fact immortality is a major disadvantage if you fall in category 4. Sad + Immortal.
And because dying removes choices -- you can't change your mind when you're dead -- for someone to want to live, to desire life, for life to seem good, which is basically what it means to be happy, is good. The highest good is for life to be worth living and available to be lived.
Also, so long as you're alive, there's always the possibility of changing from sadness to happiness. The same is not true when you're dead.
[s][Organic][/s][/b]
[s]• voluntary "shapeshifting" control of bodily features from the cosmetic (e.g. facial & vocal mimicry, pigmentation, teeth, conceal scars, add tattoos, etc) to the anatomical (e.g. genitalia, scent/phermones, limb-torso ratios, head shape, etc)
• complete, very rapidly, regenerative healing of injury and amputation (including decapitation - severed head decomposes rapidly whereas new head grows from severed neck (which requires something like "holographic memories" retained throughout nervous system, etc?))
• inhumanly high pain, fatigue, sleep-deprivation, extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, g-forces & vertigo, drug & alcohol (always euphoric but never addicted), hunger, thirst, blinding light, deafening noise, vacuum & radiation tolerances
• peak "olympic ironman" human fitness and physical performance
• complete memory suppression and eidetic recall (continual pruning of memory to extend capacity for a few human lifespans)
• complete immunity to decrepitude, diseases and contagions
• voluntary year-to-decade-long hibernation (i.e. "suspended animation") with minimal awareness of any environmental or kinetic changes in immediate vicinity to my hibernating body and the ability to awaken rapidly (otherwise appear dead to the untrained observer)
• "immortality" cannot be extracted from my body and transfered like a drug or gene therapy to make mortals "immortal"; also, all offspring are mortal (though perfectly healthy with peak human functioning in all measures and only resembling the mother)[/s]
[b][s]OR[/s]
[Digital][/b]
• (A) my self-aware, affective, sapience (somehow, 3rd text-block from the bottom :nerd: ) transferred - not merely "copied" - onto a quantum computing diamond-like substrate wherein I "inhabit" a community/group-mind (with other discrete, once biologically human, minds and an AGI 'facilitator-servant') free of my organic body (à la "the Matrix"); (B) with complete executive control of selectively suppressing/archiving (not deleting) my own memories and retrieving/reviewing them when needed; and (C) with complete agency in a simulated universe/virtual reality (e.g. 'Bracewell probe with VR avatars' in David Brin's novel Existence (2012))
Quoting Pfhorrest
A very crucial observation in my humble opinion. There's no such thing as a second chance once we die, no reconsidering the decision to die - death is final and once it occurs, your options run out.
Therefore, if one is ever put in a position in which dying becomes an option, one has to be extremely careful not to goof up.
That said, to be asked to choose between an eternity of suffering and death is going to be extraordinarily easy. Right?
Tithonus Ring any bells?
I read this and thought - but why not just choose mortality if you're a masochist?
Quoting 180 Proof
And then I thought: oh.
Yep, immortality and eternal youth are two different things.
The Malthusians would be really pissed about immortality, btw. Talk about a problem with the limited resources on this planet.
And even without immortality, but only a longer life span it would be different. Let's say that people would become adults as they do in 18 years or so, but after that they would get older in twice the time as now meaning that a current 30-year old would be an 60-year old, a 50-year old would be 100 years and the oldest people would live well over 200 years.
Not only there would be a lot more people, but think about what our society would be like. Likely the current political leaders of the US would have been born in the 1880's and only some time ago the last soldiers that fought in the Napoleonic Wars would have died. Some old Americans would still remember the time of the Civil War and slavery and many WW2 veterans would be still in the workforce.
So for times to change and people to make the same errors again as previously, we do need generations to die away and new ones to replace them.
If things go as they have gone, then it's likely that the average life expectancy will increase and it's very likely that the present children will live on average to 100 years or so. Not immortality, but better than at the time of our grandparents.
True.
:death: :flower:
A true classic. Would you now? You enjoy life that much? I'd suggest perhaps it's rather favorable circumstance you enjoy more so than anything, which comes and goes.
Besides. Along the lines of what the episode suggests, what if you become trapped in a cave or sunken ship underwater?
The idea of such an entity making a deal with a human being seems obscenely cruel. Beyond taking candy from a baby. Hardly any worse tyranny could be imagined.
I'll agree there's shortsightedness somewhere in this interaction. Meanwhile. What do you mean?
Immortality with the conscience and perception of finite human existence - full of errors and anguish -? No thank you. If - and only if - transcendence came with immortality, then I'd agree, because what human would not want to be the maxim of the metaphysical absolute - god -?
[quote=Wikipedia]The French term for boredom, ennui, is sometimes used in English as well, at least since 1778. The term ennui was first used "as a French word in English;" in the 1660s and it was "nativized by 1758".[7] The term ennui comes "from French ennui, from Old French enui "annoyance" (13c.), [a] back-formation from enoiier, anuier.[7] "The German word for "boredom" expresses this: Langeweile, a compound made of lange "long" and Weile "while", which is in line with the common perception that when one is bored, time passes "tortuously" slowly.[/quote]
If boredom is a pain and if it means "...time passes tortuously slowly." what can be said of immortality when time actually comes to a grinding halt?
God is all-powerful, omniscient and omnipresent. If you had immortality but still was a finite mind, you would still suffer existence - Being -. Through transcendence, infinite is achievable, and through infinity, Men is not necessary - Being would become retrograde -.