# Genie Wish #2-Immortality! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 5, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083 "2013-09-05T16:04:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/21 "2013-09-05T21:16:42Z")
No thanks. Like **Macca26** , remember [Tithonus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus). > [@Wikipedia](#): > > according to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal,[5] she forgot to ask for eternal youth (218-38). Tithonus indeed lived forever ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/22 "2013-09-05T21:24:34Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > As I’ve said before, Immortality can be extremely unpleasant. > > If you’re the only immortal person, congratulations. If anyone finds out, your future life is one of hiding and running from all the crackpots, security agencies, “researchers”, wealthy billionaires, the press and anyone else who may want to follow/publicize/dissect/experiment on you to discover your secret. Better hope you never get publically injured and have to explain why your arm was severed and yet, there it is, fully regrown! > > You’re immortal. You’re not invincible. You can be buried alive, wrapped in chains and dropped into the ocean, trapped in a cave-in/mudslide/collapsed building, any number of unpleasant things that prevent you from going about your long life. You could end up spending a few years or decades being tortured and experimented on until you’re completely insane, because someone is trying to duplicate your immortality, or they’re just a sadistic fuck and you are the ultimate play toy. > > Live into the age of common space flight? How about if your enemies arrange for you to be dropped into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Spend your existence as a flattened smudge on the surface of a world you can never escape. Or you just get blown out into space and spend a few million or billion years drifting among the stars until something hits you, then you spend your time riding that object on a trip to nowhere. > > Immortality isn’t a golden ticket to immortal bliss. It is a certain guaranty that you will live to regret being immortal at some point. > > Oh yeah, and if you live long enough, you’ll be the freakish Homo Sapiens Sapiens Immortalis among whatever it is Humans evolve into - you will no longer be “Human”, you’ll be a relic. Good luck trying to live any sort of reasonable existence once that happens. You should really read through the thread again-You are naturally immortal with perfect health. You will not age or get sick, but if you _can_ be killed. Reference the television series _Highlander_. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/23 "2013-09-05T22:32:18Z")
I think you’re trying to say that the recipient would be unaging or something similar. “Immortality” heavily implies that you don’t die, period. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/24 "2013-09-05T23:08:29Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You should really read through the thread again-You are naturally immortal with perfect health. You will not age or get sick, but if you _can_ be killed. Reference the television series _Highlander_. OP says nothing of the kind. Probably should have been clear on that up front, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/25 "2013-09-06T00:26:29Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > There would be nobody on this planet that you could relate to. They’d ALL seem like children. I dunno; past a certain point everyone stops maturing. Most people stop at about age 20. Some keep going until age 30 or so. But for 40 and beyond, it’s all about the same. A 10,000-year-old would no more think “everyone’s a child” than a 100-year-old. We’re talking immortality, not godlike intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/26 "2013-09-06T02:33:40Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I think you’re trying to say that the recipient would be unaging or something similar. “Immortality” heavily implies that you don’t die, period. There are some debates to the provenance of the story, but some writers point to Deiphobe, the Sibyl of Cumae. “She was granted long life by Apollo, as many years as grains of sand she held in her hand, but she had forgotten to ask to retain her youth. With her aging she withered away and she was suspended in a bottle in the temple of Hercules at Cumae (near Naples).” Some say she withered and shrank and turned into a cricket. Read the fine print, guys! ---
**Author:** ![Sudden\_Kestrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@Sudden\_Kestrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sudden_Kestrel)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/27 "2013-09-06T02:49:09Z")
No, no. No genie is making me live forever. I have done nothing to deserve that. I wouldn’t have wished for it, so it didn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![obbn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/28 "2013-09-06T04:13:50Z")
A really good article from Cracked (yes, that cracked from our middle school days) on the subject. The wrrite nails it. The article is titled: 5 reasons immortality would be worse than death. It’s a good read, but for those if you who don’t want [cracked.com](http://cracked.com) showing up in your browser history the points made are: 1: Evolution will turn you into a freak 2: Nobody can ever find out 3: You’re still getting older (mentally) 4: Time speeds up until you’re insane 5: You’ll eventually get trapped somewhere (forever) ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/29 "2013-09-06T04:47:58Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I’d start watching _[The Man From Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth)_ a bunch, treating it as a documentary. Loved that movie! To the OP: Immortality and perfect health? What’s not to like? I’d be the happiest person on the planet. Yeah, everyone I know would eventually die, and I’d be sad about it every time, but I’d have all the time in the world, to paraphrase Bemis from Time Enough At Last. The only problem I’d have is the same as John Oldman in The Man from Earth, which is every 10 years or so I’d have to drop out of where I lived and worked and start a completely new life elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/30 "2013-09-06T10:03:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > How do you go about your life through the years without letting anybody know? In the age of the internet, I don’t think it would be possible to keep it a secret. I would approach some university with a research hospital, and ask for a paycheck in exchange for being a lab rat a few times a month. As long as you get eternal youth, but not invulnerability, then suicide is always an option. Frankly, though, I think the “immortality would be a curse” people are delusional. Boredom is for teenagers. The older I get, the more interesting the world gets. You would be able to visit every tourist attraction in the world, and by the time you finish with the Antarctic, the Arctic would have some new stuff. There would always be one more place to visit, one more person to meet, one more book to read. > [@](#): > > What aspects in your life do you change? My retirement fund would become my “gentleman of leisure” fund. Eventually, I would hope to accumulate a large enough nest egg that I would have the option of quitting working and living off the interest. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/31 "2013-09-06T10:20:14Z")
Every couple of decades, I’d fake my death and move to a war-torn country. I’d then use my money from the first wish to fund my immigration back home, claiming that my records were lost in the recent conflict. ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/32 "2013-09-06T10:35:25Z")
Pass. I don’t want to live forever. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/33 "2013-09-06T12:29:34Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What you see as a problem can also be seen as a solution. The past fades away, leaving room for the future. If the memory loss is sequential - your oldest memories are the first to disappear as new memories are formed - then this is effectively the same as having your date of birth move forward with you through time. Old people can regard the world with a special kind of wonder because they’ve borne witness to so much. A 110-year-old man from rural Oklahoma can remember a time when there was no electricity, telephones or paved roads where he lived, when there were no vaccines or antibiotics anwhere; he’s seen aviation rise from a low-speed dangerous novelty to a global endeavor moving at nearly the speed of sound; and he remembers a time when women and black folks weren’t allowed to vote. His perspective on humanity is vastly different from someone born in Y2K, for whom the world has always had all of these these things. If the old guy can’t remember anything earlier than Y2K, then the only thing about him that’s different from that 13-year-old kid is his body, with its century of collected scars, insults and wear. If you only can remember x years’ worth of data, then in terms of experience and wisdom, you’re effectively no different from a person who is x years old. x could be an unusually large number, but if it’s finite, then I don’t count that as immortality. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind being able to remember x years of experience, where x is some large multiple of a normal human lifespan, maybe a few thousand years. Being physically vulnerable means you might not survive your first year, but it also means that you can call an end to your “immortality” if the future ever starts to seem irredeemably bleak, e.g. after the downfall of civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/34 "2013-09-06T13:36:24Z")
I would accept it with some provisos: perfect health and age regression back to my 30s, and the capability to opt out if I so desire. ---
**Author:** ![Macca26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Macca26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Macca26)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/35 "2013-09-06T14:23:31Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > In the age of the internet, I don’t think it would be possible to keep it a secret. I would approach some university with a research hospital, and ask for a paycheck in exchange for being a lab rat a few times a month. > > As long as you get eternal youth, but not invulnerability, then suicide is always an option. Frankly, though, I think the “immortality would be a curse” people are delusional. Boredom is for teenagers. The older I get, the more interesting the world gets. You would be able to visit every tourist attraction in the world, and by the time you finish with the Antarctic, the Arctic would have some new stuff. There would always be one more place to visit, one more person to meet, one more book to read. > My retirement fund would become my “gentleman of leisure” fund. Eventually, I would hope to accumulate a large enough nest egg that I would have the option of quitting working and living off the interest. Oh I don’t get bored easily but I really do not want to live the rest of my immortal life being tortured or hunted. One day I will get caught in a volcano and encased in obsidian. It’ll inevitably happen. The chances are infinitesimally small right? Well I have infinity here ready to make those chances happen. Just because you give yourself up to universities 3 times a month doesn’t mean everything’s going to be hunky dory. Hell, once you’re found out I’d be surprised if you don’t cause World War 3. Everyone would want you to experiment on. Having you would represent a huge potential scientific advancement. Nobody could just let some other country have you. Humans aren’t advanced enough to deal with this shit peacefully and rationally. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/36 "2013-09-06T15:35:12Z")
I’d take invulnerability over immortality. I think 80 years of life is plenty. Anyway, if I was immortal, I’d hide it by travelling around to new places every 20 or 30 years. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/37 "2013-09-06T19:39:35Z")
I would travel the world, then again and again. I wouldn’t focus on what might be the end and enjoy what I have at the moment, taking every generations’ new toys and discoveries as they come. I think I’d actually be one of the few who’d truly enjoy immortality, as long as I don’t have to go around biting folks to keep alive. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/38 "2013-09-06T19:48:34Z")
> [@Rushgeekgirl](#): > > I would travel the world, then again and again. I wouldn’t focus on what might be the end and enjoy what I have at the moment, taking every generations’ new toys and discoveries as they come. > I think I’d actually be one of the few who’d truly enjoy immortality, as long as I don’t have to go around biting folks to keep alive. Soooooo…no kinky stuff? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083/39 "2013-09-06T19:50:23Z")
Well, I already look young for my age, so I just dye my hair more and more grey. But after I hit 115 or so, there’s gonna be some problems unless medical science has advanced t0 the point where 150 is the new 100. Even so, now that you can’t really “live off the grid” so much (and it’ll be much harder 100 years from now, unless Bad Things happen), so sooner or later They will find out and it’ll be all Methuselah’s Children. But if I do have that $100MM from the previous wish, looks like I can afford to set up some fake identities. Hell, not so much “fake” as bought and paid for as some nations will basically sell you a passport for enough dough. How long I can pull this off is the problem. Just hope that anti-agathics become at least a Rich Person’s way out. I’d enjoy it, I think. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/genie-wish-2-immortality/668083.md?page=1)