There’s even an escape clause in the deal: That you can die whenever you want, if you get tired of it, trapped in a place you can’t escape from, etc
But until your say so, you’ll just keep on living, on and on and on.
You’d still be able to be killed, however. You won’t be immortal. However barring nothing kills you or you don’t make a deadly mistake, you’ll keep on living.
Natural causes, though, will not affect you. You won’t be able to die from a stroke, heart attack, or any other inner bodily threat.
Your physical age would look to be around age 30 (so if you’re already passed this age, you’ll turn young again) and you’ll never look a day older.
Would you do it?
Hell yes. As long as we can leave whenever we want, who wouldn’t want this? That would mean you could end it at the same time your husband or kid or beloved pet Snoopy dies. It’d be the end to suffering as we know it.
Definitely. There’s nothing admirable about mortality; that’s just people trying to make themselves feel good about an unpleasant fate they can’t escape.
Don’t see why not. The downside would only be if you were unable to die at all, who would want to linger for millions of years in the darkness of space. If you have a get-out clause I can’t really see many downsides.
I suppose, if I had the physical condition of a 30 year old, hormonally inspired zest and enthusiasm might make exceedingly long life tolerable. But overall, wouldn’t it be boring? Would youthful immaturity return also? Would I keep making the same mistakes over and over again? I don’t want either of those things.
I’d take another 10, 20 years of having the looks and physical capacities of a 30-year old again, though. Not eternal life. Just 10 or 20 more years of it.
I don’t think so. My entertainment interests are fairly narrow, and even then there’s more books to read and games to play and so forth than I could consume if I was immortal, didn’t need sleep and had a dozen mindlinked bodies to do it with.
Absolutely! I’ll never have the time and/or energy to do all the things I want to do as it is. Plus I so want to see the things we accomplish in a hundred years or a thousand years.
If we could get rid of that accident clause, I could even go sky diving.
Watching the people I love or care about die is why I wouldn’t do it. It’s hard enough when I’m aging. When I die I’ll “live forever” in Heaven anyway.
I just hope that my physical death, when it occurs, is quick and painless. I’m not afraid of being dead, but of, say, a long and painful illness, like cancer.
Do any of you remember the movie “The Hunger” with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie?
[Spoiler ahead for this movie]
She was an immortal would could make quasi-immortal companions through some weird blood ritual or something (I can’t remember the details). The downside for them was that they’d be immortal for some length of time and then they’d rapidly age and then … not die. They’d age and age and age until they were incapacitated living corpses, essentially, that she had stored away in boxes in the attic. It was absolutely hideous.
To me, this would be the ultimate question: would you take 100 years of youth, living with a beautiful immortal companion, only to suffer this fate at the end? If I recollect correctly, Catherine Deneuve didn’t tell these companions that this is what would await them, so she was screwing them over for her own pleasure/company.
That movie was sort of wacky but I’ve pondered its premise off and on for years.
So much of this decision would depend upon whether other people would also have this option. Could I maintain a life with my same friends? Would I be stuck banging the same person forever? Or am I the only one going forward with this semi-immortality? If the latter is the case I’d still experience a sea change of attitude in preparing for the future. I’d be looking for new professions that would carry me into the future. Your parameters did not say anything about financing my future. Do pensions last forever and have inflation protection? If I’m 30 forever, I can do almost anything. If I have sustained finances, I can keep busy doing other things without fear of running out of money. For me, intentionally checking out is not an option. I need more info before this decision can be made.
I’d want to be 40 instead of 30 but I would certainly do it assuming that I could keep gaining wisdom. I’d have to figure out a way to get a new identity every couple of decades which might be impossible in the modern age of data access and storage. I am so curious about how history and technology are going to develop that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.