But at the moment atheists’ lifespans end normally without it being up to themselves to kill themselves. Wanting to kill yourself can mean that you’re not very considerate of the feelings of the people who love you. Atheists believe that it is the only life we’ve got so we might as well make the most of it… but what if things go bad. e.g. they’ve been bullied. I think the people in the Columbine shooting were atheists. I’m not saying that murder-suicides would definitely increase much.
Why would murder-suicides be more prevalent if we had ultra long or infinite lives? Like, i could understand after a while decided to see what death was like for ourselves, but would people really try to take others with them too?
Like Mangetout implied, he would commit suicide if he ran “out of things to do, lose the will to continue or the world becomes intolerable to live in.”
I think being seriously suicidal is an anti-social frame of mind - in most cases there are people who want the suicidal person to live and killing yourself would hurt their feelings.
By killing themselves they are “playing God” and they might believe that other people also deserve to die. After all they don’t seem to love the world much.
If they felt they were a burden then they would be unlikely to murder others but if they are angry then they might.
I just think there may be problems in a world where the only way out is suicide. There are already examples of murder-suicides (Columbine shootings) but I can’t really prove they’d be more widespread.
So what would happen, then, with no way out - actual immortality? Would we break down as a species and go nuts after a few thousand years…or would we take advantage of things more?
No but maybe living for a million years would be the limit for most.
Maybe many would watch every TV show and movie there is… each day in their life might seem less important since it is so abundant. Unless they were suffering (including out of boredom) - then it would be significant.
Interesting thoughts. Thank you. 
Time flies when you’re having fun but to be merciful to people who are suffering a lot life shouldn’t be too long. People who are suffering aren’t necessarily able to end it even if they want to - e.g. being tortured in a country with a bad human rights record.
And Hitler was a Christian who killed a lot of people then himself. And Osama Bin Laden’s followers killed a lot of people, then themselves. What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Do we really have to hash this old argument out again here?
In any case, we’re not talking about suicides because you’ve been bullied or are having a bad life or whatever; I wouldn’t expect those would change in the face of dramatically extended lifespans. We’re talking about choosing when to end extremely long lives – a situation with no current analog.
Hey, speak for yourself. Most of the people I know who spent the 90s drooling and in a fog still have plenty of life left in them.
This might possibly be a somewhat valid point, but there are too many variables. If we were ‘almost immortal’ from the start, society would likely have evolved in a manner that is conducive to being that way. Meaning: I’m sure people would have come up with creative ways to nullify the whole boredom suicide problem.
On the other hand, if we were to all of a sudden become immortal today, then yeah there might be problems until we got used to it.
I really feel like there is zero correlation between the Columbine shooting and potential murder-suicides in a different world.
Like others have basically said, this would be an unprecedented issue. There is absolutely no way we could know how it might turn out.
I guess the main issue I’ve been mentioning is that a lifespan of decades is merciful when extreme cruelty exists. It could cause people to suffer for millions of years (e.g. imprisoned political opponents to a dictatorship)… On the other hand is suffering for decades that much subjectively different than suffering for millions of years? I suspect it is because with a normal lifespan they could somewhat meaningful count down the days/years that their pain will end.
BTW if this was in the future and people were uploaded into a computer, suffering could be deliberately extended even more… people’s “clockspeeds” could be increased and people could be made to never get used to pain. The computers could be hidden so that they virtually never get rescued.
Living long enough would reveal that you were never you, it is a kind of illusion. So don’t worry about it. Life’s too short for most people to notice this however.
I guess - if it ever actually came to that, and I couldn’t simply reinvent myself or happily repeat something I had already done and enjoyed - which I think I could (one of the things people sometimes omit to consider when they say immortality would get boring is the possibility of things that people might want to do more than once, or might want to repeat an unlimited number of times).
IMO, ending your own life voluntarily when you’ve had completely sufficient is a far lesser evil than having your life end against your will, before you feel you’re done.
I think we often teach the exact opposite of what we should teach.
Life isn’t short. For most of us life lasts a [relatively] long time. And the mistakes that one makes in their youth—grasping at opportunities they think they must take [YOLO]—can have repercussions that last the rest of one’s life.
Perhaps it’s just a quirk of personal perspective, but life to me feels like it lasts a very long time. At the age of 53, I am grateful that I get to enter my more advanced years whole, in good health, good shape, relatively sane and somewhat intelligent and finically stable. Trading in any of that for brief fling of excitement seems to me to the the height of foolishness.
Live for the long run. There is still plenty of opportunity to enjoy oneself.
Yup, is that a problem, philosophically?
(The point being that, right now, I ‘feel like’ 100 years might not be enough)
That hardly makes it clearer. Your argument appears to be that 1000 is not more than 80, as long as 1000 is not enough.
In any case, that comment was talking about this world. Would you be comfortable telling a dying 20YO “Yeah, well, 80 years wouldn’t be enough for you either”
Either that, or I can’t possibly assert that something is ‘too short’ unless I have a very precise notion of how long I would like it to be, which is weird.
I usually lament the shortness of my life when I reflect upon history. As when e celebrated the centenary of powered fligh (2003). My regret is like this:’
Man-the first hundred years were amazing-too bad I can’t see the next 100!"
I regret that I will not live to see:
-manned trips to Mars
-a world rail transit system
-fusion power
All of this stuff will come about…but after I leave this world (unfortunately):mad:
There’s a manned mission to Mars scheduled for 2024. It’s called the Mars One.
They told you life is long
Be thankful when it’s done
Don’t ask for more
You should be grateful
But I tell you life is short
Be thankful because before you know
It will be over
Cause life is sweet
And life is also very short
Your life is sweet