# Is there a chance that I will l\[i\]ve forever?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 29, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945 "2013-09-29T19:36:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/1 "2013-09-29T19:36:25Z")
One of my friends told me that there was a zero percent chance that I will live forever and at some point I will die. He said there was a zero percent chance that I would live to see 5,000 years of age, but he couldn’t tell me exactly how long I could live for. Is there a reason that I will die eventually, other than the fact that it seems to have happened to everyone else by the age of 122?
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/2 "2013-09-29T19:39:00Z")
Living, loving, she’s just a woman…
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### Author:  [@ryanl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryanl)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/3 "2013-09-29T19:40:42Z")
[Telomeres](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere)
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/4 "2013-09-29T19:51:25Z")
Thread title edited to fix typo (love/live).
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
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### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/5 "2013-09-29T19:54:59Z")
> [@ryanl](#):
>
> [Telomeres](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere)
It certainly is possible that telomere deterioration will reverse someday.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/6 "2013-09-29T20:30:51Z")
Science fiction writers sometimes talk about “catching the immortality wave”, or something similar. Basically, you live just long enough that medicine advances to the point where they can extend your lifespan, and your newly-extended lifespan is enough to last you to the next breakthrough, and so on.
Unfortunately, though, this depends on technological advances extending lifespan, which is something that has never happened yet. Even back in the days of Solomon, the human lifespan was about 70 or 80 years, and it still is. Medicine has done great things to help us reach that span without being cut short first, but people still die of old age at the same point they always have. Now, maybe we will hit on the secret sometime in the next few decades, and do what we’ve never done before, but you probably shouldn’t bet on it.
Now, if you’re looking to just live that long by sheer luck, without help from any significant medical advances, it’s just not going to happen. At the upper end, maximum human longevity seems to more or less follow an exponential decay: Any given year, you have a roughly 50% chance to live to see the next year (and this probability decreases with time, making it actually worse than an exponential). If you try to punch 5000 years into this calculation, you’ll find that it’s so close to zero that your calculator can’t tell the difference. There are a very great many things that are commonly regarded as “impossible” that have a significantly higher probability.
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### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/7 "2013-09-29T20:42:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Now, if you’re looking to just live that long by sheer luck, without help from any significant medical advances, it’s just not going to happen. At the upper end, maximum human longevity seems to more or less follow an exponential decay: Any given year, you have a roughly 50% chance to live to see the next year (and this probability decreases with time, making it actually worse than an exponential). If you try to punch 5000 years into this calculation, you’ll find that it’s so close to zero that your calculator can’t tell the difference. There are a very great many things that are commonly regarded as “impossible” that have a significantly higher probability.
Yes, I’m looking to sheer luck. I don’t care if my calculator can’t tell the difference, if the chance is \>zero percent chance, than that’s what I’m banking on.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/8 "2013-09-29T21:00:40Z")
“Forever” is a pretty high hurdle. I would guess that even if you didn’t age and no catastrophes beset you, the sheer grinding chance of random death would eventually catch up with you, unless you wanted to [del]live[/del]exist in circumstances so risk-free they wouldn’t be worth be worth having.
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/9 "2013-09-29T21:19:13Z")
Forever? I don’t think so. Cosmologists aren’t real certain about _anything_ lasting forever.
That said, is there a reasonable chance that you are in fact a changeling, or genetically altered by giant space gods?
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/10 "2013-09-30T01:31:52Z")
This is true. The chance that **copperwindow** is actually an elf, alien, or other naturally long-lived species is considerably higher than the chance that a human could live that long.
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### Author:  [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/11 "2013-09-30T02:03:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Now, maybe we will hit on the secret sometime in the next few decades, and do what we’ve never done before, but you probably shouldn’t bet on it.
It all depends on how long Moore’s Law keeps holding true. With a fast-enough computer, the aging problem would be trivially easy to solve. That leaves only 3 questions:
1. _How_ fast of a computer?
2. If Moore’s Law continues that long, WHEN would such a computer exist?
3. Will Moore’s Law continue that long?
You are far more confident in your bets that I am. I wouldn’t dare bet anything on when Moore’s Law will stop.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/12 "2013-09-30T02:09:11Z")
> [@](#):
>
> With a fast-enough computer, the aging problem would be trivially easy to solve.
Cite? Computers can be used to solve some sorts of problems, but only after they’re already set up properly. Figuring out how to set them up properly requires a human.
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### Author:  [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/13 "2013-09-30T02:16:15Z")
As an immortal, I’ll tell you that it’s unlikely that you’ll live _forever_.
I don’t age or get sick, and it’s possible that you’ll live to see a time when all forms of death from natural causes are similarly not an issue for you mere mortals. Unfortunately, death from unnatural causes will remain. When I am “slain”, my body promptly fades away (so I’m told) and I just sort of wake up a few days later in a new body; a mortal, even one with perfect health and longevity, would just stay dead. My time between “deaths” has ranged from hours to centuries, but I’ve never gotten close to forever. As they say, shit happens.
5,000 years might be uncommon in a society that has achieved universal longevity, but I’d reckon that a few outliers would live longer than that.
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### Author:  [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/14 "2013-09-30T02:34:04Z")
These five reasons why _superhuman_immortality would suck also illustrate why the sort of medically achieved immortality is not really possible.
> **[5 Reasons Immortality Would be Worse than Death](https://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-immortality-would-be-worse-than-death.html)**
>
> Immortality is grossly overrated.
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### Author:  [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/15 "2013-09-30T03:23:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Cite? Computers can be used to solve some sorts of problems, but only after they’re already set up properly. Figuring out how to set them up properly requires a human.
Drug companies are already doing drug testing using computers instead of live subjects. do you need a cite for that, or would you prefer to Google it?
And before you argue that drug testing is not the same as creating immortality, let me remind you that the difference is one of degree, not type. It’s biochemistry, either way. It’s merely a question of how complex the model has to be before you can get the answer you’re looking for from it.
And you’re even fairly wrong about computers needing humans to set them up. AI can already behave autonomously and learn from experience. Once again, we’re talking about a difference of degree, not type. Again, I can provide a cite, or let you Google it. Your choice.
So like I said, it all really boils down to Moore’s Law.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/16 "2013-09-30T03:40:04Z")
I fully intend to do so. And it’s worked out well so far.
BBC ran a show detailing certain advances in medical science that are claimed could in a few more decades lead to an open-ended life span. If I can only hold out!
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### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/17 "2013-09-30T04:24:46Z")
It’s already possible, even likely, for “you” to live forever, depending on your definition of “you” - just get cancer. Cancer cells don’t grow old.
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### Author:  [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/18 "2013-09-30T04:44:31Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#):
>
> BBC ran a show detailing advances in medical science that could **in a few more decades** lead to an open-ended life span.
ummm…
I saw that show, too, or one just like it. But, (and here’s the rub)…I saw it _a few decades ago._
(I had just bought a house, and hooked up the latest high-tech invention: cable TV, with 25 channels, including BBC.) It was 1989. And the show talked about telemeres, and how we could stop the process of aging–and, _in only a few decades_–we would live forever.
So don’t hold your breath.
It’s like atomic fusion power. Or jet packs.
Or, like they say about soccer in America: it’s the sport of the future—and always will be.
Moore’s law works for computers, but not biology. Human beings are not made of silicon, with simple binary circuits. Biology is complicated. We aren’t going to see miracles in the near future. Wonderful progress may occur, but it will be measured in centuries, not within decades.
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### Author:  [@Aman27deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aman27deep)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/19 "2013-09-30T04:50:40Z")
Science may double our life but no way will anything survive forever.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2013, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-chance-that-i-will-l-i-ve-forever/669945/20 "2013-09-30T05:44:13Z")
Didn’ I read here on the Dope that, according to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, it is not just possible but inevitable that I will live forever in some time line?
> [@Colibri](#):
>
> Thread title edited to fix typo (love/live).
Spoilsport!
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