What if we (mankind) could acheive a place, on this planet, that we could live in absolute comfort and forever—if we chose to. What if everyone born had the choice to live forever or to cease living.
With all of our abilities, now and that which we are learning, is there a chance that we could achieve a “forever” life if all cultures got together with their accumulative knowledge and worked toward that goal? Do you think we as mankind, in fact and in time, could triumph over death—if we wanted to?
Not quite, but with the right technology we could find a way to live indefinately. A few billion years isn’t forever, but compared to our present lifespans it might as well be. Honestly, I expect that sooner or later most would decide to suicide when they’ve decided they’ve “used up” life, which I would consider a better situation than dying whether or not you want to.
When do they have to make the choice? Is this a ‘everyone can live as long as they want, and then die when they tire of life’ scenario’, or a ‘flip a switch and then either everyone can no longer die, even if they want to, forevermore, or the other choice is they all die right now’.
If it’s option 1 and you’re asking whether we could possibly achieve it, then sure, give or take the presumption that we could also come up with a place where we could live perfectly comfortably forever. I don’t think such a place is possible; I think boredom would kick in for most people eventually. Also if we could still reproduce then crowding issues would inspire most people to eventually choose death, to make room for their successors (or escape the oppressive overcrowding).
If it’s option 2, then either you sterilize everyone in the process too, or that overcrowding thing ineveitable wrecks the ‘comfort place’ sooner or later, and everyone ends up wishing they’d chosen death when they had the chance. Unless they did all choose death, in which case they regret nothing.
What **begbert2 ** said in his last paragraph. You better have those generation ships ready to get us out of Earth because this is going to get crowded very quickly. Without leaving Earth, then it would take some serious fertility control. I would need to see how they decide who gets to procreate.