Yes and no. Life pretty much sucks as of 2010 for me. In the future I’m sure it’ll get much much better (advances in neuroscience and psychology will make life more enjoyable and emotions/cognition more user friendly). But right now I struggle with material lack, mental health issues, emotional trauma, isolation and boredom. I don’t want an eternity of that.
Being eternally young 100 years from now sounds great. Life will be a whole lot better. But right now, it would be unpleasant. But if I’m not immortal I won’t get to enjoy life 100 years from now.
So yeah, but not to maintain my current life and way of life, but as a segue to a better one.
In a heartbeat. There’s literally no downside: even if you for some reason develop the desire to die, there’s nothing stopping you just shooting yourself and saving the rest of us from your immortality wangst.
Aging sucks. So I’d take the pill provided I could still check out through other means. If only we had this before my eyesight went to shit and my hair started falling out and growing out my ears and nose, etc.
I was set on “no way” until I read your post.
I would love to be able to see how the world will be in a few thousands and more years and if we’re ever going to inhabitate other planets and have always regretted that I’ll be dead before that.
Because otherwise, being stuck on this planet till the sun blows up, with having seen and experienced all that there is to be here, sounds boring to me. (I know I could always kill myself though, but still…)
Mot many people would want to spend eternity trapped under a collapsed building that later gets turned into a memorial park, or spending hundreds of years trapped in a ship slowly rotting at the bottom of the sea, or anything like that. There has to be an Out.
I recall reading something 15-20 years ago that stated that if all other means of Death were eliminated and only Accidents remained, the average lifespan would be still only be somewhere around 500-600 years, with a maximum of around 1,000 years before something got you. So Death By Trauma still means you’re not “forever” immortal, but you will be around long enough to do quite a lot without having to worry about spending 2 million years trapped in a glacier.
I remember a thread on this very topic, and yes, the average lifespan would be only some centuries (it was based on current figures for lethal accidents, murders, etc…) . However, necessarily, some lucky people would live for millenias (assuming they would want to).
I honestly don’t understand why, if you have no moral compulsions about killing yourself, but are unhappy enough that you would want life to end, why you are still here.
I’m pretty sure that, as life goes on, you can always come up with reasons to stay alive, if your brain is functioning properly. It’s been pretty much designed to do so.
I still say the Heaven-style immortality is better: no pain, no sorrow, just eternal happiness. You can’t die, but you wouldn’t want to.
Merely halting the aging process is one thing, but then you would still be facing the never ending cycle of working for a living…forever…It’s not like to could retire at 65, or even 650 :eek:
There comes a time where the eternal sleep is your friend
There is that. As the I Ching says; The finest clothes turn to rags. You may pay off the house, but it’s still going to rot and fall down, or need major rebuilding or updating. Jobs and technology change, so you’re not entirely likely to be doing the same job for 50 or 100 years, but it is possible, especially if you’re a store clerk or a waiter.
I’d rather be uploaded into a computer and live that way, but the immortality described in the OP would be acceptable.
flickster: If you’re forever young, you’ll have time to learn many trades and, effectively, live many lives, with memories from your old ones. (I’d be curious to find out how long the brain can keep memories, myself.) As for money, presumably once enough people take the treatment the economy will shift to allow for individuals to take advantage of very stable long-term investments.
I think I’d want some kind of guarantee against disease (not full, perhaps, but eventual self-repair of nonfatal damage), since I’d rather not think of what several hundred years of accumulated minor illnesses might look like; but definitely yes.
There’s probably no way to achieve that in the physical world as long as your brain is still in your head. Uploading into a computer simulation would make it trivial, though.