Immortality bad for the brain

Sunday, July 15, 2001 by Draginol | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk

The more I read up on it the more I am convinced that within a few hundred years, humans will essentially be immortal. That we'll have figured out essentially what causes aging and have technology to stop it.

But what would happen? All "world population explosion" theories aside, what do you think would change about society if we lived forever?

I tend to think that humans would become increasingly obsessed with finding new ways to entertain themselves. Can you imagine living 200 years? About 500 years? 5000 years? By 200 years assuming 200 years of being physically 25-30 years, I would have read every book I would ever be remotely interested in reading, seen every movie I would remotely be interested in seeing, visited every place I might be remotely interested in going.

So 200 down, 10,000 years to go. What the heck would people do with themselves?

What do you think?

(think of all the skins we'd have! _
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misterME
Reply #21 Thursday, August 2, 2001 12:39 AM
Man, I'm gone for a couple of weeks and I almost miss this topic!

I don't agree with the car analogy. The fact is, if you take care of a car and change the failing parts religiously, you can essentially keep it running forever. I know. I worked on a car last week that nearly triples my own age! And it purred (but not as well as you, Feline ).

I think the human body falls into the same category. This topic has been beaten to death on a few other forums, but technology will eventually get us to a place where virtual immortality will be possible, even commonplace.

Me, I wish it would happen soon (noticed a bald spot forming on the back of my head the other day ). Personally, I can think of a hundred thousand things I'd like to do that I never seem to have the time for. So I think boredom, while inevitable, would be a *long* way off (at least several hundred, perhaps even thousands, of years).

The trick, as has been pointed out, is economics. I fear we'll reach that technological point of virtual immortality before we reach the social maturity to handle it well. So they'll be a massive purging, which in and of itself will act to equalize things out a bit.

But evetually, as has also been stated, we'll adapt, grow, mature to handle it. With that technology will come others designed to stave off the boredom. We'll travel into outer space, or begin to develop inticate and fully realistic virtual worlds, or both. There will be plenty to keep us busy.

In the end, though, there will be a point at which boredom will take root, and at that point a voluntary suicide will probably be the way of things. By the time that would happen, I imagine it would be considered socially accpetable.

All this, of course, assuming we don't blow up, strip mine, pollute, or infest the planet to the point that we're extinct in the mean time.

misterME
Reply #22 Thursday, August 2, 2001 12:44 AM
Oh, and the other, somewhat related, topic is that of our dependancy on sleep. I've seen and heard a few things about the possiblity of reducing the human need for sleep down to about 1.5 to 3 hours per 24. I, personally, would love that (no more feeling like crap at work after staying up playing Planescape Torment til 7am...)

Anyone know more specifics on this?

craeonics
Reply #23 Thursday, August 2, 2001 6:56 PM
It's not so much sleep that makes you feel crap as well as an altered biorhythm. I usually don't wake up physically until 23:00, usually close to bed time by then. Unfortunately daybreed rules the world, so getting up early (before noon) is a necessity. Well, until I become filthy rich that is.

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