Because you're thinking big, not practical. The "meaning for existence" wouldn't end. Like I said, you could kill yourself, or have yourself killed. People would live their normal day to day lives, and end up a lot better off for it too. They'd get more done, and have more time with the children/grandchildren. Etc.

But what can you accomplish today that you can't accomplish tomorrow? What I'm saying is that if you have all the time in the world, you have to reason to accomplish anything except the bare minimum of what it takes to survive.

What I'm saying is that death makes it worth it all. If you have a reason to complete something, you'll complete it. All of our uiltimate reasons are completing our goals before death. Without that factor, there's no accomplishment in learning everything, or doing everything.

JediKirby

Basically the same for me.

You see, you're not paying attention to what I'm saying. Death still exists--you just choose when to die.

I think immortality is impossible. You can only stop aging. You can still die if you kill yourself, or if someone kills you, or the world kills you. You still have to "fight death," but you don't have to be worried that age will be the evil to kill you.

So, Kirby, death will still make it worth it all. You'll still want to write that novel before you get hit by a car. You'll want to go skydiving before you catch a terrible disease. You'll just be able to keep doing new things until something finally catches you off guard and ends your life.

Kirby... you don't understand.... you wouldn't have to do the same thing forever.. I'm sure you'd get fired eventually for making a stupid mistake, or something... the reason most poeple DON'T go back to college once they are 40 is because they are too old. If we lived forever, we could have 20 different careers before we accidently died..

Exactly the same here, too.

Just to say, i'm going to start my first year at hopkins this fall, majoring in biomolecular Engineering, and i already have a few theories, done a bit of research, and done a few thought experiments on this subject, and have decided, nather finaly, that if i suceed in stopping aging (NOT immortality. as someone already mentioned, there would always be a way to die), i am pretty sure while i would want to use it on meself, i would stop there. i would not allow it to be used by almost anyone else and i would absolutely refuse to allow it to be used by the mass market (btw, just wanted to say that i plan to do reasearch on this on my own. i would not use a team of scientists on the project and then refuse them rights to it).

You may call me selfish, but i have a few reasons for this. The first may cause you to call me arrogant, as well: i don't believe most people should have access to this. however, calling me arrogant would be saying i consider myself better. this is not true. all i believe is that should i suceed, i will have the right to use it on myself. Will i deserve this 'reward' (quotes explained later) for my labor? yes, but beyond that i won't believe that i am better.

Secondly: i do not believe one should play god. Now, you may already think i would be playing god by seeking immortality. that's not true, imo. extending my own life through sience is simply a use of science. if i were to allow others to use it, or put it on the market, then i would be playing god, by saying that either some group of people are better then others because i say so (by my choosing who could use it) or that they are betettr because they have money (if i sell it). again, i won't consider my life 'worth' more, just that i spent the effort to make this, i have the right to use it for my own betterment.

Thirdly: Immortlity is a curse as much as a blessing. This is why a) i agree with Page completely: i would want a kill switch and b) i put reward in quotations. In reference to imoratilty in a society, i'm going to refute every one of the original points for immortality's good side.

1. We could not colonize fast enough. i'm not sure if the site vinny linked mentions this, but our speed in colonize will have to increase exponentially as a function of time, and eventually we will ned to hit the speed of light. can't happen.
   
2. There were two points in here. first: i already said, i don't believe that most people should have immortality, and while hitler obviously wouldn't be around, other not so obviously unworthy people would. the second part: that 'great minds; would still be alive, well, you're playing god. you're saying one person's life is better then anouther. You could say hitler was a genius, militarily he certaintly was, and he was a damned good diplomat, too, at least during the time before the war.
   
3. Life would get boring. sure, new stuff pops up on occation, but in a lot of cases things don't change too gigantically too fast. and though new thins come along, there's no garuntee they will hold your interest for long. sooner or later, you're going to end up thinking "you know what, there's nothign i haven't tried except....death...". at elast, that's how i know i'd feel.
   
4. First of all: it's too far away to be a real problem, as you said, but asuming one did manage to live for 4.5 Billion years without dying of something, then a) as someone said, eventually all the stars will die. there is also something you may have heard of: the Heat Death. all Energy in the unvioerse wants to become thermal: it's the 'easiest' form that energy can take, and its the hardest to use. at this point, most heat in teh universe is kept in little capsules: planets, stars, etc. But nature wants equilibrium. eventually, billions upon billions upon billions of years in the future, all energy in the unvierse will be thermal and spread evenly, becoming too thin and too unusable: nothign will be able to survive. b) As i already said, before this point, we cannot colonise fast enough.
   
5. It can still get lonely. you can only know someone so well. saure, after 75 years, you may still not be lonely with your ebst friend, say. but after 2000 years, might you get bored?
   
6. This is the only one i won't refute, and that's because i don't know where you got it. if its true, would somone please explain where god says its bad?
   [/list=1]
   
   And in relation to immortality in a person, it's quite simple, really. we are not ment to live for eternity. heck, numbers above a few hundred are almsot impossible to grasp. Sure, we use bar graphs and little cute similies to show big numbers, like using a huge stack of phone books to show how many jews died in the holocaust, but we still really just don't get it. all such analaogies fall short for one reason: we are not capable of understanding it. and as such, we cannot live forever. we cannot even comprehend anything clsoe to infinity, how how could we live to infinity? even now, as we discuss imortality, most of us say only a few hundred years, because we can't grasp beyond that. 'immortality', life without end, is alien to us. we just won't get it.
   
   And beyond that points are a few i made above, such as that it would get boring. however.... *looks up at rest of post* i sorta jsut made one hell of a long post, so i'm going to wrap it up. Anyone who finishes reading this, congrats, i hope i gave you some meaningful info.

well.. as you see, only 36% of the world would live forever anyway... so I think that our colonization speed would be fast enough... and if it's still not.. it will push it to become fast enough

Er, jsut to ask, where did 36% come from? i don't feel like searching for it.

I think a more interesting question would be "do you want immortality if it made you sterile forever?"

you don't have to search too hard.... 36% = the poll up top.... (actually more like 35%)

And by sterile mean your shotgun couldn't unload... or... just all your little tailed friends were just.. dead.....

Cause I could live forever if my tailed friends were dead... as long as I already had a few kids... don't want to MASSIVELY over populate..

Sterile or impotent?

OOOhhh! 36% want it! ok, i thought it was from one of Vinny's sites. sorry.

Um, even if we assume that only 1/3 of people will want to live forever, there will still be an exponential growth. It may take longer but it'll still overtake the volume of explorable space relatively quickly.

In the grand scheme of things, the coefficient in front of an exponential function is irrelevant if it's being compared with something less than exponential (cubic, quadratic, linear etc).

I'd like to be able to live for a few hundred years maybe, not forever.

Any and all problems associated with vastly increased longevity can be dealt with. There aren't any "intractable" problems.

Exponential population growth is nothing new. Why is it brought up as an argument against living forever? The human race is growing exponentially already, and we aren't even colonizing space yet. All that's necessary to stop it is a law limiting couples to one child. Simple.

As for getting so bored that you'd want to kill yourself, I can hardly see that happening. In 100 years, we'll be well on our way to exploring the entire solar system. This is an infinitesimely small part of our universe, and yet there would be more here to see and do than one could accomplish in ten lifetimes. Hell, even seeing everything on Earth would take hundreds of years. I fail to see how you would get bored.

In any case, it's not like anyone will live "forever", in the true sense of the word. I'd estimate that our life spans would be about 1000 years before random accidents, murders, etc. would cause our deaths. A thousand years isn't too much to ask, is it? (Of course we could always upload our brains into computers, allowing an even longer "life").

But you forget that there is a limit on population growth. Near the realization of this limit, the growth becomes asymptotic until it tops out, and then people will die. There's a reason why the population of the earth was only 1/6 what it is now a century ago. The population of the earth has seen standstills, and it will have yet to see them when we reach the limiting factor (habitat, disease, agricultural, who knows). Look at Africa. I'll be darned if it's seeing a massive population increase. Sooner or later America will hit a similar roadblock.

I would love to be immortal. I want to see civilizations rise and fall, great leaders live and die and change the course of history.

And I know I would never run out of things to do. Society is progressing far too fast for there to never be anything left to do. Hell, maybe I could become a scientist and help progress civilization even more.

Now, I wouldn't want everyone to be immortal. Just a few people so it is more manageable.

Of course, real immortality to impossible, so I am going to go for second best: Immortality in history books like what Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar did.

This is how they did in Arthur Clarke's book "The city and the Stars" :

theres only 10 million people left, in a single city, its the future so they can live forever.

You live your life for however long you want and after somany thousands of years when you get bored or confused b memories you walk back to the hospital.

They plug your brain into a computer and you choose what memories, emotions, charictaristics you want to retain and save them. They get stored in a computer and you stop living for a bit.

Randomly in the future robots build you a new body and give you back whatever you saved, you have a new life and make your own decisions but are influnced by what happened in the past.

Thus your essence lives on forever but life never gets dull

Um, you guys, the point kirby was making is that without the CERTAIN inevitability of death within an almost certain time frame, you're far less motivated to do something. The "but you can get hit by a car" argument just doesn't fly. We're no more likely to get hit by a car if we are immortal than we are now. And aren't motivated to achieve by "omg I could get hit by a car in six years!"