Living forever would be a nightmare in my opinion. Having to see places that hold fond memories for you end up being torn down for a parking lot. Watching the world itself become more and more worn down. Living to see animals and other species go extinct. The way i see it: We are all meant to die at some point. If you're blessed enough to live to reach your 80's or something; what's left? I'm in my early 20's, and i find myself already going "man, things weren't like this in the old days". If you can't adapt with the changing times the you're life will be a living hell.

Honestly, when my time comes to leave the world, i'll be happy. My religon says that that's when I'll meet the maker and go to paradise. Can't really do all that if you're still here.

Lords_of_Darkness
God this is long, I'll stop now. And like I said, I didn't say this to get you to say religion is wrong or stupid or anything, its my POV, nothing can change that, so don't try please. (POV = Point of View)

hmm thats a bit ignorant aint it??
just tought i would point it out.

i do however find what you said quite interesting, not that i agree with you.
i like the fact that you appearently feel good with your religion wich i think is cool.


now for the real topic.
immortality would be a gift to me, a gift that would allow the humankind to actually venture further than we have ever done before. breaking the boundaries of space wouldnt be a problem as you could just make a sleeping chamber(by that i mean neurally inducing sleep and feeding nutrition to your body), and use that, as you dont have to be afraid of aging.

imagine the ammount of knowledge the human race would optain.
imagine being with you loved ones for a very very long time.(i would love this)

i do however think that it is impossible to be "immortal" we could stop aging but not make us immortal. by the way we should start looking at the enviroment if we plan on expanding our lives, we are pretty much dooming our planet as it is.

I've been thinking for a while of a story or comic where the setting was in a world where they'd "cured" aging and all major diseases. It's an interesting thought experiment- what would happen to society in a world where people lived until they had an accident or something?

What would happen to marriage? Would it just not happen? Would you set up a renewable contract- perhaps a 20 year term, and at the end of it you would choose to renew it or leave it and go your separate ways?

What about jobs and retirement? Would you ever be able to retire, or would you have to go on working for as long as you lived. If people only died in accidents, rather than from disease, there wouldn't be a pretty standard upper age limit on life. Age of death would be all over the place from one person to the next. You couldn't set an age for retirement.

Suicide rates, I'd imagine, would be astronomical.

What if, into this society, came a new and incurable disease? Imagine the terror felt by a society of people convinced they weren't going to die for thousands of years, confronted with a killer epidemic.

Then I was thinking about population. Sure, fertility rates go down as population size goes up, but that's not necessarily at a sustainable rate for the world. As lifespan increases, so does the world's population right now. It's ballooned dramatically in only a relatively short time. So faced with a world that wouldn't support human life any more, you have two options.

1. Expand. Move to other planets, find other resources to drain.

Or if the technology of the time isn't able to offer that, you have

2. Control the population. Imagine scientists can cure cancer. Of course they go ahead and do it. Imagine they can cure heart disease. Who could say no? A cure for aging? It's progress! Living for a very, very long time wouldn't be a choice. It would be a series of scientific and medical discoveries that wouldn't be able to be turned down or made to go away. Then the governements of the world would be faced with the problem of a world full of people who'd live potentially forever. But what if..... they had a department which had some way of killing people (find you alone, deliver a lovely lethal injection or some such) at the age of, say, around 150. Everyone would get their fair shot. They could come up with some bulls**t explanation, probably that the body isn't capable of living past that age. Give it a few generations and no one would be any the wiser.

Of course, all of the above stuff is totally improbable and weird, but good story/comic fodder. ;)

On the population rate: Only look at the places where lifespans are longest (Japan, Scandinavian countries, etc.). The places of greatest population growth have the lowest life expectancy. ;)
Within populations where life expectancy is increasing but population growth is still faily large (like India); those with the longer life expectancy have fewer children (one, two or none), and the ones with more kids always have shorter expectancies. It's an elegant pattern. :)

imortality/prolonged would be GREAT!! think about it the main reson they cant send people to pluto is because they would expire. Also imagin what could happin! we get a genus maby once every 100 years or so that invents/discovers somthing incredibly ammazing. if they lived longer then theyed invent more. unfortunately there would be certin rules along with it like familys can only have a child every 50 years or so (depending on the life expectancy and with the exception of twins, tripplets ect.). unfortunately imortality is only a dream that will never come true because no matter how good whatever stims we will be using are theres no way they can actually stop the aging prosses and it would be VERRY benifical if before they started prolonging peoples lives if they could either cure or reduce the chances of mental desieases because if people lived for 200 years theyed have altimers by the time they where 120 at least

anybody here heard of alex chiu?

http://www.alexchiu.com/eternallife/index.html

Being immortal?

How about outliving everyone you know? Its like... you meet when you're children or teenagers... and then 80 years down the road, you still look the same while your former playmate is bedridden with alot of sickness due to old age.

Or what about... seeing the woman or man you made love to 80 years ago... try doin it now and you might probably hurt or kill him/her by accident. :(

Or what about... seeing all 20 generations of one family from childhood until death? Isnt that gonna creep you out?


At some point, we all need to rest permanently. When I asked my granny how she'd feel if she can be 20 again, she didnt like the idea. She told me she got a few years left... and just wants to rest in peace. :)

personaly im not incredibly attached to any one. i could handel wachting everyone around me that i know exspire. dont get me wrong im not heartless its just people expire everyday its a fact of life and theres no sence in morning the fallen because morning wont bring them back. just except it and move on. maby i like the idea because im only like 17 (almost 18 :)

Well, consider that anti-biotics were developed around the turn of the century, and that it caused people to live longer, which led to a bunch of advancements that made the 20th Century so productive. Now imagine if the average lifespan was 150 productive years. That might really help advance humanity more. Although it would probably lead to more overpopulation.

immortality, eh? that's my goal in life!
It makes me sad hearing how many of you guys are bored though. I can't remember the last time I felt bored. (probably due to my horrendous time-management skills. In fact right now, there are about five things I SHOULD be doing, rather than debating immortality.) I don't care if I'm a wrinkled old prune who can't walk, being alive is better than being dead! (yeah, even if I couldn't talk or move at all... at least I'd be alive!)
Here's a metaphor for how I see life: it's like when you go ice skating, generally you pay for a 2 hour slot. Well, some people only ice skate for 45 minutes but pay the same amount of money as the people who skate for 2 hours. Maybe their feet don't get as tired and cold and achy, but they're missing out. Me, I'd be the idiot freezing her ass off for the whole 2 hours.

The reason why I think immortality would be cool is because even things like depression and existentialist woe can be healed by 14 hours of sleep and watching the movie "West Side Story".

In my comic, actually, there's a character who's immortal, and he wants to die but can't. T_T poor zombie.