immortality is a foolish quest, and not because of how impossible it is to reach
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Serious Immortality/Indefinite Life Extension
- Thread starter STEELDRAGON
- Start date
Philosophers like Camus have more and less directly took on the subject of immortality and in The Myth of Sisyphus especially there are a lot of considerations about how people live their life and their "relationship" with death.
For example Camus says we live every day with hope for the tomorrow to get over the troubles of life without really realizing that every day passing is actually bringing us closer to our death, with the conclusion being that pretty much each and everyone of us pretends to not know about the certainty of death.
After this illusion breaks and people realize how inhumane and without meaning the world really is (and Camus brings up the case of many philosophers in a "suicide" going back to irrationality like Kierkegaard) the man has to cope with the absurdity of his condition without false hope by abandoning the metaphysical research of freedom and pretty much just living life with passion, revolt, and freedom. The key is choosing action over contemplation, a choice that is well conscious of the certainty of death.
The most famous part is the one in which he talks about Sisyphus, the hero who chained death so that no human needed to die. Once death escaped they settled on a punishment that allowed him to live forever as he was assigned a meaningful and eternal task: pushing a big rock up and down a hill.
Camus realizes that once Sisyphus accepted the absurdity of his situation and accepted his limits he is in fact happy since "The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."
If this were to become the norm humanity would probably be able to handle it but i really don't expect that much from science really during my lifetime even though a big increase to the average lifetime is probably possible
For example Camus says we live every day with hope for the tomorrow to get over the troubles of life without really realizing that every day passing is actually bringing us closer to our death, with the conclusion being that pretty much each and everyone of us pretends to not know about the certainty of death.
After this illusion breaks and people realize how inhumane and without meaning the world really is (and Camus brings up the case of many philosophers in a "suicide" going back to irrationality like Kierkegaard) the man has to cope with the absurdity of his condition without false hope by abandoning the metaphysical research of freedom and pretty much just living life with passion, revolt, and freedom. The key is choosing action over contemplation, a choice that is well conscious of the certainty of death.
The most famous part is the one in which he talks about Sisyphus, the hero who chained death so that no human needed to die. Once death escaped they settled on a punishment that allowed him to live forever as he was assigned a meaningful and eternal task: pushing a big rock up and down a hill.
Camus realizes that once Sisyphus accepted the absurdity of his situation and accepted his limits he is in fact happy since "The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."
If this were to become the norm humanity would probably be able to handle it but i really don't expect that much from science really during my lifetime even though a big increase to the average lifetime is probably possible
So I lost the big post that I was typing but I wanted to say that death will be obliterated in the near future and we are nearing longevity escape velocity.
How long do you mean? Surely you can't think we will completely eradicate death in, let's say, in 50 years time?
We have had nanobots for sometime time now and it will take a few decades to perfect them. Nanobots are not some cure all but they will solve most of the issues associated with biological aging.
We will also have some more emerging technologies that will help us live indefinitely such 3-D printed organs, Young blood proteins, gene therapy, telomere repair, antiaging drugs, mind transfer/uploading, cybernetics. At the very last resort we have cryonics.
I don't see anything unethical about immortality. Humans should have the choice whether they live or not.
With indefinite life extension they will also be life expansion and they will be always something new to talk about. The future wouldn't get boring. You would have much more time with your family or loved ones.
I think you have the right idea. As we are gaining more control over aging and disease we will also have more control over the causes of death such as accidents. There is a issue whether you upload and back up your mind if its really you. I prefer the gradual replacement approach where you gradually replace the neurons.
Age-related diseases cause more death than any other cause and will be one of the most important endeavors of the human race.
We are approaching the advances to get to the longevity escape velocity in about 15-20 years where we will be adding more time to your life expectancy than times goes by so we will outrun our own demise. Additionally people now can halt and in some cases reverse aging right now with diet, working out, and supplements. While ones chronological age is always increasing, that is not the same as biological age. Accepting death will soon be a outdated way of thinking. Over the course of human history more and more people don't accept death aren't accepting death as nothing they can do anything about. We are lucky that we were born in a time where death will largely be eradicated. While accepting death is still the mainstream that will rapidly change as we make breakthroughs. No one wants to die unless they are suffering/in pain depressed.
I am saying that by 2050 will eradicate death by aging/disease for almost everyone. The main people who would be dying at that point are people who are already 100+ and even then they could get cryopreserved and get brought back. Bringing back people from the dead will probably take a little longer by around 2100. By about 2100 the main causes death will be caused by humans such as wars, suicide and by a lesser extent natural disasters. Once we begin to colonize outside earth the risk of natural disasters such as earthquakes, etc will largely be get rid of.
There is no evidence of a afterlife and religion to a extent have rationalized death because they think there will be a afterlife/revival in another life/heaven/hell/etc. In the scientific community there is a consensus that once your brain has sustained enough damage to the point where current medical technology can't reverse the damage you are in eternal oblivion and have experienced information-theoretic death.
STEELDRAGON
While it may be possible that we do eradicate ageing and death, I can't realistically see it happening within the next 33 and a half years. There are so many causes of death, not just biological factors, but things like natural disasters, technological faults etc etc (but you mentioned this). Even if scientists somehow managed to create something to stop aging, it's highly unlikely it will be commonly available in 33 1/2 years, let alone that it will be affordable.
This isn't a certainty. We can't guarantee that we will defiantly be immortal.
This I agree with. The world around us would not come to a stand still just because we became immortal. I suppose at some point during the future it would get stale, but that would take a long time (probably a few hundred years at the minimum).
I don't believe we're going to bring people back from the dead. Nothing exists that does this (at least, nothing after you've been dead for more than a day).
How do we know that new planets / moons / whatever we colonise won't have their own set of problems that go with it?
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Aging is going to happen but it won't cause deaths. What I mean is that we are going to go through a maintence is that some one biologically 50 when the therapies first come out will have the therapies will get reversed to 20 and then slowly creep up from there and say 20 years pass and we will have a even more powerful therapy and etc. We will then get to the where anyone can be biologically the age of their choice indefinitely. Our bodies are outdated software and we will be turning into cyborglike creatures as the nonbilogical parts are increasingly better than the ones that we were born with.
The other causes of death will slowly decline as we get more control over them.
There is a very good chance that people as old as the baby boomers will get to the point where they will benefit from the technologies we will have. Even some people born in the late 1800s who are cryopreserved now will eventually get the chance.
It will never get boring there will always be new exciting developments and things to do.
When I mean bring people back from the dead I don't mean going to a gravesite and than reanimating them. I am talking about people who are Cryopreserved now and in the future will get brought back. Once we perfect bringing people back the last people to be brought back will be the ones with most damage/the ones who were cryopreserved the earliest date in time such Dr. James Bedford who was the first person to be cryopreserved in 1967.
The other places in space that we will colonize will have challenges for us and we will overcome them.
I feel like if everyone became immortal, new problems will arise. There would be over-population, resources would be stretched, etc. I can see human life being boosted by 50 years (so 100-150 at the most) but even if we remove diseases there is still going to be death. We'll still have car crashes and random things that we can not prevent. This is kind of rambling but anyway.... I can't see complete immortality ever being a thing due to Earth's resources. However I do think in the future we are going to see more people living to 100 and even higher thanks to eradicating diseases, but death will still happen because of unpredictable events.
Yeah, here are a couple more issues with immortality: one, if these therapies arise as you envision them, they will be for the rich and no one else. I don't care how you achieve it, it's going to be expensive, and thus only reserved for those with money. So the society you're envisioning would hardly be utopian, unless you have some clever way around that issue. Another issue is that you would have to completely stop all childbirth very, very soon to make this not incredibly problematic, due to overpopulation and resource scarcity. These are already huge problems (look how much dire poverty exists in the world). Do you want to grossly exacerbate this?
I don't think we'll be able to make people immune to the effects of aging anytime soon. But if we did, I think it would only further the already enormous divides between the rich few and the poor multitudes.
I don't think we'll be able to make people immune to the effects of aging anytime soon. But if we did, I think it would only further the already enormous divides between the rich few and the poor multitudes.
Utopian is setting a pretty high bar though, I don't think anyone's expecting that. In terms of rich vs poor, this is an issue with any emerging technology, but ideally you would see governments implementing systems to make this technology available to everyone. I don't see why there would be any distinction between this technology and say, a course of cancer treatment so ideally it would get lumped in with whatever affordable health care systems they have. Obviously some countries do this better than others, but that's the goal. That's even working with the assumption that it's expensive, which may not even hold true, especially as time goes on and the treatment develops.
Overpopulation is the big issue though, I can't think of any sustainable solution other than to impose heavy-handed restrictions on childbirth, but I'm not sure how popular that would prove to be lol
Of course it is. The reasons have been mentioned already. It would widen the rich vs poor divide, cause overpopulation, the old would outnumber the young... not to mention the human mind isn't meant for immortality. Most old people have mental health problems.
The rich vs poor divide is theoretically not an issue if your nation has a good healthcare system with measures to ensure affordable medical treatment, which I think most developed countries that aren't the US already do. Old outnumbering the young... I don't see how that's a substantial ethical issue tbh. Like yeah, it's something to discuss because it is notable, but I don't think it's a matter of ethics. Your comments on the human mind to me just aren't substantiated. You'd have to cite some evidence to say that most old people have mental health problems because that's a pretty big claim to make and I highly doubt it's true. To then use that as justification for saying the human mind isn't meant for immortality is a non-sequitur imo when there are so many other factors contributing to mental health issues in older people such as reduced social interaction.
Who on earth would want to live for ever? Watching all your friends and family die, losing touch with the world, and after a while you would lose all joy in living. There's a finite list of things to do in the world, and eventually you'd get sick of the place. Hell I hate humanity now - look at what we've done to the planet, and to each other.
Presumably, you're family and friends would be living forever as well. I mean you'd probably die at some point due to war or accidents, but it isn't just you living forever. Presumably as time goes on, that finite list will get bigger.
Humanity is terrible however.
hi just popping in to say that all the moral grandstanding going on about how living "forever" would invalidate all meaning is largely bullshit. if you were offered a lifetime supply of apples, those apples would still taste good regardless of the fact that there is theoretically no limit to them. sure, you might get a little sick of them if you eat them all the damn time, but as long as you just view your apple bounty as a constant in your life it's nothing more than a nice thing to have.
the same goes for the concept of having "limitless" time. the notion that people only enjoy things because they know they will one day not enjoy anything is both inherently stupid and anecdotally false. in order for that theory to be consistent, it supposes that children enjoy nothing and live in some sort of kierkegaardian despair until they realize that death exists. this is obviously not the case. living in a world where immortality is realistic would be simply returning to that state of not realizing death exists, in many ways. children who aren't aware of death aren't calculating their actions based on their own impermanence, they're calculating it based on the value they see in it for all other reasons.
obviously, the other flaw with this idea is that immortality would certainly not be an instantaneous thing. the far more likely possibility is simply that anti-aging technology evolves at a rate faster than humans at some point age, and it seems far more possible that there will develop ways to reverse aging rather than to freeze it, for some point at least. the notion of mortality is still very wrapped up inside these ideas, and just because these ideas provide mortality on a different scale does not mean they confer immortality.
the same goes for the concept of having "limitless" time. the notion that people only enjoy things because they know they will one day not enjoy anything is both inherently stupid and anecdotally false. in order for that theory to be consistent, it supposes that children enjoy nothing and live in some sort of kierkegaardian despair until they realize that death exists. this is obviously not the case. living in a world where immortality is realistic would be simply returning to that state of not realizing death exists, in many ways. children who aren't aware of death aren't calculating their actions based on their own impermanence, they're calculating it based on the value they see in it for all other reasons.
obviously, the other flaw with this idea is that immortality would certainly not be an instantaneous thing. the far more likely possibility is simply that anti-aging technology evolves at a rate faster than humans at some point age, and it seems far more possible that there will develop ways to reverse aging rather than to freeze it, for some point at least. the notion of mortality is still very wrapped up inside these ideas, and just because these ideas provide mortality on a different scale does not mean they confer immortality.
Regarding the matter of overpopulation: There are two options - Create new live or extend already existing live. The question is: Who do you think you are, to assume that your live is worth more than that of the future generation? Maintaining one generation for the rest of earths existence would mean to forgo all evolutionary advantages. Plus, we might not see the next Goethe, the next Newton. I don't think that humanity has reached - or will reach in due time - a point where the existing induviduals could grant the best possible future. In fact, I believe that even the most brilliant minds like Hawking don't deserve to live forever. It's just not about that. Everyone should get the chance to live and no one has the right to cut the right to live.
Disregarding practical issues or ethics or scientific boundaries: Personally, I could not bear to live with myself for eternity. Maybe I'm still too young to judge that, but I don't like myself enough to the point where I would give up the chance to experience death to live on indefinitely. If I could die and come back with this consciousness, however, I would like to see the world a second time.
Disregarding practical issues or ethics or scientific boundaries: Personally, I could not bear to live with myself for eternity. Maybe I'm still too young to judge that, but I don't like myself enough to the point where I would give up the chance to experience death to live on indefinitely. If I could die and come back with this consciousness, however, I would like to see the world a second time.
OLD GREGG (im back baby)
old gregg for life
My big problem with this, is that humanity is inherently creative and destructive at once. I find it quite foolhardy to think someone will create an anti-aging technique for the good of humanity. If we are to see these things, you better believe they will be-for profit. If you can't offord the hefty price tag, well that's a shame. Kiss your life goodbye.
Hypothetically, you are now immortal. Sadly the human race has reaped a large amount of earth's resources and those, theoretically, infinite apples just won't grow in poisoned soil. If you really think humanity is capable of achieving a uptopian play land where you can live forever, please come back to Earth. Look inside your own heart to see the bad, that we all have.
Ask yourself, if your desire for immortality is for the good of all or for the good of self?
Your answer will be key in understanding why I just can't take this seriously.
Hypothetically, you are now immortal. Sadly the human race has reaped a large amount of earth's resources and those, theoretically, infinite apples just won't grow in poisoned soil. If you really think humanity is capable of achieving a uptopian play land where you can live forever, please come back to Earth. Look inside your own heart to see the bad, that we all have.
Ask yourself, if your desire for immortality is for the good of all or for the good of self?
Your answer will be key in understanding why I just can't take this seriously.
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I find this topic quite fascinating, well to answer not everything the human has done its a problem without solution, you know the polution of plástics can be erradicated with pro ambiental bacterias (there are bacterias that can eat plastic), in some way we fucked the world but the human innovation is big enough to let humans solve their worst problems.
Now my opinión for inmortality i wouldn't live forever but live enough to watch the space exploration and answer some physical questions like what dark energy is i would be happy enough to say its time to rest in piece.
Now my opinión for inmortality i wouldn't live forever but live enough to watch the space exploration and answer some physical questions like what dark energy is i would be happy enough to say its time to rest in piece.
Good point, and that would be a HUGE ethical question if we have the technology. If scientist make that huge breakthrough, should they just keep it secret/destroy it, knowing the potential consequences?
I think that space colonization and breakthroughs in propulsion are inevitable. I also trust we'll figure out other problems preventing long-ranged space travel, such as radiation and zero-gravity's effects on our bodies. And if some UFOs really are extra-terrestrial space craft/starships (not getting into conspiracy theories and the descriptions we get from abductees), it gives us a glimpse of what is possible, given enough time (assuming we don't wipe ourselves out first).
Once we cross that threshold, overpopulation within a century or two (three or four at the most) shouldn't be a concern, given the size of the universe, unless someone has beat us to colonizing all nearby hospitable planets.
That is one of the main concerns I have with nanites. I won't be wanting to be one of the first to get them, though I imagine there will be many, thinking "what could go wrong?" or otherwise trusting their safety.
It cannot be understated that a lot of time would need to be made refining them and making sure their programming is flawless, or can at least be corrected on the go/they have a recall order where they exit the body/shut down if malfunctioning.
Like that would stop some individuals if the technology was possible and they could get their hands on it. All it will take is some rich bastard who thinks he's above the law, and everyone will want it, laws be damned.
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perhaps im selfish and simple but living forever=more life and life is fun. Ethics be damned. And if I can do it assume that means other people would be able to as well. I cant foresee what social problems this would cause but I imagine that great societal shifts would take place and humanity would have even greater reasons to try to expand and preserve the earth than ever before. One of the reasons people care so little is because its hard to imagine change happening over long periods of time when by the time it does happen you'll be dead. If people can conceive living that far into the future I think humanity would be better off as we would have greater drive to achieve new things.
Existential dread aside the psychological issues could be worrying. We dont know what would happen to people should they start living for absurdly long periods of time and we don't know how that would affect the people that aren't.
TBH though no need to worry about this as until Elon Musk and Google start funding a project to reach the singularity and create a brain uploading system I dont see this happening any time soon.
Existential dread aside the psychological issues could be worrying. We dont know what would happen to people should they start living for absurdly long periods of time and we don't know how that would affect the people that aren't.
TBH though no need to worry about this as until Elon Musk and Google start funding a project to reach the singularity and create a brain uploading system I dont see this happening any time soon.
OLD GREGG (im back baby)
old gregg for life
Threw any conceived "right to immortality" is completely man-made and obviously goes against the laws of nature. Man must abide the laws of nature and never the other way around. Sure, we can put a spaceship into orbit. We can even put a person on that spaceship, but do you understand how taxing this process is on the body of the astronaut? We are putting people into an environment that they were never meant to inhabit, this is why you have people who get sick on basic airplanes. Imagine how those people would feel in freaking space.
When we try to enforce our will upon nature it can have many disastrous effects that are often unpredictable. The ramifications of an anti-aging technology are not yet known, but ramifications there will be. No doubt in my mind.You cannot offset the natural balance without ramifications. Humans age because we are programmed to, it's in our DNA. Sure we might be able to hit a switch in our DNA to reverse the aging process but not without a cost. The cost might not be obvious at this point while these things are still new, but hindsight is always 20/20.
We are tampering with things we don't fully understand and until we fully understand genetic code and how it works 100 percent; I feel this is akin to playing with fire. Don't think it's very intelligent to just go into a random computer room and start pushing buttons and that's similar to this situation. More work needs to be done before this should even be considered.
When we try to enforce our will upon nature it can have many disastrous effects that are often unpredictable. The ramifications of an anti-aging technology are not yet known, but ramifications there will be. No doubt in my mind.You cannot offset the natural balance without ramifications. Humans age because we are programmed to, it's in our DNA. Sure we might be able to hit a switch in our DNA to reverse the aging process but not without a cost. The cost might not be obvious at this point while these things are still new, but hindsight is always 20/20.
We are tampering with things we don't fully understand and until we fully understand genetic code and how it works 100 percent; I feel this is akin to playing with fire. Don't think it's very intelligent to just go into a random computer room and start pushing buttons and that's similar to this situation. More work needs to be done before this should even be considered.
The desire for immortality is inherently selfish. Don't try to pretend otherwise. With that said this thread wasn't created for malicious intent but the OP and some other posts were worded in an extremely aggressive way.
Don't plan on living forever. Don't plan on forming new universes, don't plan against the most basic forces of nature. The power required to form even a few stars would be greater than the combined total energy released from detonating an atomic bomb every second for the entire life of the universe. That's not the purpose of humans on this planet, we're not here to exploit nature, possibly irreversibly damage it for our own meager, selfish ends. You aren't special. You don't deserve to live forever any more or any less than anyone else, even the murderer on death row.
For the more practical reasons, the most obvious is overpopulation. Are we just not going to have children? This obviously isn't going to work, people are still going to have sex and people are still going to have children. If we are, when do we stop aging for these children? How do we control the population? How do we decide who has to die? Then naturally crime will increase, especially if in areas where people feel threatened by overpopulation.
There are so many institutions and customs that revolve around the fact that, well, people die. Elderly care facilities. Life sentences in prison. The whole concept of religion. The motivation for people to work hard; they want to get rich, make something out of their lives, and they know they have a limited amount of time to do it. What's the point of doing things efficiently if you have an eternity? Who wants to live with the same people for eternity? Work at the same place?
vF edit: No petty insults please.
Don't plan on living forever. Don't plan on forming new universes, don't plan against the most basic forces of nature. The power required to form even a few stars would be greater than the combined total energy released from detonating an atomic bomb every second for the entire life of the universe. That's not the purpose of humans on this planet, we're not here to exploit nature, possibly irreversibly damage it for our own meager, selfish ends. You aren't special. You don't deserve to live forever any more or any less than anyone else, even the murderer on death row.
For the more practical reasons, the most obvious is overpopulation. Are we just not going to have children? This obviously isn't going to work, people are still going to have sex and people are still going to have children. If we are, when do we stop aging for these children? How do we control the population? How do we decide who has to die? Then naturally crime will increase, especially if in areas where people feel threatened by overpopulation.
There are so many institutions and customs that revolve around the fact that, well, people die. Elderly care facilities. Life sentences in prison. The whole concept of religion. The motivation for people to work hard; they want to get rich, make something out of their lives, and they know they have a limited amount of time to do it. What's the point of doing things efficiently if you have an eternity? Who wants to live with the same people for eternity? Work at the same place?
Have studies shown they want to live forever?
vF edit: No petty insults please.
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We don't deserve this improvement because as of now the harms are far greater than the benefits. You're making an extremely huge assumption by saying if we manage to solve death we'll also solve overpopulation; you need to accept there are some big things we can fix and smaller things we can't. I also like how you completely ignored my other points. You can't seriously think science would have any effect on human nature or wipe out age-old institutions because it rarely, if ever has. We still lie, cheat, kill, do you think immortality will make that any better?
I agree with you that death will still occur when we have access to indefinite life extension technologies, but as times goes involuntary death will become less and less common as we have more and more control over things. The earth's resources and needs of the growing population will be met with future technology. The current population is slowing in growth and may level out around 10 billion or so. They is still a lot space on earth that we can build new cities and living spaces. We won't be limited to be stuck on earth, we have other planets, solar systems, galaxies etc to spread out to.
I expect that within a decade or so of when we have the technology it will easily be accessible to the public. Overpopulation won't be as much as a issue as people make it out to be, as there is plenty of room in this universe. Age will become just a number people won't be able tell the difference between a 20 year old and 2,000 year old.
That isn't true there, when your age your brain changes but that doesn't mean mental heath problems for the majority of the population.
A lot of people don't realize how close we are to biological immortality. The rate of technological growth is speeding up at a staggering rate. Many members of the public are skeptical but that will soon change as breakthrough after breakthrough gets made. Most of my generation will have the choice to live indefinitely as 25 year old or whatever age they chose,. A common misconception is that people will live forever as 100 year olds but that won't be the case, many will be in much better shape than they where before the technology.
People of any age right now have the potential to live indefinitely even people well over 110 they just have to be cryopreserved and they will be revived in the future. For the younger people like myself we will be able to do that without having to be cryopreserved.
Wanting to live forever isn't selfish, everyone wants to live unless they suffering, in pain or have psychological issues like depression. I and plenty of other people can't wait to the experience to see what the 21rst century developments in all facets of the human race.
What is the purpose of the human race?
No one deserves to die involuntarily. Just like how some countries have euthanasia the right to die we should have the right to live.
Indefinite life extension will revolutionize many aspects of life such as life insurance, government terms, crime.
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