Eternal Life

As in never dying, not just not aging.

Would you want it? Yes? No? Travel the universe. Get bored?

Discuss here.

Remember. There are no wrong answers. Just stupid people.

Eternal life.
Never dying? As in... Even when swallowed by a black hole and be crushed to the size of a atom but still be alive? Sounds like a barrel of fun.

How negative. Maybe you just respawn when you're too damaged for your body to support you anymore.
Who knows.
Being an atom is not life. Eternal life, not eternal existance :p

Would be fun for a few millenniums. Sure, you would see your loved ones around you die but if that is the only drawback, I really couldn't give a damn.
Eternal life, I would make it a good one.


But from the moment you gain eternal life, don't you stop being human? Do you evolve? Would be weird to stay the same shape for ages while the rest of humanity evolves around you.

Even if you don't, you'll have to be creative and make it happen.
I'm sure gene therapy will be mainstream in a few decades, let alone millenia.
Also the rest of humanity isn't really evolving 'upwards' per se, I think most notable developments in our genes are 'negative' by now.
What with the taking out of natural selection and all that.

Also I expected more people to post here. Hm.

I think in the end, you'll be very lonely......
though it does seem interesting to me that you can see the world change
Also, what you have to think about is that you won't value life as much anymore, okay, probably a lot of people who are mortal still don't value life that much =/

Jp: do you mean lying on the couch and playing games? =D

I don't see why I'd be lonely. Clinging to old things (IE friends you had when you were young instead of making new ones all the time) is a function of age.
Which we are taking out of the picture.
If any of the social/cultural norms, or even human bodies, are around in a century, possibly two, this would be a great surprise to me anyway. Such a locked-into-your-own-world-view viewpoint. I'm pretty sure this argument will be moot very soon. Loneliness is a psychological problem, which, much like physical pain, we can probably remove soon. Most people born with it wouldn't want to of course. Just like people who were around when painkillers came around were 'against' it until they really wanted them.
See? Aging makes you silly. Not aging is a good thing.
It just enables you to take in the new developments like the next generation will, instead of becoming old and obsolete.
But probably only a control-freak can appreciate it in all it's beauty :p

Yeah. Gene manipulation and what not. Very possible. And I would do that if I had eternal life.
Sure, eternal life. You would be able to see the end of the universe but you would also see a new one being born. Just a few million years of boredom.

Could have gathered a lot of info to start your own universe and be hailed as "the creator".
People will fight wars over you.

Maybe this already happened to someone.
Anybody know an immortal person?

Ok double post and what not, but fuck it.

I'm in bed and for some reason can't sleep.

So eternal life. There are a great deal of versions of it.

Eternal life as in the movie "groundhog day" You relive the same day, over and over again but you keep the memories and experiences. If you would die, you wake up in your bed, unharmed and fully refreshed.

Eternal life as in a "god". Not born, never dieing, you are just there. Living your life to no end. You were there before the universe started and will be there when it ends. Even if this is more like eternal existence I still think it should be in this list.

Eternal life as in acquired by medical science/magic. You are born, living your life and then, BAM! Scientist/wizard does a experiment/spell on you and you can't die anymore. Instant regeneration and relocation to a safe spot. Teleportation device/magic that will activate when your body is in mortal danger and nanomachines/rejuvenation spell that will heal you when you are sick or hurt. Pain is still present or how would the machines/spells know when to work?

Eternal life as in, you are born an immortal and can only die by the hands of one of your own race. Like highlander. Death is only temporary and wounds heal over time. Extreme conditions will just you dead until rescued or a way out.

Eternal life as in an idea. Your life force depends on how many people are thinking about you. Somewhat like Freddy Krueger. But you could be a primal idea, something like an emotion. let's say as long as there are beings that are happy, you'll be alive. A very subtle way of being. Nobody really knows you are there but you drive on their emotion. Again this is more existence than life.

Eternal life as in a sort of reincarnation. You are born, live your life, you die, you are born again, different body, possibly different species but you remember your past lives.

Eternal life as in reincarnation. You are born, live your life, you die, you are born again, different body, possibly different species but you remember nothing of your past lives.

Eternal life as in an astral type of being. You hop from one body to the other, hitching a ride, living like some sort of symbiont. As long as there are living beings you'll survive and as long as you are there, there will be living beings. That is until the end of the universe. Game over.

Eternal life as in the movie "The 6th day" with Arnie. You live your life, make a "template" of your body as you wish it to be and store your thoughts everyday. From the moment you die some sort of cloning machine recreates your body and uploads your thoughts and experiences to that body.

Eternal life as above but there is already some template made of you by your planet or some source and you are basically a guardian. Kind of like FFVII with WEAPON. "Lifestream" gets your experiences when you die and reshapes you with altered thoughts. Experiences that benefits the planet/source will be kept, others will be deleted. As long as the planet or source is there, you will be there, guarding it.

Eternal life as in time traveling. You live your life, you feel that your days are over, you travel back in time and plant your current self into your past self by some weird mind transfer device and continue your life. Ok you'll be reliving the basic same ages again because you can't travel to the future that you left behind because you changed the past. But you could take a shitload of technology back with you. Just to make it feel like you haven't wasted the last 372 years of you life. Just continue your research. Always reliving the years 1990 till...


Don't know. There are probably a shitload I forgot but Meh.

Pick one if I was not clear enough about it or if you are willing to debunk any ideas. Or discus. I'm up for these kind of conversations but they are so hard to start.

My personal best bet (of course the longevity of this method is in question depending on the course of the universe, it's not really foolproof but I like reality-based discussions more I guess) is of course based on technology.

First of all, I see no need for nano machines to need pain to know when you are damaged, kinda silly. I'm fairly certain they can assess the state of your wellbeing purely by reading info from your brain. Of course all the regeneration stuff and stuff would be there. In case of total destruction you are recreated elsewhere, hopefully you were within range of whatever wireless capabilities nano machines have spread throughout known space. You'd be backed up all over the place redundantly. choosing yourself if you live inside a computer, have a body, have a body that you control from the computer, be a robot or whatnot, have multiple instances of yourself running, merging, or whatever. Bodies are optional. Consciousness can take many forms. Kinda of like a controlled distributed Peer to Peer consciousness. IF you are out of range your last known backup gets restored (yes, kind of like cylons but not as limited by tv show writers, or separation between carbon and silicon based life)
We'd explore our own universe and learn about it, of course, but running at computer speeds, compared to fleshy human brains, I daresay we will understand the basics (IE Math) a whole lot better too, which might be just as important in the long run.
Arguably all of these locations can be destroyed, and most certainly will not survive the end of the universe. However depending on which model of the universe turns out to be true (we want a big crunch to happen, information density increases as we run out of 'space') (and given that we spread out all over the universe, our computational capacity will be zomg to find out how to do all this properly first) it might be possible to run a computer simulation exponentially faster than time is running out, essentially creating limitless time from proper time (it has to do with computational density of matter, remember, time and space cannot exist without one another, and the morphology of space actually influences time, there are places where time passes faster than in other places, universal time does not exist, this much is certain)

Even if this model of the universe is false, there are some ways in which hypothetically we can cause a big crunch to happen (instead of a cold death) as far as we understand the models now. (baryon tunnels)

In the end, not even 100 years from now we'll probably understand things a million times better, and better paths can be chosen. It's the struggle of life all over again, only instead of passing on genes, we'll be passing on information and ideas (memes), rewiring ourselves, kicking out old leftovers from obsolete animal programming, and deciding our own path. I think death of intelligence is a needless waste that we need to free ourselves from, using the tools we posses as an intelligent species. Nature made us. It was luck. It is foolish not to improve upon it. We do it for anything else. I will only accept counter arguments from people living like apes in caves or the wilderness. And they do not have internet.

And I do not think it will be pointless until I understand it all. And then we can just limit ourselves, temporarily wipe our memories, that being the cure of an immoral against boredom :p run inside simulations, maybe of this life, and any other we can imagine, for nostalgia or experimentation. Maybe sometimes we will not wipe our memories and like to play god in giant universe vs universe games. not necessarily 3 dimensional ones. They could be anything. Some will opt for suicide. I for one shall not rest until every last possibility has happened. When everything has happened, there would no longer be a point. I will have seen everything and been everyone. And if I choose to, I can permanently wipe my memory and live it all over again from any ambiguous point. Would it be pointless? Feelings are only pointless for those who have surpassed them. Arguably I will question it when not in a simulation. But I could set it up so that I never even know what is happening. It depends on refusal to die being an emotional or intellectual trait.

This idea combines a lot of religious (taoist 'soulcompletion' through reincarnation, pantheism, lots more but it occurs to me that these conversations are better had in a nice jazz cafe :p my new environment of choice for talking) and technological ideas, and while not certain if it is possible at this point, there is an acceptably high chance of it being possible, given our current knowledge of How Stuff Works. One of the only problems I see concering intelligence being just an automated process is of course quantum uncertainty. It's the best argument left in favor of free will :p
But I don't think it matters if it's true. We can forget. If we would want to is another question. For every individual.

Or you know, we keep electing technophobes until the terrorists get it and they kill us all with a giant blob of nano machines. For teh lulz. Or aliens. Though I assume they are just running inside sims themselves unless they killed themself first. After all FTL might not be possible no matter what we do. It could just be the way it is.

I would never get bored. And I mock people who give that as an answer to this question. They bore me. But that's ok. It's the life I chose. Or maybe I pressed the random button. Or a friend shared one he made to me. Or I ran this as a remake of my baseline universe. Or I'm still in it. That would worry me. It would mean I'm not eternal yet.

I could go on but I'm hungry :p

Loyen, first of all, BRILLIANT

Don't have much time or energy to type a lot, but I'll pose a few questions ^^
Of course, if some"one" had reached eternal life already, and had obtained the mass consciousness that surpassed time and space through technology, and if it dealt itself up to relive certain points of its infinite experience, AND would have done that throughout space-time, IT COULD HAVE ALREADY HAPPENED :p
I mean, our bodies are just machines that grow and consume complex fuels. Cells: Nano-machines?
I don't know, it just all seems too familiar :p

And personally, I'd have to go for reincarnation and keeping your memories. Getting old may be a psychoactive response, but it still makes life so much more fun to be reborn in a new place, new time, and you get to experience a whole new lifetime.

Yet, to maintain my epic consciousness, I'd have to go for the "networking consciousness" too xD

Keep it Brutal, Keep it Commie!

Yes, if it is possible, the chance that it has already happened and we are inside one is the highest. But there is no way to tell from the inside unless it is allowed by the outside.

Avoiding the end of the universe is something I think a lot about.
More on that later maybe :p

Right now it's time time go watch some hellsing ultimate.

we weten niks. de illusie in het leven is dat mensen denken dat ze iets snappen over het leven.

Past niet echt bij de inhoud van dit onderwerp he brecht. Maar soit:

Het valt mij vaak op dat vooral mensen die niks begrijpen van wetenschap zeggen dat wetenschap niks begrijpt.

Gelukkig hebben we een radicale methode bedacht om te testen hoe dingen in elkaar zitten. We doen iets en we kijken hoe het werkt, en we verzinnen redenen totdat onze uitleg klopt. Dat heet een theorie. Zien we later nieuwe dingen waar de uitleg niet meer bij past doen moeten we die aanpassen. De theorie was fout. Wetenschap niet.

Wetenschap is een methode, niet de inhoud.

Als ge niet van empyrisch bewijs kunt uitgaan kunt ge net zogoed een nihilist worden.
Hoewel dit soort argumenten vaker gebruikt worden als een reden om niet berekenbaar gehouden te worden voor mensen hun eigen acties dan iets anders natuurlijk.

Als ge niet kunt weten of iets klopt, is het ook niet erg als ge niks doet. Amorele luie onzin als ge het mij vraagt.

I call Bullshit of course.