How would immortality change you?

[vger]

True but with negligible senescence we'll survive a journey of any duration. Time is no longer correlative to death.

We'd have time to worry about these problems, to carefully build new societies in new frontiers, and most importantly: To enjoy them.

It would be very strange though, a thousand year journey. Without rereading through mission briefings, we could forget why we were making the trip in the first place.

[WinkAllKerb'']

once immortality become a reality you're no longer alowed to have child(s) ... sad thing overall ... also in the same series

Edited April 30, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''

[Kibble]

My first impression is that this would suck - there's a reason life dies. It purges the old to make way for the new. It lets progress happen.

[RedDwarfIV]

I'd do it. And it would probably be done as an NHS procedure, too, if only to save the NHS all the money it would otherwise be spending on old people. Did you know, the NHS spends 4.6 million pounds a day on OAP's falling over alone?

Also note, this immortality only stops you aging. It cannot stop you being killed in other ways. I presume it would result in a culture where euthanasia was accepted for those who have grown bored of life.

As for space travel, it would pretty much eliminate generation ships... as a concept, anyway. A spacecraft of exactly the same design could still take immortal people to another star system.

And as for "humanity isn't ready", I counter that humanity will never be ready until we adjust to it afterwards. Ours is not a species that tends to wait until society can handle its inventions.

[RainDreamer]

I would love it. I like to take my time to enjoy things and life often goes by so fast. So many things to learn and so much to explore, but not enough time. Reminds me of the groundhog day movie in a sense. I get all the time in the world to master things, but not having to be trapped in a time loop.

[YNM]

Shouldn't change so much (if it were to hit, let it hit, if it were to struck, let it struck). Unless some long decades later, when I'm tired of things ?

[Voidryder]

Well it hasn't changed me yet.

[Robotengineer]

First, I'd say, "Oh !@#$". Second, I'd probably start building a bunker in the woods somewhere and stocking up on ammunition, food, information (like, "How Things Work" vol 1-179), and medical supplies. Next, I'd become a very strong advocate for mandatory, enforced birth control and population limits, with the hope that maybe, just maybe, we could gain enough wisdom fast enough to stay the coming disaster.

I would do the advocation part, I wouldn't do the bunker part. I seriously doubt that the ability to have immortality would become available to the general population, simply because the creators of the Immortality tech can charge an immense, possibly infinite, amount of money for immortality.

Human society is simply NOT ready for immortality. It could destroy us very easily. Also, human progress would grind to a halt as no new minds came into being to think new thoughts. Progress is driven by the young.

People change over time, so I don't think that progress would grind to a halt at all. It might slow, but if you look at the issues that prevent species from evolving into sapient species, it is passing information from one generation to another, so if we eliminate the issue of passing info down generation to generation, we may actually make more progress.

Now, if we could like, live to like 150 and no more, and maintain relative youthfulness for most of that- I suppose that might be good, but being stuck at like 25 forever would be bad, bad, bad.

Wouldn't staying young forever affect your above question?

[WinkAllKerb'']

how immortality would have change you ?

...

right now can't tell because someone else is immortel, the universe is infinitely full of immortel there no room or ressource left for a single more and you're never born. sound cool or not.

time to find a new universe now ; ) so you might have a chance to get immertel too.

[Starwhip]

I don't think I would like to be immortal at all.

And technically speaking, the answer to "How would Immortality change you?" is "it wouldn't change you at all".

Unless we're not talking halting the aging process. It is not a pretty sight to be a sentient desiccating corpse.

Being young forever, that can really give someone some crazy ideas. At the optimal age in one's life, when they are most fit and mature, would have its own advantages.

Too young and your mind cannot develop any further.

Too old, and you will soon lose all of your memories.

Really, I'll tell the guys selling me the miracle pill to go and... well, you know.

[Voyager55]

What happens when my memory runs out?

You won't. Your brain will keep deleting useless memories. Bold and striking events will stick out more and your most recent century or two would be the most vivid. But you could still probably remember the first time you went to space 1000 years ago because it was a significant event.

[ZedNova]

I think the title should be "How would immortality change our society". Because i think we all know how it would personally change us. ( á° Üʖ á°)

[lajoswinkler]

You won't. Your brain will keep deleting useless memories. Bold and striking events will stick out more and your most recent century or two would be the most vivid. But you could still probably remember the first time you went to space 1000 years ago because it was a significant event.

And what when significant memories exceed the capacity? If you live forever, that will happen sooner or later. 100 000 years? Million? Hundred million? It's still nothing. You live forever.

That's where immortality destroys itself. With enough time passed, everything you were will be gone and replaced. That means you will die.

[WestAir]

And what when significant memories exceed the capacity? If you live forever, that will happen sooner or later. 100 000 years? Million? Hundred million? It's still nothing. You live forever.

That's where immortality destroys itself. With enough time passed, everything you were will be gone and replaced. That means you will die.

You'll still be you. Actually, since it's impossible for humans today to "cap out" their memories, the immortal you of the future will be more you because it'll have an order of magnitude more "you" memories and personality. A (theoretical) cap does nothing to change that. Additionally I have a hard time agreeing that neurons work in this fashion: It's widely accepted that memories are unreliable sources of historical data. You can change someones memory of a car crash by using words like "crashed" instead of "bumped", reportedly leading people to recall the speed of the collision as either fast for "crashed" or slower for "bumped". It's hard to give credence to human memory when it can be changed through active recall.

[Bill Phil]

True but with negligible senescence we'll survive a journey of any duration. Time is no longer correlative to death.

We'd have time to worry about these problems, to carefully build new societies in new frontiers, and most importantly: To enjoy them.

Then there's external things. Radiation, and other physical problems. But we can conquer them.

- - - Updated - - -

You never know what you have till it's gone. Maybe when biological death is gone, we'll all wish and beg for it.

- - - Updated - - -

You won't. Your brain will keep deleting useless memories. Bold and striking events will stick out more and your most recent century or two would be the most vivid. But you could still probably remember the first time you went to space 1000 years ago because it was a significant event.

Brains aren't 100% efficient. Some rewrites will have less overall space. You're going to run out of memory eventually.

[KSK]

I'd start putting as much money as I could into cancer research and Alzheimer's research. I'm not sure about the latter but with aging no longer an issue the former becomes merely a matter of time.

[jwenting]

I'd hate to live forever. If the rest of my life's going to be like the last several years, which is not unlikely, it's going to be hell.

Cells aging isn't the only thing that causes the human body to wear out. You'd start seeing many many seriously infirm people with bone degeneration, mental problems (especially deep depression).

Suicide rates would skyrocket among people who used to think they'd be able to retire and live out their lives in relative comfort at age 65-70 and now hear they'll have to work for all eternity in order to pay taxes at ever increasing rates.

[Xannari Ferrows]

That depends on what "you" are.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/115881-Philosophy-What-are-you-and-where

[WinkAllKerb'']

the fun fact about immortality is that living make no sens

[lajoswinkler]

You'll still be you. Actually, since it's impossible for humans today to "cap out" their memories, the immortal you of the future will be more you because it'll have an order of magnitude more "you" memories and personality. A (theoretical) cap does nothing to change that. Additionally I have a hard time agreeing that neurons work in this fashion: It's widely accepted that memories are unreliable sources of historical data. You can change someones memory of a car crash by using words like "crashed" instead of "bumped", reportedly leading people to recall the speed of the collision as either fast for "crashed" or slower for "bumped". It's hard to give credence to human memory when it can be changed through active recall.

You will not be you anymore. It will be another person. Gradually, over the eons, everything you were will be lost. Immortality is therefore impossible. "You" are a complex unity of various things which affect one another. One of those things are the memories.

[Endersmens]

The title needs to be changed in this thread. You are asking how not aging would change us. Immortality isn't the right word there. Immortality means you live eternally. While this "procedure" you guys have been discussing means you would live eternally because you will not age, a 150 year old in a 25 year old's body will still be very much dead after falling off a cliff, or anything like that. Therefor they aren't immortal. The title should read something like "How would stopping the effects of aging change you?"

I think.

[Bill Phil]

You will not be you anymore. It will be another person. Gradually, over the eons, everything you were will be lost. Immortality is therefore impossible. "You" are a complex unity of various things which affect one another. One of those things are the memories.

By that same logic you aren't you. You have more experienced than you did years ago. Maybe it's not that big of a change, but it's still a change.

It really depends on how you define "you". Yes you are this arrangement of atoms with a specific genetic code. Yes you are your mind/personality.

- - - Updated - - -

The title needs to be changed in this thread. You are asking how not aging would change us. Immortality isn't the right word there. Immortality means you live eternally. While this "procedure" you guys have been discussing means you would live eternally because you will not age, a 150 year old in a 25 year old's body will still be very much dead after falling off a cliff, or anything like that. Therefor they aren't immortal. The title should read something like "How would stopping the effects of aging change you?"

I think.

It's called biological immortality, or something like that.

[Louella]

it'd mean that I would almost certainly never find out if I'd be a good mother or not.

not that I was planning on doing that any time soon, but you know, it'd be nice to have the option to.

A vastly increased lifespan would have a bigger impact on women than it would on men, I think. Due to stuff like wear and tear on the female reproductive system. Like that condition that causes fibrous growths in the womb, that gradually reduces fertility.

Like, say a person could expect to live 500 years. Unless medical technology can extend the age at which a woman could carry a child to a similar extent, then it'd mean that a woman would be in competition with a lot more generations of her descendants. And that's not good. Like, it's fairly rare for someone of college age to have a great grandmother currently. So people usually have no more than two or three generations of descendants that they're in competition with, for stuff like living space, jobs, that sort of thing. But if a woman lives 500 years, but has to have all the children that she'd want by the age of 50, then, she'd have like 9 generations of descendants that she'd be in competition with. And that'd be a bit of a problem.

[Newt]

It seems like we are arguing over semantics, which is not what this thread is about. Regardless of whether the thread is about inability to die or inability to age, it is pretty clearly not about word useage. In my personal understanding of the word, as a native US English speaker, I took the OP as being correct; you are immortal if you have a hypothetically limitless lifespan--you are invincible if you cannot be killed.

Anyway. Having immortality would be rather a practical problem for infrastructure, obviously, and would need to be handled very delicatley due to the potential problems that it would cause, with overpopulation in particular. Most probably, that would be helped ny the fact that becoming immortal likely would not be cheap, and would certainly be difficult to argue as needed in most cases, you would be hard pressed to convince any medical insurance (or government service, I imagine) to cover the costs of what would seem to be an optional proceedure.

It would also be highly controversial, facilities offering the service would face protests and potential difficulties getting public funding, as some would argue about the entire thing as being 'unnatural' and bad.

As far as what would happen to a person, I think, after a few millenia, they would still be themself. Changed, yes, but themself. Even over the 80 or 90 years that many people live these days, most individuals in their twenties are not really the same as they are in their 80's, they are the same person, still because not only do they share a body, but because those changes passed slowly, an evolution from the 20 year old to the 80 year old. Now, over a millenium, this would be only really different as far as degree to which the change is made, but the principal is the same.

On a personal note, my grandfather, when he was getting old (somewhat over 100 when he died some years ago), was an interesting person to talk to. He was physically active, as much as you could expect from a person his age, he would climb orange trees to get fruit, that sort of thing. Now, of his childhood, he could remember some things, he remembered his mothers name, for instance, but not the names of his siblings. I highly doubt he 'capped out' his memory, he just forgot, like you might forget the password to an email account after sevral years of not siging in. There was not some reason (it was not like the siblings were taken away when he was a baby) it was just that he could not remember, he had not seen them in so long. I rather doubt that there was a moment when he ceased to be the same person as he would have been, as a kid, to the person that I knew, it was progressive. By the end, he may have been a 'different person', but I see little reason that he should be spoken of as different entities in his youth and old age, as some people in this thread almost seem to be suggesting, is absurd.

Of course he changed. We all change, all the time. But changing progressivley, as a result of thoughts, experiences, and understandings does not make one cease to be the same person. That would be like suggesting that I cannot move to a different country, because if I do, I will die, and someone else will live in my body as the experience will transform me into a new person. It makes no sense.

[ZedNova]

By that same logic you aren't you. You have more experienced than you did years ago. Maybe it's not that big of a change, but it's still a change.

I think what Lajos is saying is immorality is useless if you can't keep all of your memories and/or personality intact throughout it. Why see what will happen in 5,000 years if you can't remember what happened before that?

This is why we have books, they can last longer than any human and keep more information, more accurately. The only problem is evolving language.