Biological Immortality Versus Creating Or Buying

[Spacescifi]

If you and others had biological immortality (aging won't kill you) would you rather buy or build items you use?

For once you could not make the excuse "I don't have time so I must buy!"

I would probably start off buying, then use my nonwork time to become skilled enough to build stuff of my own. Once I became sufficiently skilled, I would hire myself out.

Eventually the goal would be not a jack of all trades, but a master of all trades that concern me, at least involving anything I use regulary.

Toothbrushes? Check. I can make them. Automobile? Yep. Spaceship. Give me some time but yeah.

 

You get the picture.

What about you?

Edited October 7, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

I would wait a little and buy a "Universal Thing Self-Building Kit". (Nanites, probably)

Edited October 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Shpaget]

Making stuff is harder than you probably imagine. Making stuff cheaper than mass produced stuff is certainly not possible, unless you are willing to also go the mass production way, but (cost of that setup aside) what are you going to do with tens of thousands of toothbrushes you make each day? Sell them? I'd have thousand and one better things to waste my immortality on, than accounting. Hard pass.

Making toothbrushes for my personal use? I can order a years' worth of them online and they come to my doorstep for less than the equivalent of my time's worth which would take me to walk to the shop down the street to buy them. Making them in a workshop I have, would take significantly longer and be more expensive, not to mention pose a health hazard.

Making an automobile? Working alone, you'd probably crush your face in a 500 ton press before making the first door panel.

Just because you don't die of old age, doesn't mean you can't get hit by a car, suicide because running the global toothbrush empire became so mind numbing, or chronic poisoning due to various unaccounted chemicals I unwittingly introduced to my home made toothbrushes.

[kerbiloid]

Having unlimited time it's better to play with long-term bank deposits, financial markets, and even gambling bets. To hire or buy instead of spending your time on every craft existing Even in Skyrim.

[YNM]

Would communicable diseases still exist or not ? Pandemics broke the immortality dreams in the face IMO...

 

Though if it's possible I'd like to invest in stuff please.

Edited October 7, 2020 by YNM

[cubinator]

I already build stuff, at least when learning a skill is more valuable than the final product, or when the thing I want doesn't exist. I buy a lot of the things I need, but I also spend time inventing new things.

[Nuke]

as a mortal i always prefer building over buying, i figure being an immortal would just make more people do same. 

like i would rather have a built by hand amish desk than one out of a mass production facility. of course thats after the freebie '50s steel desk i found on the side of the road*.

 

* getting it home and up the stairs was a massive undertaking, but it was junk and didnt mind the paint scraping off as i slid it up the metal grate stairs. i got it over here by using an old gardening cart that the previous tenants left in the shed as a makeshift dolly. i only had to move it 2 blocks but that was enough to reduce the gardening cart to splinters. the cats made short work of the family of mice living in one of the drawers. im always amazed by how often people throw away perfectly good things. 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Nuke

[SOXBLOX]

"breaks easier"

If one man is doing the building, you bet it's gonna "break easier".

And yeah, this is a thing for a reason.

Ever read I, Pencil? If not, definitely read it; it's short.

[coyotesfrontier]

I mean, I'd still be mortal, biologically immortality only means I don't age. I don't really think my worldview would change, I'm only 18 and have so much ahead of me. Receiving immortality wouldn't change how I'd think about my life that much, people my age already feel like they have plenty of time after all. Getting to see how humanity progresses would be nice, but I'll have to see my friends and younger brother age and die. Overall It'd be a mixed bag.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, coyotesfrontier said:

I mean, I'd still be mortal, biologically immortality only means I don't age. I don't really think my worldview would change, I'm only 18 and have so much ahead of me. Receiving immortality wouldn't change how I'd think about my life that much, people my age already feel like they have plenty of time after all. Getting to see how humanity progresses would be nice, but I'll have to see my friends and younger brother age and die. Overall It'd be a mixed bag.

 

The original post is implying if we ALL had it..... never growing old.

Nonetheless.... mankind is not mature enough yet individually or civilizationally to handle such great power nor responsibility.

 

The more time one has the less reason they get to justify excuses for things they should have done but did not. Living forever kills any excuse given based on a lack of time. There is only care or care not.

It is arguably a good thing humans don't live forever nowadays.

We would probably stockpile antimatter bombs like we do nukes, and ruin a lot of stuff through other means as well.

 

To not even speak of culling (too many people not enough land).

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Superfluous J]

I'd buy most things because of this adage:

"Why buy it for $7 when you can make it yourself for $92 in craft supplies?"

That's a joke of course but it's very true for a lot of things. Pickling cucumbers are generally more expensive per pound than pickles, and the pickles come with the jar and you don't need a lid sealer taking up cupboard space.

Also, many things I just don't WANT to make myself. Beer? Sure. If I had infinite time I'd only drink my own hand crafted beer. A car? No thanks I'll take a Tesla please.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Superfluous J

[kerbiloid]

If everyone starts making all his things, soon the only thing they have would be stone axes.

[Shpaget]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

To not even speak of culling (too many people not enough land).

Only if this immortality happens suddenly. If it happens gradually over multiple generations, then birth rates would drop and compensate, just the way we see happen in western world over the last 100 or so years. Why would anybody rush to have kids in their 20s when they can just as easily have them in their 2000s, by which time there is a better than even chance that they meet an untimely demise due to slipping in the shower and cracking their head open, or something.

This site lists chances of death due to injury for various causes, with total chance of dying due to external causes over a lifetime to be 1 in 24, this brings the math to about 65% chance of dying due to injury over the period of 2000 years.

I imagine murder rate would also go up, due to all the kids not wanting to wait eons for the inheritance.

[Okhin]

It's not because you're immortal than you necessarily have the time to do things. I do not see why your lives would be less busy because yo're immortal. Sure, you might have a longer time to spend on a hobby of you, meaning that, if they're no time imperative, you could effectively spend two thousands years perfecting the art of pottery. But when you broke a tea cup, you need to replace it (or maybe fix it), and you need to do it in a short time span. Because you want tea now, or tomorrow, not in two thousands years.

And if you're not busy during your immortality, then there's a chance you're getting bored. And death won't come naturally to you, since you're immortal. So you might decide that, at some point, being immortal sucks and you'd rather kill yourself. Or maintain a busy and entertaining life (but then, at some point, you might reach the point where what entertains you is totally loveed up). I mean, read some vampires story, they never end well :p

So definitely buy.

PS: Ok, except for pottery. I spend the last two thousand years on perfecting the art of pottery, maybe I can make my own and not buy it.

[kerbiloid]

1. A mammal (incl. human) immortality can't expand the female fertility duration, because egg cells form in female embryo, and their numbers is fixed.
So, the menarche at ~13 starts monthly countdown, and by 40+ the female is out of egg cells, and metabolism starts disabling unused chemical reactions, so by ~60 even a cloned cell implantation is impossible.
So, even immortal females still should give birth in their first ~40 years.

2. Male gonades are affected by radiation and chemical factors and mutate. So, an immortal man still has just several decades for safe reproduction.

3. The immortality makes no sense without advanced regeneration abilities, otherwise it will be a one-legged, three-fingered, one-eyed immortal with no teeth in few centuries.
On one hand, this can unexpectedly solve the problem of the fertility by monthly regeneration of egg cells.
(Also technically she'll be an eternal virgin even having a hundred of children.)

On the other hand this probably makes any surgery useless, as any defect (from heart to teeth) will self-restore after the surgery (which is actually a managed trauma).
So, this makes the immortality of a not perfect body almost equal to the immortality of a non-regenerating immortal.

So, the biological immortality requires a perfect body and a perfect regeneration to feel happy.

***

In turn, this forces the regenerating immortal to practice various psychophysiological technics like yoga to withstand casual kinds of discomfort.
(Neither frost, nor heat can kill him, so it's just a question of psychological comfort for him to sleep in ice without clothes.)
This, in turn, lets him less need things.
The limited needs in things together with ability to use your favourite clay plate bought in 250 BC means that an immortal person unlikely needs many new things, and that any craft he learned gets useless just a couple of centruries later. And his practical knowlegde as well.

So, actually the only thing to learn for the immortal is how to get profit by people manipulation.
(Who said Slytherin?)

Also, when you are immortal, you can get interest from your long-term deposits made in XVI century.
So, if there are immortals, they probably are not mountain hermits.

Edited October 14, 2020 by kerbiloid