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Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

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Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#31

Post by iwwr »

A civilisation where people can live arbitrarily long lives may have some interesting consequences. For one, cultural stagnation caused by people with entrenched beliefs sticking around. A lot of social progress and scientific development happens over the dead bodies of the old holdouts.

Then in the beginning at least there is the risk of extreme social inequality and a gerontocratic ruling class. Only the wealthy will have access to life extension and it may be the wealthy power structures that deny the technology to other people.

Finally, a civilisation made up of long-lived individuals may become extremely risk-averse, with possible consequences of reduced experimentation, creativity and rebellion. They may also turn out a little like what Larry Niven makes of the Puppeteer race: powerful, cowardly creatures, highly ritualistic, paternalistic and soft-totalitarian.

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#32

Post by crimsonalucard »

Zikes wrote: post #25
crimsonalucard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boredom is a common argument against immortality that is completely derived from pure speculation because nobody has ever lived long enough to experience that feeling of suicidal boredom. I spend great portions of my life being bored. Never has my boredom ever interfered or had any connection with my desire to live or be immortal. It's pure bullshit to even imply there is a connection.

I would find it hard to believe there's a single human in all of history that would be bored if they found themselves living in present day. Especially now that we're in the Information Age, more and more boredom is becoming a conscious choice for anyone with an internet connection, rather than an inescapable circumstance.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. I can be bored and on the internet at the same time.

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#33

Post by crimsonalucard »

iwwr wrote: post #31

A civilisation where people can live arbitrarily long lives may have some interesting consequences. For one, cultural stagnation caused by people with entrenched beliefs sticking around. A lot of social progress and scientific development happens over the dead bodies of the old holdouts. Then in the beginning at least there is the risk of extreme social inequality and a gerontocratic ruling class. Only the wealthy wi…

There was this movie starring justin timberlake that depicted a world like this. The plot was generic, but the setting was unique.

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#37

Post by jshevek »

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #6

Assuming we could keep the human body alive forever, I don't think we could handle it a person would eventually go insane. Also it would get incredibly boring at some point and I imagine the suicide rate would be somewhere near a 100% or at minimum people would allow themselves to die. I definitely don't want to live forever. So my answer is No, and no one will ever be immortal.

I don't see how boredom could possibly be a problem. There are so many things I'd find interesting to do, but which are not important enough to warrant the time investment for me - like earn phds in all the sciences, learn a multitude of languages, read and re-read all of the classic literature (in the original language), learn how to paint, to sculpt, to create music. I could spend centuries trying to (re)prove all of the historically important math theoroms. I could spend centuries learning as many martial arts as I could. A few centuries playing chess, a few centuries playing go.

And those are all things I could do without the internet nor virtual reality.

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#38

Post by jshevek »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #32
Zikes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find it hard to believe there's a single human in all of history that would be bored if they found themselves living in present day. Especially now that we're in the Information Age, more and more boredom is becoming a conscious choice for anyone with an internet connection, rather than an inescapable circumstance.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. I can be bored and on the internet at the same time.

Aren't you usually avoiding something, though, when you do that?

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#39

Post by tenpoundhammer »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #18
tenpoundhammer wrote: post #6

Assuming we could keep the human body alive forever, I don't think we could handle it a person would eventually go insane. Also it would get incredibly boring at some point and I imagine the suicide rate would be somewhere near a 100% or at minimum people would allow themselves to die. I definitely don't want to live forever. So my answer is No, and no one will ever be immortal.

What is boring about it? Is living 40 years more boring than living 30? What about living 1000 years instead of living 100 years? At what point does it become boring? It's hard for humans to conceptualize eternity, so don't think of it in those terms. If I could live in my current body for 1000 years, I'd still never get around to most of my backlog of things I'd like to do. Boredom is mostly caused by lack of purpos…

I was bounding this conclusion on the possibility that someone could be alive until the end of time, that could be a million or a billion years . I think under those constraints it's entirely plausible that life would lose all meaning.

Re: Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

#40

Post by nrb »

ffn wrote: post #15
scarmig wrote: post #3

I'm hoping the first person to achieve immortality was born at least 29 years ago.

If you read between the lines of this guy's comment, you can infer he is implying that he will get to be the first immortal person.

I read it as him hoping that the first immortal person will be his senior (increasing the likelihood of immortality for himself), and not his junior (reducing that likelihood).
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