Should we live forever?
 

I know that we would all life to live longer. I know I would.
But should we?
As technology improves, the ability to prolong life will increase. And there are people who would sacrifice everything, and everyone they know, to be alive.
But the world has gone on for a long time with the circle of life (to borrow a phrase)
without human intervention.
Now that we "almost" have the technology to prolong human life, is it something that we should do?
Are a bunch of old minds in immortal bodies something that we should strive for?

What are the ethical implications?

Just asking.

Nope! 84 and a heart attack in my sleep like my grandfather, sign me up. Still worked 40+ hours per week and plenty sharp. I have no desire to outlive my useful life, and I’m not scared of what comes next.

It would be nice if our bodies stayed young. But if I’m going to be 300 years old and frail, nah. Though, I’m not sure I want to be 150 and have to deal with the death of gasoline.

No thanks. If the human mind had the ability to maintain the plasticity of youth, well perhaps. And one would also need to become very detached from....attachment. The Buddhist's have a path there....

In a word, no. I don't want to live forever.

No. Imagine the population explosion. Too many old people now. Yes I am getting there. 67. I dont want to be trapped in a home. Too much like jail.

I looked into this a few years ago.

Let's say at some point in the future we cure ageing. (Which means we "fix" our cells so they reproduce perfectly forever)... If the current accident rate stayed the same the average life expectancy would be about 600 years.

You may think "fixing cells so they reproduce perfectly" is impossible but there's a lot of research into this right now and they're making progress. What will be possible in another 50 to 100 years? I believe the first person to live beyond 150 years has already been born.

So what does that mean for us old farts?

I'm 55 so being optimistic, I'm expecting 20 good years ahead of me but something could change over the next 5 to 10 years that could give me another 20 good years. Note I wrote good years. I have no desire to be disabled and unable to do the things I love.

Purely hypothetical but: If I could decide how long I would live? .... 1,000 years sounds about right.

There's a reason it's actually a curse to wish somebody lives forever....or to curse them to live in interesting times...http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...leys/devil.gif. My Dad is 80 and is really not enjoying us right now. Sad how chapped he is all the time. My great grandfather went from the Wright Brothers to the Moon, to color television in his life....he thought it was cool. He found our homestead and founded our ranch in the late 1800's his porsche was a gelding race horse. Wish I'd known him better. Dad well...he's lost back in Gunsmoke and John Wayne. Me I'm a 80's teen, tech...cool....50's rock-a-billy cool...Dead Kennedy's tunes fun..surfing high tide and throw in some hunting and fishing. Twenty years Coast Guard, I'd say I'm pretty well rounded and chill.

Live forever...only if I can do it with my family.-WW

no.

As someone who is getting ready to knock on 80's door, I'm increasingly tending to think it's not that useful to live an overly long life. As others have said, the quality of life you live is everyting. I'm luckier than most in that I have a good quality life and can do things lots of others my age have trouble with. I have a friend (need to remember to call her soon) who is 106 and lives in an assisted living home in Texas. She's mentally sharp but doesn't see well and doesn't get around too well. She's always telling me she doesn't want to hang around any longer, and I don't have anything positive to respond with.

^^^ What if you could take one tablet everyday that would effectively reverse the ageing process?

Imagine being 21 again! ... They're doing research into this sort of medication right now!

Bring it on !!!!!!!

Just finished reading "Old Man's War" by Scalzi. If you want to keep going it sounds the best way.

Turn 75, get the option to leave for space. All secret once you leave. No looking back, all done with Earth, no calling home. You are legally dead by law. Take off and get stuck in a 21 year old, enhanced body and go fight for human colonies. All most everyone 90% or so dies in scifi war. But the 10% who survive after 10 years get to start a new life on some homestead on some new colony. Fun read as you get older.

Another quote I heard once..It's better to die on the battlefield than under the knives of the women.-WW

I want to retire someday. The longer you live, the more money you will need. I am not sure I can afford to live forever.

Healthy 130-150 range would be ok. That'd give me time to see pretty much the entire planet. I already know there are things I won't see given the current life expectancy

^^^^THIS exactly, I could have wrote this myself...My Grandpa got up in the middle of the night, and collapsed back into bed after a long full, adventurous life...no regerts !

It depends on how often we get to change romantic partners.:D

Doc says to the frail 90 year old in the exam room. "Remember all that working out and dieting you did to get extra years? Well, here they are."

Yea, living as a 20-40 year old is a lot different to a 70-90 year old. So with the youth and strength of a 20-30 year old, sign me up. As a 90 year old, no way.

Yes.

It’s how we are designed.

I'll take the next 40 years (currently 55) with the energy I had from the first 40 years, then yes, but otherwise, no !

On earth? No.
I could elaborate if you want to take it to PARF ..... :)

+1 with a correction: Not on this earth in its current state. The new one will be awesome.

One of my Solar Clients, husband and wife are in their 70's. They are aging very well. But, he is having his head scraped regularly to prevent skin cancer.

My Dad was in great shape until about 80. Then it all began to fall apart...

If I had to live on like my dad is now, nope. If I could regain my early/mid 20's then probably.

One other issue is stagnation. Without "turnover" would we become complacent? Most people would not be allowed to have children, since that would lead to terrible over population. And people would probably not be willing to take the risks we do today, since we want to live forever...

I do expect that the death rate will be more than the accident rate, since medicine isn't perfect. And you know this will not be cheap, so most likely only the 1% will get this.

Ring world?

I’ve often wondered if eventually our consciousnesses will be able to be downloaded and live on inside some kind of supercomputer - storing all of our memories and experiences even after our bodies wither away. The human brain has something like 10^12 neural connections which is amazing but technology is getting to the point where storing this amount of information is now possible (and increasing exponentially over time).

I think that’d be pretty cool - essentially it’d create an encyclopedia of all amassed human knowledge and experience that’d be available for anyone (including those whose consciousnesses were “in the box” living on already) to reference and access at will. Sort of like a hive mind but not exactly - a collection of different minds.

Think of what we could learn and accomplish. Virtually limitless possibility.

While I do not believe in the traditional notions of “souls” or “afterlives” or “gods”, these sorts of technological innovations could be our way to create such things (in a way) for ourselves. Just don’t run that supercomputer on a windows OS! 😆

Pretty interesting times we live in... We play god and we can now almost literally create god as we wish.

I suspect the issue is 100% speculation and much like nuclear fusion, "just another 20 years away" for the last 50 years. It will make fusion look easy. Or a brain to computer interface, to download the human consciousnesses. Just download grandpa's brain and life experience and put him in a virtual world. Like the TV show Upload. That is more likely than a biological immortal.

Consider that while you may be able to live a long time, you may also have to work in a soul sucking grind to pay the bills.

Hmmm. The prospect is less attractive.

I don't think I want to live forever. I think we need a little "time pressure" to appreciate what we've got.

And things that live a long time tend to be very slow and geared towards maximum efficiency. Human life forms don't seem particularly good at that. Maybe we get assimilated into the Borg/Matrix, that seems more like it.

Would I like the ability to be as strong and vigorous as I was when I was in my 20s? Yes, in a heartbeat. Where do I sign up?

Some really smart people think we're already being controlled by AI. The social media platforms all run on AI algorithms.
How many people are influenced by what they see on Faceplant, Twitsville and Instapoo?

At some distant point in the future it will become trivial to recreate every person that's ever lived in a computer simulation.

Well maybe if you had the time you could develop a talent you're passionate about and then do that for a living.

Basket weaving or playing a violin.
Making a violin or an acoustic guitar.
Making pottery or making beautiful wood furniture.
How about writing poetry or a book.
Find the love of your life several times over.
We could have two year contacts for marriages open for renewal of course.
Design and build eco-friendly housing.
Climb every major mountain in the world.
See every ancient site.
Live in India for 50 years.
Live in England for another 50.
Move to Japan for another 50.

When you get bored start again with something new.

This is how I want to go out, peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. As opposed to dying screaming in terror like the passengers in his car

no way. the planet would corrode around us.

there would be a zillion humans consuming, and littering the planet.

while i am happy we dont live like "logans run", living forever wouldnt be free either.

We would adapt and imagine what it could mean for space exploration. All of a sudden our solar system becomes really small. Mars would be colonised and terraformed. From there the gas giants and the outer planets would be explored. Then we'd find a way to use the almost limitless resources of our Kuiper belt. (There's lots of water, heavy metals and rare elements in the Kuiper Belt.)

In 100 years we could have millions of people living in various parts of our solar system.

In 200 years... With our current technology it's about 100 years to travel time to Alpha Centauri (Distance from Earth: 4.367 light years).
A space ship 5 times the size of the biggest air craft carrier with more than 100,000 people on board.

What if we launched lots of these in various directions? (All built for the resources in the Kuiper Belt.)
How many virgin versions of Earth are out there waiting for us?

In 500 years or less we could have many billions of people living in other solar systems.

If we could cure ageing our perception of everything changes.

I am looking forward to hitting 150.

I want to die quietly in my sleep, like my grandfather: not yelling and screaming like the people in the bus he was driving.

Wow, you want to pollute the whole solar system with humankind????
That's pretty cold.

How do you know that’s not already the case? #aliens

Haha but do you think, maybe as we become more technically advanced we'd be able to solve our waste and pollution problems?

If we had an unlimited life span would we have more incentive to be responsible?

16 Psyche has more iron than than 5 millions years of present production. Plus, it is already in a very good gravity well position. All we need is a way to produce steel in zero-G

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
-- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest

So there is your answer!