Immortality bad for the brain

Somewhat with the topic - Check out AMET http://www.sangraal.com/AMET/intro.html - man, talk about original skinners

Could I still retire at 65?

It's the existence of a limit, in knowledge, time, etc and last lifetime, that pushes a person to stretch them, outrun them, accomplish some goal(s), futile or not. Remove it and you'll end up with a bunch of empty sacks...

I just wonder how long we could live before going insane of boredom. Seriously. Give me 200 years of health and I could probably do pretty much everything I'd ever want to do.

Immortality would lead to total isolationism.
After aeons of doing everything, with everyone, to be diverted, we would eventually run out of things to do, say, envision, etc... Closing ourselves off to the others, as there would be no reason to interact with each other, being as we had already done, so..

Immortality (coupled with eternal youth) would be great. Millennia would not satisfy my need for knowledge or outlast my fantasy. I for one do not intent to die for a long long time.

I totally agree with crae. I'm also pretty sure that if such a thing were to happen; the human race would adapt. I think we'd probably become litrally slower. We'd all become zen masters of a sort. A few of us would probably go insance and destroy ourselves, but humans show a distinct ability to adapt. Hmm, I wouldn't mind that at all.

I wonder if people 300 years ago wondered what people would do if they lived longer than 50 years.

i'm getting up there and am starting to just look forward to being able to successfully take a crap.

With the mentality of younger people the way it is today, and the likelyhood that the negative ideals will continue to increase steadily, I think that if we were to become essentially immortal, we would all eventually end up suicidal.

What?! Live forever? And never find out what lies beyond death?! What if it is sooo much better than this life?

Guess what... the ultimate thing every imortal who had tried everything would want to do in the end would be... to die.

Yup, suicidal that is what immortality would take us to. even at 46 things are getting very repetitive, just think of being as fit as 25 when your 80. There would be no retiring, because you have to pay off that 60 year home loan at 30%.
And in the work place, people would have to run over each other in the parking lot just to advance. No no no the idea is a bad one

so, if most people are going to comit suicide, then all the worlds supply of chocolate will be mine HEHEHEHE
/me feels happy

Hey hey, don't forget about us immortal crae's, kitty!

how could i forget about you?
i am just not sure that i am ready to share even all of this planets chocolate 50/50

however, i have it from a reliable source that there are planets totaly covered in chocolate
/me PURRRRRRRR

soon we will have the time for a bit of exploring

Can you imagine keeping your current job for 200 years? No one could affort to live 100 years in retirement. Unless until then society finds a way of eliminating money and therefore everything would be free, from food to housing and every kind of travel and entertainment.
Yeah, right. That idea is even more impossible than the idea of immortality itself.

I think that if man became immortal, the XP skins would eventually stop.

The simple problem with immortality is it will be too expensive.
Only the super rich will become immortal.
All the mortals will then be slightly ticked off and kill all the immortals.
Then immortaltity is lost and the cycle starts over.

At least untill the planet is destroyed

Since 1900, the life expectancy of an adult male has increased from 48 to 81. That's nearly a doubling. I wonder what people of 1900 would have thought about living an extra 30 years.

Yes, but there is a limit. We have achieved close to the limit. I read somewhere that the human body, if given the proper nutriments, proper exercise, no stress, no poisons (pollution, alcohol, cigarette) should have a life expectancy of about 100 years.
Now, that's the limit for a natural life. After that, we'll have to rely on techonology such as tissu cloning and transplant, cell regeneration, DNA manipulations and the such. That's whole other ball game, although I know we are getting there. But again, I think there WILL be a limit. It's like your old car. Although you can fix it forever, give it a new engine, repaint it, change about every single piece in it, after a while the car will still be good just for the junk yard.

Man, I'm gone for a couple of weeks and I almost miss this topic!

I don't agree with the car analogy. The fact is, if you take care of a car and change the failing parts religiously, you can essentially keep it running forever. I know. I worked on a car last week that nearly triples my own age! And it purred (but not as well as you, Feline ).

I think the human body falls into the same category. This topic has been beaten to death on a few other forums, but technology will eventually get us to a place where virtual immortality will be possible, even commonplace.

Me, I wish it would happen soon (noticed a bald spot forming on the back of my head the other day ). Personally, I can think of a hundred thousand things I'd like to do that I never seem to have the time for. So I think boredom, while inevitable, would be a *long* way off (at least several hundred, perhaps even thousands, of years).

The trick, as has been pointed out, is economics. I fear we'll reach that technological point of virtual immortality before we reach the social maturity to handle it well. So they'll be a massive purging, which in and of itself will act to equalize things out a bit.

But evetually, as has also been stated, we'll adapt, grow, mature to handle it. With that technology will come others designed to stave off the boredom. We'll travel into outer space, or begin to develop inticate and fully realistic virtual worlds, or both. There will be plenty to keep us busy.

In the end, though, there will be a point at which boredom will take root, and at that point a voluntary suicide will probably be the way of things. By the time that would happen, I imagine it would be considered socially accpetable.

All this, of course, assuming we don't blow up, strip mine, pollute, or infest the planet to the point that we're extinct in the mean time.

Oh, and the other, somewhat related, topic is that of our dependancy on sleep. I've seen and heard a few things about the possiblity of reducing the human need for sleep down to about 1.5 to 3 hours per 24. I, personally, would love that (no more feeling like crap at work after staying up playing Planescape Torment til 7am...)

Anyone know more specifics on this?

It's not so much sleep that makes you feel crap as well as an altered biorhythm. I usually don't wake up physically until 23:00, usually close to bed time by then. Unfortunately daybreed rules the world, so getting up early (before noon) is a necessity. Well, until I become filthy rich that is.