Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality

I would like to live for a thousand years...because in that much time a poor man can become rich, and having a 30 year house loan would be nothin.

yes there will still be deaths, thats not what this article is about.

could your brain stay operational for 1000 years? isn't there a linit to how much information you can obtain?

oh, and this wouldn't be for astronauts, just because they could live for 1000 years, you cant live that long in a spaceship on your way to a new solar system, you would have to be cryogenically frozen.

Think about this. In 25 years we will have immortality and be able to live for 800 years. Yet by that time, there will probably have nano-viruses that are hard to cure. Nano technology by then could be used as weapons. We won't be so immortal then.

[edit on 11-4-2005 by cloudx]

What if those long lived elites start making their slaves immortal, and start inflating real estate into 999 year mortgages, what then?

You can be certain that despots will put their special angle on longevity, so one would find the technology useless under current moral conditions, and the seemingly limitless imagination of controllers to make that 1000 year life miserable.

Only if you totally control the tyrants will a 1000 year lifespan be useful, and if you imagine a gist of cultures under these circumstances you can also recognize how miserable people will be coping with current egomaniacal elites, with another 10 centuries in which to exercise their megalomania.

At least under the Romans as a slave you could seek refuge in the fact of your limited existence, maybe 40 years at the most.

One should think deeply about some rich 35 year old telling you what to do when you are 800 years old and in the chains of class poverty. And think, even if your physical appearance is 20-25, your mind is cumulative within either its suffering or enjoyment of life.

No I do not want to live a thousand years, with legislatures robbing me and you blind over that period of time until there is even less than death as a shell of existence. Count me out, unless there are fundamental changes in the current trends which are in a total downward spiral towards concentrating wealth and marginalizing the less wealthy in a state next to desperation. I would not want to have 1000 years of that kind of life, wishing it would all end because in the midst of huge wealth for all, a few people put it in their deep draining pockets. You know the saying, "Give me Liberty or give me death!" If I had the freedom to exclude dealing with buzzards that imagine themselves to be eagles, I will take the offer very gladly.

[edit on 11-4-2005 by SkipShipman]

Originally posted by cloudx
Think about this. In 25 years we will have immortality and be able to live for 800 years. Yet by that time, there will probably have nano-viruses that are hard to cure. Nano technology by then could be used as weapons. We won't be so immortal then.

Dont think of it as immortality, you can still die, its just a longer life.

nano-viruses...you've being watching to much tv. Theres allready a billion ways for a human to die, nano technology (which is basically anything really freakin small) is going to help combat that.

anything can be used as a weapon.

This sounds like a horrible idea to me... I dont like it at all. Overpopulation is getting bad now, what the hell will happen when people can live for 1000 years? It will never work in my opinion. I'm sure the Earth would find a way to keep populations down.

Personally, i wouldnt want to live for that long. Assuming i live for the avg. lifespan THESE DAYS, i have been through about 1/4 of my life. Thats nothing, and im already anxious/curious about what the afterlife will hold for me... I wouldnt want to have to wait 900 years to find out.

you would'nt have to. It would be a choice, and im guessing that a lot of people would'nt choose to live for 1000years. Most religious people would not go for this option because it would be like trying to avoid the afterlife. Their will be a lot of different minorities not willing to live for a 1000years even if you are still going to die one way or another.

IMO you all think a little small and take little considderation in technological advances.

Nano-technology will be the BIG thing in the next decade, (realitive) immortality will be possible with this tech.

Also, If we build UP (Fifth Element comes to mind) we have plenty of space for people...

I'm all for immortality, I want to space travel and fullfill all my live's dreams and see what's out there, I'd have to get very bored of knowing everything before I'd considder death...there is so much to learn!

Wow, scientist and inventors getting to hang around to finish what they started. That would be cool. Just think, Bill Gates would get 950 more years to try and get windows to work right. That is, if someone didn't off him for inventing it in the first place.

They arleady have people in Japan that are forming online suicide cults and the technology were talking about is still 25 years away. Just think, we can make suicide a national holiday. Everyone who is sick and damn tired of living for hundreds of years can say goodbye to friends and family and then, along with other like minded people world wide, leave this place in whatever way they choose. It would be a worldwide celebration of life that, well, ended badly.

Personally, I believe it would be easier to stop the sun from shining or the season from changing then to stop the growth of the eternal soul. Each of us is already going to live for eternity. Of course, thats just my humble opinion.

I'll stick with living 3/4's of a century and then go on my way. I plan on coming right back so its not like i'm skipping out. Next time I want to be in a more primitive setting, maybe Africa or Australian Aboriginy. Anything more daring then the cushy life I have now.

Love and long life to each of you,

Wupy

I wonder how much this revolutionary gene therapy will cost? Probably something along the lines of $XXX annual payments for...let's say 500 years.

Brilliant, Simulacra.

This whole idea seems to be cooked up by the elites who already have plenty of money and whose minds then turn to their rotting bodies. They want to live forever. Unfortunately, the majority of people on Earth live in despair and comparable poverty. This is an elitist pipedream.

Frankly, I believe in reincarnation and I don't think this law can be broken. Even if you could make yourself live for 1000 years, why would you want to? I have no problem with death whatsoever. I neither crave it nor do I fear it. My feelings are best described by Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan:

By the time knowledge becomes a frightening affair the man also realizes that death is the irreplaceable partner that sits next to him on the mat. Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force. Death lends the ultimate touch and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.

A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidably he becomes keenly aware of his death. Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts. He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.

Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.

People who fear death are confused.


[edit on 11-4-2005 by smallpeeps]

I agree with the earlier post that stated that humanity would be put on pause. Since no one is dieing then there would be no reason to have children beacuse that would only continue to overpopulate the Earth. That in itself would crumble humantiy, but what makes anyone believe that they should exist on Earth forever. By doing this, not having children, you could be stopping great thinkers from being born, bringing new ideas to the world.(Back to the idea that humanity would be put on pause) I think it is a very bad idea IMHO

just to say though about like things wouldnt seem to be so expensive because you have so long to pay it off, well if people lived so much longer population would explode and eventually the earth would be way to overpopulated also think if people live to be like 80 and their last 10 years ish usually just horrible then it would be like the last 150 years would be just horrible also think of the social security so id pass.

by the way u stoll my topic i had this topic quite a while ago, but ill forgive you
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think that as we become more medically advanced, we begin to fear death more and more, and technology that would allow us to live for hundreds of years would be very helpful with our acceptance of death. Five hundred years ago, dying at forty was normal. Today, people are expected to live til they are seventy and over.

All of these medical breakthoughs keep on bumping up our life expecancy rate and expectations for our life expectancy, and if people fear death more and more, our basic beliefs of life will become disrupted.

I think apart from being extremely elitist this technology would also be fought over like anything we have seen before. I can picture the the rich and powerful trying to control and own this technology and the lenghts they would go to to control this, I know how far I would go. Living forever is no good if just anybody can do it too the smaller the amount of people having access to this technology the greater the price one would pay for it. this is the kind of thing that many people would sell their souls for (even those that believe in all that). The pandandora's box that this will open is almost unimaginable, I mean really think about if this was available today imagine the conflict that would arise.

Whata re you crazy. You telling me you would have the option of being able to live 1000 years and even think of listening to anyone ever again? I would make it my goal to destroy as many of the elites as I possibly could seeing as I could live quite along time. I wonder how many leaders of the top 10 companies controlling the world now I could murder before I get gunned down, stabbed, hung, poisoned whatever. Sorry fellas noone deserves to live that long. Besides this is just crap anyways it will never happen.

If people think it is not the time for imortality then let them die. I for one will be getting this treatment if it becomes available, what good is it to me if humans are not ready now? I am not going to let myself go, we only have 1 life and i would rather preserve my conciensesness than risk there being an ''afterlife''.

I am sick of people saying that "humanity isn't ready for immortality"

For as the Good Charlotte song goes, "I just wanna live"

[edit on 12-4-2005 by Mabus the Forsaken]

OMG

That IS a scary thought. of course you dont know exactly WHAT will happen until it happens, then again our memories are stored at the microscopic level, so i guess (hope) there will be enough space for 1000 years.

a)our brains will overwrite the oldest info with new (like windows update )

b)considering that different information is kept in different areas of the brain perhaps it will overwrite random info so one day you wake up and have lost your 27th birthday, the next you have forgotten your name.

c)your brain will try to grow in order to create more space

d) there is enough room for 3000, 6000 or 10,000 years. (im NOT a scientist so i dont know the human brains capacity)

I have read that the amount of information we actually store through our entire life is only in the 10s of MB yet our true capacity is in the GB range if not much more. It makes me wonder, maybe in the greater sheme of things nature has anticipated that we will prolong our life span therefore we have more mental capacity than we need for the current average life span.
This brings me to a more general point which sometimes annoy me. People say it is un-natural to do this or that yet if it was not supposed to be done it wouldnt be done. IE if in the greater scheme of things we are never meant to live for 1000 years then why do we have the capacity to do it?
Think about it.

I think the whole we are not ready thing is just ignorance, we've been using artificial means of prolonging life for over 100 years, maybe even 1000s of years. There are stories of african tribes doing brain surgery(dont know how sucessfull they were) most of us would be dead by the time we were forty. If we still had our completely natural lifespans we would live till we're about forty with absolute no medical help at all. If we wanted to keep our "natural" state of things there would be no medicine,organ transplants or vacines, which were all seen as unnatural forms of extending ones life when they came out until cultural/ethical Ignorances of the times were defeated.

This brings me to a more general point which sometimes annoy me. People say it is un-natural to do this or that yet if it was not supposed to be done it wouldnt be done. IE if in the greater scheme of things we are never meant to live for 1000 years then why do we have the capacity to do it? Think about it.

Yeah but what do you mean by 'capacity'? Are you saying this sort of life-extension has been done already? As I understand, it is still theoretical.

What's interesting is that even if life-extension were possible, the existence of it could only be proven by observation of the aging process over several decades anyway. For example, if I said I had been given a hidden secret to eternal youth, oh, and which keeps me looking 30 years old (like I do) how would you disprove it? You'd have to watch me age, which takes a long time.

So, in fact, if life extension got thought up, I suspect it would be hidden away from the rest of us as some sort of rare gem or "Rearden Metal". As has been said, living for 1000 years would raise one to an almost god-like status among a population of average humans, particularly if one keeps it hidden. For example, if I outlive you by two-hundred years, wouldn't I be able to essentially rewrite the history of our relations? History would be rewritten by the long-lifers.

However, having said that, I should mention that the human lifespan has been doubled, not by technology, but by germ-theory, which told doctors to start washing their hands and keeping sterility as their main goal. Also, once there was enough food (thanks to agricultural innovations by humans), more old people began living into retirement-age.

I could easily see a similar "awakening" where we learn that we are currently 'sick' and therefore only live for 70-80 years. I could imagine some kind of lifestyle or therapy that could extend life to maybe 300 years or so. Something naturl like that would be accepted, almost like a religion. However, "life-extension technology", which came in a box and was sold in a price-range beyond the majority of humans --this would not last. It would be destroyed before it became a factor.

Humans will allow an advance that helps all humans live longer.
Humans will NOT allow an advance that helps some humans live longer.