Would you become immortal, if you had the choice?

So what if instead of having the question phrased exactly like that, what if, on the beginning of every day, a guy showed up at your doorstep and gave you the choice of assuring that you'd live for the next day. And you had to choose to either assure you'd live or assure you'd die. Which day would you say... you know what, I think I'll die today?

Binny: Very nice. Hmm...I'd have to say on my 150th birthday, though if I'm still aging, I might cut that back a few years...excellent question.

Exactly!! I think Highlander says it all, tho the idea of seeing life over the centuries would be amazing.Id hate to see my loved ones die around me.

Welcome, M-girl. I never actually saw that show, though the premise sounds interesting. Could you give me an overview? That's a good point, also: I would hate to be alone in the world, with all my friends and family dead for years.

I would not want to be immortal because everyone i love would die. And i would live to see it.. over and over again.

I would only become immortal if i had a switch to turn it off when i felt the time was right...

It is the impression we make that lives on. What is immortal, that never dies, is the spirit.

I agree with this. And even better, the option for the ones you love to also be immortal, and for it to be a secret. Just imagine the amount of money and knowledge you could amass. Of course, there would probably be the casual degration of respect for human life.

There was a vampire character in a role-playing game which was an artist, and it couldn't produce anything good because it had lost its soul. I'd like to find out what kind of things I would paint and how after a few thousand years!

Of course, if you were born knowing that you were supposed to live that long, it might not be as exciting. I've always felt that the mayfly is living a full life, even though it only lives a day, because that is what is expected by mayflies. And forty - one-hundred years is what is expected by humans.

The highlander plot is that each highlander shows up on somebody's doorstep and is raised by a family. After they grow up, they go around cutting off the heads of other highlanders (thats the only way to kill them) and stealing their "essence" or "power" or something. This is accompanied by a big electrical show where lightning comes out of the dead one's neck hole and goes into the other guy. And implanted in their minds: there can be only one.

On immortality: I'm not too concerned with what I would do with just immortality. What I want is the super-knowledge and wisdom that will come with it. We are moving toward enhanced brains. We can already implant elctrodes and stuff. We will one day be able to implant chips. Chips enable links to computers. This will be a significant step, particularly if the implanted people set their mind to expanding their mind through programming. Technological developments like artificial immortality (in a myriad of forms) will arise from the incredible power of this set-up. Just think of how much you could do if you could think 5 trillion times as fast as you do now. And had net access built-in.
I reserve the right to consider immortality until after I get a little bit of insight from 5 or 10 years after attaining the ability to think a million times as fast and deep.

immortality
Yes, but only if I were also granted health at a fixed and reasonably mature age, so as not to end up like the Sibyl of Cumae, who was given a semblance of immortality by Apollo but forgot to ask him not to let her grow old. Otherwise, the thought of not existing for whatever turns out to be forever, is a nightmare of cold terror to me.

Hmmm.... Lazarus Long anyone? :wink:

Thanks for the recap, Binny. Doesn't exactly sound like my kind of show, but the basic premise is interesting. Baron: Yeah, I forgot about that aspect of it. I've been thinking about it lately, and I'm sliding towards the opinion that immortality is something that would cheapen my life no matter how long I used it. The inevitable corruption such a power would bring would, to my mind turn me into something unworthy, and maybe I'd wake up one day and not want to go back, or, on an equal level of corruption, desire death. Either way, it would be a fairly shitty existence.

no

No. Surprised that the 'no's' have it.

i would only take imortality through Jesus Christ. other wise a eternity of nothing sound pretty good.

Everything is impermanent.

But even if I can survive what would become of our universe, I think that one lifetime is enough, and future lives will flourish. Will I still be there? Not in the mind-body sense, but in the sense that my particles and my influence is left, and my existence have filled one chapter in the history of eternal time.

I think most of the opinions expressed here (all in fact, including mine ) are highly tainted by the stink of hormones and their corrosive effect on reason.

what would you do when your lifes allotment of toilet paper runs out.

learn to lick my butt like a cat

And then get E.Coli?