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Note: I am not looking for religiously-based posts in this thread. This is purely a hypothetical philosophical thread. Please keep your religious beliefs out of it. If you can't do that then please don't respond.
Hypothetical question: What do you see as the pros and cons of human immortality? Assume for the sake of the argument that science discovers how to halt aging, essentially rendering humans immortal other than by accidental death or suicide. Let's also assume that the method of making one immortal is free and available to anyone that wants it.
Issues I see would be the necessity to control population growth, what we would do with immortal but violent criminals, et cetera. I also assume that some people would simply get tired living so voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide would need to be addressed.
What are your thoughts? Remember, this is a philosophical question, so keep religion beliefs and biases out of the discussion please.
well you forgot an important factor in immortality. diseases. if i were to live immortally - disease free, forever 18, and with loads of money... hell yeah i will sign up anytime. population growth is not big deal, if they discover how to be immortal, surely there will be kick ass contraceptive too. the problem is yeah, the violent criminals.
there is also a flaw in your question. once you were immortal, how can you die via euthanasia or suicide? is your immortality reversible?
well you forgot an important factor in immortality. diseases. if i were to live immortally - disease free, forever 18, and with loads of money... hell yeah i will sign up anytime. population growth is not big deal, if they discover how to be immortal, surely there will be kick ass contraceptive too. the problem is yeah, the violent criminals.
there is also a flaw in your question. once you were immortal, how can you die via euthanasia or suicide? is your immortality reversible?
I didn't "forget" anything. It's not my problem you didn't understand the question. Here's a hint: immortal is not the same as invincible or indestructible. Even fictional immortals like the Highlander or Dracula can be killed.
One thing that would be affected would be the notion of career. If I were immortal, I'd want to pursue many different careers, mastering each one before moving on to the next. I'd devote one career, early in my immortal life, to amassing a big-enough fortune that the interest would support me forever, enabling me to return to college, take vacations, do volunteer work, etc. whenever I wanted to. (Interesting economic question: could everyone who wants to eventually become wealthy?)
As someone once pointed out in a similar discussion, many people don't know what to do with the lifespan that they have now. I assume many people would "check out" after a century of two. I have my doubts as to whether the human mind is made for immortality. Would boredom overcome us all eventually?
Another factor to consider is whether society and technology will continue on an upward trend. If civilization collapses, for whatever reason (climate change, plague, wars, etc.), the means to immortality might go with it. For example, if it's a complex drug that allows immortality, then the collapse of civilization might halt production and supply of the drug. If society does progress long enough, though, perhaps we'd gradually replace our flesh-and-blood bodies with more-durable robotic versions -- even transferring our consciousnesses to computer models of our brains. If that happens, it's likely our minds could be enhanced -- even linked and networked.
Religion, from a philosophical standpoint, will be interesting. How many religious people will forego immortality because they believe it isn't part of God's plan? I imagine we'll eventually understand the workings of the universe well enough that the question of whether God exists will be definitively answered at some point.
Of course, immortality isn't absolute: eventually, our universe is going to end, either in a collapse and big bang or in an eternal expansion and cool-down to absolute zero. Will we eventually find a way to get to another universe, if they exist?
Oh, good remarks Honuman! I don't know if everyone could eventually become wealthy. I would think not, since a lot of people can't seem to manage their money no matter what. There would also be at
least some population turnover from people that refused immortality, accidental deaths, and people that killed themselves for whatever reason.
I do agree that there would be a lot of potential for boredom. I think we'd see a renewed push to get off the planet, because if one is effectively immortal then long-term space travel would not have the same
issues it does now. Hell, I would probably volunteer to be a settler on another planet if I had that opportunity! And I agree with you about careers. I would certainly want to experience several. For instance I would go to both medical school and law school.
I would gladly accept immortality, as long as I had the opportunity to die if I chose to do so.
unless you can make the sun immortal then its no point sinse we would all die when the sun burns out
but on the philisophical point of view-we are eternal beings traped in temporary bodies so IMO we already are immortal
who would want to live on the material plane forever i would much rather live in the spiritual world forever feeling bliss
oh yeah and the whole population thing would be a real problem
The obvious problem, population aside (and this would be insurmountable for those of us who love children), is that almost all people would die within a few thousand years from accidents. Suppose that the probability of dying from an accident in any given year is one in 1,000. If that is the case, then the odds that a person would still be alive in 1,000 years would be approximately 37%. An individual's odds of living for 5,000 years would be only 0.67%, and for 10,000 years a vanishingly minute chance of 0.005%.*
In addition to accidents, we'd eventually face inevitable disasters on a scale that we can scarcely comprehend, such as climate change (an ice age would be catastrophic and is definitely going to occur within a few thousands years), eruptions of super volcanoes like Yellowstone, reversals in the earth's magnetic field, wars...
Our so-called immortality would be reduced to nothing more than extended lifespans. If the population problem could be solved so that people can still have families, I would definitely opt in. I would love to see Yellowstone erupt, even if I died a few minutes after witnessing the sky being blotted out by a vast cloud of ash and debris. But I'd probably die from an accident before then. Just don't put me on life support. The euthanasia option has to be available or else I'm out.
*[The formula for deriving this is to take the odds of living in any given year, .999, and raise that to the power of 1,000 which gives an answer of .3677777 = 37%, give or take. Similarly, .999 raised to the 5,000th power gives approximately .0067 or 0.67% odds of being alive for that long.]
Last edited by tongpa-nyi; 03-29-2010 at 03:16 PM..
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