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The idea of eternal life

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AwesomeUsername

AwesomeUsername

Esteemed member
Scientists are currently working on making us immortal. There are animals on this plant that don't age, once they hit a certain point of development they just stay at that point. They get killed however, but if they weren't they would be able to live forever.

This is just one area they are looking at too figure out what is that they hold in their genetics that could make them potentially immortal.

From my understanding this seems like a great step forward for mankind. The people that were born too early will unfortunately have to deal with death at one point, but those that haven't could achieve the gift of having the whole eternity to achieve everything they wanted to achieve in life from this point on.

Assuming it is in everybodies interest to lead a peaceful life in a peaceful environment, this could mean a new generation of people would also find a way to gather all the skills required to make a comfortable life without the help or guidance of an expert for a specific area.

More importantly, there would not be needed any sort of population control if the ideal number of the next generation people would be reached since it is way easier to sterilize a human at that point than to kill one, or make them a burden to society till they die naturally.

IMO this sounds very neat on paper, and could also be great in practice if we wanted to.

What are your views on that? Has science gone too far, or is this the missing puzzle we have been trying to reach to maintain a perfect life for everybody?
 
There are several issues that would need to be addressed imo if people could live forever.

Im not sure if I understood you correct, but imo talking about an "ideal number of next generation people" and sterilization is some sort of population control, and so the people need to be willing to follow these rules, and they also would have to follow, if we want a sustainable future. How ever having kids is an instinct, so that might be an issue.

The second thing that came to mind, is that I would vote for obligatory psychotherapy for everybody, because imagine some very powerful people full of hatred and power complexes (like we can see today)because of all kind of unresolved childhood fears and traumas, living to the age of 1500.

if we leave these problems aside, I think it would be a very interesting experiment, to see what kind of wisdom a human that old can develop.
 
I think science is going too far. It's unnatural in my opinion. We are supposed to die.

Death is as an important part of our existence as life itself. As we age our maturity and roles in life change again and again. We are reborn many times in a healthy life and roles like being a teacher, mentor and a protector are just as important when we are older, for ourselves, as the they are for the young people we are teaching and protecting. It's this psychological and physiological evolution that transcends us, gives us reflection, puts context to life and brings us closer to "understanding".

Without this process, given infinite time, life would become meaningless. Sitting around watching television would have just as much value as building bridges, growing trees or taking drugs. The majority of the human race would descend into complete hedonism. There would be no "meaning" to life other than experience. There would be no chapters, there would be no context, no celebration of new life, no reverence for the passed. Just an endless passage of time.

Some would become involved with the pursuits of deeper learning. The vast majority would continue blindly though as they do today. That would sooner or later lead to suicide. Our race of immortals would start to knock themselves off at astounding rates once the pointlessness sets in and fatalistic psychology caught hold. It's happened before in small isolated towns. That's rather ironic really.

So no... we're not jellyfish. I vote nay.
 
Humans devising means of attempting to live forever on earth would be like a fetus attempting to devise means to forever remain in the womb...

I think these people that through medical advancements, or freezing, or through cyborg like technology who want to live forever are entirely missing the point.

Before DMT, I was afraid to die, the thought of living forever didn't sound so bad, however after DMT I am incredibly comfortable with death, and see the thought of living forever as repugnant.

I could use thousands of characters and paragraphs of text trying to elaborate, but I Will hold off for now. I want to articulate these notions in a precise way, rather than having my concepts comming out sounding like a redundant abstract cliché.

-eg
 
When you watch a james bond movie, and you have these supervillains with their evil plans for world domination and the total destruction of all of mankind, you'd be tempted to think that such over-the-top megalomaniacs could't realy exist in real life.

That is, until you run into some transhumanists from the sillicon valley area.

Luckily though, (and if mr musk would actually manage to put a few million people on mars in a year or two i am totally willing to take this back) as with all the people from sillicon valley, their hubris Always far exceeds their competence.
 
I don't see this as a good thing at all. Humans are nowhere near wise enough and we're nowhere near ecologically minded enough to start living forever on this planet, as it exists now. Look at what we're doing to the planet, and imagine what we'd do it if we all started living forever? If you look at the state of the world today, it is clear that it isn't everyone's priority to lead a peaceful life in a peaceful environment...and I think we're some way off achieving this, if we ever do. We really need to sort our priorities before we get delusions of grandeur and want to start living forever.

I think death is a natural part of life, and gives it meaning. I'm not sure being immortal would have the motivating effect on everyone you seemed to think it would...why would you need to bother getting out of bed in the morning if you have forever to achieve your goals?

One other issue is the makeup of the human brain/mind. The brain has not evolved with the possibility of going on forever, and living in this way would have definite repercussions on our brain in ways we cannot easily perceive. We would be living infinite existences with finite brains...it's not hard to see there might be a clash there. Living forever would also by definition extinguish evolution in our case, and I'm not sure that's a good thing either.
 
Bancopuma said:
I don't see this as a good thing at all. Humans are nowhere near wise enough and we're nowhere near ecologically minded enough to start living forever on this planet, as it exists now. Look at what we're doing to the planet, and imagine what we'd do it if we all started living forever? If you look at the state of the world today, it is clear that it isn't everyone's priority to lead a peaceful life in a peaceful environment...and I think we're some way of achieving this, if we ever do. We really need to sort our priorities before we get delusions of grandeur and want to start living forever.

I think death is a natural part of life, and gives it meaning. I'm not sure being immortal would have the motivating effect on everyone you seemed to think it would...why would you need to bother getting out of bed in the morning if you have forever to achieve your goals?

One other issue is the makeup of the human brain/mind. The brain has not evolved with the possibility of going on forever, and living in this way would have definite repercussions on our brain in ways we cannot easily perceive. We would be living infinite existences with finite brains...it's not hard to see there might be a clash there. Living forever would also by definition extinguish evolution in our case, and I'm not sure that's a good thing either.
Click to expand...

I 100% agree.

But the 'dream of immortality' is just one disturbing example of transhumanism. There are also many people who envision an 'ideal' world where we all have brain implants that would connect us to the internet 24/7, and would make us smarter and more efficient.

Like with the immortality thing, it's not very likely to ever realy happen. But the amazing thing is that people actually believe in this shit.
How out of touch with reality would you have to be, not to see the potential risks and hazards of something like connecting all of our brains directly to the internet?

But in the end it's not hard to see where all these delussions of grandeur come from: it's only about busines. Money and power. Typically the ambitions of sillicon valley people: the longing for a global monopoly on all information, the global monopoly on means to live eternally, the global monopoly on human communication, the colonising of planets, thought controll....
 
AwesomeUsername said : "There are animals on this plant that don't age, once they hit a certain point of development they just stay at that point. They get killed however, but if they weren't they would be able to live forever."

Can I get an example of one that would fall under that category? I'm racking my brain but nothing is popping up in regards to that category.


Entheo-gnosis said : "Humans devising means of attempting to live forever on earth would be like a fetus attempting to devise means to forever remain in the womb..."


Exactly, I feel like you would only be cheating yourself. This life is just a chapter/step in the process, not the final goal I believe. It's ok to leave here. Life found you once, it will find you again, aswell as your loved ones. The thought of having this earth forever is a very worldly point of view. The bigger picture is, bigger 8)
 
It's a bit difficult to correctly translate it in English for me but I will try to summarize what I think.

To me, life and death are the two faces of the same coin, they aren't opposite but complementary. Life would have no flavour, no meaning without death. It's because of its fragility that life is so precious and magnificent. I have read a book where angels were jalous of humans, because death was a gift God gave them, in order to give their life more interest. That makes sense for me.

So, artificialy trying to prolong it (what is already a real problem in today way to practice medecine), without first trying to improve the way we live and act as spiritual individuals, would lead IMHO to a trainwreck. The acces of such a technology would certainly be limited to richest people, triggering anger, perhaps riots...

Definitely not a good idea to me!
 
Eternal life is not going to happen, and frankly any endeavour to pursue it is on a similar level of idiocy to penis enlargement pills or other irrelevant and ineffective tributes to mankind's futile, banal vanity.

Our Sun will die, the galaxy will die, our universe will die, perhaps even the paradigms which support the most basic laws of physics will die, but some guy in a lamborghini with crazy botox and white loafers is going to live eternally?

Nope. Fake news.
 
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