Do you feel immortality would be a desirable thing? Wouldn’t a never-ending life become unbearable hell?
#CriticalQuestions #Quiz #PubQuiz #Immortality #Unbearable #Hell #StayHome #StaySafe #StayHomeStaySafe
@CriticalCupcake
There can be no light without darkness. The thing that makes life valuable is that it is finite.
I had an accidental lunch with Aubrey de Grey, where he asked that question of several of us.
Without the 'unendurable hell' part though, and instead with the qualification 'in good health and sound mind'.
I was shocked that everyone else said
no thanks', but I said 'tell me more'.
I imagine that there are several kinds of immortality, and they might be more or less bearable dependent on type. Ultimately, physical immortality within this universe is an impossibility, as the universe eventually would run out of energy to maintain it.
But suppose a greatly extended lifetime for human beings: what then? The human brain has limited capacity for retention of memories. By age 200 you might have forgotten your childhood...
... By age 1000, you would be a completely different individual from the person you had been ten centuries earlier. In terms of the way we want to imagine immortality–endlessly same self-identity–it would be a failure. There would just be an evolving series of personalities (hopefully but not necessarily for the better) within a biological continuum, each personality being gradually erased and replaced over time.
It's not clear that people would find that desirable.
@CriticalCupcake "Do you feel immortality would be a desirable thing?" Only if one could die by choice at any time.
"Wouldn’t a never-ending life become unbearable hell?" Absolutely, which is why there is no such thing as Heaven.
@CriticalCupcake
Unless it is accompanied with perfect health, immortality would just be torture. Even perfect health with immortality would be tedious unless youe existence was comfortable enough to appreciate it: a tidy savings, a home, a plot o land.
@CriticalCupcake i'm not the least bit interested in immortality.
i wanna die & have everything end so i can bloody well rest for eternity.
immortality sounds like hell, to me.