Death, were discussing Death, wow this is a jolly happy thing lol, death is like a peanut i dont like it.... you guys do wat u want im not gonna die, Cryogenics... freeze myself for a few hundred years - untill weve worked out how to cure every deseise and how to stop ppl from dieing then i will live forever.

Why would you want to live forever? "the smart and the wise die when they want, others die when they have to" --old Serbian saying. (it means that if you're smart enough, you'll achieve whatever your life goal was, and the need to live disappears, on the other hand, some people need 'just one more day'...)
I know that quite a lot old people get so tired of life that they just lie in their beds hoping and waiting to die, even though it's (physically) not their time yet... Noone could cope with immortality for more than 200 years, IMO.
What happens after you die? You wake up several years later as a different person, not remembering your past lives...


Careful what you wish... You might just get it.

I don't think a society could support people living for over 200 years, simply because people in a capitalistic society would easily have enough money by their 100th birthday to live the last 100 without having to work. So you would have all these people who aren't contributing anything.

If you were immortal, it would be the equivalent of eternal punihment. Why? After some time, you'd just get so tired of being alive. Chances are, you'd go insane. And even then you wouldn't die. It would be, as the saying goes, a 'living Hell'. that's all I've got to say. : /

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I don't think a society could support people living for over 200 years, simply because people in a capitalistic society would easily have enough money by their 100th birthday to live the last 100 without having to work. So you would have all these people who aren't contributing anything.

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you see it all wrong.
you gotta look at it like a string of gum it streches so your childhoud would also last longer you wil also have to work longer.kids wil reach puberty at age 24.

a nice little fact. did you know that along time ago the ozon was alot thicker adn thus oxygen was more plentyfull and alot of other factors I forgot would make human, plants, beasts, sealife were all ALOT bigger than they are now.
(they think that this is the way the story's about giants started)and thus live longer also.(saw this along time ago on dicovery)

Puberty at 24...kinda like hobbits!

And I agree that immortality is a curse (reminded of Planescape: Torment). And any society in which the members have life expectancy of 200 years is a society that will quickly become stagnant. Why? because death means providing space and opportunity for new ideas to emerge. Obsolete ideas need to die before being replaced by new, fresh ones. If their creators continue to live and defend their ideas, it's going to be a lot harder for the newbies. (eg: WCNews forum, where old regulars are, ahem, you get the point. Compare that to the TLR. Ok, we get dumbed down a little bit, but new ideas come and go, instead of a couple of regulars redigesting several same pleasant memories.)

so..... if we had a lifespan of 50 years we would be more advanced?(becouse of new replaces old)



Edited by - _zero on 06-07-2003 00:22:32

That's oversimplifying and you know it.
I think that a 75-80 years lifespan is ideal in every way.


Careful what you wish... You might just get it.

Well, not humans. Humans can't be much bigger than they already are. I think that goes for most animals too, though I'm not sure.

i dont think so chet, if you knew without a doubt that THIS is the only thing you'll ever know, i dont think id ever wanna leave. if i had the opportunity of being mortal or imortal, i'd take the latter. As long as i was able to actually live though, not just bed bound or anything but up and about. the way i figure it, "better the devil you know..."

-arcon
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i know my reference is doubted by most.. but i quote from dumbly from HP, 'death is the next most exciting adventure..' or something like that.

i saw on some other discovery long ago.. maybe it was something else, but i saw that scientists believe that humans used to live up to 1000 years. or was it the stork? no.. its humans.

The immortality idea fails because:
-If you are the only one who is immortal -- living one life is hard enough, but living a 100 lives is somethig that destroys your sanity (even less, 3-4 lives would do the trick). By 100 lives I mean watching and living with 100 generations. Sure, you can learn a lot of things during that time, but it's just too much for a human...
-If a small gorup is imortal (say 15-100 ppl), then you get the WCNews forum scenario.
-If everyone is immortal, then time stops. No new ideas (no need for 'em), no medicine, no wars, no progress, no nothing, just eternal boredom.
You know that I'm right, you just wont admit it...

According to the Christian bible (don't go any deeper into religion than stating facts please) people use to live to be really old, like 900 years etc, however I somehow doubt that a human has ever lived that long.