Would you live forever if you could?

[no one you know]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/11/can-humans-live.html

An interesting article. In the next few years we will see a lot of new technological breakthroughs that will borderline science fiction. I think I would and travel through space, shit would be tight. What about you?

[MexicanSpaniard]

"Do you really want to live forever?"

[no one you know]

^
Mad Max?

And yes it would be tight, at least prolong my existence and become 1/2 machine and see the universe. Did you see the images of the exoplanet they released yesterday?

[The Upside of Down]

Living forever...cool, but that would only be cool if I could stay around 20-30 for the rest of my life, and that will never happen, so I am gonna say no.

[MexicanSpaniard]

Chick from Conan who briefly came back form the dead.

[no one you know]

^
Oh Thanks

Living forever...cool, but that would only be cool if I could stay around 20-30 for the rest of my life, and that will never happen, so I am gonna say no.

No, that is what would happen, you would stay athletic and shit, you wouldn't keep getting old and wrinkly and shit, science would halt the aging process. The fountain of youth dog. You would just live way longer...

So, are you down? Its gonna happen in our lifetimes.

[loophole]

i wouldn't want to live for ever at all.


plus if we did this place would get kinda crowded.

[Sleazy]

no that's not what would happen. you'd still get arthritus and other non-fatal ailments and you'd still be able to die. you'd just dodge the bullet on some age related diseases and i doubt they'd even be able to achieve that. heart disease is one part aging but a bigger part lifestyle. same thing with lung cancer due to smoking, etc... most natural causes are actually a result of lifestyle and age, not just age.

[jalopy james]

i wanna die. i always wonder what that will be like. it seems more a release than anything else. great topic, by the way.

[skate_bored]

i wanna die. i always wonder what that will be like. it seems more a release than anything else. great topic, by the way.

im pretty curious about death too. not that i want to die necessarily, but ive never had something stump me more than life and how everything started and ends. shit will make you go nuts if you think about it for more than 5 minutes.

[???]

not that I am overly religious person, but I would like to think that there is something else beyond this world and universe.

that being said, I don't want to live forever. although doing some space travel would be sick.

[Mark Snappleyard]

I would definitely be down to live 1,000 years.  You get to live really super long plus you still get to die at the end.  It's a win/win situation.

[Pelican]

This happens to a lot of old people in this country. They get so old and live with death so long that they lose their way when it comes time to actually die.
Sometimes they stay lost for years. It is horrible to watch them linger on. Finally the weight of their own blood crushes them.

-brautigan, "winter rug"

[daddy]

I definitely do not want to live forever but I'd sure be down for some time travel to choose any point in time I could visit. And if it isn't invented in our lifetime, maybe I can hitch a ride with someone from the future who is passin through.

[Carrolls Chesthairs]

then everybody on here would say they use to skate

[grimcity]

Living forever would be cool as long as our technology could make sure we're off this planet and somewhere comfortable by the time our sun goes red giant (also: forever as a relatively healthy, ageless 30 something).

I'm in no way looking forward my eventual death... I really like living, and the odds are that death is going to be pretty anticlimactic... I mean, you just stop being. You don't know you're dead, you're just compost. I'm too stoked on existing and being self-aware to want to experience an end to it all. I seriously doubt there's any afterlife, so death really doesn't offer an incentive.

[gravel pitch]

Wouldn't hesitate a second.

[Sleazy]

you planning to have kids Grim?

my daughter helped me end my existential crisis.

while not as cool as getting to continue to live yourself, knowing that someone else that you created, who is for the most part literally an extension of you, gets to live on definitely made a difference for me. it's a whole new life long reality that will be experienced by someone who looks and acts just like me.

for me after life will be lived by my kids.

and fuck it, all the time that went by before i existed wasn't bad so just got to make the most of the precious little time you got.

[grimcity]

you planning to have kids Grim?

my daughter helped me end my existential crisis.

Nah man, my wife and I are pretty set on not having kids, though I have heard other parents express something similar to what you're saying. I definitely understand how you could have that perspective, seeing a part of yourself staring back at you via your kid... I think me and my wife just don't want to give up the time and effort. I respect parenthood, but among other reasons, I'll be damned if I raise a little version of myself! I was a little scumbag...

[jrock]

no way in hell would I want to live forever.  more than enough fucked up shit happens to us in our 80 or so years on earth already.  i think there was a reason we used to die at 40. 

however, i could see myself changing my view on this from my deathbed.

[Lance]

Wouldn't hesitate a second.

[loophole]

i think what makes life special is that it's fleeting. it doesn't last that long. it makes the days much more valuable.

if there were a hundred diamonds on earth, they would all be so much more beautiful than if there were a thousand.

[Mouth]

I'd probably decline on everlasting life, although I'm in no hurry to die.

My feeling is that if I could extend my natural life indefinitely I'd only be dooming myself to having to watch everything around me die, before eventually coming to a violent death at some point down the line. Probably a long time before the Sun turns into a red giant as Grim pointed out.

Mankind is unlikely to be able to fly around space with ease at any point in the future. The distances are too simply too great.  So Earth is it. Unless you like the look of Mars or the Moon. I certainly don't. And unfortunately, I don't really see the Earth turning into a utopian paradise over the next 500 years.

As for the afterlife, I'm an atheist, or at the very least agnostic. Which suits me fine. I think I'd find spending an eternity playing a harp on a cloud almost as painful as if I were being jabbed in the bum by an imp with a flaming pitchfork.

I guess I just think eternity would be a pretty boring place.

[nice weather]

If I'd travel through space I'd get frozen, so no real need for eternal life as long as I can be unfrozen. I really don't wanna stay awake on a fucking hundred year journey through space.
As for the eternal life thing, if I'm still mortal in a way that I can get hit by a car and die, then I'd do it because I wouldn't make it far anyways. Real eternal life could suck, but then again you're bound to see and experience literally everything no matter what you do.

[Mooley]

There was an episode of The Nature of Things I watched a little while ago talking about this. Being able to extend the lives of fruit flies and laboratory mice doesn't really convince me that this shit is coming along too soon.
Either way, we're the generation that's fortunate enough to start seeing everything go down the shitter, so I don't think I'd be too interested in seeing it all play out. 

[sebastian toombs]

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
       Winston Churchill

[Mouth]

Winston Churchill was a bad motherfucker.

[MEOW]

If I'd travel through space I'd get frozen, so no real need for eternal life as long as I can be unfrozen. I really don't wanna stay awake on a fucking hundred year journey through space.
As for the eternal life thing, if I'm still mortal in a way that I can get hit by a car and die, then I'd do it because I wouldn't make it far anyways. Real eternal life could suck, but then again you're bound to see and experience literally everything no matter what you do.

it's all about bending the space time continuum, that way you travel however many million light years by taking one step.. in oversimplified terms. i always thought the best way to die would be to travel through time until the "red giant" phase and watch all those poor little planets get annihilated from afar... but i mean i was like 13 then and didn't understand that even something as seemingly impossible as this had its own set of restrictions as well. for anybody interested in this stuff i highly recommend this book, physics of the impossible. it basically breaks down scientific advancement with popular science fiction themes, such as teleportation, invisibility, time travel, etc. and says what would have to be done, and when, if ever, we might be capable of such things. it's kind of scary how possible a lot of that shit actually is... and a little frightening what might be done in our lifetime (assuming we don't all live forever  ) http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Impossible-Scientific-Exploration-Teleportation/dp/0385520697/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226722808&sr=8-1

[faceneck]

I wouldn't want to live forever but i would love to look young until i die at a good age of 70, much like the people in Brave New World. That would be rad.

[cav]

depends on what happens during my lifetime