Would immortality be borring?

[Hayabusa Rider]

Know how you do it? You experience life through the eyes of others. Perhaps through the eyes of 7 billion. One perspective at a time.

I'm still not sure what you mean by "immortality". Precisely how long would one have to live to qualify for that? If that's not what you mean then just what?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I'm still not sure what you mean by "immortality". Precisely how long would one have to live to qualify for that? If that's not what you mean then just what?

How about Laplace's demon + TARDIS? You can go through time and space within all of our known universe and, if you like, change anything to any infinite number of permutations until every possibility is worked out.

Manipulate bits big-bang: a nanometer this way, a micro Kelvin cooler here.

You could come up with every possible permutation of our universe and watch it all play out.

You could even just create a world of only the good parts of every potential existence.

If you could then develop a way to manipulate your own memory: you could limit your own memory to just long enough to experience every part of the good parts before starting on the whole thing again.

A literal, perpetual, heaven that you would never tire of. (unlike in my sig)

 

[Greenman]

And then that's nothing. Death in inevitable. Staying sane for a very long time would be a trick in itself, forget forever.

Don't get me wrong, I'm right behind you, immortality would totally suck. But living a very long time, under the right conditions, would be pretty cool.

 

[Juddog]

I wouldn't mind living a few billion years; after that it would get pretty boring though.

 

[coldhart]

unending life would be boring but death only come when u wish would be the best.

 

[moonbogg]

I'm still not sure what you mean by "immortality". Precisely how long would one have to live to qualify for that? If that's not what you mean then just what?

What I ultimately do mean is real immortality, at least for all practical purposes. What I mean by that is some form of consciousness that you either possess or are a part of, would continue ad infinitum in one form or another (we choose).

I am strangely confident of the following:

The known universe is so small compared to the larger structure that it would blow our minds if we could grasp it. I see infinite possibilities for us, and we may be experiencing those possibilities now and by design, wouldn't know or have any way of verifying that to be the case. In other words, in a future where our experience is one endless stream, we could become bored or tired due to lack of things to be accomplished. Instead we could embrace experience from different perspectives. We could be born in a natural way, all over again to learn and grow and develop societies and civilizations. We could find ourselves once again at a place of our choosing, staring up at the night sky and once again asking, "Where did it all come from?"

 

[Retro Rob]

I'm willing to bet that all those in here who says "it would be boring to live forever" would jump on to immortality like ugly on an ape if was offered in say, pill form tomorrow -- its only natural to want to live. We cannot deny that.

Heck, I would take the pill without hesitation if it was real. I imagine that you'd say its boring because we think about it living in the same body, with the same mind, in the same cold and brutal world...from that angle, I would agree...it wouldn't be worthwhile.

 

[moonbogg]

I'm willing to bet that all those in here who says "it would be boring to live forever" would jump on to immortality like ugly on an ape if was offered in say, pill form tomorrow -- its only natural to want to live. We cannot deny that.

Heck, I would take the pill without hesitation if it was real. I imagine that you'd say its boring because we think about it living in the same body, with the same mind, in the same cold and brutal world...from that angle, I would agree...it wouldn't be worthwhile.

That is a popular pill, and its taken often, just in different flavors. You know as well as I that people have chased the idea of immortality since forever. From special fire dances to please the gods, to Egyptian pyramids, to religion, to silly atheists hoping they will be in the matrix some day (like me) etc etc. But for some reason people say it would be boring?? Imagine with all that time, i'm sure you could come up with something interesting to do, such as simulate reality and start fresh again.
I think the pill is real. Its just that its a hard earned one and doesn't come quickly with incantations and wish thinking. We need to dump tons of money into science like our lives depend on it, because they actually do.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

That is a popular pill, and its taken often, just in different flavors. You know as well as I that people have chased the idea of immortality since forever. From special fire dances to please the gods, to Egyptian pyramids, to religion, to silly atheists hoping they will be in the matrix some day (like me) etc etc. But for some reason people say it would be boring?? Imagine with all that time, i'm sure you could come up with something interesting to do, such as simulate reality and start fresh again.
I think the pill is real. Its just that its a hard earned one and doesn't come quickly with incantations and wish thinking. We need to dump tons of money into science like our lives depend on it, because they actually do.

You haven't yet defined whether your idea of immortality is perpetual and unending.

You would come to envy this.

 

[moonbogg]

You haven't yet defined whether your idea of immortality is perpetual and unending.

You would come to envy this.

"What I ultimately do mean is real immortality, at least for all practical purposes. What I mean by that is some form of consciousness that you either possess or are a part of, would continue ad infinitum in one form or another (we choose)."

That's what I said and I think its the best I can do. I don't know if infinities are real or possible. I think we can outlive this universe and persist in it even after heat death as well as discover other places to live. So yes I think we can exist forever.

EDIT: You and I will die, but humanity can go on to exist forever. Just to clarify.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

"What I ultimately do mean is real immortality, at least for all practical purposes. What I mean by that is some form of consciousness that you either possess or are a part of, would continue ad infinitum in one form or another (we choose)."

That's what I said and I think its the best I can do. I don't know if infinities are real or possible. I think we can outlive this universe and persist in it even after heat death as well as discover other places to live. So yes I think we can exist forever.

EDIT: You and I will die, but humanity can go on to exist forever. Just to clarify.

OK, let's look at the possible. How do you propose to rewrite the laws of physics. I don't mean engineering or technical feats. I mean getting rid reality and starting over with something else? I'll give you an easy one which if you can do then we'll see. I want you to take back one single step you have taken. I don't mean walk to a starting point, I mean undoing travel once taken. Just one step. Not some sci fi time travel. I mean undoing a physical act entirely, not just nullifying what was already done. When you can get there you are on your way.

 

[moonbogg]

OK, let's look at the possible. How do you propose to rewrite the laws of physics. I don't mean engineering or technical feats. I mean getting rid reality and starting over with something else? I'll give you an easy one which if you can do then we'll see. I want you to take back one single step you have taken. I don't mean walk to a starting point, I mean undoing travel once taken. Just one step. Not some sci fi time travel. I mean undoing a physical act entirely, not just nullifying what was already done. When you can get there you are on your way.

Why would I have to do that to achieve immortality? Undoing the chain of causality is not necessary. Anyway, here goes. According to a fringe theory based on the amplituhedron, space and time may not be fundamental, but emergent. If they are emergent properties, then with an understanding of what lies beneath, then perhaps within a particular system, such as a universe, maybe we can one day manipulate the causality chain and operate from a more fundamental position. It would be like if you had a sheet of paper and had flat landers living on it, and they wondered about the impossibility of finding their way out from the inside of a circle. From their perspective, they can't ever do it. But you, being a 3 dimensional being could imagine picking them up into the third dimension and setting them down outside the circle.
Space, time and causality chains may be the same to us here. Isn't that the nature of science fiction and fantasy? In just a short time, much of what was unthinkable becomes ordinary fact. Its happened countless times with paradigm shifts, scientific progress and general technological development. I see no reason to think or accept that the limitations of today will be the limitations of tomorrow, or a million years from now.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Well, immortal is not the same as eternal is it not? My understanding is that immortals simply do not age or get ill but can still die from other mundane problems (car accidents etc). Eternal is you simply cannot die.

I'd love to be immortal. To never worry about ageing or illness, and to hopefully have some backup system in place in cause you get hit by a bus. I'd love to see the world in a thousand years and see the human story and what humanity has achieved or failed to to achieve. Dying kinda sucks if you think about it. It's like picking up a really awesome book and putting it down half way though and never knowing how the story ends.

So would it be boring? No, I don't think so. I'd love it. And let's face it, you won't live forever even without ageing or illness and other backups in place. It may take 50k years but something will happen to knock you over.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Why would I have to do that to achieve immortality? Undoing the chain of causality is not necessary. Anyway, here goes. According to a fringe theory based on the amplituhedron, space and time may not be fundamental, but emergent. If they are emergent properties, then with an understanding of what lies beneath, then perhaps within a particular system, such as a universe, maybe we can one day manipulate the causality chain and operate from a more fundamental position. It would be like if you had a sheet of paper and had flat landers living on it, and they wondered about the impossibility of finding their way out from the inside of a circle. From their perspective, they can't ever do it. But you, being a 3 dimensional being could imagine picking them up into the third dimension and setting them down outside the circle.
Space, time and causality chains may be the same to us here. Isn't that the nature of science fiction and fantasy? In just a short time, much of what was unthinkable becomes ordinary fact. Its happened countless times with paradigm shifts, scientific progress and general technological development. I see no reason to think or accept that the limitations of today will be the limitations of tomorrow, or a million years from now.

I'm not sure if you understand what emergent implies. That does not mean that they aren't "real" nor that what comes about isn't in anyway binding. What the article really suggests is that what we perceive as time and space are second order events, but they aren't necessary to explain particles and their interactions. Is is the latter two which do not have dependencies on something deeper, at least as we know things now. The practical side of that revelation is computational simplicity, and being able to look at a thing at a more fundamental level is exciting, but now you have a bit of a problem. These artifacts of time and space are our contextual home. You would have to change the geometry of the particle/interactions and being less than omnipotent how would you do that? We live like characters on a page. How will you pop out and write a new novel? More formally it could be considered a problem of hierarchies.

 

[moonbogg]

Well, immortal is not the same as eternal is it not? My understanding is that immortals simply do not age or get ill but can still die from other mundane problems (car accidents etc). Eternal is you simply cannot die.

I'd love to be immortal. To never worry about ageing or illness, and to hopefully have some backup system in place in cause you get hit by a bus. I'd love to see the world in a thousand years and see the human story and what humanity has achieved or failed to to achieve. Dying kinda sucks if you think about it. It's like picking up a really awesome book and putting it down half way though and never knowing how the story ends.

So would it be boring? No, I don't think so. I'd love it. And let's face it, you won't live forever even without ageing or illness and other backups in place. It may take 50k years but something will happen to knock you over.

I love this post. And i'd love to see where we go next as well. I think people get caught up in the nit picking of the definition of immortality. I think everyone knows basically what it means. You don't die, at least not for a very long time if you play your cards right. Maybe immortal is the wrong word then. Perhaps I should say "The Post Human Era".

 

[moonbogg]

I'm not sure if you understand what emergent implies. That does not mean that they aren't "real" nor that what comes about isn't in anyway binding. What the article really suggests is that what we perceive as time and space are second order events, but they aren't necessary to explain particles and their interactions. Is is the latter two which do not have dependencies on something deeper, at least as we know things now. The practical side of that revelation is computational simplicity, and being able to look at a thing at a more fundamental level is exciting, but now you have a bit of a problem. These artifacts of time and space are our contextual home. You would have to change the geometry of the particle/interactions and being less than omnipotent how would you do that? We live like characters on a page. How will you pop out and write a new novel? More formally it could be considered a problem of hierarchies.

What are you talking about and why are you asking me about that stuff? I am talking about post human immortality. When I talk about creating our own reality, I am talking about a digital environment or world. I don't discount other things though. I don't pretend to be a physicist. I am talking about the exciting possibility of people entering the post human era. That's it.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

What are you talking about and why are you asking me about that stuff? I am talking about post human immortality. When I talk about creating our own reality, I am talking about a digital environment or world. I don't discount other things though. I don't pretend to be a physicist. I am talking about the exciting possibility of people entering the post human era. That's it.

Everything you can interact is either energy or matter. Eventually matter will decompose. Heat reaches equilibrium everywhere and you cannot perform any action. None. That is a quality of the particles which create reality. Any holographic device would be built from the stuff that makes everything else.

I'm trying to impress on you two things, one objective and one subjective.

First absolute immortality is impossible due to the physical nature of the universe. Stuff breaks, even particles.

The second and subjective part is that if somehow you became God and ordained that we exist forever there are only so many possible permutations of particles which are contained in any casually connected universe. If you could take all that you could ever see and all the particles which are there are only a finite number of permutations which could come about. Now adding one proton here and a neutron there from a "sandbox" of particles would take a very long time, but "a long time" is meaningless. You would merely repeat those finite combinations an infinite number of times.

That has no appeal to me. YMMV.

 

[moonbogg]

Everything you can interact is either energy or matter. Eventually matter will decompose. Heat reaches equilibrium everywhere and you cannot perform any action. None. That is a quality of the particles which create reality. Any holographic device would be built from the stuff that makes everything else.

I'm trying to impress on you two things, one objective and one subjective.

First absolute immortality is impossible due to the physical nature of the universe. Stuff breaks, even particles.

The second and subjective part is that if somehow you became God and ordained that we exist forever there are only so many possible permutations of particles which are contained in any casually connected universe. If you could take all that you could ever see and all the particles which are there are only a finite number of permutations which could come about. Now adding one proton here and a neutron there from a "sandbox" of particles would take a very long time, but "a long time" is meaningless. You would merely repeat those finite combinations an infinite number of times.

That has no appeal to me. YMMV.

What makes you think we won't learn to harness dark matter or dark energy? OK, even if we die with the universe, that would be success in my book. I'd say we had one hell of a good run. We made it until the great heat death. If we last that long, that's plenty good enough for me to call it immortal. You can call it whatever you want.
But I won't back down from my position just because you think its impossible. I disagree and believe strongly that we can overcome any obstacle that you could ever imagine.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

What makes you think we won't learn to harness dark matter or dark energy? OK, even if we die with the universe, that would be success in my book. I'd say we had one hell of a good run. We made it until the great heat death. If we last that long, that's plenty good enough for me to call it immortal. You can call it whatever you want.
But I won't back down from my position just because you think its impossible. I disagree and believe strongly that we can overcome any obstacle that you could ever imagine.

You've given what I've been looking for and that's a clear understanding that there's some timeframe. As for the rest you are entitled to your beliefs. I disagree, but there's nothing wrong with differences of opinion.

 

[moonbogg]

You've given what I've been looking for and that's a clear understanding that there's some timeframe. As for the rest you are entitled to your beliefs. I disagree, but there's nothing wrong with differences of opinion.

If it turns out that we cannot avoid an ultimate time frame, there are things we can do to extend it by so much that it would be pointless to consider it. For instance, if we ended up living in simulated universes, we could speed the time up within the simulations relative to the real universe that they are contained within. So, by the time the real universe dies, the time in the simulated universe could be trillions of times longer, but from the perspective within the simulation, time will pass at a normal rate. This would be like creating an artificial time dilation.
If you have simulations within simulations, then the time extension effect is magnified even more. Eventually though, the mother universe would die and all simulations would go down with it like a cosmic house of cards.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

If it turns out that we cannot avoid an ultimate time frame, there are things we can do to extend it by so much that it would be pointless to consider it. For instance, if we ended up living in simulated universes, we could speed the time up within the simulations relative to the real universe that they are contained within. So, by the time the real universe dies, the time in the simulated universe could be trillions of times longer, but from the perspective within the simulation, time will pass at a normal rate. This would be like creating an artificial time dilation.
If you have simulations within simulations, then the time extension effect is magnified even more. Eventually though, the mother universe would die and all simulations would go down with it like a cosmic house of cards.

There's a hypothesis that we may already be a simulation in something analogous to a computer. It's entirely possible that we may be playing out your scenario right now and what a trip that would be. 😀

Now such a simulation would of necessity be a product of intelligence, but another possibility exists and you can find more under "holographic universe". To oversimplify our reality may be emergent, a 3D projection of a higher 5 dimensional spacial reality. We're accidental"shadows on the wall", an interplay of "light and shadow", put in quotations because they are analogies, not literal equivalents. One might say interesting but not a thing which can be tested. Well... they're fixed constants which are set in stone in order for quantum theory to be a valid representation of our universe and one is the "Planck length" Again rather simply spacetime is not continuous. At an unimaginably small scale the ability to divide a physical line ends. So what again? There isn't a particle accelerator which could be made to examine things that small. Well... That's correct BUT if we a holographic projection the smallest scale would be "smeared" so as to appear larger. Not enough to measure directly, but in certain qualities of gravitational waves, which we are on the verge of measuring.

That's really interesting stuff.

 

[HeXen]

I just want to live youthfully without getting old and live as long as I would otherwise, don't care when Death comes over to say hello, just want to go physically and mentally in my prime.

 

[Sonikku]

Would immortality be borring?

If highlander the series is any indication, then no.

 

[moonbogg]

There's a hypothesis that we may already be a simulation in something analogous to a computer. It's entirely possible that we may be playing out your scenario right now and what a trip that would be. 😀

Now such a simulation would of necessity be a product of intelligence, but another possibility exists and you can find more under "holographic universe". To oversimplify our reality may be emergent, a 3D projection of a higher 5 dimensional spacial reality. We're accidental"shadows on the wall", an interplay of "light and shadow", put in quotations because they are analogies, not literal equivalents. One might say interesting but not a thing which can be tested. Well... they're fixed constants which are set in stone in order for quantum theory to be a valid representation of our universe and one is the "Planck length" Again rather simply spacetime is not continuous. At an unimaginably small scale the ability to divide a physical line ends. So what again? There isn't a particle accelerator which could be made to examine things that small. Well... That's correct BUT if we a holographic projection the smallest scale would be "smeared" so as to appear larger. Not enough to measure directly, but in certain qualities of gravitational waves, which we are on the verge of measuring.

That's really interesting stuff.

Great post. I heard someone say that the planck length is like the "resolution" of our universe and that the universe may be considered digital and not analog. If the universe is a simulation, it would be amazing, but would it really be surprising? The way I see it, no matter what the actual case is, its totally amazing and I can only see things getting more and more interesting from here on out.

 

[sandorski]

At times it would be boring, other times it may seem hopeless(collapse of Civilization for eg. I suspect after awhile most people would get tired of it and want to die. That would be fine, just need to give them the opportunity to end their life in a dignified way.

I suspect something would go awry though. Like insanity inspired Suicide Cults bent on killing everyone for their sin of thwarting the natural order or something.