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Not interested

Originally Posted by Fynn

Not interested

Fair enough.

Sounds mainly like heaven for people suffering from crippling physical health issues to me. So not something for me specifically, but definitely something I'd endorse the existence of for the people who need it.

I'm surprised no one wanted to pursue immortality.

The inevitability of death is one of the most fundamental parts of the human condition. Take that away and you are no longer human.

It'd probably redefine what it means to be human or evolve the meaning at that point. That definition wouldn't be the same if this were to happen. It's also a very interesting topic to me because I came across the idea from reading about artificial intelligence. That and it's also very fun to read how people interpret immortality as a whole.

I feel there are too many negative variables to account for to make this a good idea. Civilization and culture are completely based around the concept of escaping death, to accomplish it would largely make the entire sum of our culture pointless.

We would no longer need families, no longer need to give birth, and no longer need to have creative problem solving. We would likely reach cultural stagnation and our entire economy would crash disastrously to the likely extinction of those who could not afford to undergo the process. That's assuming they go peacefully and the very creation of such technology doesn't give birth to a new type of class war. Other species on our planet would also largely be screwed over because they would no longer have much value to us. We may see the world become a lifeless shell in a few centuries as we wipe out all other sentient life on the planet as we strip mine the planet for the resources needed to maintain our new artificial bodies.

The other issue here is that it would be very unlikely, let alone necessary for our new bodies to recreate a limbic system of which a good portion of our "self" is dependent upon. In fact, the most interesting discovery of this process would be learning how much of our concept of self is based on the purely biological processes of the brain. A part of you might gain immortality, but it would be debatable if it actually could be called "you". It would be safer to say you would no longer be human but something else and sadly, our instinctual nature to wipe out anything that can be counted as "other" might mean this immortal version of us would be wiped out before they had a chance to do any drastic changes to the world.

In the case of clone bodies, it would largely make the population problem our planet already faces explode to apocalyptic levels. We can barely manage as it is and several of the growing world problems we face today could potentially be solved if half our species disappeared or had significantly shorter lifespans, but removing the cycle of death would only strain our resources to the breaking point. Even if the clone bodies were sterilized, the population that can't afford new bodies wouldn't be able to die fast enough to make life easy for the immortal ones, which would likely result in more wars and human suffering for the benefit of the people born lucky enough to be in a society that offers immortality. Not to mention the clone bodies would do nothing to curb our natural instincts to breed so even sterilization might only be a temporary thing and even then it has the ramifications of creating new class struggles that would cause discord.

The idea of immortality is actually pretty shortsighted when you start to imagine the socioeconomic ramifications it would bring, especially in the light of the major issues we have yet to resolve. It's kind of like time travel, sounds cool, but the potential ramifications of the technology make it far too dangerous to ever really pursue, assuming it is possible.

Nice response!

I think the idea of immortality is interesting because the discussion often goes both ways. Unfortunately, it hasn't gone both ways here. There is a real implication that immortality might generate more negative impact than positive. We can attribute that to the way we utilize our resources today. However, I think there's also an equal chance that there can be a positive impact as well.

Here I presented it very linearly but the idea of digital transference might help us expand into the universe as a species. It can help save lives or unexpected deaths for a lot of people. Maybe in achieving such longevity, it can refocus our voracious appetite in using Earth's resources to become more conservative or less detrimental.