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[DungeonJerk]

The dying and in pain can't die, over-population, no insurance that this is the type of immortality with absolute regeneration. So get into an accident, possibly spend the rest of eternity as a living splat mark. People might need to still eat, so food is not infinite VS the mass numbers, so we would end up eternally starving.

Pretty much, there are so many factors that could turn something that should be awesome into a nightmare. It just isn't funny.

[Loud Whispers]

Are you kidding? If you're immortal what is suffering to you but a mild nuisance?!

Forever.

The dying won't die.

The ones in pain won't be in pain.  (Pain becomes redundant!)

Absolute regeneration? SCIENCE BRO

Living splat mark? Freaky. How would that work?

Necro's don't need to eat. Or whatever. Again, eternally starving? What does it matter if you're immortal, you can ignore it.

[DungeonJerk]

See dude, that's the difference between what we're saying about immortality. You have certainty's in your perception of immortality. I don't. I am quite literally saying that maybe just maybe that immortality is so varied that it is a curse instead of being a benefit.

I mean how can be certain?, who among us is immortal?

And I dunno about you. But I don't like being in pain. It kinda piss's me off.

[ASCIt]

"time heals all wounds". I wonder if necromancy is a derivative of chronomancy?

[wierd]

I'd say it has more in common with medicine and vivomancy (historically part of alchemy, specifically as relating to the homunulus; essentially the magic of creating life from inanimate matter) than it does with chronomancy.

Chronomancy would have more in common with illusion magic, and space-distortion magic.

Regardless, without also trancending several physical design issues with existing neural hardware, immortality would become unbearable over sufficient periods of time. Specifically, after you are about 25, the vast majority of your primary axons are formed, making the learning of new skills substantially more difficult. The brain's design is not meant to endure eternally. Eventually the immortal person would suffer such extreme culture shock, and have such dated skills, that they would be unable to engage in a society that they no longer recognize.

Take for instance, if you plucked an illiterate dark-age peasant from backwater romania, and dropped them in modern-day new york. That's just 500 or so years of time passing, invoking a tremendous change in the ways people live, work, and play, and a huge shift from agrarian skills based living to information skills based living.

Said theoretical immortal would struggle terribly trying to keep his/her skills up, as the hardwired connections in his/her brain become less and less relevant over time. Truly, a relic of ages past, living in the past, and unable to let go.

This means that said immortal needs to have radical neural pruning and radical neurogenesis going on to keep up over the passing ages, which means he/she will be forgetful, and literally lose skills and knowledge they used to be proficient with as time passes, in order to stay plastic enough to keep gaining new ones and adapting to the changing world.

Such radical plasticity would make it likely that the person would have a highly mutable personality as well, as the memories that form the basis of behavior and decisions would literally be lost and replaced over time.

The person from 1412 would be radically different than the person from 2012. They probably won't even remember what it was like in 1412 by that time. Diaries would be essential.

[mendota]

I've never seen the "hardwired" theory ever substantiated.

[wierd]

muscle memory is one such form of proceedurally generated hardwiring.

It manifests physiologically as a thickening and increaded density of white matter axons and dentritic connections between the motor cortex and other regions of the brain.

It does you no good to be able to drive a mule-cart in your sleep, when people are flying spaceships.

[wierd]

1) everyone loves cake. Perhaps he felt he could attract more members if there was cake?
[Would that make it an easy bake coven?]

2) death as a form of comedy and levity has been around for centuries. Look at the death present in loony tunes, for example.

3) propoganda. Claim undeath as being the same as immortality, despite the clear and obvious drawbacks.

4) being brooding, dark, scary, and creepy keeps the masses away. Instead, he bakes you a cake while feeding you sugar coated PR.

[DungeonJerk]

Yup, what better way to sucker in the weak minded sheep then to use propaganda?

I used to see it all the time when I played that idiotic game Evony. The Alliance I was part of LOVED to spout propaganda about how bad ass they were, but they were all weak minded simpletons who's best strategy was to waste all their units in an attack, leave their defense's wide open for counter attack, never finish an assault. And then spout off about how great they were and how they "owned" the territory they were infesting.

Yet the dumb ones ate it up like Cosby in a pudding factory

A necromancer using propaganda would draw in a much larger group, and easily form a cult devoted to his ideals.

[mendota]

muscle memory is one such form of proceedurally generated hardwiring.

It manifests physiologically as a thickening and increaded density of white matter axons and dentritic connections between the motor cortex and other regions of the brain.

It does you no good to be able to drive a mule-cart in your sleep, when people are flying spaceships.

Your link doesn't help your case. At no point does it mention a permanent increase in thickness and density of axons and connections.

"Hardwiring" just doesn't seem to have any place in neuroscience. There's conditioning and biases, but there's no such thing as neural hardwiring from what I've read...

[wierd]

whitematter production explosively progresses until about age 30, then declines

Whitematter is the neural material that is mylenated, and which connects portions of the brain together.

Without reversing this trend, which was the thesis of my earlier post, the immortal person is on a 1 way trip to demensia.

[Pokon]

This is what happens when Pinkie Pie becomes a necromancer.

Undead "special" cupcakes?

[Mitchewawa]

Dwarf Fortress is locked in a perpetual state of scientific and cultural stagnation. And though skills rust, mental attributes do not. Basically, a dwarf at the adult age of 12 will stay in the exact same of state of pseudo-sentience and mental activity for the rest of its eternal life. Plus, the necromancy in this game is that which gives eternal life; not immortality. So yes, everything can and will die (there is a 100% chance of a fatal accident occurring if the time span for such an event is infinity). Necromancers die. Zombies die. Eternal dwarfs will die to the very dangerous living environment they occupy*, and following the high mortality rate not caused by old age, overpopulation will not be a problem.

*IE: starvation, burning, crushing, getting stabbed by a goblin, getting ripped in half by a berserk, all of your internal organs turning into live purring maggots due to FB poison, etc.

[DungeonJerk]

I believe the immortality topic drifted out of DF and just spilled into real life.

Though I have yet to see a Zombie stay down.

[wierd]

Quite right.

The pointed out bit of mental decay coupled with a changing world was meant in the philosophical sense of why immortality is unpleasant.

Even in an idealized setting free from degenerative mental illnesses, such as in tolkien's universe, the elves eventually long for death, and envy mortal men. (They live, but everything the love around them always dies.)