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[Lyeos]

I dunno why people go "I don't want to be immortal! Everyone I know will die!"

Well, yea. They will. But by the time you're an old man, most of the people you know will be dead anyway.

Keeping in mind immortality is not the same as invulnerability.

Everyone you ever come to know will die.
Always.
For all time.
Until you cease.

[TD1]

Excellent!

I will get to know more people. People I would never have met if I'd died. And besides, I don't particularly need friends. Sounds harsh, but I could do without them handily enough.

I could read to my heart's content, write to my heart's content, etc.

It would be a blessed existence. And, if it ever gets too much to me, I can kill myself and therefore live exactly as long as I wanted to live. If that's after some friends die, then so be it.

[Graknorke]

Immortals don't die m8.
It's kind of the dictionary definition, you know?

But I imagine the insanity induced by colossal boredom from not dying would probably make things more bearable.

[TD1]

I doubt I'd see life as a colossal boredom. But, my idea of immortality would be sort of an extended life that CAN go on forever, but most likely won't. That keeps you human, not some sort of god-thing.

Edit: I suppose Gandalf would be a good example? Or did he just have a very long life? Or elves, too. They're immortal, but can die.

[Graknorke]

I doubt I'd see life as a colossal boredom. But, my idea of immortality would be sort of an extended life that CAN go on forever, but most likely won't. That keeps you human, not some sort of god-thing.

So like the staying alive is a deliberate act and you can stop at any time?
Because I can see how that would be bearable if you chose to die at an appropriate moment.

Actually living forever would invariably cause some boredom and probably insanity from isolation and lack of stimulation though. People aren't going to stay around forever. And neither is the Earth, the sun, or even the galaxy. You would have to go a little bit insane to preserve what sanity would be left.

[BFEL]

As for Allee's existential dread, I think of it like this: If I have lived this life right, why would I need a second one?

As for immortality, I find people's views on how bearable it would be is generally related to what their views on life in general are. I personally am a bit of an optimist, so I don't think it would be so bad. Not to mention I'm somewhat....emotionally stunted? Not really full sociopath I think, but I'm not as whiny as the rest of you XD

Death is just a fact to me I suppose, I know I'll die eventually, and I know everyone else will too. It doesn't bother me. I'm more concerned about doing the things I want to before it happens

[AlleeCat]

I could handle being immortal. I would like it a lot more if I had someone to be immortal with, though. Like my girlfriend for example. Although eventually the universe will either die or crunch back into the little dense state it was in in the beginning, but by that time, I'm sure I'll have invented time travel, so it won't be too bad.

[BFEL]

Time travel has already been invented silly!
Granted it can only send you forward and is really poorly optimized, but time travel nonetheless

[Urist Imiknorris]

Yeah, it lags like hell at higher velocities.

[Spehss _]

My mom decided she wanted a laptop. My 64 year old mother, who's incredibly ditzy and airheaded, and who's never really used a computer in her life.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Went through the process of setting her up a Gmail account for email on the prepackaged Internet Explorer. She spent two hours typing an email out to a friend talking about how she found photos of her friend's family on the internet and wanted to see more of them. The email was about 2 lines of text long, half of it was in all caps because she used capslock instead of shift for capital letters and left it on, and she had misspelled history as histery. The entire email was something like "I looked up your name on the google AND WANTED TO SEE MORE OF YOUR HUSBAND'S PITCHERS. PLEASE SEND ME THEM."

While she was doing all this she somehow got to a new window for match.com or some dating website shit, which she was trying to log into with her email account and her password for accessing her gmail account. She wanted to log into it --note that she thought she could log in using her gmail email account and password-- so she could "see more of [her friend's] photos."

So, here's a bit of what she was doing wrong.

The email wouldn't send because she had filled out the destination wrong, putting her friend's name instead of the email, like you would send a physical letter and put the receiver's name at the top. There was way more wrong with the email than just that, but the thing that ruined it was the wrong address, which thankfully kept the abomination from being sent.

She couldn't close the new window with the dating website because there were 2 tabs and she couldn't understand why everytime she tried closing the whole window a new window asking if she wanted to close all tabs or one tab kept popping up. She closed the tab window, went back to trying to close the dating website window, and repeat. Don't know how long she was stuck with that. My dad, being the gentleman he is, contributed to the moment by giving her shit for mistakenly going on a dating website, saying she's being unfaithful and it's practically porno and "how would she feel if he went and did that" despite the fact she was completely misguided about what she was trying to do. My dad's a bit of an ass at times, yes.

The "photos" of her friend she was looking at was images google image search brought up when she google searched "[FRIEND'S NAME REDACTED] history". She thought they were all photos of her friend's family. Had to explain how google worked and explain that all these photos probably had nothing to do with her friend, but were just random photos off the internet that google got from the keyword "history". Also explained that "you can't just look people's names up on the internet. Or at least you can't send them emails saying you looked them up on the internet and want to see more photos. It's creepy."

So, I installed Firefox and installed adblock, so she'll hopefully not be at risk of clicking any more shady trashy ads. The potential for viruses and malware probably dropped exponentially from that.

Then I walked her through the process for sending an email, explaining what she did wrong and how to do it right and having her show me she can do it right.

She's currently playing an old point and click adventure game that I used to play when I was a kid. Like, 4 or 5 years old kid. "Pajama Sam - No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside", loved dat game as a kid. She's genuinely enjoying it. As in it's a challenging and enjoyable mental exercise, not out of nostalgia. It's like watching a little kid.

She's so tech illiterate (and probably slightly literature illiterate as well [honestly, pitcher? histery? why]) that it physically pains me to watch. The whole experience just reminds me that my parents are getting old and my mom is probably gonna get Alzheimers or go senile or something, given her track record of mental faculties and health history.

Oh, and my dad mentioned that she wanted to try driving again. She hasn't driven in years. She was never that good of a driver. I'm afraid something will go wrong if she does get back into it.

[/sigh]
It's a reminder that my parents are old and getting older and will eventually die. The dying isn't that upsetting, it's the thought of watching them slowly decline into ruin that I don't like.

[Orange Wizard]

"Do you want to live forever?"
"Sure!"
"Okay, now hop into this particle collider..."

[Descan]

* Descan giggles at people saying, basically, "I'll be immortal but no one else will be!"

* Descan also giggles at people saying "Living forever is boring!"

1) Kind of a dick move to create a method of immortality without giving the option to use it to other people. (regardless of what it is, you guys saying "I'll just upload my neurons" like that won't kill your consciousness and like it won't be a form of immortality [i.e. someone thinkin' they're you living forever] are silly)

2A) Like you've done it.

2B) If you're bored in the universe we have, and the technologies we have and will have, and with the myriad people we have, will have, and will create, and possibly find, then you're doing it wrong. I'm not bored with life now. I don't see why I'll be bored with life tomorrow. And I don't see that stopping any time soon, especially since all evidence points to the alternative being the ultimate in boredom, i.e. *literally* being nothing and doing nothing.

[hops]

I'm still sad that people are afraid of death.

I mean, I would love to exist forever, but I'm cool with ceasing to exist too.

[Tawa]

There was some crazy chinese emperor dude who thought eating these poisonous beans would let him live forever.

Guess how well it worked out?

[Descan]

He died, because he was dumb, because he didn't know jack from shit about even start to know how you find out about how to find out how to get a more durable brain/body. Or even what caused death in the first place. :V