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Question 45

Do you want to live forever? Why?

• Yes, because being alive is better than not being (death). I suppose I would go through periods of boredom, but how is being bored worse than *not* being? (Carl Funk #1229)

• Yes -- because, quite simply, I want to see what happens next.

  (The same attitude that got me through bouts of suicidical depression.)

  : I hope you're not having them anymore, Czar.

  Oh, no -- regular as my bowel movements though they once were (uh... was that a little too much information?), I haven't had to put up with any for quit some time now. Come to think of it, the frequency of such intense depressions has continually decreased the longer I've been an atheist. Hmmm... (Czar #13)

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• Provisionally, "Yes please," but it depends what you mean by "forever" and what assumptions I make about what's entailed with the idea.

  To make immortality worthwhile, you'd have to assume continuing perfect physical and mental health together with an infinite capacity for not getting bored (should the heat death of the cosmos turn out to be right). (Therion Ware #422)

• Depends. I certainly don't want to live forever or even for a long time "like this". If I somehow developed the ability to surpass physical restraints and travel through time and space more or less unrestricted, I would definitely enjoy myself for some thousands, millions or maybe even billions of years.

  But eternity is an awfully long time. Sooner or later, you'd have seen everything -- been there, done that, got the t-shirt and worn it out. If there was nothing left to be learned, explored, discovered, then life in whatever way would be an unimaginably tedious affair to be ended before it drove me insane. (Sarah Jaernecke #1102)

• Even if the big bang theories are true, they may only apply to local space. (couple hundred billion lights years sphere?) And the (our?) universe may go thru cycles of expansion and contraction, so each new universe would be an exciting new playground. Even if a faster than light star drive were never to be invented, living forever would enable someone to travel to the stars very slowly in some sort of hiber-sleep, to explore and discover the universe as it unfolds in its ever changing diversity.

  Of course time and space as we presently understand it may be a function of this particular universal cycle, so the next time around the concept of forever may be drastically different. (zach #33)

• Not particularly. I can't at this point imagine being bored with life and I think that death as we now know it is imposition upon the Human species that cannot and should not be tolerated. However I also understand that, as theory holds now, the universe will end in a cold, black, and miserable 3Kelvin and I'd rather end my train of experience before that happens. Forever is a long time-- maybe some day I'll decide it's too long. (Elf Sternberg #1493)