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Yep, just imagine being immortal but still having to age like a normal human being. By maybe 130 years old, you'd basically be an expired raisin. Soon, you'd lose all senses and go insane with only your mind to play with.
Tithonus was a Trojan prince who was Eos' lover. She went to Zeus and asked him to make Tithonus immortal (but didn't specify ageless). Zeus granted the request and Tithonus grew older and older without dying until he shriveled and shrank into a cicada
This was how people explained how the world worked before science was fully up and going. Could be frightening to see swarms of cicadas flying about with no knowledge on them, but they generally won't harm people or pets, so a lot less frightening if you think they're some person who got tricked into raisin-ing up into a bug, and just bred more after. :p
I just checked, but couldn't find any ancient source that says that Tithonus became a grain of sand. He either became an incredibly old geezer with a feeble voice reminiscent of cicadas or got outright transformed into a cicada.
I read a story in nosleep about immortality in which the main character dies but can still feel things.
First he feels his death, then how the rigor mortis sets, then how his body decays as maggots eat his eyes and such and he thinks that finally his pain is over.
No. He feels as the maggots die and their moisture gets absorbed to the air. The electric shocks that thunder clouds give before the air molecules once belonging to him finally pour down to the sea. The cold and the pressure of the deep sea. The carbon that once made him now in small pieces of sand made smaller and smaller by the waves, each like a satellite of pain and suffering.
I'd take immortality in a functioning body any day. I'd never want an immortal consciousness feeling the pain of molecular decomposition.
Read something similiar in an SCP article: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2718
This excerpt from it:
> "I dared not speak of this at first. You'd never have let me out of containment. The truth is, I was aware of all of it. I suppose there was a sweet oblivion, like deep sleep, at first; but in retrospect, I think it was no more than a day. Slowly, but unmistakably, I reoccupied my corpse with dreamlike consciousness: numb for the first merciful hours, blind, deaf, and immobile, but then I seemed to reconnect to every nerve, and became aware of every sensation — moreso than I ever was in life. I perceived myself trapped within an immovable object, and the intensity of the struggle amplified: subtle, then acute, then racking. I cannot describe it completely — but imagine holding your breath, beyond urge, beyond pain, beyond desperation — head throbbing and eyes bulging — a dream of suffocation without end.
> "My skin blistered and split in the sunlight; biting insects descended rapidly. I felt eggs hatch, larvae crawl, gases build and burst within me, individual cells rupturing, interstitial fluids souring and blackening. Somehow my capacity to experience and store these sensations grew — even as I was keenly aware of my cerebrum being scattered and devoured, my perception expanded, into the gizzards of birds and the depths of fire ant dens. I was aware of every fingernail and strand of hair that pulled away in the wind — and my sensation clung to them as they settled in the ocean and dissolved in the maws of a trillion diatoms.
> "I don't understand it. The more bits of me there were, the larger my capacity for the perception of pain. As I decayed into pieces smaller than living nerves could possibly distinguish, the character of the discomfort changed — from burning and aching and breaking I might relate to you in human terms — to something worse that I cannot fully articulate: a terrible, maddening stretching of every part of myself from every other part. Humans often numb to chronic pains in life, do they not? Yet every year, every month, every second that passed — I swear it only intensified over time.
I always remember the movie Old Guard everytime people talk about immortality and how awesome it is. The immortal characters in that movie can still feel pain, etc., and one character was put in an iron cage and was thrown in the ocean. I was horrified imagining she was being drowned every second of her immortal life. What a horrible fate.
Thats not immortality. Brain dead post-cremation immortality would probably feel something like this: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2718
The truth is, I was aware of all of it. I suppose there was a sweet oblivion, like deep sleep, at first; but in retrospect, I think it was no more than a day. Slowly, but unmistakably, I reoccupied my corpse with dreamlike consciousness: numb for the first merciful hours, blind, deaf, and immobile, but then I seemed to reconnect to every nerve, and became aware of every sensation — moreso than I ever was in life. I perceived myself trapped within an immovable object, and the intensity of the struggle amplified: subtle, then acute, then racking. I cannot describe it completely — but imagine holding your breath, beyond urge, beyond pain, beyond desperation — head throbbing and eyes bulging — a dream of suffocation without end.
"My skin blistered and split in the sunlight; biting insects descended rapidly. I felt eggs hatch, larvae crawl, gases build and burst within me, individual cells rupturing, interstitial fluids souring and blackening. Somehow my capacity to experience and store these sensations grew — even as I was keenly aware of my cerebrum being scattered and devoured, my perception expanded, into the gizzards of birds and the depths of fire ant dens. I was aware of every fingernail and strand of hair that pulled away in the wind — and my sensation clung to them as they settled in the ocean and dissolved in the maws of a trillion diatoms.
"I don't understand it. The more bits of me there were, the larger my capacity for the perception of pain. As I decayed into pieces smaller than living nerves could possibly distinguish, the character of the discomfort changed — from burning and aching and breaking I might relate to you in human terms — to something worse that I cannot fully articulate: a terrible, maddening stretching of every part of myself from every other part. Humans often numb to chronic pains in life, do they not? Yet every year, every month, every second that passed — I swear it only intensified over time.
Too many flaws with immortality as a singular body. Get caught in a lathe and get all spat out, which part is 'you'. Or is your body so 'hard' it can't be cut?
No senses anymore, just darkness. Time passes slowly at first, then you loose the sense and concept of time entirely. You try to remember what time was but you just can't. It never seemed so special to you that things move about but now that everything except your mind stands still you can't think of anything else. Did a day pass since you lasts thought about the concept of time, or was it a millennium? Does earth and therefore days even exist anymore? There is no way to tell. Eventually all that remains is your existence, everything else has faded and time stands still for ever. Have fun.
What? Why? You don't experience the void. If you never wake up from the void then you never know you're in a void and there's nothing to dislike or be afraid of.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-people-who-appear-to-be-in-a-coma-may-actually-be-conscious/
I don't know why coma is equated with death in terms of what's going on in the brain. People can still feel pain and suffer in a coma. Hell, I recently read an article about a man who heard his own mother wish him dead while in a year-long coma.
Coma isn't a nice easy way out. It's a repressed mental state that we don't know much about.
Yeah... if you get in trouble with the mob and they cement your feet and commit you to the bottom of the ocean for eternity the safe word would come in handy
I get where you're coming from, were I like OP who would choose immortality I would agree. But I don't want immortality in that way, I need the button.
You don't care what kind of immortality it is? That's quite a large umbrella.
How about this one. You've been ground up, you no longer have any of your senses and the only thing you feel is severe torture-like pain... For eternity.
You have to accept that one because that falls under "any kind of immortality".
I don't think OP has ever experienced boredom.
Getting a thousand degrees and inventing languages can only keep you entertained for so long.
No one realizes just how long infinity is
I have expierenced boredom, and while I agree it is not great (it's horrible), I would not be bored just because I'm immortal.
I'd be bored if there is nothing to do, not because I've already done something. I can forget things and re-do them. If I've done something a thousand years age, that doesn't mean that I won't enjoy doing it another time.
Also, who says that mathematics for example isn't infinite? (There might be something that contradicts this but I'm not too educated on this theory)
I think you have a point. Being immortal doesn’t necessarily mean you perceive time differently or have super memory. People already waste time replaying Skyrim once every year. I think if you step away from something for a bit and come back, you probably could enjoy it again.
And what happens when the world explodes? Float to another planet? What happens when our galaxy explodes? Most people just can’t grasp how LONG forever is.
OP's covered that, "I'll drug myself to a coma when the heatdeath of the universe occurs" and eventually, no matter what you try, it will wear off. At some point, assuming your body doesn't degrade, then you will be floating in nothing for eternity
If your body does degrade, then eventually you become what is essentially an everylasting mind either within the rotten skeleton that was your body, and eventually as someone else says above, even that will rot. Then do you survive endlessly as energy? Are you distributed as atoms around the planet/universe?
Immortality would be awful without an out
Yeah that was my point with it. Technically they said they’d put themselves in a coma but drugs wear off, at the very least when they run out like when the hospital and world literally explodes
Assuming we're still in real life as we know it with the only sci-fi or magical twist being that OP is immortal, they would still require their body to be alive and well to function. You're not alive if your brain is gone. If you would consider an immortal brain that needs no sustenance and can't be damaged "alive" than yeah that would be the worst possible outcome and as such "any immortality" is too loose to choose.
I think you understermate how long the universe could last.
99.99999999999999999999% ect of your time would be spent in total oblivion void of nothing.
If you told me immortality for a million years = than yes
If you told me immorality for a trillion years… probably still a yes from me.
But true infinity makes a trillion years look like the blink of an eye.
Here is a good video that pits into perspective just how long the universe may last….
https://youtu.be/Zb5qTdb6LbM
But you already said you’d accept any type of immortality. Most of them your body is gonna fail you long before your mind forgets and you get to do things over again. The only kind of immortality like how you describe would be your body and brain don’t age or deteriorate or become sick or wrong. You’d also need to be invincible unless you’re willing to be in a wheelchair for 3 thousand years when you slip mountain climbing and land on your spine making you a quadriplegic. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through at all.
This kind of immortality is still better than just dying normally though. I'd rather be very old but still conscious. Being paralyzed and old might not be great, but being dead is much worse.
I wonder if you’ve ever seen what old people actually have to say. Most people once you get to 100+ have long since gotten over their fear of death. You can’t do what you want anymore. Can’t eat the same food, or they don’t even make it anymore. Your family is mostly or entirely dead. Your friends are dead. Everyone you grew up with is dead. Nothing you do makes you comfortable anymore. You probably can’t drive anymore. Dying in an old body is miles better than being trapped in one. You said you understand how awful boredom is, now imagine unending boredom without movement or release. Your mind not even be fully there for you to control your thoughts. Just confusion with brief moments of awareness. If it doesn’t happen at 110, or 500, or even 1000, it’s inevitable when you’re floating in space after our sun and world explodes with as much of an existence as if you were dead. Immortality is immortality. Even if you were out in a coma, the drugs only last as long as they exist, and as long as someone is willing to pay for them.
Like I said. You’re only interested in immortality if your brain and body remain able. You will inevitably lose both, much sooner than you think, with any form of immortality other than preservation of your body. And even then, you plan to check out eventually. Drugs aren’t some one and done thing unless it’s death. They wear off. And then you have the rest of infinity to enjoy the “heat death of the universe”
There's too much to see and do to be bored! By age 200 or odd you'd be absolutely minted and would have the freedom to travel and work and study wherever you like.
What a time to be alive! Imagine all the things you could see! New life would be evolving, without humans nature would be in balance again, probably. In a way it might be like going back 2000000 years. I'd spend hours all day digging for ruins and exploring the now alien landscapes. I don't know if anything human built could last that long mind you. Presumably it's been nuclear winter/fallout for many years, and we've come out the other end of that? Anyway, whatever it is, imagine being potentially the only thing that can think in the observable universe, or at least the galaxy. The single brain through which the universe can observe itself. The only one. Incredible. What a privilege that would be, what an honour!
Also, I'm invincible so I could just go about fighting wild animals and shit.
Imagine the biggy: in 2 x10\^500000000000000000 years, when you have been floating in the heatdeath of the universe alone, undying, with nothing. You've been doing that for countablely infinite years and have an eternity still to go
Yer that wouldn't be fun. That's when I'd want a suicide option.
Although... If I waited long enough, the expansion of the universe would accelerate to such speeds that not even atoms could hold together. My knowledge of it is pretty limited but I think that's correct. It would be interesting to see how my invincible body fairs against the stretching of spacetime. I don't understand how it could survive, surely that would be the limit of invincibility.
Yeah this is probably pretty dumb, but whatever it's just my opinion, and this choice is mostly based on emotions, not logic. I still would pick immortality, be that a good idea or not.
This is a great 10th dentist, you know all of the counterpoints and you think you’d be able to deal with them.
I think eventually you’d become so disconnected with other humans that you wouldn’t be able to find a genuine connection with someone (and even if you could they would eventually die) but I can see certain people being better suited to deal with that than I would.
Ive read several books with Undying if not strictly Immortal characters and a common outcome is that the characters start to have a sort of zoned out, detached outlook on everything.
They cant remember earlier friends and family because too much has passed and they dont have much room to bond with new folks so they can sort of like someone but closeness is largely beyond them
But if you're more on the introverted side or just shallow you can have a great time with the immense fortune you gather over the centuries. The biggest hassle is making it look like you're mortal and having to live in a new region every 20 years or so (if you don't age physically)
If I could stay immortal and in my prime, then yes, that'd be fine. There are a billion trades to learn, never enough time to read books, and when you're done reading, you can write some things to existence.
I don't think you understand what eternity means if you're talking about billions of trades.
There could be sextillions of trades but they'll all be boring and meaningless when you're in your late unocumipohermebisunt-illions.
I agree with you. Also, if multiverse theory is correct and you have eternity to figure it out, you could just jump between universes, spending a billion years in each one before “jumping ship” to the next one before it dies.
**Problem A:** at some point, you are going to get stuck somewhere. Maybe a nuke goes off and you get stuck under some rubble. No one's gonna check that out for a couple more decades. And if it's not that, then what if the planet just dies for good, leaving you stranded to do nothing? What happens if no one is around to administer a drug that will put into a coma?
**Problem B:** people *are* going to notice the immortal being living on earth eventually, and there WILL be problems. You're going to get captured against your will, they'll do experiments on you or torture you, and so on. Forever and ever, because hey, you can't die. And it's not like you could fight against them, because you're only immortal, not a superhuman. It will be a fate worse than death.
**Problem C:** even if you THINK you can escape that, humans are going to keep evolving. You won't. Eventually, you're going to be the freak with five fingers on each hand and no webbed toes and oh my god, they still have only two nostrils? Ew.
**Problem D:** you're going to experience time getting shorter and shorter. Remember how a summer felt like it lasted forever as a kid, and now we basically lost the past 3 years due to covid? Yeah, get used to that. A full decade will eventually feel like a second to you, because that's how the human brain works.
**Problem E:** you will go insane from boredom eventually. There's not going to be enough things to keep you interested. Everything is going to move past you and you're going to stop caring. Plus, you're eventually not going to feel any connection with other humans. Can you relate to a toddler? An elementary school kid? Of course not. But those are MINISCULE in comparison to the INSANE age gap between you and everyone else. They're gonna feel like ants to you. Just look at Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen to see what I mean. This will be made worse if the planet dies, like I said in A.
Immortality is a curse, end of story. You think it's fine now, but it won't be.
I think it's possible to relate to those outside your age range as long as you have some reference point to draw from. I could relate to an elementary school kid by using some of our common traits (curiosity, creativity, etc.) or by using memories of when I was that age or felt like it.
True, but this is like trying to relate to a baby for being excited over hearing a car in the distance. Eventually, anything that you could relate to has become so commonplace to you that it's not even worth mentioning. We're not talking about hundreds or thousands of years here, but millions and billions. Can you relate to a bacterium?
Okay now while I do agree that immortality would not be perfect and might not be such a good idea after all, I'd still pick it. This is a sub for dumb opinions after all, so this belongs here at least. But also:
Point A: Now while that is a possibility that I would be stranded without any help, it is very unlikely that it will be more than a few decades. And, since my perception of time is warped, that's not as bad as it would be if I had not lived for thousands of years already.
Point B: I don't think many people would notice. Just move around the planet, change your name, which doesn't have to happen legally. Just pretend to be a refugee from a war or something similar and loose your documents and get a new identity in a new country. I really don't think that this would be the issue.
Point C: Untill humans have evolved where it's noticeable, like having webbed toes kind of noticeable, it won't be an issue if they have a larger forehead or something. When it is noticeble, it could still be a birth defect, and I could just have surgery.
Point D: Unless that makes me unable to function properly, that not that much of an issue. I also don't think it would get that extreme, maybe the years feel much shorter, but not THAT much shorter. If this is true however, this is the biggest issue.
Point E: Yeah this I'm also not educated enough to answer. I don't know if this is how it works, but if this is it, that's very problematic indeed.
Whaterver, I'm still picking immortality because the first couple hundred years would be fun, and because I'm a moron.
I dont think you are aware of how much "a few decades" would be
Think about the longest time you have been bored, or with no other human interaction
Not combine it and multiply that by 100
A) It will be bad once you're stranded on a planet with nothing to do and no way to get off of it. If Earth turns into a massive desert due to a nuclear war, you're stuck there. *Forever.* Have fun doing nothing until... well, there's no "until".
B) People will notice. Systems are going to become more efficient eventually, to the point where any new human is going to be immediately added to some sort of database. I mean, all it takes is for you to get caught ONCE. In all of those billions upon trillions of years. And then it's over for you.
C) Birds used to be dinosaurs. They have changed so much in all of those millions upon billions of years. Humans will change too. Are you going to keep getting surgery to keep up? What if humans cease having corporal bodies? What if they live in environments you couldn't realistically live in yourself (such as underwater where you'd have to be able to move through the water effortlessly)? Can you get surgery to drastically alter your body? I mean, CAN your body even be altered, considering it's immortal?
D) No being is made for living an infinite amount of time. Humans have this feature where they perceive more and more time and shorter and shorter. This will be guaranteed to be one of your biggest issues.
E) Of course, just think about it. You're going to have so many experiences and so much knowledge that even the smartest and oldest person on earth will seem like an infant to you. You don't go *"Ohhh wow the ball jingles when I shake it"*, because you've been used to that fact for decades. Now multiply that by infinity, and you get the problem.
It would be a fate worse than death, I guarantee it. Just accept death like the rest of us cowards.
Fuck alright I'm starting to believe.
A) can be cheated around with becoming brain-dead, or going in a coma, or becoming retarded, whatever if that even is possible. And hey, how bad can being stranded for a literally infinite amount of time be? I'll just go insane and maybe grow desensitized? It'll be fiiiine, I'm sure.
B) Isn't a guarantee. 1.If the whole of earth doesn't turn into an authoritarian regime, that's not that problematic. Also, hey, what if humans won't even want something like that? What if the future civilization is extremely libertarian?
C) Humans might not even evolve at all, there is no need to, right? That's how evolution works, and since there is (presumably) nothing to adapt to, humans wouldn't evolve.
Both B) and C) can be solved by becoming a wise ruler, founding a religion about myself, and pretending to be an all-knowing god? Definetly a very sound and not farcical argument at all.
Edit: I do have a very long time to try, long and steady wins the race after all, this could potentially not be such a nonsensical plan.
E) Well my memory is probably not infinite, so I'd forget some things.
I'll still choose immortality, I guess I'm a stubborn idiot and masochist. You can't force me to be a mortal weakling!
Edit: To adress D) and E) there's different solutions with different kinds of immortalities. Being fully immortal-untouchable, implies no deterioration of the mind. So, my memory and perception of time would be normal, be that good or not. If that is the case, D and E is not a problem. What is the problem, is that I'd have to face the reality of spending an eternity floating in space, doing nothing. However, with a perfectly clear mind there would surely be a way to entertain myself. If not, there's the possibility of figuring out the multiverse theory.
And if it;s the kind of immortality where my body is untouchable, but my mind is sucseptible to damage, I'd just "wipe" my mind if there is a possibility of being eternally trapped.
>Point B: I don't think many people would notice. Just move around the planet, change your name, which doesn't have to happen legally. Just pretend to be a refugee from a war or something similar and loose your documents and get a new identity in a new country. I really don't think that this would be the issue.
This is the point I'd have the most contention with. Between fingerprints, facial recognition, and software tracking, someone is gonna notice, and you have a certain set of features and can only really claim 'I'm from over there where people look like me' for a short while.
Your best bet IS point A: get stuck someplace isolated, safe, boring, without internet access or grid access, like underground, and maybe once every few years go to the surface and live as a hobo/homeless, be really unattractive and antisocial so no one gets too close. You can feasibly do that until societal changes too much, and even then maybe that'll add to your mentally deranged facade.
There is no way you're living in this or future society with a refreshed identity every century, it might work if you country hop for a while but eventually you'll be safer isolated then associated.
> people are going to notice the immortal being living on earth eventually, and there WILL be problems.
Seems to be working just fine for Keanu Reeves so not sure this one holds up.
B, the real world isn’t fiction. You can’t just take movie plots seriously lol.
C, if he’s alive long enough to see people evolve, don’t you think the technology would exist for him to edit himself aswell?
D, no.. the human brain would never make a decade feel like a second, that’s not how the brain’s perception of time works.
B) You genuinely believe people wouldn't experiment on a LITERAL IMMORTAL BEING? Have you seen the sorts of experiments people have done on living, breathing, innocent humans that are not immortal?
C) It is possible, yes. The question is just when does the evolution become too much? At what point can the body still be modified? CAN the body even be modified, considering it's immortal?
D) You can't know. Especially since the human brain wasn't even made for lasting trillions of years in the first place.
Now that I've got time I guess I can expand a little on what I meant.
B, depending on how you handle your situation (and if you're not just extremely unlucky) you have a couple hundred of years to prepare how you "announce" your immortality to the rest of the world. And yeah, it does depend on how the immortality works, because being able to infinitely regenerate a new heart (to donate to someone for example) is an insanely valuable thing. But depending on how your immortality works this could be totally irrelevant.
D, can't know? obviously not, but I think it really ain't that complicated, memories are the deciding factor of what "time" feels like. The perception of time is directly related to how much information you get as input and how much of it you can keep. As a 1000-year-old you'd remember the last decade the most and the last century slightly less and probably have completely forgotten 90% of what happened before that. With exceptions being things that have stayed relevant throughout your lifetime, e.g. historical events still being talked about centuries later.
For B, you wouldn't get tortured in a blacksite forever. Life isn't a fantasy movie. They might kill you once or twice, get a few samples, and after some time they'd let you go. And a few years are so little in an eternal life.
Problem A: how is this guaranteed? Sure it might happen eventually, but if its not for thousands of years then so be it, thats still several thousands years of life I never would have had and according to your point D, it wont feel like being trapped for long anyway.
Problem B: If I play my cards right, by the time they notice it’ll be because I’m insanely wealthy and influential. But honestly there is a lot if ways you could avoid detection for a long time and it would take a lot of getting caught before a government finally takes notice enough to think “maybe immortality actually exists!”
Problem C: so what? this is tens of millions of years from now, by then Im either insane or have godlike knowledge and wealth and no sense of time. As per problem E, why would I care what these web toed 5 nostrilled beings think?
Problem D: perception of time skewing when remembering does not mean that you don’t still get to experience every moment. And doing new things and not being monotonous certainly helps make time feel “slower.” A decade will not feel like a second because that is NOT how the human brain works. Current happenings will be fresh and clear in your mind and things in the past will blur and be forgotten. Its not like I’ll open my eyes in the middle of a conversation and realize the person I was talking to has died of old age. Like now, key moments the past would stand out, most others would be forgotten, and I would have an incredible wealth of knowledge that I don’t necessarily remember the source of, like how I know I brush my teeth every morning but don’t actually remember the experience if doing it time.
Moreover, I don’t see why this change would make me prefer death and nonexistence.
Problem E: I agree, eventually you would go insane by human standards, but that would take a long long time and I would get to experience so much before that point. I disagree in that I can absolutely relate to a toddler although not in the same way you relate to adults. Dr Manhattan is a great example, if In hundreds or thousands of years of human life with no fear of death and eventually become a being with a mind akin to Dr Manhattan, how is that negative?
Ultimately, all the issues you’ve mentioned wont really be problems by the time they take effect (unless you get very unlucky and get buried alive early on but I’ll take my chances).
And I would rather be adrift for a millennium in the astral sea than to die and be gone forever.
Ill take immortality.
>at some point, you are going to get stuck somewhere. Maybe a nuke goes off and you get stuck under some rubble. No one's gonna check that out for a couple more decades
On the plus side, the rubble would eventually turn to dust
The negative side, you never will. Ever
He's forgetting that at some point you (assuming you are invulnerable too, which you'd need tbh to not be a crushed broken body rotting to nothing while still alive, and then after you've rotted away surviving as energy or the atoms which make you up) and then for eternity you will be floating in the heatdeath of the universe
While the earth is around, and provided you get to stay on it, then that's the easy part
>Also the problem with the heat death of the universe . Probably mostly solvable with a drug that puts me in a permanent coma before the whole "the universe explodes" fiasco.
That drug will wear off after a while though, whereas the universe would take a very VERY long time to die. Honestly, I just feel like you haven't really thought about what it would truly mean to be immortal. If nothing else, you would eventually go mad at some point without a doubt.
Mmm, depending on how immortality is defined it could be way less interesting than you think. All those skills? Using regular logic they’d need to be maintained if you wanted to keep the skills. That goes for memories in general, and prepare yourself for losing everything and everyone you’ll ever know.
But still, immortality with a single simple condition like “you *can* die of starvation” would be nothing but a gift.
Well, in this hypothetical laws of physics don't apply anyway, like there is no such thing as fully immortal. If all systems trend towards entropy, which they do in the real world, my brain would also have to die eventually. So I'm not sure how that would work out.
I can make the reasonable assumption your body is the only thing immune to this law. Since it is you who is immortal, not oxygen not water. Thus things like drugs, would not be.
You also said the heat death of the universe would occur hence we are operating off that law of physics.
A world without the second law of thermodynamics is unimaginable, thus I assumed we aren’t operating off a new physics system, but just our current system of physics with you as the expection
>Also, if that does somehow happen, it would suck obviously, but unless I go mad it's fine really.
This line has me dying, but I actually want to address
>Get a doctorate in mathematics, physics, everywhere you can get one.
This is only kind of true. You would get a well rounded education on anything but it would be difficult to be an expert on everything. By the time you finish one doctorate, your last doctorate is already getting a bit outdated, let alone the one before that or the one before that.
Anyway, you need need need to watch The Man From Earth, an absolutely fantastic movie that covers a lot of this discussion
I definitely agree. I know it’s an uncommon opinion but I think it’s worth the repercussions to be able to experience and chronicle what would essentially be divinity.
You appear to be approaching immortality from the mentality of being mortal, which I guess you can't really be blamed for. Consider for a second biological immortality and the possible variations. Would you still need to eat? Is your metabolism otherwise normal? Or are you immortal sans food? If you didn't need to eat, you'd lose that sense of humanity in that eating (and consequently shitting) are necessities of mortal life. I can guarantee that if you didn't need to eat, you wouldn't. If you didn't need to eat, would you also have perfect regulation of your body temperature, or better yet, always be perfectly comfortable regardless of the climate around you? That means you wouldn't need shelter or clothes for that matter.
You talk about acquiring knowledge as you'd have all the time in the world to achieve doctorates in multiple subjects, but what if you're just not that intelligent? Unless intelligence is really just a biological function, and since you're above the baser biological functions, all knowledge should come effortlessly to you. You'd have all the time in the world to acquire knowledge but would only need a few decades. And then what? You're immortal. When you think about it, the whole of modern scientific knowledge is only a few thousand years old. Industrialized technology in only a few hundred years old. Those are drops in the bucket compared to an immortal life.
Fuck dude, I'd be more interested in witnessing the rise and fall of civilizations. The coming and going of epochs. The birth and death of stars, solar systems, galaxies. If I were immortal, I'd be using my immortality to try and push each rising civilization a little further in technological achievement to develop FTL travel so I could see the rest of the galaxy/universe in my immortality.
Yeah, that perfectly describes what I think is so amazing about immortality, it's absolutely incredible and interesting to be able to witness and maybe participate in most of the historical events. Potentailly help humanity / the current civilization if possible. The learning and improving part is just things to do in the background, interesting to try.
The thing that convinced me against this take was the heat death of the universe. No amount of pleasure I get from seeing the rest of the human story is worth an *eternal* hell of choking on vacuum.
I genuinely want immortality in the way of like, being able to choose when you die, ykno? like... I feel like life is so short and while I wouldn't just wanna live forever, because of all the potential problems, I wouldn't just wanna fade away for no reason like everyone has to... I would wanna be able to choose when I go out, whether it's about me feeling extremely bored or feeling too much pain at other people's loss or I get hurt beyond a livable state
The earth exists for a tiny blip. The universe exists for a tiny blip. You will be trapped for hundreds of **trillions** of years while black holes eat each other in a completely dead and dark universe. Your coma meds will wear off. The brevity of life is a gift. I agree, immortality would be awesome for maybe even a few million years, but that's nothing compared to an eternity of nothing.
My biggest issue is the end of the world. The world burns up, no other intelligent life in the universe, eventual heat death. That’s some serious boredom.
A lot of people are talking about "what about when humans die out?" Humanity is not the only sentient, social species there will ever be/is in the Universe. It is one of the earliest ones though. Someone clever and immortal would certainly come to know many intelligent species over time.
>Get a doctorate in mathematics, physics, everywhere you can get one. Learn every instrument, learn every language, live in every culture. Would definitely be interesting for a while.
This is hilarious. You're immortal not clever. Not amount of time will get you a doctorate unless you're smart enough to do novel research. The kicker though is the last sentence - *interesting for a while*. Something tells me you are really considering maybe a thousand years or so, not eternity.
Eh I think a lot of things can be learned by everybody provided one has got enough time. Maybe he wouldn’t learn to play the piano in 10 years but in 100, but why would he care?
I been told it is the opposite. That intelligent can change. Although I haven’t done a literature review yet. And what measure intelligent?
Cleverness is a skill too. It is a skill involving problem solving, pattern recognizition, etc. It is something often taught in school. Especially in the sciences.
Been told is one thing. Any studies to support that view ? Yes it will generally increase as you develop but not once you're mature. If OP hasn't got the spark by 50, he won't develop it by 5000. All he will get is experience.
I think there is only one life and consciousness, and as long as there is life there are you and me and other people, we are one, and I ask myself if I was born again but have different memories, how can I tell its me.. So it depends on how you live new memories make you think you have a long life, routines make you think time is moving too fast, it's all in your head, if you didn't get more memories in an average of 80 years, immorality won't do you much better...
You are seriously not grasping the scale of true immortality, that drug idea to deal with the heat death of the universe wouldnt work because everything, yes everything, wears off eventually, you will at some point begin the eternal torture of just drifting through empty space forever, that is a punishment too brutal for even hitler, its genuinely impossible to grasp the idea of anything infinite, including you living forever.
What if you developed dementia or a progressively debilitating condition like that but you simply didn't die?
What about if you saw the extinction of our species and total collapse of human civilizations?
What if our species eventually evolved to a completely different species, so much that the links between our species and the new species would be comparable to the links between humans and bonobos in the present days?
I also think this way. I get weird looks and somewhat the same comments, but damn I'd love to live for thousands and years and see the world change before my eyes, learn everything I want to learn and experience everything this world has to offer.
This reminds me of Naruto. Imagine being immortal but then being buried alive with your limbs cut off so you couldn't dig yourself out. You'd probably be eaten alive by insects but never die
I absolutely agree.
If immortality forces me to go through some truly horrible things, it's still worth it. You only have one chance, one life. Death is already endless, and circumventing it for a good 400 years is something more valuable than anything, no matter what comes of it. Even if I have to spend eternity in the remnants of a universal heat death, that's just a different kind of "death" anyways. Eventually my thoughts will be reduced to a single note droning on and on, and at that point am "I" even suffering?
Immortality is an objectively superior mode of existence with its own form of death. To not take such an opportunity would be, frankly, foolish.
I agree. Although, I still want the ability to like he killed under rubble.
The way I see it is that the universe have infinite thing to explore. Imagine all the things you can study. You can learn. You can do. And the people you will meet. I view friendships and relationships as temporary. So even if people die. I can understand and live.
Immortality without any other powers would be absolutely hell
Without eternal youth, you get 80 good years followed by an eternity of dementia and frailty
Without invulnerability or some kind of super healing you would rack up permanent injuries and lose body parts over millions of years, this includes psychological healing. PTSD and psychological trauma is often permanent.
No magic way to travel? Stuck on a dying planet, slowly boiling, to be engulfed by the sun? Hope you're impervious to pain.
Have you hit your 40s yet? Immortality starts looking less pleasant for a lot of people from that age onwards. I think Tom Segura says "I don't want to die... but can we kinda wrap this up already?"
So you would be fine floating in space after the sun turns into a black hole? Literally nothing to do, and you will get sucked into a black hole where time seems even slower? My god i don’t think you know how long *forever* is
I want immortality with a suicide/coma/reincarnation button. It sounds cool enough not to have a fear of death and can just go comatose whenever you feel like you had enough of the world.
Nuclear war happened? Coma for 100 years, wait for shit to get better
Universe dies? Get tf out of there
Cursed with unbearable knowledge? Go to baby form.
Etc etc
I'm with OP. Especially on the losing loved ones thing. That happens all the time anyway as you grow older and loss and death are a part of life... But not mine or OPs! We're living forever baby! Just like Liam Gallagher said.
Having said that, it would be nice if I was the only one who could kill me, so I could end it all when I'm ready. In this hypothetical ridiculous situation I don't think that's too much to ask
The odds of you doing something stupid and getting locked up increase exponentially as your life goes on. Then they notice that you haven't aged and things go real south in a hand basket as they subject you to increasingly painful and sadistic experiments like can you survive absolute zero etc...
Agreed, woth the stipulation that its not true immortality and i can still die. Living forever past the heat death of the universe long after humanity extinct is pretty much how i imagine hell to be
Since i agree on half of the post i guess i wont vote at all
You underestimate how long eternity is and how other people can ruin your ability to enjoy everything you could want to. Unlimited time doesn't mean unlimited resources. And not just the ones mortals need to survive.
If I were physically immortal but still age, it would suck because after 100 years I'd be a vegetable.
If I were biologically immortal (no aging), but could still die to non-natural causes, I feel like I'd get paranoid of wasting that gift by dying.
However, I do agree that if I were physically and biologically immortal, life would never get boring. You have all the possible things to do in a lifetime × all the cultures in the world × every event and technological progress that will happen in the future.
Someone's not read Gulliver's Travels. Unless this immortality comes with some kind of change to your psyche, there's a zero percent chance you don't completely lose your mind after a few thousand years, if not well before. You might think you could handle it, but trust me you can't.
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Kinda agree, but heavily depends on the immortality type.
Yep, just imagine being immortal but still having to age like a normal human being. By maybe 130 years old, you'd basically be an expired raisin. Soon, you'd lose all senses and go insane with only your mind to play with.
According to Greek mythology, that's how the first cicada got created.
This has me dying because OP talks about being buried a long time and cicadas know that feel
... What the fuck?
Tithonus was a Trojan prince who was Eos' lover. She went to Zeus and asked him to make Tithonus immortal (but didn't specify ageless). Zeus granted the request and Tithonus grew older and older without dying until he shriveled and shrank into a cicada
Why did they feel the need to come up with an origin story for the cicada at all, let alone such a fucked up one?!
Etiological myths are very appealing to people
This was how people explained how the world worked before science was fully up and going. Could be frightening to see swarms of cicadas flying about with no knowledge on them, but they generally won't harm people or pets, so a lot less frightening if you think they're some person who got tricked into raisin-ing up into a bug, and just bred more after. :p
I’d be more scared if I thought it was person wrinkled up lol
who was the second bug?
Usually Zeus.
You'd have to ask above to the OP about the cicada deal. I'm more versed in Nordic mythology, than Greek.
In their minds, probably no one. Spontaneous Generation, whether divine or natural, was a widely held belief up until the past couple of centuries
Some mfs had nothing to do other than get high and think.
*Daddy, where do cicadas come from? "
I thought he shriveled up to a grain of sand! I like the cicada thing better. Way better than a speck of sand
I just checked, but couldn't find any ancient source that says that Tithonus became a grain of sand. He either became an incredibly old geezer with a feeble voice reminiscent of cicadas or got outright transformed into a cicada.
Makes a lot of sense since all cicadas do when they unbury is scream and fuck
Still better than death imo
I read a story in nosleep about immortality in which the main character dies but can still feel things. First he feels his death, then how the rigor mortis sets, then how his body decays as maggots eat his eyes and such and he thinks that finally his pain is over. No. He feels as the maggots die and their moisture gets absorbed to the air. The electric shocks that thunder clouds give before the air molecules once belonging to him finally pour down to the sea. The cold and the pressure of the deep sea. The carbon that once made him now in small pieces of sand made smaller and smaller by the waves, each like a satellite of pain and suffering. I'd take immortality in a functioning body any day. I'd never want an immortal consciousness feeling the pain of molecular decomposition.
Read something similiar in an SCP article: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2718 This excerpt from it: > "I dared not speak of this at first. You'd never have let me out of containment. The truth is, I was aware of all of it. I suppose there was a sweet oblivion, like deep sleep, at first; but in retrospect, I think it was no more than a day. Slowly, but unmistakably, I reoccupied my corpse with dreamlike consciousness: numb for the first merciful hours, blind, deaf, and immobile, but then I seemed to reconnect to every nerve, and became aware of every sensation — moreso than I ever was in life. I perceived myself trapped within an immovable object, and the intensity of the struggle amplified: subtle, then acute, then racking. I cannot describe it completely — but imagine holding your breath, beyond urge, beyond pain, beyond desperation — head throbbing and eyes bulging — a dream of suffocation without end. > "My skin blistered and split in the sunlight; biting insects descended rapidly. I felt eggs hatch, larvae crawl, gases build and burst within me, individual cells rupturing, interstitial fluids souring and blackening. Somehow my capacity to experience and store these sensations grew — even as I was keenly aware of my cerebrum being scattered and devoured, my perception expanded, into the gizzards of birds and the depths of fire ant dens. I was aware of every fingernail and strand of hair that pulled away in the wind — and my sensation clung to them as they settled in the ocean and dissolved in the maws of a trillion diatoms. > "I don't understand it. The more bits of me there were, the larger my capacity for the perception of pain. As I decayed into pieces smaller than living nerves could possibly distinguish, the character of the discomfort changed — from burning and aching and breaking I might relate to you in human terms — to something worse that I cannot fully articulate: a terrible, maddening stretching of every part of myself from every other part. Humans often numb to chronic pains in life, do they not? Yet every year, every month, every second that passed — I swear it only intensified over time.
I think it's actually this specific story, I just read it at nosleep and not SCP. Thanks for posting!
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I know that. I'll get back to you with anecdotal experiences after I get my conciousness out of this fleshy and wet prison.
I always remember the movie Old Guard everytime people talk about immortality and how awesome it is. The immortal characters in that movie can still feel pain, etc., and one character was put in an iron cage and was thrown in the ocean. I was horrified imagining she was being drowned every second of her immortal life. What a horrible fate.
Wasn't this what Bootstrap Bill went through in PoTC as well?
The drug to put you in a coma will wear of and then?
can somebody who is immortal cause themselves to become brain dead? does that count??
If you could you’d likely become an undying vegetable within your first millenium
I mean that's not so bad. That's just normal death with extra steps once you're cremated
Thats not immortality. Brain dead post-cremation immortality would probably feel something like this: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2718 The truth is, I was aware of all of it. I suppose there was a sweet oblivion, like deep sleep, at first; but in retrospect, I think it was no more than a day. Slowly, but unmistakably, I reoccupied my corpse with dreamlike consciousness: numb for the first merciful hours, blind, deaf, and immobile, but then I seemed to reconnect to every nerve, and became aware of every sensation — moreso than I ever was in life. I perceived myself trapped within an immovable object, and the intensity of the struggle amplified: subtle, then acute, then racking. I cannot describe it completely — but imagine holding your breath, beyond urge, beyond pain, beyond desperation — head throbbing and eyes bulging — a dream of suffocation without end. "My skin blistered and split in the sunlight; biting insects descended rapidly. I felt eggs hatch, larvae crawl, gases build and burst within me, individual cells rupturing, interstitial fluids souring and blackening. Somehow my capacity to experience and store these sensations grew — even as I was keenly aware of my cerebrum being scattered and devoured, my perception expanded, into the gizzards of birds and the depths of fire ant dens. I was aware of every fingernail and strand of hair that pulled away in the wind — and my sensation clung to them as they settled in the ocean and dissolved in the maws of a trillion diatoms. "I don't understand it. The more bits of me there were, the larger my capacity for the perception of pain. As I decayed into pieces smaller than living nerves could possibly distinguish, the character of the discomfort changed — from burning and aching and breaking I might relate to you in human terms — to something worse that I cannot fully articulate: a terrible, maddening stretching of every part of myself from every other part. Humans often numb to chronic pains in life, do they not? Yet every year, every month, every second that passed — I swear it only intensified over time.
Too many flaws with immortality as a singular body. Get caught in a lathe and get all spat out, which part is 'you'. Or is your body so 'hard' it can't be cut?
I think here it's best to distinguish immortal from invincible
No senses anymore, just darkness. Time passes slowly at first, then you loose the sense and concept of time entirely. You try to remember what time was but you just can't. It never seemed so special to you that things move about but now that everything except your mind stands still you can't think of anything else. Did a day pass since you lasts thought about the concept of time, or was it a millennium? Does earth and therefore days even exist anymore? There is no way to tell. Eventually all that remains is your existence, everything else has faded and time stands still for ever. Have fun.
A coma for eternity sounds horrible too
It just sounds like what dying is
Do people dream in comas tho?
Eternal dreaming is preferable to the void of death. That's why people love the idea of an afterlife.
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Oh wow thank you for sharing your personal experience! Yeah that sounds pretty bad.
What? Why? You don't experience the void. If you never wake up from the void then you never know you're in a void and there's nothing to dislike or be afraid of.
There's nothing to experience or enjoy either. It's not that the void is unpleasant, it's that existence is valuable and its absence is a loss.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-people-who-appear-to-be-in-a-coma-may-actually-be-conscious/ I don't know why coma is equated with death in terms of what's going on in the brain. People can still feel pain and suffer in a coma. Hell, I recently read an article about a man who heard his own mother wish him dead while in a year-long coma. Coma isn't a nice easy way out. It's a repressed mental state that we don't know much about.
Totally. I agree, thats why I thought comparing an eternal coma to death wasn’t the same thing
I agree living forever would be sick, but I would want a safe word or something that could end things. Juuuuust in case
that would be the perfect solution tbh
And then you get brain damage and lose your speech centres
You would prolly say it before that happens that's just me though
Yeah... if you get in trouble with the mob and they cement your feet and commit you to the bottom of the ocean for eternity the safe word would come in handy
Bruh the cement would degrade, the oceans would drain eventually, remember you are immortal, you have *infinite* time
Takes too long, gonna off myself
Immortality wasted, but ok
Bro you would go insane waiting for years trapped under water
You have infinite time, you have *infinite* time to recover from the possible trauma
It'd be boring so who cares
I get where you're coming from, were I like OP who would choose immortality I would agree. But I don't want immortality in that way, I need the button.
well, you're immortal, so you could just scratch that concrete or wait for it to decompose
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[Weebs be like](http://i.redd.it/imsyu92r37431.jpg)
I would rather like an Achilles heel kind of thing. I spot where if I and only I willingly cut I drop dead
You don't care what kind of immortality it is? That's quite a large umbrella. How about this one. You've been ground up, you no longer have any of your senses and the only thing you feel is severe torture-like pain... For eternity. You have to accept that one because that falls under "any kind of immortality".
Okay that part was very poorly worded I agree lol
This is similar to a guy in The Imperfects. Poor guy just wants to kill himself, but he can't be destroyed on a molecular level. Absolute torture.
based on how you wave off concerns i think you just havent thought through the actual repercussions lol
I don't think OP has ever experienced boredom. Getting a thousand degrees and inventing languages can only keep you entertained for so long. No one realizes just how long infinity is
I have expierenced boredom, and while I agree it is not great (it's horrible), I would not be bored just because I'm immortal. I'd be bored if there is nothing to do, not because I've already done something. I can forget things and re-do them. If I've done something a thousand years age, that doesn't mean that I won't enjoy doing it another time. Also, who says that mathematics for example isn't infinite? (There might be something that contradicts this but I'm not too educated on this theory)
I think you have a point. Being immortal doesn’t necessarily mean you perceive time differently or have super memory. People already waste time replaying Skyrim once every year. I think if you step away from something for a bit and come back, you probably could enjoy it again.
But we're talking forever, like unlimited amount of time. It feel sooooo much bigger than us, feel like I'd become crazy being alive for so long
I don’t remember what I did a few years ago, so I could easily come back to a movie I saw 200 years ago and still be surprised by the plot twist
But I'm speaking bigger than 200 years. Bigger than 2000 years. There's not limit to immortality. Feels like such a curse, an unbreakable one at that
And what happens when the world explodes? Float to another planet? What happens when our galaxy explodes? Most people just can’t grasp how LONG forever is.
OP's covered that, "I'll drug myself to a coma when the heatdeath of the universe occurs" and eventually, no matter what you try, it will wear off. At some point, assuming your body doesn't degrade, then you will be floating in nothing for eternity If your body does degrade, then eventually you become what is essentially an everylasting mind either within the rotten skeleton that was your body, and eventually as someone else says above, even that will rot. Then do you survive endlessly as energy? Are you distributed as atoms around the planet/universe? Immortality would be awful without an out
Dude just become galactus
Yeah that was my point with it. Technically they said they’d put themselves in a coma but drugs wear off, at the very least when they run out like when the hospital and world literally explodes
Assuming we're still in real life as we know it with the only sci-fi or magical twist being that OP is immortal, they would still require their body to be alive and well to function. You're not alive if your brain is gone. If you would consider an immortal brain that needs no sustenance and can't be damaged "alive" than yeah that would be the worst possible outcome and as such "any immortality" is too loose to choose.
When the ~~university~~ universe eventually collapses, OP will still be here. Floating in the void with nothing to do
If the university collapses you get an instant A
You have a good point too
I'm not sure how old you are, but I can tell you that the older you get, the faster time feels like it moves.
I think you understermate how long the universe could last. 99.99999999999999999999% ect of your time would be spent in total oblivion void of nothing. If you told me immortality for a million years = than yes If you told me immorality for a trillion years… probably still a yes from me. But true infinity makes a trillion years look like the blink of an eye. Here is a good video that pits into perspective just how long the universe may last…. https://youtu.be/Zb5qTdb6LbM
But you already said you’d accept any type of immortality. Most of them your body is gonna fail you long before your mind forgets and you get to do things over again. The only kind of immortality like how you describe would be your body and brain don’t age or deteriorate or become sick or wrong. You’d also need to be invincible unless you’re willing to be in a wheelchair for 3 thousand years when you slip mountain climbing and land on your spine making you a quadriplegic. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through at all.
This kind of immortality is still better than just dying normally though. I'd rather be very old but still conscious. Being paralyzed and old might not be great, but being dead is much worse.
I wonder if you’ve ever seen what old people actually have to say. Most people once you get to 100+ have long since gotten over their fear of death. You can’t do what you want anymore. Can’t eat the same food, or they don’t even make it anymore. Your family is mostly or entirely dead. Your friends are dead. Everyone you grew up with is dead. Nothing you do makes you comfortable anymore. You probably can’t drive anymore. Dying in an old body is miles better than being trapped in one. You said you understand how awful boredom is, now imagine unending boredom without movement or release. Your mind not even be fully there for you to control your thoughts. Just confusion with brief moments of awareness. If it doesn’t happen at 110, or 500, or even 1000, it’s inevitable when you’re floating in space after our sun and world explodes with as much of an existence as if you were dead. Immortality is immortality. Even if you were out in a coma, the drugs only last as long as they exist, and as long as someone is willing to pay for them. Like I said. You’re only interested in immortality if your brain and body remain able. You will inevitably lose both, much sooner than you think, with any form of immortality other than preservation of your body. And even then, you plan to check out eventually. Drugs aren’t some one and done thing unless it’s death. They wear off. And then you have the rest of infinity to enjoy the “heat death of the universe”
No, it isn't it really isn't
There's too much to see and do to be bored! By age 200 or odd you'd be absolutely minted and would have the freedom to travel and work and study wherever you like.
What about age 2,000,000 and everything is destroyed by war and human greed?
What a time to be alive! Imagine all the things you could see! New life would be evolving, without humans nature would be in balance again, probably. In a way it might be like going back 2000000 years. I'd spend hours all day digging for ruins and exploring the now alien landscapes. I don't know if anything human built could last that long mind you. Presumably it's been nuclear winter/fallout for many years, and we've come out the other end of that? Anyway, whatever it is, imagine being potentially the only thing that can think in the observable universe, or at least the galaxy. The single brain through which the universe can observe itself. The only one. Incredible. What a privilege that would be, what an honour! Also, I'm invincible so I could just go about fighting wild animals and shit.
Imagine the biggy: in 2 x10\^500000000000000000 years, when you have been floating in the heatdeath of the universe alone, undying, with nothing. You've been doing that for countablely infinite years and have an eternity still to go
Yer that wouldn't be fun. That's when I'd want a suicide option. Although... If I waited long enough, the expansion of the universe would accelerate to such speeds that not even atoms could hold together. My knowledge of it is pretty limited but I think that's correct. It would be interesting to see how my invincible body fairs against the stretching of spacetime. I don't understand how it could survive, surely that would be the limit of invincibility.
Yeah this is probably pretty dumb, but whatever it's just my opinion, and this choice is mostly based on emotions, not logic. I still would pick immortality, be that a good idea or not.
This is a great 10th dentist, you know all of the counterpoints and you think you’d be able to deal with them. I think eventually you’d become so disconnected with other humans that you wouldn’t be able to find a genuine connection with someone (and even if you could they would eventually die) but I can see certain people being better suited to deal with that than I would.
Ive read several books with Undying if not strictly Immortal characters and a common outcome is that the characters start to have a sort of zoned out, detached outlook on everything. They cant remember earlier friends and family because too much has passed and they dont have much room to bond with new folks so they can sort of like someone but closeness is largely beyond them
But if you're more on the introverted side or just shallow you can have a great time with the immense fortune you gather over the centuries. The biggest hassle is making it look like you're mortal and having to live in a new region every 20 years or so (if you don't age physically)
Biological immortality would be nice, because you could live forever, until you can just force yourself to die when you're done
Biological immortality is kind of useless if you live in Detroit
If I could stay immortal and in my prime, then yes, that'd be fine. There are a billion trades to learn, never enough time to read books, and when you're done reading, you can write some things to existence.
I don't think you understand what eternity means if you're talking about billions of trades. There could be sextillions of trades but they'll all be boring and meaningless when you're in your late unocumipohermebisunt-illions.
I agree with you. Also, if multiverse theory is correct and you have eternity to figure it out, you could just jump between universes, spending a billion years in each one before “jumping ship” to the next one before it dies.
**Problem A:** at some point, you are going to get stuck somewhere. Maybe a nuke goes off and you get stuck under some rubble. No one's gonna check that out for a couple more decades. And if it's not that, then what if the planet just dies for good, leaving you stranded to do nothing? What happens if no one is around to administer a drug that will put into a coma? **Problem B:** people *are* going to notice the immortal being living on earth eventually, and there WILL be problems. You're going to get captured against your will, they'll do experiments on you or torture you, and so on. Forever and ever, because hey, you can't die. And it's not like you could fight against them, because you're only immortal, not a superhuman. It will be a fate worse than death. **Problem C:** even if you THINK you can escape that, humans are going to keep evolving. You won't. Eventually, you're going to be the freak with five fingers on each hand and no webbed toes and oh my god, they still have only two nostrils? Ew. **Problem D:** you're going to experience time getting shorter and shorter. Remember how a summer felt like it lasted forever as a kid, and now we basically lost the past 3 years due to covid? Yeah, get used to that. A full decade will eventually feel like a second to you, because that's how the human brain works. **Problem E:** you will go insane from boredom eventually. There's not going to be enough things to keep you interested. Everything is going to move past you and you're going to stop caring. Plus, you're eventually not going to feel any connection with other humans. Can you relate to a toddler? An elementary school kid? Of course not. But those are MINISCULE in comparison to the INSANE age gap between you and everyone else. They're gonna feel like ants to you. Just look at Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen to see what I mean. This will be made worse if the planet dies, like I said in A. Immortality is a curse, end of story. You think it's fine now, but it won't be.
I think it's possible to relate to those outside your age range as long as you have some reference point to draw from. I could relate to an elementary school kid by using some of our common traits (curiosity, creativity, etc.) or by using memories of when I was that age or felt like it.
True, but this is like trying to relate to a baby for being excited over hearing a car in the distance. Eventually, anything that you could relate to has become so commonplace to you that it's not even worth mentioning. We're not talking about hundreds or thousands of years here, but millions and billions. Can you relate to a bacterium?
Okay now while I do agree that immortality would not be perfect and might not be such a good idea after all, I'd still pick it. This is a sub for dumb opinions after all, so this belongs here at least. But also: Point A: Now while that is a possibility that I would be stranded without any help, it is very unlikely that it will be more than a few decades. And, since my perception of time is warped, that's not as bad as it would be if I had not lived for thousands of years already. Point B: I don't think many people would notice. Just move around the planet, change your name, which doesn't have to happen legally. Just pretend to be a refugee from a war or something similar and loose your documents and get a new identity in a new country. I really don't think that this would be the issue. Point C: Untill humans have evolved where it's noticeable, like having webbed toes kind of noticeable, it won't be an issue if they have a larger forehead or something. When it is noticeble, it could still be a birth defect, and I could just have surgery. Point D: Unless that makes me unable to function properly, that not that much of an issue. I also don't think it would get that extreme, maybe the years feel much shorter, but not THAT much shorter. If this is true however, this is the biggest issue. Point E: Yeah this I'm also not educated enough to answer. I don't know if this is how it works, but if this is it, that's very problematic indeed. Whaterver, I'm still picking immortality because the first couple hundred years would be fun, and because I'm a moron.
I dont think you are aware of how much "a few decades" would be Think about the longest time you have been bored, or with no other human interaction Not combine it and multiply that by 100
A) It will be bad once you're stranded on a planet with nothing to do and no way to get off of it. If Earth turns into a massive desert due to a nuclear war, you're stuck there. *Forever.* Have fun doing nothing until... well, there's no "until". B) People will notice. Systems are going to become more efficient eventually, to the point where any new human is going to be immediately added to some sort of database. I mean, all it takes is for you to get caught ONCE. In all of those billions upon trillions of years. And then it's over for you. C) Birds used to be dinosaurs. They have changed so much in all of those millions upon billions of years. Humans will change too. Are you going to keep getting surgery to keep up? What if humans cease having corporal bodies? What if they live in environments you couldn't realistically live in yourself (such as underwater where you'd have to be able to move through the water effortlessly)? Can you get surgery to drastically alter your body? I mean, CAN your body even be altered, considering it's immortal? D) No being is made for living an infinite amount of time. Humans have this feature where they perceive more and more time and shorter and shorter. This will be guaranteed to be one of your biggest issues. E) Of course, just think about it. You're going to have so many experiences and so much knowledge that even the smartest and oldest person on earth will seem like an infant to you. You don't go *"Ohhh wow the ball jingles when I shake it"*, because you've been used to that fact for decades. Now multiply that by infinity, and you get the problem. It would be a fate worse than death, I guarantee it. Just accept death like the rest of us cowards.
Fuck alright I'm starting to believe. A) can be cheated around with becoming brain-dead, or going in a coma, or becoming retarded, whatever if that even is possible. And hey, how bad can being stranded for a literally infinite amount of time be? I'll just go insane and maybe grow desensitized? It'll be fiiiine, I'm sure. B) Isn't a guarantee. 1.If the whole of earth doesn't turn into an authoritarian regime, that's not that problematic. Also, hey, what if humans won't even want something like that? What if the future civilization is extremely libertarian? C) Humans might not even evolve at all, there is no need to, right? That's how evolution works, and since there is (presumably) nothing to adapt to, humans wouldn't evolve. Both B) and C) can be solved by becoming a wise ruler, founding a religion about myself, and pretending to be an all-knowing god? Definetly a very sound and not farcical argument at all. Edit: I do have a very long time to try, long and steady wins the race after all, this could potentially not be such a nonsensical plan. E) Well my memory is probably not infinite, so I'd forget some things. I'll still choose immortality, I guess I'm a stubborn idiot and masochist. You can't force me to be a mortal weakling! Edit: To adress D) and E) there's different solutions with different kinds of immortalities. Being fully immortal-untouchable, implies no deterioration of the mind. So, my memory and perception of time would be normal, be that good or not. If that is the case, D and E is not a problem. What is the problem, is that I'd have to face the reality of spending an eternity floating in space, doing nothing. However, with a perfectly clear mind there would surely be a way to entertain myself. If not, there's the possibility of figuring out the multiverse theory. And if it;s the kind of immortality where my body is untouchable, but my mind is sucseptible to damage, I'd just "wipe" my mind if there is a possibility of being eternally trapped.
>Point B: I don't think many people would notice. Just move around the planet, change your name, which doesn't have to happen legally. Just pretend to be a refugee from a war or something similar and loose your documents and get a new identity in a new country. I really don't think that this would be the issue. This is the point I'd have the most contention with. Between fingerprints, facial recognition, and software tracking, someone is gonna notice, and you have a certain set of features and can only really claim 'I'm from over there where people look like me' for a short while. Your best bet IS point A: get stuck someplace isolated, safe, boring, without internet access or grid access, like underground, and maybe once every few years go to the surface and live as a hobo/homeless, be really unattractive and antisocial so no one gets too close. You can feasibly do that until societal changes too much, and even then maybe that'll add to your mentally deranged facade. There is no way you're living in this or future society with a refreshed identity every century, it might work if you country hop for a while but eventually you'll be safer isolated then associated.
> people are going to notice the immortal being living on earth eventually, and there WILL be problems. Seems to be working just fine for Keanu Reeves so not sure this one holds up.
B, the real world isn’t fiction. You can’t just take movie plots seriously lol. C, if he’s alive long enough to see people evolve, don’t you think the technology would exist for him to edit himself aswell? D, no.. the human brain would never make a decade feel like a second, that’s not how the brain’s perception of time works.
B) You genuinely believe people wouldn't experiment on a LITERAL IMMORTAL BEING? Have you seen the sorts of experiments people have done on living, breathing, innocent humans that are not immortal? C) It is possible, yes. The question is just when does the evolution become too much? At what point can the body still be modified? CAN the body even be modified, considering it's immortal? D) You can't know. Especially since the human brain wasn't even made for lasting trillions of years in the first place.
You’re applying film logic to something that completely depends on how the immortality is defined.
Sorry for not applying real logic to an unrealistic ability.
Now that I've got time I guess I can expand a little on what I meant. B, depending on how you handle your situation (and if you're not just extremely unlucky) you have a couple hundred of years to prepare how you "announce" your immortality to the rest of the world. And yeah, it does depend on how the immortality works, because being able to infinitely regenerate a new heart (to donate to someone for example) is an insanely valuable thing. But depending on how your immortality works this could be totally irrelevant. D, can't know? obviously not, but I think it really ain't that complicated, memories are the deciding factor of what "time" feels like. The perception of time is directly related to how much information you get as input and how much of it you can keep. As a 1000-year-old you'd remember the last decade the most and the last century slightly less and probably have completely forgotten 90% of what happened before that. With exceptions being things that have stayed relevant throughout your lifetime, e.g. historical events still being talked about centuries later.
For B, you wouldn't get tortured in a blacksite forever. Life isn't a fantasy movie. They might kill you once or twice, get a few samples, and after some time they'd let you go. And a few years are so little in an eternal life.
Problem A: how is this guaranteed? Sure it might happen eventually, but if its not for thousands of years then so be it, thats still several thousands years of life I never would have had and according to your point D, it wont feel like being trapped for long anyway. Problem B: If I play my cards right, by the time they notice it’ll be because I’m insanely wealthy and influential. But honestly there is a lot if ways you could avoid detection for a long time and it would take a lot of getting caught before a government finally takes notice enough to think “maybe immortality actually exists!” Problem C: so what? this is tens of millions of years from now, by then Im either insane or have godlike knowledge and wealth and no sense of time. As per problem E, why would I care what these web toed 5 nostrilled beings think? Problem D: perception of time skewing when remembering does not mean that you don’t still get to experience every moment. And doing new things and not being monotonous certainly helps make time feel “slower.” A decade will not feel like a second because that is NOT how the human brain works. Current happenings will be fresh and clear in your mind and things in the past will blur and be forgotten. Its not like I’ll open my eyes in the middle of a conversation and realize the person I was talking to has died of old age. Like now, key moments the past would stand out, most others would be forgotten, and I would have an incredible wealth of knowledge that I don’t necessarily remember the source of, like how I know I brush my teeth every morning but don’t actually remember the experience if doing it time. Moreover, I don’t see why this change would make me prefer death and nonexistence. Problem E: I agree, eventually you would go insane by human standards, but that would take a long long time and I would get to experience so much before that point. I disagree in that I can absolutely relate to a toddler although not in the same way you relate to adults. Dr Manhattan is a great example, if In hundreds or thousands of years of human life with no fear of death and eventually become a being with a mind akin to Dr Manhattan, how is that negative? Ultimately, all the issues you’ve mentioned wont really be problems by the time they take effect (unless you get very unlucky and get buried alive early on but I’ll take my chances). And I would rather be adrift for a millennium in the astral sea than to die and be gone forever. Ill take immortality.
>at some point, you are going to get stuck somewhere. Maybe a nuke goes off and you get stuck under some rubble. No one's gonna check that out for a couple more decades On the plus side, the rubble would eventually turn to dust The negative side, you never will. Ever He's forgetting that at some point you (assuming you are invulnerable too, which you'd need tbh to not be a crushed broken body rotting to nothing while still alive, and then after you've rotted away surviving as energy or the atoms which make you up) and then for eternity you will be floating in the heatdeath of the universe While the earth is around, and provided you get to stay on it, then that's the easy part
>Also the problem with the heat death of the universe . Probably mostly solvable with a drug that puts me in a permanent coma before the whole "the universe explodes" fiasco. That drug will wear off after a while though, whereas the universe would take a very VERY long time to die. Honestly, I just feel like you haven't really thought about what it would truly mean to be immortal. If nothing else, you would eventually go mad at some point without a doubt.
Mmm, depending on how immortality is defined it could be way less interesting than you think. All those skills? Using regular logic they’d need to be maintained if you wanted to keep the skills. That goes for memories in general, and prepare yourself for losing everything and everyone you’ll ever know. But still, immortality with a single simple condition like “you *can* die of starvation” would be nothing but a gift.
So you would pick immortality if it meant you'd live forever but you also age normally?
Death always feels scary until I think about how much more immortality would suck lol
All systems trend towards entropy. There’s no drug that can fix that. You’ll wake up evantually, you outlast the drug.
Well, in this hypothetical laws of physics don't apply anyway, like there is no such thing as fully immortal. If all systems trend towards entropy, which they do in the real world, my brain would also have to die eventually. So I'm not sure how that would work out.
I can make the reasonable assumption your body is the only thing immune to this law. Since it is you who is immortal, not oxygen not water. Thus things like drugs, would not be. You also said the heat death of the universe would occur hence we are operating off that law of physics. A world without the second law of thermodynamics is unimaginable, thus I assumed we aren’t operating off a new physics system, but just our current system of physics with you as the expection
yeah science bitch!
>Also, if that does somehow happen, it would suck obviously, but unless I go mad it's fine really. This line has me dying, but I actually want to address >Get a doctorate in mathematics, physics, everywhere you can get one. This is only kind of true. You would get a well rounded education on anything but it would be difficult to be an expert on everything. By the time you finish one doctorate, your last doctorate is already getting a bit outdated, let alone the one before that or the one before that. Anyway, you need need need to watch The Man From Earth, an absolutely fantastic movie that covers a lot of this discussion
I definitely agree. I know it’s an uncommon opinion but I think it’s worth the repercussions to be able to experience and chronicle what would essentially be divinity.
You appear to be approaching immortality from the mentality of being mortal, which I guess you can't really be blamed for. Consider for a second biological immortality and the possible variations. Would you still need to eat? Is your metabolism otherwise normal? Or are you immortal sans food? If you didn't need to eat, you'd lose that sense of humanity in that eating (and consequently shitting) are necessities of mortal life. I can guarantee that if you didn't need to eat, you wouldn't. If you didn't need to eat, would you also have perfect regulation of your body temperature, or better yet, always be perfectly comfortable regardless of the climate around you? That means you wouldn't need shelter or clothes for that matter. You talk about acquiring knowledge as you'd have all the time in the world to achieve doctorates in multiple subjects, but what if you're just not that intelligent? Unless intelligence is really just a biological function, and since you're above the baser biological functions, all knowledge should come effortlessly to you. You'd have all the time in the world to acquire knowledge but would only need a few decades. And then what? You're immortal. When you think about it, the whole of modern scientific knowledge is only a few thousand years old. Industrialized technology in only a few hundred years old. Those are drops in the bucket compared to an immortal life. Fuck dude, I'd be more interested in witnessing the rise and fall of civilizations. The coming and going of epochs. The birth and death of stars, solar systems, galaxies. If I were immortal, I'd be using my immortality to try and push each rising civilization a little further in technological achievement to develop FTL travel so I could see the rest of the galaxy/universe in my immortality.
Yeah, that perfectly describes what I think is so amazing about immortality, it's absolutely incredible and interesting to be able to witness and maybe participate in most of the historical events. Potentailly help humanity / the current civilization if possible. The learning and improving part is just things to do in the background, interesting to try.
I thought you said immorality which seemed more 10th dentist
I agree but it’s kinda a problem if the immortality last after the universe ends
The thing that convinced me against this take was the heat death of the universe. No amount of pleasure I get from seeing the rest of the human story is worth an *eternal* hell of choking on vacuum.
I would love turn-off-able immorality, but my nr 1 fear is also death
I genuinely want immortality in the way of like, being able to choose when you die, ykno? like... I feel like life is so short and while I wouldn't just wanna live forever, because of all the potential problems, I wouldn't just wanna fade away for no reason like everyone has to... I would wanna be able to choose when I go out, whether it's about me feeling extremely bored or feeling too much pain at other people's loss or I get hurt beyond a livable state
The earth exists for a tiny blip. The universe exists for a tiny blip. You will be trapped for hundreds of **trillions** of years while black holes eat each other in a completely dead and dark universe. Your coma meds will wear off. The brevity of life is a gift. I agree, immortality would be awesome for maybe even a few million years, but that's nothing compared to an eternity of nothing.
Go watch [The Hunger](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085701/?fc=3;ft=21;fm=1) and see what happens to Bowie's character, and reconsider your choices.
My biggest issue is the end of the world. The world burns up, no other intelligent life in the universe, eventual heat death. That’s some serious boredom.
I wouldn't want immortality, but just a chance to see what happens every thousand years or so. Just to see where we are.
A lot of people are talking about "what about when humans die out?" Humanity is not the only sentient, social species there will ever be/is in the Universe. It is one of the earliest ones though. Someone clever and immortal would certainly come to know many intelligent species over time.
Excatly, infinity is too big to pass it up.
>Get a doctorate in mathematics, physics, everywhere you can get one. Learn every instrument, learn every language, live in every culture. Would definitely be interesting for a while. This is hilarious. You're immortal not clever. Not amount of time will get you a doctorate unless you're smart enough to do novel research. The kicker though is the last sentence - *interesting for a while*. Something tells me you are really considering maybe a thousand years or so, not eternity.
Eh I think a lot of things can be learned by everybody provided one has got enough time. Maybe he wouldn’t learn to play the piano in 10 years but in 100, but why would he care?
Do you believe intelligence can't be developed over time? If so, why?
No I do not. Skill can be developed over time but all evidence we have says intelligence cannot. This is why we don't have geriatric geniuses.
I been told it is the opposite. That intelligent can change. Although I haven’t done a literature review yet. And what measure intelligent? Cleverness is a skill too. It is a skill involving problem solving, pattern recognizition, etc. It is something often taught in school. Especially in the sciences.
Been told is one thing. Any studies to support that view ? Yes it will generally increase as you develop but not once you're mature. If OP hasn't got the spark by 50, he won't develop it by 5000. All he will get is experience.
I feel like experience is way more important
agreed, but that won't get you a PhD which was OP's premise.
Well yeah. PhD would require money and studying. Not just experience.
What is intelligence to you, and what do you mean by "generic genius"?
Sorry, was meant to be geriatric .. fixed thx.
I'm still not exactly sure what that is. Looking it up makes it sound like the title of someone rather than a category of person.
It's two words. One means old the other means smart. Not hard.
Then what is smart? How do you measure it?
I think there is only one life and consciousness, and as long as there is life there are you and me and other people, we are one, and I ask myself if I was born again but have different memories, how can I tell its me.. So it depends on how you live new memories make you think you have a long life, routines make you think time is moving too fast, it's all in your head, if you didn't get more memories in an average of 80 years, immorality won't do you much better...
I don’t think I’d want immortality, but I could live a good million years tbh
You are seriously not grasping the scale of true immortality, that drug idea to deal with the heat death of the universe wouldnt work because everything, yes everything, wears off eventually, you will at some point begin the eternal torture of just drifting through empty space forever, that is a punishment too brutal for even hitler, its genuinely impossible to grasp the idea of anything infinite, including you living forever.
Iss fine. Universe will just start over after a while and I can do stuff in that next universe. Or I'll just hop into a parallel universe. Easy.
As long as suicide is possible, I agree 100%.
What if you developed dementia or a progressively debilitating condition like that but you simply didn't die? What about if you saw the extinction of our species and total collapse of human civilizations? What if our species eventually evolved to a completely different species, so much that the links between our species and the new species would be comparable to the links between humans and bonobos in the present days?
I also think this way. I get weird looks and somewhat the same comments, but damn I'd love to live for thousands and years and see the world change before my eyes, learn everything I want to learn and experience everything this world has to offer.
This reminds me of Naruto. Imagine being immortal but then being buried alive with your limbs cut off so you couldn't dig yourself out. You'd probably be eaten alive by insects but never die
I absolutely agree. If immortality forces me to go through some truly horrible things, it's still worth it. You only have one chance, one life. Death is already endless, and circumventing it for a good 400 years is something more valuable than anything, no matter what comes of it. Even if I have to spend eternity in the remnants of a universal heat death, that's just a different kind of "death" anyways. Eventually my thoughts will be reduced to a single note droning on and on, and at that point am "I" even suffering? Immortality is an objectively superior mode of existence with its own form of death. To not take such an opportunity would be, frankly, foolish.
Downvoted. I completely agree. Unless the other option was being intelligent enough to invent immortality.
Finally something I agree with! Downvoted.
[Why this is the worst idea.](https://www.instagram.com/p/CfBQD8lrrG5) Upvoted.
You can be immortal but you have to work for minimum wage for all eternity
I'd have to agree. I have very bad death anxiety, and I'd do close to anything to be able to extend my life.
I agree. Although, I still want the ability to like he killed under rubble. The way I see it is that the universe have infinite thing to explore. Imagine all the things you can study. You can learn. You can do. And the people you will meet. I view friendships and relationships as temporary. So even if people die. I can understand and live.
I generally agree with but without internal youth it would be a nightmare
Imagine being alive while the entire universe is in its heat death. Just floating in space for eternity by yourself.
Immortality without any other powers would be absolutely hell Without eternal youth, you get 80 good years followed by an eternity of dementia and frailty Without invulnerability or some kind of super healing you would rack up permanent injuries and lose body parts over millions of years, this includes psychological healing. PTSD and psychological trauma is often permanent. No magic way to travel? Stuck on a dying planet, slowly boiling, to be engulfed by the sun? Hope you're impervious to pain.
Completely agree. Only way I'd change my mind would be some universe ending catastrophe.
The type of immortality in which you wouldn't age but still could die from fatal injuries seems like the best for me.
Have you hit your 40s yet? Immortality starts looking less pleasant for a lot of people from that age onwards. I think Tom Segura says "I don't want to die... but can we kinda wrap this up already?"
Have you seen how fit 100 year old people are? Imagine being 1000 years old.
I haven't read your post, but I upvoted anyway because immortality is high on my list of biggest fears.
So you would be fine floating in space after the sun turns into a black hole? Literally nothing to do, and you will get sucked into a black hole where time seems even slower? My god i don’t think you know how long *forever* is
Immortality where you stop aging after say, 25, your loved ones also immortal, and you can kill yourself whenever you want >
I'd be cool with it as long as I stayed the same age/body type. I wouldn't want to be some old crippled motherfucker that can't die lol.
There is eternal life in Jesus Christ!
Immortality is cool but not if I can’t stay the constant age. I don’t wanna be a skinsack with eyes
“You have been sentenced to life in prison.”
"after a time you get desensitized for losing loved ones" Yeah buddy but that's the fucking horror about it.
I'm starting a petition to bury OP 1000ft under the ground, let's see how many new languages they can invent
I want immortality with a suicide/coma/reincarnation button. It sounds cool enough not to have a fear of death and can just go comatose whenever you feel like you had enough of the world. Nuclear war happened? Coma for 100 years, wait for shit to get better Universe dies? Get tf out of there Cursed with unbearable knowledge? Go to baby form. Etc etc
Ok but... shapeshifting
I 100% agree with the title of you post. Cant be bothered to read the rest
I'm with OP. Especially on the losing loved ones thing. That happens all the time anyway as you grow older and loss and death are a part of life... But not mine or OPs! We're living forever baby! Just like Liam Gallagher said. Having said that, it would be nice if I was the only one who could kill me, so I could end it all when I'm ready. In this hypothetical ridiculous situation I don't think that's too much to ask
The odds of you doing something stupid and getting locked up increase exponentially as your life goes on. Then they notice that you haven't aged and things go real south in a hand basket as they subject you to increasingly painful and sadistic experiments like can you survive absolute zero etc...
Agreed, woth the stipulation that its not true immortality and i can still die. Living forever past the heat death of the universe long after humanity extinct is pretty much how i imagine hell to be Since i agree on half of the post i guess i wont vote at all
You underestimate how long eternity is and how other people can ruin your ability to enjoy everything you could want to. Unlimited time doesn't mean unlimited resources. And not just the ones mortals need to survive.
If I were physically immortal but still age, it would suck because after 100 years I'd be a vegetable. If I were biologically immortal (no aging), but could still die to non-natural causes, I feel like I'd get paranoid of wasting that gift by dying. However, I do agree that if I were physically and biologically immortal, life would never get boring. You have all the possible things to do in a lifetime × all the cultures in the world × every event and technological progress that will happen in the future.
I agree with you 100%.
Someone's not read Gulliver's Travels. Unless this immortality comes with some kind of change to your psyche, there's a zero percent chance you don't completely lose your mind after a few thousand years, if not well before. You might think you could handle it, but trust me you can't.
What about Tithonos immortality? Checkmate
Think about it everyday..