As I am one of the oldest people here; 1000 years is not that long. The older you get - the better unlimited lifespan looks.

Maurice

As long as my family could live along with me, and my body and mind would remain in the state of perfection that it is in now, lol, then I'd like to be an Eternal. But I'd be afraid that I'd turn apathetic after a while or be labelled a renagade and be aged against my will by the Tabernacle.

Don't know for sure which is worse, the potential Zardoz scenario or the Logan's Run situation. Runner!

If you could live for ever, you would be picked for space travel for your long life to go into the vast space.

Since I've seen no indication in myself of spending time more intelligently as I get older, I think I'll stick with normal life span.
Why would you want to look back on 500 misspent years? :wink:

elmey

? Not sure what you mean. Average lifespans in Europe, Asia, America etc... are all over 50 and under 100.

wasn't like that a few hundred yrs ago. Sanitation, immunisation, advances in health etc have all played a role. Hardly any women die in childbirth, infective causes of death in the 1st world have dropped considerably. Not many people die in childhood, or middle age. Farming advances for food etc

If humans weren't meant to be timkered with, get rid of health care and revert back to survival of the fittest

It'd be even cooler if you knew you would live for ever. That way, you could do all sorts of bad stuff and care.

The only reason Im not a villan, it because Im crap scared of getting the shit beaten out of me.

I'm wondering Wade,
living for 4000-6000 yrs, wouldn't that be great; I'd be like sissy Zev, then later Xev; cool huh. 8) & since you're HisDivineShadow, then it'll be no problem; you'd be 8000 or so yrs. cool 8)
I'd love to be with sissy Xev on baby Lexx right now; we can both tease & pest Stan & 790; oh yea, 790 is still in morning or the death of Kai.
I'll see you in 2 weeks from tomorrow & thave a great Summer.

Time Travellers Unite,
Jhevz :wink:

you forgot about sticking an option 50-100 yrs in the poll.
Modern medicine's already tinkered the human lifespan above normal- most creatures of the animal kingdom die by the time the female of the species reaches the menopause.

Oh there was a good program on this before. Discussed things like- if we did reach immortality, the person who'd create it would problably charge a ton of money for it. It'd come down to those who could afford it, and those who couldn't. Widening of the rich poor divide etc.

This discussion is WAAYYY too undefined! Does it mean how long would I personally like to live, or how long I think is the optimum human lifespan? Personally, re optimum human lifetime, I think about 200 years sounds about right, but I'd have to be able to change the aging rate. I'd like people to age roughly 50 years in 200, with adolescenece between about ages 12-16 going at the current rate (because, oh my transcendent beings, who'd want that to last any longer than it has too?!) and a sudden deteroration into physical deteroraition aged about 198 - people may have to age, but it is unfair the large % of life people ahve to spend very physically decrepit. People would be stuck dealing with the enviromental changes their lifestyles caused, people would still be at peak fertility when they were actually at an age when they had sufficient emotional maturity to raise children and had hopefully had a life of their own and attained some wisdom in the mean time, hopefully people would be allowed to spend a bit of that extended childhood actually learning about life on their own terms through play and voluntary learning before being shoehorned into other people's ideas of who they should be through the educational system, and schools would hopefully not be the current breeding grounds for torment, suppression of the induvidual and cliquishness that they currently are.
However, if we're talking purely how long I'd personally like to live in an otherwise unchanged world, I really really don't know. It really depends what the future of the 21st and later centuries will be like. Imagine having been born about 1880 and aging very slowly into the present day. You would have been 34 when WW1 broke out, and your entire social system crumbled around you. Would you have been able to keep your sanity dealing with the total revision of the world since then? If the future sees such radical social and technological changes as the recent past has, i'm not sure how old I'd want to get. Imagine being the same as i am now in a world devastated by terrorism attacks, or where the entire world's sociaety has adopted religious fundamatalsim, or where everyone has computers implanted in their brains at birth and is hyperintelligent. However, if someone offered me a treatment to keep me 'young into my 120s right now, I'd probably accept it. I'm weak that way. I don't mind ageing, but it seems unfair how young you have to do it!

Well I voted mormal lifespan, but if I could die of old age looking like I'm in my 30s (without surgical intervention) I'd be a lot happier about it.

It'd take me at least a thousand years to do all the stuff I wanna do.

I voted forever.
I don't buy this stuff that people will become apathetic and want to die. That would be to say that to live is to be depressed and unhappy. All depression can be overcome. If it's true that they become depressed then they can just get some psychotherapy.
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If someone doesn't want to die today, then I am very sure they won't want to die a Billion years from now, because really...it will still be "today" i.e. the present moment.
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"Forever" is really only the present moment. A Billion years from now, that present moment experience wwon't be any different, the mystery and fear of death will still be there and the love and desire to live and experience pleasure and happiness will still be there.

Since over 2000 years ago, the lifespan of a man was set at 3 score years and ten (70) for all our marvellous scientific achievements, we haven't made an awful lot of progress, generally speaking.

Living a much longer life span would depend on the state of mental and physical health you would enjoy.

If they could cap you at say 30-40 or even 50 it would not be too bad. If it became a gradual thing... like it takes 80 years to reach 40ish health and then it is a lonnnnnnnng slow slide from there..... no.

I would not like to spend 50 or 60 years (or longer) with 80/90ish health. I have seen theGrandmother, theGreatAunt, and theOldestUncle experience this. While they were glad to be with us that long, they were also looking forward to escaping the aches, pains and medical limitations by taking the big sleep soon.

Well yes there's that and also Venus made many good points. I'm just assuming that if technology can keep a person living forever, it can also keep you healthy and vigorous.

Teh article is still there:

"Life extension is not everything, after all. Near-starvation and castration both bring unusual longevity, but few of us choose either option. "

Well some sacrifices I am not willing to make.

"We might remember the wisdom of Odysseus, who was offered immortality by a luscious goddess, Calypso, but turned her down to grow old and die with his wife, Penelope."

..the moral..never marry anyone called Penelope.

The question no one's really asked is "is it eternal life and eternal youth, or just eternal life?" because the later could be very scary.

Secondly it also depends on what type of immortality, standard "keep your body"? yep that's okay, copying over to clone bodies? yep okay with that despite the fact that there would eventually be errors, converted to energy the whole "higher plain thing"? yeah thats okay, downloaded into a machine? I could go for that. Head in a jar? Uhh no thanks, I remember Leonard Nimoy's "Simple life of dignity" on Futurama.

We sort of did cover this.
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Well "Q" did spend some time as an amoeba in a petrie dish. He said it was kind of very boring. The continuum had threatend to leave him there forever several times for his bad behaviour. also his son was once under threat of this. "Q" has had some awful experiences in the Continuum's penal system. ;)

Forever is such a long time. The earth is only 5 Billion years old, the Universe (at least in this cycle) is only 15 Billion years old. Life is only Four Billion years old. In terms of forever, we haven't really started yet.