You have the chance to gain immortality. Do you take it?

Sure, why not.

No.

Watching everyone die around me would be kind of sad, but not having to worry about anything sounds all right. What happens if you get paralyzed? Or receive an crippling disease? Life would suck then.

So.....I don't know.

@jking47 said:

Only if I have a way to kill myself.

Depends... Can I turn into a bird?

Ah, you mean live forever in this body. If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, you get to spend eternity with Christ worshiping God forever. So there is a way to do it, just not like how you are proposing.

@BabyChooChoo said:

I played Lost Odyssey. No.

Immortality would be fine unless I was broke throughout the entirety of forever. Then it would suck.

The everyone you know dieing thing is not that big of bummer. People I have known have died many times. The only difference with immortality would be I never would. It would be sad when it happened but eventually it would pass and I would move on.

@betterboulder said:

but it could also be a wasteland where war or a horrid disease wipes out the majority of mankind.

So it could be Mass Effect or it could be Fallout? Fuck yeah, bring either one on.

No. I don't want to be the last living thing in existence 100 trillion years down the road.

Fuuuuuuck no.  By like 200 you would probably be insane and wanting to die.  Forever is way longer than that.  Imagine being conscious for like 10,000 years.  1 million years.  1 billion years.  It's like the worst torture I could imagine.

Yes, I would take it. Not only would I take it, but I would spent a significant amount of time trying out every type of life that was possible. I would be homeless a thousand years, and then I'd be rich. I'd try being a criminal and a law abiding citizen. I would be a drug addict and then become a preacher. If I had an eternity I would try out everything that was possible. Then I'd be bored. Can I end the immortality eventually? Say it's been a million years and I've done absolutely everything possible, Saying I've taken over the planet and ruled it for thousands of years. Can I die if I choose to?

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I'm reasonably certain that most, if not all, truly and clinically insane individuals do not perceive themselves as being insane. So that's a moot point, in my opinion. It's simply a shift in an individual's perspective, and what's relative to the individual defines their reality. The same can be said for arbitrary views of morality behind the concepts of "good" and "evil."

But that's just my opinion.

This is my response to every thread that asks this question:
  

@BabyChooChoo said:

I played Lost Odyssey. No.

I had the exact same thought. That game does not paint immoral life in a positive light.

Fuck. Yes. I agree that once every like 50 years or whatever you would have a very painful few years where everyone you have grown to know/love dies but then it would be another like 50-60 years of seeing advancing technology and history, making new friends ext. ext.

No. Life is only worth a damn because it's short. If possible, I would stop the aging process (Old age itself is far scarier to me than death), but there's no way I could stand outliving everything I know, and knowing full well that would happen. Immortality is a lonely, lonely, lonely thing. Even if you do not age, your memory, lifestyle and culture are all completely stuck in the past when you grew up. After a point, you won't be able to relate to anybody, and you'll know so much everyone will just be a complete idiot to you. Maybe it's because I believe in heaven, but if I were to choose between even dying right now or becoming immortal, I'd choose the former.

Duh! I'm pretty damn sure if I just cut my head off I'll die. Plus, that means I won't die anytime soon. I'm turning 20 this year. I don't want to have to worry about dying the next few minutes all my life. If I'm immortal, I can play every game ever. Yessssssss. And sex with many many woman and eventually alien woman like an Asari. I'm thinking too much into this.

Fuck yes.

@Gamer_152: I know right? I was out of my mind bored at work today so I was just thinking about this in detail and once you really start to think about it it sounds awful actually.

@Phatmac said:

Fuck yes.

Yes i would do this.

me thinks somebody's been reading twilight shit

I don't know exactly how the brain works, but I would think you'd start forgetting stuff you once knew. You'd only remember the things you hold dearest (or think about often). So you might forget what your parents look like, but you'd remember the details you think about the most. I'd guess that in a 1000 years there'd only be fleeting memories of your past lives. Maybe that you had parents, their names, but you don't remember what color their hair was or when they were born, etc. Edit: while of course having new experiences and learning new things.

The only way I'd take immortality is with a lot of answered questions and an emergency opt out. That way if things don't go as I'd hoped, I can end it.

I'd take it without a doubt. I want to see us travel to other planets and make colonies, and the way we're going, I don't think we're going to make it in the next 76 years (I'm 24).

Only if I got to choose the type of immortality. There are many different kinds and many of them suck.

@Demoskinos said:

So, if you had the chance to gain immortality would you take it? Granted, the benefits are pretty obvious aging would stop all disease wouldn't effect you and injuries would never be fatal.

That's not immortality, that's a healing factor. Strictly speaking, you can end up an immobile, mindless pile of flesh and still be alive. I'm not interested in that.

@BabyChooChoo said:

I played Lost Odyssey. No.

I had the exact same thought. That game does not paint immoral life in a positive light.

Only if you reserve the right to suicide once there's noone to shoot the shit with.

I would say yes. I'm saying yes believing that "immortal" in this case means I can still be killed, I can still get hurt (I could cut myself, lose a limb, go blind from chemical spillage, etc), but I don't age or catch disease (kind of like Wolverine but without the healing wounds part). I think it would be great to see this human thing to the bitter end. 
 
Of course, if I can still die from things outside my control, I may not make it that far either. But for the most part, I'd bet I'd get to be 200+ years old before the odds catch up to me and I crash my hydrogen fuel cell flying car on one of our many space colonies. Or die from radiation during the nuclear winter after *insert awful future war here*. Whichever path humanity takes. I just want to be able to see it. 
 
One of my craziest fantasies ever since I became fascinated with space was being able to live forever as a ghostly being (no corporeal form) that can travel many times faster than the speed of light and just visit the different parts of the galaxy and just observe things. You can imagine what the Galaxy Map in Mass Effect did to me. "Oh shit, I can go to any of these places?!"

Yes, I would take it. I would then use said immortality to issue in worthwhile change in the planet. I would become something of a legend stepping into human events just when things seemed their bleakest then I would bow out into obscurity.

Only if I can kill myself when I feel like the time has come. Otherwise you would be stuck in an everlasting spiral of boredom and general suckiness once you did all the fun stuff and learned all that you wanted.

Nope because in the back of my mind I'd know I'd have to be around at the collapse of our star and would probably end up drifting in space for eternity. Or like others said, there's no guarantee you won't fall into a really deep hole or get put in prison or captivity, the downsides are enormous.

@Capum15 said:

I better be able to do some other shit too (or hope we get some serious space flight capabilities), since one day the Earth will be consumed in the hellfire of the killball we call the Sun (that bastard...just sitting there...waiting...), and I'd rather not still be here when it does.

Ah! I was hoping this would be mentioned. Several things must be kept in mind here, and the sun eventually going poof isn't even the highest on the list. Say we do get space travel and we do manage to get away from the sun, and you as an immortal are on those spaceships. Fine, another few billion years of hanging out with mortals. But then the universe goes and ends on you and all of the matter in the universe could possibly be ripped apart into the smallest of particles - including you - or all of the matter in the universe contracts and you get squished in with everything else. Granted, this would all take a very long time, but unless we can figure out a way to go outside of the universe, then anyone who is truly immortal is fucked come the end of time itself. Badly. Even if with immortality came infinite brainpower (i.e. days don't become like minutes, you get an infinite amount of memory, etc.) , there are still other horrifying issues that can be thought of.

Let's not even mention what could happen if the spaceship you're in happens to, oh, crash and run adrift in space and you have to float in infinite darkness for eternity, or you could get sucked into a black hole and you get ripped apart, then totally regenerate, then rip apart again, etc for eternity, or you get sucked into a star, or... you get where I'm going with this.

Now, I shall go on to a personal answer. Would I like some immortality? Of the most extreme sort, no. I don't want to live until the sun burns away or whatever. However, if I could get, say, 10,000 years or so with that aforementioned infinite brainpower as well as a body that continually looks around 25-ish and healing power a la Majin Buu (i.e. regenerate anything from a single cell) and a body completely immune to disease, then yeah I would take that.

As a final note, please excuse the run-on feel of a lot of this.

All it takes is for one of the millions of jealous souls over your infinite lifespan to get so pissed off they bury you alive in the middle of nowhere to put a downer on the whole situation.

I wouldn't be able to handle being the only thing alive on the planet. I'd only do it if there was a way to die of my own terms if and when i need to.

Absolutely. First, the people around you will die whether you are immortal or not. Second, I fail to see how I would get bored. By the time you could learn about everything you find interesting, there's a whole bunch of new stuff to do and explore. If all else fails, turn into a shadowy assassin, shaping the course of human events from the background. or devote yourself to solving all the problems that face the smartest minds of the time. After all, you have all the time in the world.

Huh, It seems hard to say yes without coming off as some sort of feelingless Psycho/Sociopath. Whatever.

The only thing about dying that is scary to me is the pain from dying. Being dead is probably like just being a sleep. Being immortal sounds cool but it would probably cause you to go mental and eventually beg for death.

No I wouldnt.  Living for that long would definitely suck.  Even if someone that I loved the most was immortal too

Absolutely not. On a long enough timeline (or an infinite one) every conceivable bad thing would happen to you. At some point, you would be struck by lightning and space debris, you would be hit by a bus, involved in a plane crash, shot, stabbed, immolated, etc. In fact, at some point in your infinite existence, you would invariably find yourself trapped forever; whether it's in a collapsed building, cave in, or ejected into space when the planet explodes.

Yes, despite having read and enjoyed Tuck Everlasting as a child.

Nope. Just hand me the gun and let me finish the job, please.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@Little_Socrates said:

Nope! No statement there that says you can't feel pain and you never age in there. We have no idea what happens when a brain ages past 130 years old, let alone 10000 years. My imagination is that you eventually become a braindead invalid or insane danger who cannot die. Neither are desirable to me.

This, the idea sounds great till you think of exactly this.

"Immortal" can mean many different things physically and mentally. It's like asking what would happen in a zombie acopolypse: The details of concept can be very different depending on who's telling the story.

You could be an invincible superman without any need for food or water; a man who doesn't degrade in any way possible. You could simply not age but be able to be killed, and still need to eat and take care of yourself.

It's impossible to make a judgement based on biological factors is what I'm saying.

I think people forget that one day the earth will cease. And forever is a lot longer than the time it will take for the Earth to die. So theoretically you will live on forever in space trapped in your mind after the planet is asploded due to some meteor, war, or the sun going out.

Oh never mind you cats already mentioned it. ^^

only if i have lazer eyes too

I played Lost Odyssey. No.

Honestly, I think we may get immortallity within our generation IMO. With how fast technology advanced in just the past 20 years of my life. I would never have expected many of the things here to be made. With how fast biocells and freaking Nanomachines are going to get. We have a good chance at creating immortal humans... don't mess things up because I do have a back up plan of freezing myself just before I die. No really. I do. Why not live forever?

I would get even lazier... idk about that. Plus, do I still age at my normal rate? Cause I would look hella ugly in a few hundred years. Like a human sized mole.

I think living for a few hundred years would be more... doable

GUYS! GUYS! GUYS! What if dying is awesome???

Can I breathe in space if I'm immortal? If so then yes....hey I'll live forever; might as well get my ass to the next solar system and find some aliens.