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I think it is pure speculation to say that we would become apathetic in as little as a few centuries, which to our current lifespan seems an unfathomable amount of time, but in the grand scheme of things is still exceedingly short. We might continue to develop further beautiful and fulfilling depth that is unreachable given the measly few decades of youthful energy we have today.
I spend a lot of my effort learning about and exercising my health. I’m wagering a bit of my energy now on catching the wave of advancing health and longevity research later. Some day I believe it will likely be possible for a person to ride this wave through extra healthy decades, catching scientific advances just in time to rewind their ticking clock by a few years, a few times or even indefinitely. It might be a pipe dream, but I think it’s worth a shot. If this doesn’t come true for me, I will at least likely have a longer than average healthspan.
I admit that perhaps the human brain and psyche have not evolved for happiness and fulfillment beyond our disappointingly short deadline. Still, I have to wonder whether the psychological disengagement and decay that we observe in many of our elderly would be different given prolonged health of body and brain.
But what would you think during the next world war, for example? Or if there's some massive climate refugee crisis (more akin to a war, actually), are you on the side getting shot, doing the shooting, welcoming strangers (and being ostracized by "your own"), hating newcomers or ignoring everything? What do you think about yourself then? Death ain't all bad in dire circumstances.
“The trick isn’t to live forever, it’s to live long enough to live forever “
If one life extension makes you live 5 years longer, and during that time an new one comes out that lengthens your life by a few more years, you can see how one might keep "catching" these just in time and thus gradually transition from mortal to immortal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage:_Live_Long_En...
Even if at no point actual immortality is developed, you can go like this forever, finite life extension by finite life extension.
If you life to long I think you will loose yourself in just living in your routine.
And I myself would not mind dying even younger than 70 much younger.
I have the feeling that the big surprises in my lifetime are done. When I look at older people around me, non of them experience something I haven't yet and their day to day life's are boring I will be boring.
you can live a boring life but you don't have to. break the cycle!
Jes Webb for example.
But political drama like trump is not entertainment.
New advances in science are always great but it stopped impacting my life.
Would I like a robot who is doing everything for me? Yes sure, will that actually change anything nor me? Not really. I can already hire someone or go outside or use convince food.
I don't envy people who can travel 365 days a year in the nicest hotels and location in the world (don't get me wrong I would love to do that for a few years) but not forever. And especially not in the constrains of our society.
Most people alive today need some kind of structure. Just look at the boomers who “retire” and then get antsy super fast. I took a handful of years off in my late 20s to do nothing and when I tell people about it, they’re like “Didn’t you get bored?”
I do think meditating and becoming comfortable with "nothing" is important to enjoying activities. If you can enjoy not just eg hiking but also the car ride to the hiking and packing your bag, then hiking as a whole has become enjoyable.
Susan Ertz
One is less easily bored if one goes deep. Doing superficial things like international travel does get boring, by contrast.
I suspect that people who like to say that they would like to live "forever" or think that they would be interested "endlessly" in new things have not really thought through what infinity means. You might want to check Grahams number. And then spend a while thinking that even that number is not even a microscopic fraction of infinity.
And if you still think you want to live forever. How on earth are you going to use your puny 100 billion neurons to experience, store and decide the order of experiencing and studying the endless Graham numbers of curiosities without at some point getting into a loop after you have had your brain in every single possible state? And when your brain has been in every possible state for say a billion times, you think it is not going to get boring?
> And when your brain has been in every possible state for say a billion times, you think it is not going to get boring?
I do think that, because if I'm back in a previous state then I'm not growing more bored.
Buddhist cosmology holds that we do sort of live forever via reincarnation. But just like the last season of the show, the Buddha realised that such an existence would be a kind of cosmic horror. You would be stuck in a cycle of desire for all eternity. So the solution would be to seek an escape aka Nirvana.
I believe the show itself was heavily influenced by Buddhist ideas.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” -- Max Planck
One sees the beginnings of this in Einstein's case with his "God does not play dice with the universe" opposition to quantum theory.
Get away from the tourist places, the tours, the cruises. Go to an area and try and stay in normal accomodations and eat the local spots and spend time with the people there. Strike up good conversations.
Four hundred years, and her biggest hobby was... knitting? Which it seemed like she'd turned into a job. I can't say I see myself in this at all, nor could I imagine any of my friends or family acting this way, but-
Well, I have no trouble imagining that we're self-selecting for that. A lot of people do seem like they function on rote habit and instructions, and I don't know what to do about that.
Remove instruction. Encourage experimentation (and make failure cheap but not totally free).
I’ve heard of teachers taking your advice. Usually, teachers who as children would have responded well to that same technique.
Almost universally they learn why that wasn’t the technique used.
"I’m bored of knitting, bored of reading, bored of games, and there isn’t a country I haven’t visited less than three times."
I think I know what she means, but I read it over and over and I can't get the double negative to work out right.
Imagine a detective getting assigned a case that is never resolved. The obsession to solve the case never subsides. The detective never gives up, endlessly pouring over the records for eons, in a similar manner to that of detectives that spend decades trying to solve cold cases to this day.
The hope for immortality should always include other parameters.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_of_a_Million_Years