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Comment by JofArnold | Hacker News Reader

As someone of the same age I feel the same. Sometimes I'm enjoying myself or finding it especially easy to be stoical about mortality. But sometimes it makes me breathless with dread for a few minutes.

The realisation I was probably born a bit too early for technology to give me immortality saddens me; I only have so many weekends left to do hobbies and even fewer blocks of a few thousand hours to master something new... So I have to prioritise which is annoying.

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I was afflicted with an awareness of existence from an early age and struggled with it till around 40. Having kids obviously enhanced that but also changed me so profoundly and I realized we are just human sized atoms flying through the universe.

I’d simply advise to get on getting on. It is. You are you so see what you can do with it in the way you feel you can.

What is the point of being immortal, if lt bring eternal suffering, Life in itself current form is suffering for many, unless you solve all other problem other then just mortality, life in itself bring difference with long lifespan. Inherently I see no difference if I live 100 years or 1000 years.

There are countless people who have died before you that were born too early for things like penicillin.

You can always find a reason to be grateful (just as, I suppose, we can always find a reason to be saddened ... and probably our future counterparts will as well.)

I dont get this obsession with immortality, if its unleashed then it will be to enhance slavery. Dictators that dont die, potential dark ages.

Enjoy rather current times, we have it easy and pretty compared to whats coming

FOMO, quite literally.

Quite hard to enjoy the current times if you're dead. I would take my chances with the immortality even in spite of some vague "dark ages" hand-wave scenario, thanks.

Well, if there is a immortality drug, it won't be cheap. So only the rich can get it, who will then live longer, and have more time to accumulate wealth, while thinking, "the earth is already overpopulated. If the drug becomes too cheap, that problem will worsen" So it will stay out of reach for the masses.

So the result will likely be immortal overlords and mortal peasants. Hard to see any other outcome.

As long as we're writing science fiction, if immortality was known to exist like that, there are swathes of ordinary people who would stop at nothing to obtain it. Perhaps the cure IS cheap (how could you know for certain it's not?) and it's not an issue in the first place. Perhaps some of the rich will not be so cynical and give immortality to the finest minds in the world, allowing scientists to build knowledge indefinitely instead of whole generations of knowledge and experience being permanently lost consistently every 80-100 years. Perhaps those scientists with massive amounts of experience thanks to the time they now have bring about a utopia.

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