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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> If life were "infinite" or even significantly prolonged (i.e. 10 times the current life expectancy), I think we'd have a lot of thinking to do to come to terms with such a new reality.

I'd be happy to spend next few centuries thinking about this problem.

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One thing about 10 x life expectancy would be that your attitude towards risk would become much more conservative. You have so many more potential years to lose if you fall off your mountain bike or your parachute doesn't deploy or your fast car skids off a road or your speedboat flips over. People with a 700 year lifespan would probably spend a lot of time sitting around indoors, I reckon.

There will still be idiots. They won't respawn.

Would they? I don't find myself thinking "I have only at most 80 more years to live, so I'll jaywalk here, risk be damned". Do people really do those kind of mental calculations? It might be me still being relatively young, but having 60-80 years in front of me feels more like +∞, and I have to keep constantly reminding myself that my time is limited.

I'd wager that the only relevant scale for people to think is weeks/month; there wouldn't be much difference felt between 60 years, 600 years and +∞.

People don't _think_ about it, but a sense of our time limit is part of our 'human condition'. e.g the phrase 'you only live once'. 'You only live once, but for 700 years' has quite a different feel to it.

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