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Comment by madebylaw | Hacker News Reader

To live forever?

Remembered something by Tolkien. "Death was a gift to men. Though elves did not die, as they aged they became more sorrowful". [paraphrased]. I don't think that living forever is a good thing.

Fine. Those who want to die, be my guest. Those of us who want to live forever, we'd like the option anyway, please.

Living forever is only hell if you remain human. By the time I turn one million I will be an entity of nearly infinite wisdom, more powerful than the God of the Christians.

A nice (though hella-long) follow-up to this thought: http://lesswrong.com/lw/xy/the_fun_theory_sequence/

I've read it. I wish more people were asking the questions asked by Eliezer.

Why not just reboot and live another interesting sequence of experiences every thousand years or so?

Absolutely, I believe that is an important part of living forever. My immortal soul will get bored sometimes and have part of himself reincarnated.

Interesting knowledge will continue to exist into the future for a while. If no one has built a particle accelerator the size of a planet yet by the time I get my PhD in Physics, I'll build one for my dissertation. Then once we find the second and fourth dimensions, we may discover the actual secrets of the universe. Or AI will do it for us.

Ultimately I think the thing to do will be to colonize the universe for humanity. To try and reach the next type on the Kardashev Scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

If men lived forever, earth would be hell.

Why?

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