h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What would you do if you would live forever? Do you want to live forever? One Year ago I would have answered "yes", but now...

No I don't. I want to live a full and happy life but this world... well would I sound like an arch pesimist if I said I thought it was doomed?

Yes, you would. Why?

Well as fun as it was to see Jonathan Porritt run rings round Jeremy Clarkson last night on tv (apologies if you are not British), with the earth's fragile ecosystem being messed with and man's pathological love of blowing things and other people up, you can't help thinking that it is only a matter of time until survival of the fittest becomes a reality again.

But then I have always felt like I am living a thousand years to late.

I might wish to be immune to the effects of age and disease. But I would have to allow for death by trauma, otherwise what would be the worth of effort? I think this is the attraction of the movie Highlander for many.

Survival of the fittest is real. But humans just have technology which has, besides giving us a benefit to other animals, pretty much stopped biological human evolution. Now it´s about wether you can work a VCR.

Yes at the moment, but what happens after the bomb drops. Where is your VCR then?

In the same place as before, though in a bit of a different state But again it will then just be about who can make the best stone spears. Technology is what humans compete on. Considering the topic, I think I better quote what a beauty queen said:

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
--Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

For me, it would depend on who else was living forever. If it really was a 'Highlander' situation, with a lot of the rest of the people out for my blood, then forget it. Also, if I was the only person living forever, forget it. I don't want to go on living when all my friends and family have died.

Oh, and there seems to be the assumption that eternal life = eternal youth. That's the only way it would be worth having. However, there's an ancient Greek myth about Eos (I think), Goddess of the Dawn. She fell in love with a mortal and wanted to marry him. She asked Zeus (Jupiter) to give him eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth as well (the Gods had that as a matter of course). Consequently, the man lived forever, but got older. I guess the moral is: Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.

An *extended* lifespan - now that's a different matter. Being able to live about twice as long as we do at the moment, aging more slowly, would be great. There isn't enough time in this lifespan to fit in all the things I'd like to do.

Yeah, without eternal youth it´s worth nothing. And if we achieve it through technology it will probably be in the form of eternal youth. Even though it probably wont be forever in practical. But just a few hundreds or thousands of years is enough isn´t it? I think I´d like to come with another quote "Everybody wants to live forever, yet we don´t know how to spend a rainy sunday evening." I think it puts it very much into perspective.

If everybody lived forever, we'd soon run out of room. making life harder and more unbearable. For ever.

I am enjoying growing older; because as I get older I get wiser and freer. So not only am I making more interesting mistakes, but I am also having more fun.

Do I want this to go on forever?

Well, maybe there are things you can only learn when you are young, and if I missed out on those lessons this time around then "forever" becomes a prison sentence.

But I have not yet had to face my own death... so who can tell.

Many people think not in terms of living for another year, another 50 years, or forever. Rather, they think in terms of wanting to be alive tomorrow.
If I said now that (for example) 200 years of eternal youth would be sufficient, you can bet that on the last day of that time I would be frantically wanting to wake up the next morning!


If aging was stopped then people would live much longer but this could be sustainable if births dropped significantly. Maybe this would have to be enforced?

Depends. If sex was forbidden, then there'd not be much fun to look forward to tomorrow.

Well, what I meant by 200 years was that lfie is interesting. but after a certain time you might be fed up with it. There´s not really that much more new you can experience or learn.

Yeah, if we started living much longer it would give problems for the size of the population. Perhaps we would need to expand into space somehow. Or start living on the ocean floor too.

Well, what I meant by 200 years was that lfie is interesting. but after a certain time you might be fed up with it. There´s not really that much more new you can experience or learn.

Yeah, if we started living much longer it would give problems for the size of the population. Perhaps we would need to expand into space somehow. Or start living on the ocean floor too.

Ha! That brings us to the "Why are Humans so badly designed" forum. If there were so many of us, we'd have to adapt pretty quickly to surviving in the tundra, the desert, on ice and in salt water.

"There´s not really that much more new you can experience or learn."

Beg to differ but too tired to argue the point (which may of course prove the point!)

My sister told me that Francis Bacon was the last man to know everything there was to know. Since then we have all been specialists.

So start on a new speciality....

Well, if I was to live forever, don't you think it would get a little tedious? It kind of reminds me of Groundhog Day, w/ Bill Murray (great movie). I mean, you wouldn't be living the same day, but...hell, I dunno.

Onyx, what changed between last year and this one?