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

"Even if all your friends and family had normal lifespans, is their deaths really a reason to not want to continue if you had the chance?"

No parent wants to outlive their children. Even if everything else (money, health, etc) was fine, this would be too heart-breaking.

They used to do it all the time.

"I guess that depends on how much your work wears you down. Wether you're a coal miner or a crooner. Some people seem to think no music made after their 30th birthday is any good. Imagine what it would feel like when you've reached 200 years, and you haven't liked any of the new stuff that's come out" [Xanatic]

I can relate to that, but I'm giving it my best effort. Even in my sixties, every so often I hear a new song that I love. The latest one was "Put a little love in your heart," that was in a movie.

It would be easier if a whole bunch of us were all 200 years old, so we could *insist* that there were radio stations that played the music we liked.*




[One of the big gripes of the generation that came after the postwar generation was that their music was passed over in favor of the older stuff.]

How old do you have to get before 'new music' stops appealing to you? I like stuff from now right back to decades before I was born. Mind you, I don't like all new music. Some is utter

NOBODY likes all new music. Everyone has their taste. I have never, in my entire life, liked more than about 20% of what's in the charts, and I don't know many people who do. Florence and the Machine and Paloma Faith are on pretty heavy rotation on my pod lately. On the other hand, I couldn't tell Tinchy Stryder from Tinie Tempah if my life depended on it.

"We live in a world where you can be healthy and intelligent in your early 90s but saddled with a situation that is slowly grinding you down. You can't pretend the situation isn't there"

Hmm. That situation isn't there in many civilised countries. That whole "hospital bills" thing fills me with grim horror. It amazes me that people *choose* to live in a place where having a health problem or even an accident can doom you to poverty. I live in a country where if you need to go to hospital, you go to hospital, and your treatment is, to you, at the point of delivery, free. I'm aware that the "free" treatment is not as good as that which the rich can afford - there are cancer drugs the NHS won't fund for instance - but it's better than nothing, and private care exists as a choice.



To the OP - yes. Like others here, I simply can't understand giving any other answer to the question. I'd go further - I'd live as a brain in a jar if it meant getting another couple of hundred years. I want to see people living on Mars. I want to KNOW we're not alone in the universe. I want to know what the hell the deal is with dark energy. I live in fear that this knowledge will become available the day after my death.

Oh, and I want to see the 100th anniversary Special Edition of Star Wars, in holographic solid 3D. You know Lucas is already thinking about it.

I watched an episode of NCIS today (the season 6 crossover with the new NCIS series) where they were using a computer in a way similar to how they did in the movie of Minority Report. It made me both chuckle and smile ruefully. Already in my lifetime, technology has caught up and overtaken the scifi stories I read as a kid. If I don't get to see other stories brought to fruition, I can live (or die, in this scenario) with that.

When I was a teenager I would have gladly signed up to go on a mission into space just to know what was out there, knowing that I would never come back. Now I am much more interested/invested in what is going on right here on Earth (even if I still wonder about the great unknown).

Hoo, for the most part, the same segment of society that doesn't have access to decent healthy care in the US is the same group that doesn't have the resources to relocate to a country that does.

And as we have seen, the (wealthy) members of government here are not likely to socialize medicine any time soon.

Imagine all those people you would come to know and see die, life is for living and living is living with those that you love.
I’ve been married twice, have shared many happy, loving moments and seen too much death too.
I could not envisage a thought that I was to remain healthy, whilst all those I came into contact with were to be subjected to the aging process and to see them all demise time and time again.
To be fair, the threads introduction states “Would you like to live for a really long time?” it doesn’t say for ever.
I’m certain I would not want to live for ever, just as the though of living for a long time equally does not appeal to me.

I think that the natural answer for anybody who 1) does not believe in an afterlife (or a good one) and 2) is given the option of living under circumstances similar to their prime time of life (or how s/he wishes it had been) has to be Yes. But the question becomes more interesting if you are talking about a very extreme length of time relative to normal human lifespan. My own opinion is that we would have to live in some kind of hypnotic reality, with repeated loss of identity, for extremely long lives to be made sense of internally. It would be about the only way to avoid boredom. Even if continual boredom is preferable to death, it is hardly compatible with a life one would have had in the prime of life or would have wanted to have had then. I don't see extremely long life for an individual as an imposition on others unless it is being denied to others. Both producing progeny and having them also do so, et cetera, AND living an extremely long life is, though, naturally. And a world in which everybody lived extremely long lives would have to be one pretty much lacking in childbearing and child-rearing. This activity would have to find some kind of substitute, bvecause it is such a natural and fulfilling part of life. But, still, it is better to do without most anything to avoid death as long as suffering is not intense and interminable.

I was not answering this in the situation considered by most everyone else, by assuming that people one knows would necessarily predecease oneself. I was answering as though the entire 'ship' were hypothetically lifted. The answer may reasonably differ if one were to be constantly faced with loved ones dying, but that is a kind of interminable suffering.

I can't believe how morbidly serious everyone is being about this question.

Would you like to see the next 1000 years unfold? YES!

Would you like to see the next 10,000 years unfold? YES!

A million? Ten million? Ten billion? The rest of the life of the universe? Dammit yes!

I’m not being morbid , was just putting my two pennies worth in.

When will you get to draw your pension when your wandering around on your own “Ten billion”years from now, EH and more importantly what you going to spend it on, gifts for your new found friends no doubt.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LivingForeverIsAwesome

"Hoo, for the most part, the same segment of society that doesn't have access to decent healthy care in the US is the same group that doesn't have the resources to relocate to a country that does"

Indeed. But they have guns in abundance, which is why I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been armed insurrection in the US sooner. The people of Tunisia, and Egypt, and Libya didn't stand for their treatment, and I don't know why the silent masses of poor but heavily armed US citizens stand for what they put up with either.

Actually, that's not true. I've been there a couple of times. Those people have ready access to cheap junk food and cheap petrol and television. Who needs things like health care and education when everyone, even the poor people, can buy Cheerios 24/7 from a "local" shop six miles away? It's a shame.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheManFromEarth

I think with centuries to get things right, there would be no fear of failure (in for example, career choice), so people would just keep trying and for the majority, would become very successful, wise and wonderful people. Natural selection would take care of those who didn't want to keep trying new stuff- they would probably kill themselves eventually. But I honestly cannot see how it would be possible to run out of new things to do, new places to go, new experiences to try.

And here's the thing; You would naturally become more employable and more successful in life. Experience and qualifications are the only barriers to any job (ok some innate intelligence is important and longevity couldn't help much there). With hundreds of years to educate yourself and gain work experience across sectors, people would just become super-employable or self-employable and generally make the world a better place.

Thee, just how optimistic is *that*

The thing that worries me about living forever, is that perhaps one day the rest of humanity would die out and I'd be left on a barren Earth with only Jack Harkness around. Scary.

I sometimes feel as if I have already lived for a very long time. But I am jealous of not being young enough still to see first hand what will happen in the next 50 years. I really want to know, otherwise it will seem to me like reading a very long book and missing the final chapters. So, given the choice, I would like to live for an awful lot longer.

"That situation isn't there in many civilised countries. That whole 'hospital bills' thing fills me with grim horror. It amazes me that people *choose* to live in a place where having a health problem or even an accident can doom you to poverty. I live in a country where if you need to go to hospital, you go to hospital, and your treatment is, to you, at the point of delivery, free."

Dear Hoovooloo, I was talking about stress as much as financial devastation. But I agree with you that civilized countries need to have adequate medical coverage so that health problems and accidents don't doom people to poverty. As for choosing to live in countries that provide this coverage, there wouldn't be room in Canada and Europe if 280 million people choose to move there from the U.S. But don't worry about suffering from overcrowding in your neighborhood. That's not likely to happen.

Cheerios is a rather bad example of bad food. It's one of the better choices on store shelves. Try Fruit Loops or Count Chocula or something for a better example, Hoovooloo.