What are some downsides to immortality that most don't think of?
What are some downsides to immortality that most don't think of?
I'll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.
Edit 1:
- Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.
Edit 2:
- Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you'll miss people and lose them.
Wage slaving never stops
Cancer. So much goddamn cancer. It doesn't matter what kind of immortality you have, you WILL get cancer. Repeatedly. Over and over. Forever.
That really depends on the type of immortality you get
The disappointment of experience winning lifetime supply of something but that would eventually turn into a lie
Family meals that take 3 restaurants No retirement
Rephrase?
I think they're saying this:
Family meals would comprise of three restaurants worth of people since they're all immortal
Separately, you can never retire since you will never hit retirement age
Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is
If we're talking magical immortality, as in you can't die, at all. Then the fact that however much enjoyment and experiences you get while the universe still exist, it will be followed by an infinite stretch of nothing after the heat death of the universe.
If you have epilepsy or Parkinson's or MS, you're just going to likely get worse forever.
i think that experiencing all the things & people i care about would be the worst of it.
either that or seeing us repeat history over and over again as a society complete with all of the indifferent cruelties it entails and studying it, but ignoring it anyways
At some point, our sun will go supernova and you will end up drifting through space.
And all your life before that point will be less than a blink of an eye compared to the time that follows:
Trillions and trillions of years until the heat death of the universe.
And even that time will be less than the blink of an eye compared to the eternity afterwards, when you drift through a black void without any stars.But can I take my Steam Deck with me?
Yes but you don’t have anything to make power to charge it :/
But no people around. So overall a win.
All the comments assume everybody else isn't also immortal. I forget the title and author but there's an old sci fi story (or novel?) about a future where everybody lives for centuries, and they've found that the brain only retains a certain amount of experience. They have long careers, get tired of doing whatever, re-educate and do something else, or even have multiple families they eventually forget about. A couple of the characters are surprised to find out they used to be married like a century earlier. To me that seems vaguely like reincarnation, and I kind of don't hate the idea. I really don't see any downside to that scenario, or even just going on forever.
People are focused on having regrets and negatives that last forever. But buck up li'l camper, you can learn to move on from stuff. And I say this as a dad whose daughter had cancer at age 10 (she survived). It was hell and I wouldn't want to live through that whole period again, but I don't consider it a reason not to want to live forever. The trick is to learn how to cope with these things and not let them outweigh the good experiences you have.
Is it: “the age of pussyfoot” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot
Swear I've read that. Anyone?
Isn't the movie Hancock a bit in this direction?
Everyone else in your life that isn't immoral (if you're the only one who is) dies eventually, so every time you make a friend or start a family, you do so knowing that you will have to watch them all die someday.
Wow you're a real smart one, nobody has ever thought about that. Read the Question in the title again.
Life will pound you into an uncaring jaded disinterested unloveable husk of a being after too many emotional scars from losing loved ones, too much of seeing humanity make the same mistakes, and too much watching the knowledge you gained turned irrelevant.
Or, life will beat into you an uncanny ability to converse and relate to others, even if fleetingly.
Watch The Man from Earth.
You don't need immortality for that. Only a bad decade in your 20'.
But do not watch the sequel. It ruins the whole beautiful thing.
Yes and No. You could argue that True Love was the factor between them
If you're injured and you survive with the scarring from said injuries. Well, good luck because you're now going to wear those and wish you had died from them. If you're incapacitated or amputated? Gotta live with that for years and years.
Discovering the upper limits to what the human mind can retain and just constantly forgetting all the shit you used to find important.
Basically all of the time you’re alive will be after the heat death of the universe, where you will be floating in space, with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience. Complete darkness, complete silence, in a complete vacuum, for eternity. Every other particle in the universe is forever out of your reach. You know that you will have nothing forever. You will never see, hear, or touch anything again, for all of time, which will never end. The trillions of years that preceded your float through the void fade into a distant memory as you outlive twice as much time, four times as much, a trillion-trillion times as much, and infinitely more.
Or you get to experience another big bang. That would be worth the wait.
Then you could call yourself Galactus
I wrote a story that features such an entity and what was interesting about it to me was how even the slightest glimmer of life beyond their void would lead to an all-consuming desire to experience "living" again.
So just my normal day?
LoL investing and compounding! I literally have all the time in the world.
Idk id be super depressed if I was able to experience my family, friends, family's children, and so on die.
I don’t think you’d remember a break up from hundreds of years ago, let alone be upset about it.
Vampires are always like this in stories. I feel like reality might be more like ergo proxy. Where what is a relationship that tastes 10 or 200 years compared to thousands?
On one hand, you have eternity to come to grips with everything you've done. On the other hand, it might take eternity to come to grips with everything you've done.
Seeing all of your friends and family die, knowing you'll never stop missing them.
Having the perspective of centuries. Seeing society make the same mistakes over and over again because they forget, but you never do. It would drive me mad. Already does, considering I have the ability to, and have, read history. I just imagine living it over and over to be tedious.
You know how the curse of pet ownership is that you will almost certainly outlive them?
That, but with everyone you love
That, but with everyone you love
Agreed. You will have to move state to state after three decades. New identity, new job, basically new "life" so as not to raise any suspicions.
You do not wanna spend the rest of the eternity being a state government "lab rat"
I believe there's a movie about this.
That old person feeling of no longer being with "it", and what's "it" now being strange and scary probably compounds over the centuries.
And this is why elder vampires are so vengeful.
I absolutely love the scene in "Interview with the Vampire" where Lestat is found hiding away in a room, distraught by all the creations of modern civilization.
Having to keep track of that evil snail.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5ipinn/you_and_a_super_intelligent_snail_both_get_1/
If other people are also immortal, the awkwardness of all of them eventually becoming your exes
"Hey, we talked about this. You stick with the 52 states while I herd my broken heart down south"
I'll say no one can truly know. Unless you are yourself immortal
secrets!
Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.
Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.
Depends on the type of immorality. Do you continue to age? If no, what age do you stop? Eventually the universe will die. So what happens to you then?
It might be fun for a while. Maybe even a long while. But that fun will be gone in an instant compared to the trillions and trillions of years you will float in a dark dying universe of nothing.
Nothing forever will feel oh so fast when you lose any frame of reference.
Presumably you will advance along with humanity though, or failing that, just figure out the transcendence thing yourself with so much time?
I don't think anyone would choose to stay 'meatbag human' for trillions of years.
Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don't die...nothing to do but float in space.
You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I'd find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn't last as long as you...and then you're just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.
I think there is a clear difference between being immortal and being indestructible. I would think if your planet breaks apart you'd probably die with it being crushed or whatever. Also always unclear if being immortal means you don't need to breathe air.
I think a good author makes it explicit.
Here's a sci-fi web novel I read years ago, where a couple of the characters end up being immortal in different ways, and in one case they show exactly how far that can go (in the context of the story) even without invoking heat death.
Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don't die...nothing to do but float in space.
LOL, that's just the beginning -- only on the order of 1012 - 1014 years. After that, you're going to be waiting around for proton decay (1036 - 1043 years), all the way up to 10^10^120 years* for the final heat death of the universe.
(* Anybody know how to get Lemmy markdown to do nested superscripts?)
10^10^10
Does your consciousness evolve to Godhood, and you reach back beyond time and create the universe which birthed you?
You join the Q Continuom.
The fantastic animated show, Pantheon explores that very idea at the very end of its second and final season.
Without getting into the heat death of the universe and all that, I can think of something that happens much, much sooner. I'm only middle aged and I already don't like where the world is going. Can you imagine being centuries, or eons past the era you identified with? Can you imagine how insufferable young people and old people alike would seem when you have centuries worth of life experience and wisdom? Can you imagine a horde of little edge lords on the internet confidently yet incorrectly telling you about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when you were there when it was signed?
immortality doesn't guarantee perpetual health, you're alive, but so broken and sick you wish you could die, but you can't
My knees hurt already. I can't imagine living with constant aging forever until you're just a crumpled pile on the ground and then it still goes on.
"I have no mouth and I must scream" could end up being a plausible way to spend eternity.
Just listened to that recently. I could see this being a thing.
I also couldn't believe how graphic it was for how old it is.
Brandon Sanderson wrote a novel about this.
Knowing the answer to some of history's biggest mysteries, because you were there, but being unable to speak about them because, 1, that would expose you, 2, nobody would believe you either way because nobody expects you to be THAT old.
Also, it is already frustrating seeing kids being dismissive or denying events that you yourself have lived. Imagine being thousands of years old and seeing so much shit, but those events are rarely retold, forgotten, or straight up denied by conspiracies or future governments that won't admit their fault on it.
Knowing my memory I'd forget it all very soon after it happened and need a history book to help me recall any of it and the stuff left out or distorted would end up warping that recollection enough that it'd be so unreliable I may as well believe the historians. I can scarcely remember the previous day as it is.
Being eaten by sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, penguins, and other jellyfish.
One of my books features an immortal protagonist and I've as such thought about this quite a bit. More than the answers already provided here, what I found interesting as a writer was the balance I needed to find between making an immortal detached from mortal values while still being engaging to mortal readers.
Said as a pithy question, if you can outlive everyone's decisions and mistakes, what would it take to make you do anything at all?
Having to constantly find new hiding places for the blood chalice, and keeping up with all the latest scanning methods so you can develop countermeasures. Your secret is never truly safe.
I would assume that over centuries or eons, you'd amass enough wealth and power to comfortably circumvent those sorts of things. If you're not running the world after living for 2000 years, then you're a ley-who-say-her.
Getting imprisoned for thousands of years unable to get out.
Life sentence and they start wondering why you haven't died yet.
The eventual heat death of the universe would be painful
But would you survive?
If you remember your parka
The Sun will eventually fry all life on Earth and boil off the water & atmosphere. Eventually the Sun will die out completely, leaving you on a cold, dark rock.
Once with no atmosphere and the sun going nova, there's a chance of the rock getting obliterated. With a nice boost you might fly off to another planet eventually. Might not be inhabited or even inhabitable, but hey.
I think I'd have enough time to build a rocket....
You’d have Musk-levels of wealth before long, so maybe.
As we get older, our perception of time speeds up. An immortal would easily lose track of time after just two human lifetimes, causing an immortal to suffer from dementia-like symptoms where they expect one date but find themselves habitually late. And since time doesn't mean the same thing as us to an immortal, they would eventually become disconnected from the world around them and be unable to reintegrate. They wouldn't be able to maintain friendships, relationships, mortgages, payments, etc. They would be surrounded by people but forever alone.
Government Bureaucracy.
Renewing a driver's licence or passport. The individual looking at your application will see the date of birth and raise a red flag.
Boredom after some period of time, you will have some everything there is to do.
You get to pursue all of the really niche crafts. Things like clock making and random complicated stuff like that.
I don't think one could ever be bored with enough curiosity, and the means to pursue it.
That's really a valid point.
Just depression in general. I don't want to live one lifetime, let alone never being able to die.
If you're immortal in a body that isn't broken then that might be a different story, but you'd still grow to love people only to have to lose them and go through that pain over and over.
Highlander does a good job at highlighting this.
Not being able to kill yourself.
Based on your question, you might dig the book “Boat of a Million Years.” The author put quite a bit of thought into just that.
Friends, family, and lovers dying before you.
Read this on the largest number every used in a mathematical proof.
Then ask yourself, if you think you could handle this number in microseconds let alone an eternity
Does yer dick still work when you’re like 150?
Yes, in the oncoming capitalist hellscape, even white dudes named Richard will need to work
being alive
Man, you took it too real too quick
Watching history repeat itself.