Immortality. Would you want it?

[Foghorn]

Immortality.....I want it.......just so long as it doesn't take forever.

[reknaw]

Who'd want to outlive his dick?

[Emerald Green]

No I wouldn't want it. I'm sure Fianna Fail would like it though.

[Malboury]

Sign me up, asap. Digitized mind, Robot body or plain old clinical immortality; whatever it takes. You can always decide to end it all later; wouldn't count on doing that myself though As long as some form of society survives, there will always be more to see from the eternally creative human race. (Though by the time immortality is on the books, 'human' might be an outdated term). And if that's not enough, there's always space

[meriwether2]

I doubt it, although I wouldn't mind living to, say, 150 or so. I suspect the accumulation of boredom and sadness would make life unbearable by the time you were much older.

How so? Life's not boring.

I see immortality like that line from Matthew McConaughy's character in Dazed and Confused

[paraphrase] [Looking at the schoolgirls] 'I get a year older, they stay the same age'.

[irish_shrink]

Couldn't help myself, sorry.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Zux512oN4"]YouTube - Fama - I'm gonna live forever[/ame]

[Lao-Tse]

I doubt it, although I wouldn't mind living to, say, 150 or so. I suspect the accumulation of boredom and sadness would make life unbearable by the time you were much older.

As Swift said, "Everyone wants a long life, but no-one wants to
be old".

I remember reading that George Bernard Shaw wrote at the
end of "Back To Methuselah" that all humans should become immortal.
Karel Capek wrote a book rebutting Shaw's claim, whose name
escapes me.

[Sailor]

I think it was Woody Allen who said "Eternity is very long, especially towards the end"

[Panopticon]

It depends what they can do for the quality of old age. I don't want to live 70 years of 2009-quality senescence.

Immortality would probably lead to large increases in population. Robin Hanson notes that this means large social changes, including the threat of losing a natural world independent of humanity, and eventually the end of rising living standards:
Overcoming Bias : Nature is Doomed
Overcoming Bias : Limits To Growth

[west'sawake]

Not on Earth, it would be dystopic.

Best literature on this, probably interview with a vampire.

Life would suck because we would become life suckers. Death is natural, eternal life is supernatural, as embodied souls we are destined for immortality, not on earth though.