Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born?

[scarmig]

I'm hoping the first person to achieve immortality was born at least 29 years ago.

[ffn]

If you read between the lines of this guy's comment, you can infer he is implying that he will get to be the first immortal person.

[jmorrow977]

Same here. My email is in my account profile, please get in touch. Cooperation improves our odds.

[melling]

I didn't realize that we've made any progress towards extending the maximum human lifespan. It's probably a lot harder than we think. I guess we're at the point where Jules Verne was in the late 19th century; we like to dream big.

[iwwr]

A civilisation where people can live arbitrarily long lives may have some interesting consequences. For one, cultural stagnation caused by people with entrenched beliefs sticking around. A lot of social progress and scientific development happens over the dead bodies of the old holdouts.

Then in the beginning at least there is the risk of extreme social inequality and a gerontocratic ruling class. Only the wealthy will have access to life extension and it may be the wealthy power structures that deny the technology to other people.

Finally, a civilisation made up of long-lived individuals may become extremely risk-averse, with possible consequences of reduced experimentation, creativity and rebellion. They may also turn out a little like what Larry Niven makes of the Puppeteer race: powerful, cowardly creatures, highly ritualistic, paternalistic and soft-totalitarian.

[flycaliguy]

As far as experimentation goes... I think I'd probably go gay for a bit after 300 years. Might as well right?

[crimsonalucard]

There was this movie starring justin timberlake that depicted a world like this. The plot was generic, but the setting was unique.

[Zikes]

There's a short story of a woman who was a bit of a luddite, but late in life her children and grandchildren convinced her to adopt "upgrades" here and there, until she became almost entirely virtual. She retained much of her humanity, but was able to be in many places at once, "inhabiting" purpose-built bodies, and building up a certain reputation and popularity. Eventually humanity's probes make contact with aliens, and she's chosen to be humanity's ambassador.

I wish I could recall the name of that story, but it always painted a pleasant picture of immortality to me. Hopefully someone here recognizes it and can share it with us.

[moyix]

I believe that's "The Gentle Seduction", by Marc Stiegler: http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html

[iwwr]

If you liked that one, you may also enjoy 'Accelerando' by Charlie Stross.

It's available for free at Stross' blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

[mhurron]

You won't really know until they don't die.

[gallamine]

It's kind of like being a cancer "survivor" - XKCD explained it well: https://xkcd.com/931/

[walterbell]

Unless they undergo cosmetic surgery and adopt a new identity.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

The second law of thermodynamics answers this question with a definitive "no".

[jshevek]

They aren't speaking literally. From my point of view, a human who can live, say, 10,000 years is as good as 'immortal'. Sure its literally wrong, but I heard webster now defines 'literally' as 'figuratively' so I'm ready to give up on pedantry.

[Zikes]

Immortal for certain definitions of forever.

[darkmighty]

Even if we had a "permanent" energy source, we have only a finite number of atoms. So one day we would actually also be guaranteed to cycle our thoughts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theore...

So for me true immortality is not only about unbounded time but also unbounded size, neither of which seems achievable.

For all purposes of regular human condition though, an approximation is good enough.

[crimsonalucard]

Maybe not forever, but eons.

[tenpoundhammer]

Assuming we could keep the human body alive forever, I don't think we could handle it a person would eventually go insane. Also it would get incredibly boring at some point and I imagine the suicide rate would be somewhere near a 100% or at minimum people would allow themselves to die.

I definitely don't want to live forever.

So my answer is No, and no one will ever be immortal.

[pyrrhotech]

What is boring about it? Is living 40 years more boring than living 30? What about living 1000 years instead of living 100 years? At what point does it become boring?

It's hard for humans to conceptualize eternity, so don't think of it in those terms. If I could live in my current body for 1000 years, I'd still never get around to most of my backlog of things I'd like to do.

Boredom is mostly caused by lack of purpose IMO. As long as there is something to learn, something to explore, something to achieve, something new or pleasurable to experience, boredom is the last thing I'd worry about.

[Zikes]

It really depends on what sort of definition you have for immortality. I would say in this case it would be the ability to live until you choose for yourself not to live any longer, not necessarily that you can never die.

I disagree that it would drive people insane, though, excepting the increasing chances for mental illness to set in as we age which I would assume would be solved as a part of the implementation of immortality as a concept. Our perception of time changes as we age, the passing of a single year takes on less and less meaning each time, becomes less of a milestone and more of just another regular occurrence. Depending on how we go about achieving immortality, time may take on dimensions we can't currently understand, and we may even have the option to choose not to perceive its passing at all.

[jshevek]

I don't see how boredom could possibly be a problem. There are so many things I'd find interesting to do, but which are not important enough to warrant the time investment for me - like earn phds in all the sciences, learn a multitude of languages, read and re-read all of the classic literature (in the original language), learn how to paint, to sculpt, to create music. I could spend centuries trying to (re)prove all of the historically important math theoroms. I could spend centuries learning as many martial arts as I could. A few centuries playing chess, a few centuries playing go.

And those are all things I could do without the internet nor virtual reality.

[mattmanser]

Siri, what's my favourite memory?

Hi Matt, going on the Mars Safari is your favourite memory.

Siri, store Mars Safari memories, wipe from my soft drive and book a ticket on a Mars safari.

Never bored again.

[crimsonalucard]

I'd rather be bored and alive than dead. Heck a good chunk of my life is already spent being bored.

I'd do unspeakable things for immortality.

[nathan_f77]

Hey, I'll let you die if you want to.

I would personally like to live for as long as possible. I have a lot to live for.

[cymetica]

This must be done for real space travel that leads to truly inhabiting other "earths".

[pvaldes]

Yes of course, is an afro-american woman and her name is Henrietta Lacks