Would you want to live to be 1000 years old?

I just read a Popular Mechanics magazine (not sure which issue it was), but there was an article which entertained the idea of living to be 1000, and that the technology to do so was only about 50 years away with the advent of nanotech and the like.

I'd like to ignore the physiological and technological aspects of this for a bit to just entertain the question: if you could live to be 1000, waving good-bye to the affects of aging and thus basically being in your prime till year 3000, would you want to do it?

Personally, I'd be fond of the idea. It's a chance to learn more, do more, experience more. You could pursue a new life's passion every few decades, see the world, maybe even other ones, find a true love to share for centuries, watch the rise and fall of nations and empires, witness a huge swath of recorded human history, and do as much fun stuff as one can do in a thousand years.

At the same time, your demise will likely be of an accident, or from a war, or from a number of unpleasent ways to die other than dying warm in your bed. You may or may not get bored with the ENTIRE WORLD, as 1000 years is alot of time to see it all.

Thoughts?

 

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No.

 

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1000... wouldnt be enough.

-MT

 

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It's hard to say because the world in the future (20-30 years from now) is going to be so radically different from how the world is now. If the question were, "Would I want to live to be 1000 years old living the way I am now." I'd say definitely no.

But if life is greatly improved over the years, I may change my mind. If perhaps society is greatly improved, and finally it seems there is purpose and a reason to continue, living for a 1,000 years might be very desirable. It's possible.

So I can't say. I'm going to have to go through with the experiment. The notion that I may be able to live vastly longer than under natural conditions, sticks in the back of my mind all the time.

 

If each hundred years was like a current passing decade aging-wise, sure.

If the last nine hundred years is just going to be a progressively lesser version of what it is currently to be 100, what would be the point?

 

i'm assuming one doesn't age if one no longer has a limited lifespan. then again, if that's not the case, maybe by 500 years into it, one could take on an artificial body. that would be pretty intreaguing...

 

10,000? Not even 1,000. Let's first consider living over 100.

I think that reaching 100 is very bliss, but then unless you are taken care of by others, I doubt you'd ever even be able to reach 100! So even at that age your life has deteriorated so much that you need to depend on those around you for survival - for basic needs.

I'm not just talking about physical deterioration, but if you have lived an active life, you have 100 years of memories that you'd be struggling with to recall. This would creat a burden and a self-realized guilt-trip when trying to convey your experience to others. So as time goes on beyond this, you'd have to just realize that your mind eventually forgets all those past experiences - that your mind fades away. So how do you deal with that? You'd have to the accept the fact that you now live only day-by-day until your time comes.

 

How can anyone decide in advance what day is a good day to die until they reach that day. One day you may or may not reach that day.

Assuming of course that death does not reach you first.

 

I want to live to be a million, or until travelling by jetpack becomes commonplace - whichever comes first.

 

Those are my exact sentiments. It's quite possible that generation Y/X is going to see more change in terms of civilation and society than any other. It's a terribly exciting time to be alive!

 

Life is less about living history than it is about living family, and neighbors.

How long do you need to work your way through all of humanity to confirm you can no longer stand any of them?

Immortality is impossible because Nature already knows our dirty little secret.

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Depends.

Living that long could destroy ones sense of zest through a false sense of immortality (same as it has done in the Western world). Imagine a place 10x more mundane than your typical mid-sized suburban city. *shudders*

 

I want to live forever, even if it means most of life will be pain. support stem cell research and nanotechnology development.

 

Would you want to live to be 1000 years old?
Yes. We could probably find a way to travel through the universe by the end of the next milenium... And a lot of interesting things could happen till then...

There's a lot to do and be done......

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It would take some kick ass nanotech to extend our lives that long and keep us in our prime. Consider, it's not any one thing that kills us. It's every organ in our body failing with age. You see these eighty, ninety year old people. Some are fairly healthy, most don't really know what's going on. Heart failing, vision failing, hearing failing, skin cancer, prostate cancer....... If it's not one thing it's another.

But, assuming this nanotech could maintain me in prime physical and mental condition, fuck yeah!

In his book, Pandora's Star, Peter Hamilton proposed such a world with one extra. Everyone had a chip installed into their brains, sort of a back up. Should you experience accidental death, they'd clone you, upload your memories, and on you'd go..... They called it "body death". Someone who had not yet gone thru this procedure was called a "first lifer". Sort of like being called a punk kid. It was paradice, until the evil alien invasion......

 

Microchip in the brain as a backup? Again, would you want to remember all those past experiences? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Anyone who wants to a 1000, or even past 120, needs to visit a retirement community and talk with a few of the elderly who are in their 70's, 80's and possibly 90's. Almost all of them - maybe all - will tell you that they would not want to live this long.

 

thats cause their almost dead already. Most of them, if not all of them, will tell you that they want to be young again.

 

That idea was addressed. Many people would delete huge portions of their memories, keeping them on disc in case they needed them. One guy almost commited the perfect crime by killing his wife, then deleting his memory of it. Unfortunately, he reported her missing and ended up getting caught.

That's because they are in misery. Their bodies are literally falling apart, their minds are going. Give them an eighteen year old body, and I'll bet they'd change their minds real fast.

 

Oh my god, imagine your average 25 year old who actually has some hundred years worth of knowledge and experience. You wouldn't spend a few decades living life as well as you can and then go into decline, you could keep living until a probable accidental death. I'm pretty sure if one had that kind of a timeline to exist on, they would entertain many, many ideas of how to spend their lives. One wouldn't need to be overly concerned with a financial future, becuase you wouldn't expect to retire except perhaps several centuries into the future. I take that back: your retirement would be decades you take off to do... whatever. Then you get back on a job, or try a new career path, or whatever. There'd be such an unfathomable degree of freedom associated with living that long.

Of course, it could be painful to have that capacity if most of the people in the rest of the world died around you. One such long-life person would live through dozens of generations of people inhabiting the planet, have loved ones that die away relatively soon, maybe even have spouses that die from aging when the long-life person still has centuries of life ahead of him/her. I could see alot of social pain, therefore a tradeoff. Freedom vs. stability.

Then again, I don't know who would live to be 1000 without suffering from some kind of accident. I mean, one of the reasons men's average life span is shorter than women's is due to work accidents alone. Take into account any travel fatalities, wether or not the nanobots save one from abusive substances, diseases that have yet to evolve, etc.

There could also be the posibility that whatever nano-system is inhabiting such a person would have to be very adaptive, thus somewhat intelligent. What if this intelligence evolves into an AI that is incorperated and synergistic to the mind of the individual? What if the nano-system evolves to such intelligent extents as to allow the person to genetically evolve within his/her own lifetime? This means changing your biological functions and physical charachteristics on the fly, maybe even consciously. This is obviously a stretch, but just a thought.