If you had a choice between Immortality and Love, which would you choose?
Live one lifetime with the one I love...immortality would be heartbreaking
What would be the optimal age to become immortal?
Well, many people would say somewhere between 18–25. While this might be a fun age group to be for the rest of time, it would be difficult to be taken seriously by people in their 40’s and older. And let’s face it, after 50 years of being 20 years old, the average 20-year old will seem totally obnoxious to you!Also… if a 20-year old immortal were actually 1,000 years old and very wise, an older person would take one look at them and mistakenly judge them as being young, dumb, and full of… well, you know what. And it wouldn’t really be their fault when 20-year olds are always young and dumb in comparison.You’d want to be old enough that you can appear responsible, but at the same time young enough to physically handle mostly anything and adjust easily to new situations in the future. Young enough to appear young, but old enough to appear mature and responsible.I’d say somewhere between 32 and 37. Basically in the range of 35 years old, +/- 2 or 3 years. As a bonus, you’re at a nice intermediate age where you can date people in their 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s! Lots of choices for the rest of eternity!
Would you rather be functionally immortal or completely immortal?
Functionally and completely immoral.Oh, wait a moment, I misread the question.Shame, because first thoughts were of loads of possibilities and fun.A license to thrill, you might say.Anyway -Functionally immortal, for all the good reasons given by the answerers already. Then, whenever I’ve had enough I can choose the most spectacular outside force to run into, to wipe me out.:)
If you could choose between immortality and death, which would you choose?
On the condition that my body will not age further than it already has, sure, sign me up for immortality.I will lose everyone I know and care about, eventually…..I will keep accumulating experiences, like a an ever thickening book, gradually older memories may become irretrievable, I may turn into a ‘different’ person than I was a century before….I would probably be expelled from any community I tried to blend into once they realized there was something really ‘off’ about me.Culture, social mores and fashions would keep changing, it would be interesting to see myself adapt, or try to adapt….I could be a historical curiosity to many academicians and lay people, might actually make a comfortable living off it…or I might be on the run all the time.Having a savings account or any kind of financial security would be difficult, I would probably have to learn survival skills to get by…As time goes by, my species would evolve, growing ever more stranger and alien to my sensibilities, if my species on the whole became smarter, I would be in trouble…Forming any kind meaningful relationship would be painful, knowing that the other person has an expiration date…On the other hand, I would be able to see the Earth itself change and species evolve, flourish and dieoff, watch Australia move north and gradually collide with Indo-China to create a new mountain chain that will dwarf the Himalayas, witness the Mediterranean ocean dry out into salt desert and refill again, and again, and again, witness Antarctica become green again, see the Amazon basin turn into grassland and then desert,….The years would go by faster and faster, I am 31 now and even the last 10 years feel like a blur…a time would come when labels like past and present would cease to have any meaning, because I would be effectively insane.Sounds absolutely terrifying.Sign me up!Time to rewatch The Man From Earth…
What wisdom does gilgamesh gain after his quest for immortality?
Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain. The pain in losing what he desired so much, and he began to accept who he truly was . Gilgamesh is a fine example of a ' bad ' hero with a rather selfish quest to become immortal. His mission was never fulfilled, and he learned that he was only human. Similarly we, too, must accept our mortality and our flaws but that doesn't stop us having goals and dreams in life.
Why did organisms choose reproduction instead of immortality?
Well, the answer is to survive the changing climate.Let's go back in time, to the time when the organisms arose…When the first organisms took birth they had only one option of death, death by non natural means, death by external factors like temperature, pressure etc. i.e, the change in climate. So, organisms evolved to adjust to their surroundings…The problem with the immortality is that they can't change their habitat, food with the changing environment. Remember the early earth was entirely different from what it is now, there were fluctuations in climate. So, the death of the organisms was very certain. This is because, they were unable to change the genetic material, to suit their habitat. Hence, they adopted a new and fascinating way of survival, that is reproduction. This is the way through which they can modify their DNA and the effect will be on their physical structure.This helped the organisms to adopt to their surroundings. But, remember it's very slow and gradual. Now, they have found a new way through which they can alter their body plan and sometimes even their environment.An organism once born can not change its building block in its life time, but it can be done through its descendants. What happens is, when the climate changes, since the organism is unable adopt to the changed climate will fall ill, is vulnerable to diseases and in turn their life time is shortened. So, the sexual reproduction is helping to overcome this.For example, consider mosquitoes, if a generation of mosquitoes born vulnerable to some particular mosquito repellent, they die due to the toxicity of it. But over time, they change their gene sequence in such a way that their descendants will be born tolerant to the same repellent. This increased chance of their survival and continual of the species.And this was possible only through change in genetic material and that change is brought about by reproduction. This is one of the wonders of nature…I hope it's clear.Question everything…!! : )
If you had to choose between immortality or time travel which would you take?
This is easy - Time Travel. You'd have to be nuts to pick immortality unless you want to go insane.OK, immortality may sound cool but that means living for eternity. That means potentially living inside the sun after it swallows the Earth. It means living in a universe for trillions and trillions of years after every human is dead and every star is burned out. It means having to upgrade your iPhone more times than you can possibly count.If you pick immortality then you have to bet that mankind will eventually re-engineer the earth/sun and/or eventually find other homes in the galaxy and universe so you could go too. Otherwise, you will be living on a desolate planet devoid of life before the sun swallows it for an unfathomable amount of time. And before that happens you will go insane from watching reruns of the Kardashians on whatever media machine mankind or its AI overlords last created before they went extinct.If mankind can figure out how to avert this fate then certainly it will figure out how to enable humans to live for millions and millions of years, barring an accident or the inability to re-upload your mind after one. With a time machine you could interfere with history until this outcome happens - if that's what you really want. A time machine would give you the knowledge and tools to succeed at any time in history as well as the technology to keep yourself alive and healthy as well with your loved ones. If you’re immortal, you have to watch your loved ones die over and over again for eternity.With a time machine and the future tech you obtained you could marry a beautiful woman in any time period and keep her young and beautiful too. Or you could have a whole harem in another time period. If you get bored after 2, 20, or 200 years of marriage you can just ditch the woman and find another woman in another place and time. And if you decide you want to go back to her you can and she’d never know you’d been gone unless you were dumb enough to tell her. Or you could tell her the time machine broke.In the end the Time Machine gives you the most options to live long and live well. Most importantly, you will still have the option to die and eventually you will want to – or at least evolve into something beyond human – like the rest of humanity will before its own extinction.