SpoilerLiving forever seems cool. It is, that's why we want it, but it probably won't live up to our expectations because seriously, SERIOUSLY.
We expect WAY too much. We expect to have no more diseases, to stay eternally the same (whether we are looking at age, fertility, looks, general body shape does not matter), to remember everything, to be above pain.
Sorry to shatter your dreams, but becoming immortal is not becoming a god.

However.
To be able to stay alive our major body functions must remain intact.
Therefore our heart, digestion system, lungs, liver, kidneys, brain, etc. must always remain in reasonable shape.
This means, that we need not include eternal youth in our prerequisites for accepting eternal life, because our body will never be able to grow older than about 200 years at the very most.

Provided we are clearly-minded most of the time and write things down before we forget them, demention is not a HUGE issue either.
And when we are working on things, we have infinite time to complete them, which is great. No deadline, no stress.

OK, it might be boring you say. I could not disagree more. If our brain happens to age to about 200 we won't remember much. Everything will cause joy, because everytime it's the first time. Or maybe the second time. This can be illustrated by real-life examples from my experience:
I read a lot of books. I usually end up re-reading a large number of them because I like them and I am out of things to read. Everytime I reread a book I notice new things that I either did not notice before or forgot. Some books I have not read in a long time, and I remember almost nothing.
I can say, "yes, I did read it", but I could as well not have read it.

There will always be new inventions. We will never be done.
There's always new tech to look forward to, and everything will bring new joy or grief to your life.
Joy in itself is great, and can be increased by supporting the cause. Grief is not so great but will keep you motivated for fighting the cause, and it is a source of hope, which can be an even better feeling than joy.

You say people living forever might be locked away in a lab or nuthouse.
Yup, that's inevitable. AS LONG AS YOU SHOUT IT OUT.
If you live your life like a normal person, switching identity and relocating yourself, faking your death, whatever, it will go unnoticed a lot of the time.
If it does not go unnoticed, well, it can hardly go noticed EVERY time you try it, and you got loads of it. This also will be a source of adventure and energy.

Then there are our dreams.
Like mentioned above, immortality does not answer to our dreams.
However, immortality gives us the time to work on them, and eventually, if it's not COMPLETELY unrealistic, we will make them come true.

Oh, and entropy. There's that.
If the complete universe dies and runs out of energy, there will still be you.
Since you are truly immortal, not even the finished processes of entropy and all the leaked away energy will be able to kill you. Since you must stay alive, there's always energy in you, so entropic processes will not ever fully finish.
You tapping from an unlimited amount of energy (at a certain rate, not superhuman) is NEEDED to stay alive in such a situation, so solely with your time and strength, you will inevitably (infinite time, remember) find a solution to bring energy back to the universe and have it be reborn. Maybe through two particles, exactly the ones you need, colliding? No one can tell.
Of course, it'd get cold after a while, but there's this new universe to work for. And once you do finish recreating the universe, can you not consider yourself a god?

If all this is not worth the grief and pain, I might as well be dead now, because it's called LIFE. Joy, hope, energy and andventure don't come for free.
You gotta WORK for them, and immortality buys you the time for that. Maybe too much time, time that you cannot actually spend, but there will always be things to live for.

And there's the arument that we would become cavemen in a world filled with hyper-intelligent creatures.
Sorry, not going to happen. In our current state, we are either stagnant or devolving. We keep the weak alive, and this is great, but it will not help us in the long run, because weak genes will be spread amongst humanity as an entirety, because people with those genes will not die (like in nature).
For a healthy evolving race, the weak must die. That's not happening here, so unless humanity finds a way to discourage the "weaker" to reproduce, WE will be the more intelligent people after, say, five thousand years.

"Life won't have a meaning".
If life doesn't have a meaning without death, life does not have a meaning at all. This is because most people do their things without thinking of death continuously. They might as well be immortal for all they care at that moment they decide to do things.
And who says you have to be dead to have your life have meaning? There are things like "virtual deaths". One of my friends died a "virtual death" to me a while ago, since he was moving out of town. At the very moment I last saw him before he moved, he died for me. I see him enough times now, but at that very moment, he died. If that is not death, I do not know what IS, and if his life didn't get any meaning right then, no ones lives ever will get any meaning.
There are many ways to die a "virtual death". And all of them feel the same as a normal death, at that very moment you need to say goodbye. The only difference between death and "virtual death" is the feeling of hope that comes with the latter. The lack of hope is not required when giving lives a meaning.

And also the example of the "2000 year old jerks" does not apply here. Want to know why? Because if they behave like that, they did not live forever, no. They've been transported to this time without having a chance to do, see, or understand anything that happened in the meantime. If you were to follow most developments in society properly, you would be able to adjust. If we're talking about time-travel, yes, this applies. If we're talking about immortality it doesn't.

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(04-04-2013, 12:11 PM)MrGuy Wrote: »That argument really doesn't hold water based on IQ scores of the past several years (IQ is a flawed metric, but the fact that scores are going up certainly implies that things aren't being entirely fucked). Not to mention that morality and knowledge is ever-evolving and the 200-year-old brain you just mentioned will be a lot more resistant to change and gaining new information. Eventually your knowledge and opinions are going to be outdated simply by virtue of the fact that you can't keep up.

As for the "follow most developments in society and adjust" thing, most people who are eighty, let alone two hundred, are kind of shitty at that. I do think a fair portion of this community is liberal and open-minded but I feel like it's a lot more complex than you make it out to be.

Also that argument's kind of eugenics-y and creepy.

Today we live on the most free Earth of all time. A free and liberal environment require a free and liberal mindset. Everyone is capable of that if they try hard enough. I feel like you are stereotyping older people as incapable of having this mindset, rather than, what I believe, that they simply choose not to.

By accepting immortality, one should also accept that things move on and that one should adjust. People are very well capable of adjusting: My grandma is 75 and she works with computers the way anyone else does.

The IQ gains. Heheh. I'm actually not that surprised.
Education today focuses on increasing intellectualism, and we are working together to also bring this to 3rd world countries. Education as it was focused on preparing children for reality, and work rather than being intelligent, and there was a lot of difference and apartheid back then.
I'm not saying I'm not glad that IQ displays a global avarage increase, I'm simply saying it is misleading.

Although I must say that educating people in an intellectual way also has them expect they get intellectual jobs. Currently there are too few people working in less-intellectual jobs, so the actual development is questionable.

About the eugenics. Yeah, I'm a supporter of the idea in the way I explained it. You can find it creepy if you want, but this also means that I myself should be discouraged to reproduce. I have certain weaker genes that caused me to have autism and possibly gluten intolerance.
If there were a large global group of people who also supported the idea, I would go ahead and don't have children, but just doing it myself without any supporters doesn't make much of a point.

Also notice how I use "discourage" rather than "disallow". Disallowing is bound to be rebelled upon and takes away free decision, which I am a supporter of. Discouraging people is bound to give some result, and raises global awareness, while it still respects everyone's opinions and free choice on the matter.

Also, eugenics is a far more humane solution to this problem than simply killing off all the people who are in any way weaker or less intelligent, which would have happened in nature.

SpoilerRegarding the matter of reproduction, I'm of the rare opinion that everyone should stop reproducing until all of the orphans are adopted.
The Earth has enough humans, and not enough parents for the children already here. I don't understand how a couple can be like: Oh hey there's a whole ton of babies that don't have parents in this town that are going to grow up in shitty conditions and probably have shitty lives and never feel loved and feel so alone, but yeah let's just ignore that whole thing and make a new baby!
I can never actually say that to any parents though ofcourse ahahaha /oh gob I hope I haven't offended any parents here

As for hard, brainless work that is so in demand for more laborers: I would rather not society depend on that, and that people that would work in horrible conditions for low pay and die early because of some mining-related disease or whatever would instead run into the wild and live off hunting and a vegetable garden. I don't think that kind of massive system of suffering should be an accepted part of humanity, and we should fight it with everything we have. Hopefully automate/robotize things as much as possible on that end. We're making good progress on that in some places.

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(04-04-2013, 04:18 PM)Mythee Wrote: »Regarding the matter of reproduction, I'm of the rare opinion that everyone should stop reproducing until all of the orphans are adopted.
The Earth has enough humans, and not enough parents for the children already here. I don't understand how a couple can be like: Oh hey there's a whole ton of babies that don't have parents in this town that are going to grow up in shitty conditions and probably have shitty lives and never feel loved and feel so alone, but yeah let's just ignore that whole thing and make a new baby!

I have to say I agree with you here. It would not be a bad idea at all.

(04-04-2013, 04:18 PM)Mythee Wrote: »As for hard, brainless work that is so in demand for more laborers: I would rather not society depend on that, and that people that would work in horrible conditions for low pay and die early because of some mining-related disease or whatever would instead run into the wild and live off hunting and a vegetable garden. I don't think that kind of massive system of suffering should be an accepted part of humanity, and we should fight it with everything we have. Hopefully automate/robotize things as much as possible on that end. We're making good progress on that in some places.

As a matter of fact society does depend on it. Not that it is necessarily brainless, underpaid and unsafe. Those things are being worked on, although I would like to see they are being worked on harder.
But don't tell be being a carpenter or plasterer is brainless.
Then there are some things that simply need human control.
Some things are hard or dangerous when there is no human controlling it.
Something else to think about: some people like low-educated jobs. Why it is wrong to let them have those jobs? If they enjoy working as a baker, a telephone sanitizer, etc.
As for the underpaid portion, we should internationally make sure companies cannot hire workers from other countries cheaper than a lowest legal price in the country they are going to work in. Something like that. This is not really worked on and I would like to see that change.

SpoilerWhile only a few chapters deal with immortality, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a great read and I highly encourage everyone who thinks Harry Potter as a scientist is an awesome idea to give it a read. It's pretty long though.