Would you want to gain Imortality?

Yusss. And stay young forevaaa! *burns roses and makes a deal with the devil* ;-;

I would, but only on the condition that I can also enhance my memory capacity and intelligence. Otherwise, I would forget so much that I'd learnt or experienced, that there'd be no point living forever. However, I believe the technological capability to do so is no more than 100 years away (probably sooner). So I suppose the answer is yes from a selfish perspective.

Looking beyond my own lifespan though, the availability of immortality to all humans (and by extension perhaps all creatures), would lead to extreme poverty due to global overcrowding; unless strict measures for birth control were put in place. Women may eventually forgo pregnancy altogether, favouring artificially grown babies instead, with vastly reduced risk to their own, and baby's health during development and birth.

Moreover those children are likely to have edited DNA, with emerging technologies such as CRISPR revolutionising gene editing. We will be able to eliminate birth defects and hereditary disease, and select desired physical and mental traits for our children before they're even fertilized embryos. These children will naturally live longer due to their genetics, and will probably be much healthier, more intelligent and physically attractive.

Neural interfaces will remove the need for physical interaction with the (much faster and improved) internet (or IoT), and also other people. That is not to say we couldn't physically interact; but it will be akin to writing letters to communicate in the present day. Not many people see the point. This will allow us to store out memories externally to ourselves, giving us pseudo-limitless memory capacity and the ability to enhance our own intelligence by off-loading some thought processing to external (or internal) hardware.

The ethical dilemma that arises is; given the technical capability, should it be a human right to extend life indefinitely? We are already doing that, with advances in medicine, access to healthcare, shorter working days, and concerns over people's health and safety. The average lifespan of a person has been increasing globally for centuries now, at one time it was no less than 30 years old. In some countries it is over 80 at present. It is estimated that the average human born in developed countries in the year 2000 will live to be 100 years old.

As aforementioned, this comes at the cost of an overpopulated planet; even if we do start colonising the moon, and other planets, we will still be limited by the number of habitable planets and our ability to traverse the solar system. And even within the next few centuries it is not likely that we'll be an interstellar species, unless we discover new physics.

So inevitably, most humans will end up not being able to have children, unless somebody dies for reasons not related to aging. When that person dies, a 'gap' might open up for a new child to be born in the global population; which will likely be capped at some number, lets say 10 billion. Couples, if indeed monogamous relationships persist past this point (a whole discussion in itself), will probably be on a waiting list style system, where they are waiting for enough people to die from accidents for them to legally be allowed to have a baby.

Which ethical position takes priority? A person's right to have a child? Or person's right to keep living? There will have to be a choice made, or some sort of compromise like an 'age cap' where once you reach a certain number of years old, you must euthanize yourself to make space for more generations. Of course, despite what ethical code becomes law, enforcing that law will be extremely difficult. People who are determined to have children, or determined to continue living will doubtable be willing to break the law to do so. Just take the era of China's one-child policy as a very mild form of controlling population. Wealth played a huge role in determining who got to 'break the rules'; those who could afford the fines could have as many children as they pleased, while the poor could not. Similar forms of corruption are likely going to happen on a global scale.

I have not, in my writing, considered the impact of super-intelligence (artificial intelligence that exceeds a natural human being's). It could be argued that it will take over the running of most of society's systems (economics, industry, research, government, justice) and may render all human work/jobs unnecessary. This is because robots/AI will simply be better at those jobs than we are. Although as previously discussed, neural interfacing will allow us to be as intelligent as our machines. So it is possible we will be part human, part machine; an idea known as transhumanism. In that we will still be relevant, because we will [i]be[/i] super-intelligent ourselves. We may even copy our consciousness into machines, so a different version of ourselves may live on in a digital form.

I can see this leading to revolutions in global secularism, and a vastly accelerated increase in atheism. The ability for every human to understand all scientific knowledge and access it at will, will surely lead to this. Obviously, 'work' therefore may also become a choice. It might be more wise to say we'll all be pursuing our own interests (whatever those might be for super-intelligent beings).

Humanity will in essence, no longer be in a recognisable form as it is today. It will be like comparing chimpanzees with present day humans. The next few generations, could well be the first to gain immortality. The impact of technological progress may make money redundant, as the discovery and transfer of useful information become the currency. New humans may only be born if somebody accidently or voluntarily dies. Ultimately, I do not think any one person will be able to decide if immortal humans should replace the option to have new generations; it will be either imposed through dictatorial rule, or democratic vote. So even if you wish to live forever, your desire may not align with the possibility.

That's my opinion. I could go on and into far more detail, but I tried to keep it brief. 😄

We have no choice but to eternally live. So it's best to become interested in making our actions count.

Dear lord no.
Life's hard enough if you get to struggle with the 3 score and ten let alone eternity !!!

Meh. What I'd want is to live the normal 80 years or whatever, but have the body of a 23 year old (my current age) for the rest of the time.

I'm already immortal.

only if I could live as a hermit

Yes