The False Horror of Immortality

Would you become immortal? CORRECTION: in Altered Carbon, everyone has stacks, but only the meths can afford lots of new cloned bodies regularly. Minor detail, but still. If you want to see more of my work like this, your support on Patreon is so so important www.patreon.com/hellofutureme thank you if you already do! Stay nerdy! ~ Tim

I really like that sandman episode where he gives a normal person Immortality to see if it would be a curse and that person just really likes being immortal.

This reminds me of a quote from a dnd game I was in: “Wishing for a prolonged life isn’t wrong or evil. Isn’t it normal to want to extend your time so that you can enjoy the happiness, love, and experiences life can give you? If it wasn’t, why do children wish to stay awake a bit longer, or when it’s time to leave a festival, they look at your with doe eyes, asking for, ‘just a little longer?’ Where the evil lies, is in what are you willing to do in order to prolong it. That. That is what makes it evil.”

This kinda misses the point, but Frankenstein's failure wasn't his pursuit of resurrecting the dead, but the fact that he then proceeded to abandon his creation / "Child" as soon as it came to be alive.

In defense of those alchemists, mercury is extremely cool and if I didn't know better I would absolutely mess around with it 😂

"I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust...I forgot to ask that they be years of youth." Ovid: Metamorphoses

I don't want to live forever, but... it would be nice to live longer. That "300 years and then reconsider" vial sounds pretty damn awesome to me

The most depressing thing is that my Grandmother passed away the very morning that this video was posted. Complications from Dementia. The section about "The Dying of the Light" left me in tears, because that's what she experienced these last couple years of her life... I couldn't bring myself to watch this video until last night, and then I finished it this morning.

"Speak for yourself sir, I plan to live forever." - William T. Riker

I think that ultimately people don't want to live forever, they want to choose when to go. Unforced by disease or circumstance.

As a young, disabled person (in my 20s, physical mobility issues, and cognitive impairments) this take on immortality and youth and the fear of disability is so interesting to me. It does kind of feel like people are uncomfortable around me or deny my experience as a young, disabled person due to their fears being reflected from my mere existence. It really does feel like I'm trapped in the body of an elderly person and I often see people my age going out to parties or going on hikes or other "normal" activities and I feel a bit jealous and mourn my own life because it feels like mine is already over. (I do want to add that in my opinion, because there's a subconscious, and sometimes conscious fear that non-disabled people have of becoming disabled themselves one day, I think there's some cognitive dissonance that leads to ableism and a rejection of accessibility resources. Being disabled sucks, but it would suck a whole lot less if we could accept that disability is often just a part of life.) I will say though, I often get lost in fiction; video games, books, anime, movies, etc. and it feels like I've lived hundreds of lifetimes by doing this and in some way it's my form of not quite immortality, but vicariously living so many lifetimes through the eyes of so many people I feel like it in a sense. Great video, as always!

When I am old and grey, just before I start to lose myself, I want to make a last trip into the woods and leave this world peacefully, that's how I want to go

I'm a scientist whose life is dedicated to curing aging (and all diseases). I saw the title—"The False Horror of Immortality"—and expected to hate-watch/monitor more opportunistic, ignorant, shallow transhumanism-bashing. It's actually extraordinarily thoughtful, well-researched, asks the right questions, and doesn't come to any sort of immediately debunkable idiot conclusion. THIS IS GREAT, in other words, and worth watching—and it packs an emotional punch that you won't expect if you think it' going to be anti-anti-aging. This is a complex, heartfelt masterpiece of evangelism for curing aging (almost certainly not the creator's intention, but still praiseworthy!) Those of us working to defeat aging aren't driven by some vast empty megalomaniacal all-grabbiness. It is enough to visit a cancer ward (aging is the major risk factor for cancer by far), or to see your grandfather decaying.

I've always found it ironic how we demonize both immortality and suicide. if we had the opportunity to live forever, but choose not to, is that not the same as suicide? The lack of meaning these stories portray in immortality, the feeling that life is no longer worth living, is the same as what suicidal people often feel.

I really liked the approach in The Good Place (spoilers): you go through a period of self-improvement tailored just for you, and then you reach The Good Place, an afterlife where you can see everyone, do everything, and stay as long as you like. There's a door that you can choose to walk through to end your existence (or move on to whatever is next), but you don't need to go through it until you're ready. You can choose when to walk through the door, and choose to do everything you want before that time. I'd really like an "immortality" like that, I think.

When I got sober I was shocked at how much time was actually in a day. I had to find some way to fill that time or I would destroy myself. I took up various forms of art and now I wish I had eternity to continue creating beautiful things.

I really liked that Sandman quote about having a thousand "tiny deaths" before realizing that you have nothing left that's keeping you alive. Not alive in the physical sense, but spiritually. You'll get to a point when you want to die and that's ok. It's not always about losing the will to live over sadness or despair, sometimes it's just because you've reached a point of content with yourself and the world around you. There's nothing keeping you tied to the physical world any longer and you can freely leave in peace. At least that's the way I like to interpret it.

I think too often we personalise immortality. What would I do, what would I make, what I achieve. What if YOU didn't? Isn't there joy enough in guaranteeing that you'll be there to see what we all do tomorrow? Would I be immortal if I could? Certainly. But not to write a Hamlet or climb an everest. I'd do it because tomorrow things will happen, and I'd quite like to see what they are.

I’m here for the background goat ambiance

This was like a long-form poem. Beautiful, but also quietly devastating.