I read it as him hoping that the first immortal person will be his senior (increasing the likelihood of immortality for himself), and not his junior (reducing that likelihood).
I didn't realize that we've made any progress towards extending the maximum human lifespan. It's probably a lot harder than we think. I guess we're at the point where Jules Verne was in the late 19th century; we like to dream big.
A civilisation where people can live arbitrarily long lives may have some interesting consequences. For one, cultural stagnation caused by people with entrenched beliefs sticking around. A lot of social progress and scientific development happens over the dead bodies of the old holdouts.
Then in the beginning at least there is the risk of extreme social inequality and a gerontocratic ruling class. Only the wealthy will have access to life extension and it may be the wealthy power structures that deny the technology to other people.
Finally, a civilisation made up of long-lived individuals may become extremely risk-averse, with possible consequences of reduced experimentation, creativity and rebellion. They may also turn out a little like what Larry Niven makes of the Puppeteer race: powerful, cowardly creatures, highly ritualistic, paternalistic and soft-totalitarian.
There's a short story of a woman who was a bit of a luddite, but late in life her children and grandchildren convinced her to adopt "upgrades" here and there, until she became almost entirely virtual. She retained much of her humanity, but was able to be in many places at once, "inhabiting" purpose-built bodies, and building up a certain reputation and popularity. Eventually humanity's probes make contact with aliens, and she's chosen to be humanity's ambassador.
I wish I could recall the name of that story, but it always painted a pleasant picture of immortality to me. Hopefully someone here recognizes it and can share it with us.
They aren't speaking literally. From my point of view, a human who can live, say, 10,000 years is as good as 'immortal'. Sure its literally wrong, but I heard webster now defines 'literally' as 'figuratively' so I'm ready to give up on pedantry.
I read a lot of Niven's short stories as a child, but I don't remember that title. Did he illustrate some of the problems we'd have with long life spans?
Not really. It was more of an exploration into different perspectives on search for life-extending technologies by aliens with different life spans. I suggest reading it.
Even if we had a "permanent" energy source, we have only a finite number of atoms. So one day we would actually also be guaranteed to cycle our thoughts.
Assuming we could keep the human body alive forever, I don't think we could handle it a person would eventually go insane. Also it would get incredibly boring at some point and I imagine the suicide rate would be somewhere near a 100% or at minimum people would allow themselves to die.
I definitely don't want to live forever.
So my answer is No, and no one will ever be immortal.
What is boring about it? Is living 40 years more boring than living 30? What about living 1000 years instead of living 100 years? At what point does it become boring?
It's hard for humans to conceptualize eternity, so don't think of it in those terms. If I could live in my current body for 1000 years, I'd still never get around to most of my backlog of things I'd like to do.
Boredom is mostly caused by lack of purpose IMO. As long as there is something to learn, something to explore, something to achieve, something new or pleasurable to experience, boredom is the last thing I'd worry about.
Boredom is a common argument against immortality that is completely derived from pure speculation because nobody has ever lived long enough to experience that feeling of suicidal boredom.
I spend great portions of my life being bored. Never has my boredom ever interfered or had any connection with my desire to live or be immortal. It's pure bullshit to even imply there is a connection.
I would find it hard to believe there's a single human in all of history that would be bored if they found themselves living in present day. Especially now that we're in the Information Age, more and more boredom is becoming a conscious choice for anyone with an internet connection, rather than an inescapable circumstance.
I was bounding this conclusion on the possibility that someone could be alive until the end of time, that could be a million or a billion years . I think under those constraints it's entirely plausible that life would lose all meaning.
It really depends on what sort of definition you have for immortality. I would say in this case it would be the ability to live until you choose for yourself not to live any longer, not necessarily that you can never die.
I disagree that it would drive people insane, though, excepting the increasing chances for mental illness to set in as we age which I would assume would be solved as a part of the implementation of immortality as a concept. Our perception of time changes as we age, the passing of a single year takes on less and less meaning each time, becomes less of a milestone and more of just another regular occurrence. Depending on how we go about achieving immortality, time may take on dimensions we can't currently understand, and we may even have the option to choose not to perceive its passing at all.
I don't see how boredom could possibly be a problem. There are so many things I'd find interesting to do, but which are not important enough to warrant the time investment for me - like earn phds in all the sciences, learn a multitude of languages, read and re-read all of the classic literature (in the original language), learn how to paint, to sculpt, to create music. I could spend centuries trying to (re)prove all of the historically important math theoroms. I could spend centuries learning as many martial arts as I could. A few centuries playing chess, a few centuries playing go.
And those are all things I could do without the internet nor virtual reality.
It's hard for many people. There's plenty of theories out there that state that much of what we do and much of what we by are motivated by our fear of death and our desire to ignore it.
The best way to face death, however, is head on. Look at yourself in the mirror and firmly remind yourself you will die. Find some way to remind yourself of this every day. St. Thomas Aquinas is said to have kept a skull on his desk to remind himself of his morality. At first, you will feel many emotions, fear, anxiety, depression, anger. You may rush around for a bit, trying to get things done. But the more you think about your death, the more you meditate on it, eventually, things will settle down, and you'll ask yourself the right questions: "What do I want to be remembered for? What do I want to achieve before I die?"
I've made this comment elsewhere in this thread, but if that's the case please get in touch with me. My email is my username @ gmail.com (or see my user profile).