Life is Change, and a Longer Life Means More Change
Change is coming, more of it in the next few decades than has taken place in the past few centuries: progress is accelerating. We are the species that builds and changes - but inside we still carry the evolved instincts of the ape, and he greatly dislikes change, no matter whether or not it is positive. How much of opposition to human life extension is predicated on fear of change?
"Wouldn't you eventually get bored?" Like clockwork, the question arises when I tell someone quixotically, arrogantly, that I plan on living forever. From the limited perspective of 20 years, even the prospect of living another six or seven decades in full color can be impossible to envisage. Hedging, I answer that assuming a world where radical life extension is possible, there will be no telling as to how different the human experience will be from what we know.Returning to the original question - in essence: "Why choose to live forever if forever really just means eternal boredom and senescence?" - it's apparent that living forever would mean something other than continuing as our current selves. Technology futurists are reasonably certain that at some point in the next century, we'll be enmeshed in networks of artificial intelligence, bodily modified beyond immediate recognition, and confronted with a new set of identity questions, societal challenges, and existential ambitions.
If I'm fortunate enough to make it to 150, I expect to find a world where caring about ethnic politics in the Middle East, wearing university colors, impressing girls, and investigating my ancestral origins won't be of much, if any, use. In other words, I expect that I'll need to invent a new self for a radically new world. More than anything I can imagine, it'll be a tall order. We have good evolutionary reason to love ourselves to death rather than contemplate being completely reconfigured. It's a daunting prospect to imagine, but it's anything but boring.
Link: http://www.thecrimson.com/column/dining-on-sacred-cow/article/2012/12/17/lipson-life-after-death/