We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendants Could Be Immortal

Re:We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendant... by Junk_Collector on Friday May 17, 2019 @10:02AM (#19939680)

There is also the Niven take on cheap immortality where people just become incredibly BORED with life after a few hundreds years, reinventions, and "mid-life" crises. Inevitably they turn to increasingly extreme pursuits as they age and run out of lifestyles to try and an average life expectancy develops organically.

It's interesting to note that he also wrote some about the style of immortality described by Alastair Reynold's and the cheap immortality of his "Known Universe/Ringworld" novels is after that time period in which longevity has become cheap, commoditized, and easily affordable by all.

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Re:We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendant... by thechao on Friday May 17, 2019 @11:43AM (#19940668)

There was a reddit conversation years ago where some actuaries discussed all-causes mortality for an immortal. If you factored out death by natural causes (cancer, heart, ...) you still ended up with a mean time to death of ~3100 years. That is, all of the possible accidents in life pile up & kill you. For instance, live long enough and you will be struck by lightning — the survivability of which is very low!

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Re:We Are Especially Unfortunate to Die, When Our Descendant... by Fjolsvith on Saturday May 18, 2019 @09:44PM (#19950867)

Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. Main character lives over 3000 years and is kept from suiciding by his descendants. He grew bored and tired with life. The love story at the center of the book made me cry.

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