I’ll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.
Edit 1:
- Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.
Edit 2:
- Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you’ll miss people and lose them.
Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I’d find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn’t last as long as you…and then you’re just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.
Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
LOL, that’s just the beginning – only on the order of 1012 - 1014 years. After that, you’re going to be waiting around for proton decay (1036 - 1043 years), all the way up to 10^10^120 years* for the final heat death of the universe.
(* Anybody know how to get Lemmy markdown to do nested superscripts?)
10^10^10
I think a good author makes it explicit.
Here’s a sci-fi web novel I read years ago, where a couple of the characters end up being immortal in different ways, and in one case they show exactly how far that can go (in the context of the story) even without invoking heat death.
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You join the Q Continuom.
How much more annoying the (much) younger generations would be.
Yeah, they always gloss over how you’d have a very noticeable accent within a couple hundred years, and would straight up be using a second language within a thousand.
As if peoples accents and vocabularies don’t grow and change over time?
Accents are at least somewhat fixed. Haven’t you noticed old people sound a certain way? Ditto for grammar - hedging with “like” isn’t something I’d ever hear an elder do where I live, and the “because noun” shortening sounds straight up incorrect to them, rather than just cute.
Vocabulary can grow, though. Sometimes it doesn’t, but that seems to be mostly down to old people not wanting to learn. Unfortunately new vocabulary is relatively minor in the evolution of most languages - a Russian word and an English word will often descend directly from the same 3000BC proto-Indo-European root, although they might now have drifted to mean different things.
The rest of humanity will eventually evolve into something you don’t recognize and can never be part of.
Neanderthals wanted to live forever and now we have bigfoot.
My thought. In 500M years, you would be like the slime that crawled out of the oceans to the dominant life.
being alive
Boredom after some period of time, you will have some everything there is to do.
Not if you constantly invent new things to do
You get to pursue all of the really niche crafts. Things like clock making and random complicated stuff like that.
I don’t think one could ever be bored with enough curiosity, and the means to pursue it.
That’s really a valid point.
Depends on the type of immorality. Do you continue to age? If no, what age do you stop? Eventually the universe will die. So what happens to you then?
It might be fun for a while. Maybe even a long while. But that fun will be gone in an instant compared to the trillions and trillions of years you will float in a dark dying universe of nothing.
Presumably you will advance along with humanity though, or failing that, just figure out the transcendence thing yourself with so much time?
I don’t think anyone would choose to stay ‘meatbag human’ for trillions of years.
Nothing forever will feel oh so fast when you lose any frame of reference.
Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.
I once entered an extremely far back yet technically plausible birthday there and steam just wouldn’t accept it. I remember thinking “what if Kane Tanaka wanted to check out this steam game, you just wouldn’t let her?” (RIP by the way, she was the last oldest person whose name I learned. They change too often)
Worse still, no manual entry of the birth date, so it takes ages to scroll down and select the year.
Or not being able to play a board game, because it says “ages 9 - 99” on the box.
Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.
The eventual heat death of the universe would be painful
But would you survive?
The Sun will eventually fry all life on Earth and boil off the water & atmosphere. Eventually the Sun will die out completely, leaving you on a cold, dark rock.
Heat death of the universe though 🥶🥶🥶
I think I’d have enough time to build a rocket…
You’d have Musk-levels of wealth before long, so maybe.
With no atmosphere and the sun going nova, there’s a chance of the rock getting obliterated. With a nice boost you might fly off to another planet eventually. Might not be inhabited or even inhabitable, but hey.
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Yes, in the oncoming capitalist hellscape, even white dudes named Richard will need to work
As we get older, our perception of time speeds up. An immortal would easily lose track of time after just two human lifetimes, causing an immortal to suffer from dementia-like symptoms where they expect one date but find themselves habitually late. And since time doesn’t mean the same thing as us to an immortal, they would eventually become disconnected from the world around them and be unable to reintegrate. They wouldn’t be able to maintain friendships, relationships, mortgages, payments, etc. They would be surrounded by people but forever alone.
Friends, family, and lovers dying before you.
Based on your question, you might dig the book “Boat of a Million Years.” The author put quite a bit of thought into just that.
