What are some downsides to immortality that most don't think of?

Clocks [They/Them]@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 193 points –

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.
210

Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.

Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.

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)

Or not being able to play a board game, because it says "ages 9 - 99" on the box.

Worse still, no manual entry of the birth date, so it takes ages to scroll down and select the year.

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.

All the comments assume everybody else isn't also immortal. I forget the title and author but there's an old sci fi story (or novel?) about a future where everybody lives for centuries, and they've found that the brain only retains a certain amount of experience. They have long careers, get tired of doing whatever, re-educate and do something else, or even have multiple families they eventually forget about. A couple of the characters are surprised to find out they used to be married like a century earlier. To me that seems vaguely like reincarnation, and I kind of don't hate the idea. I really don't see any downside to that scenario, or even just going on forever.

People are focused on having regrets and negatives that last forever. But buck up li'l camper, you can learn to move on from stuff. And I say this as a dad whose daughter had cancer at age 10 (she survived). It was hell and I wouldn't want to live through that whole period again, but I don't consider it a reason not to want to live forever. The trick is to learn how to cope with these things and not let them outweigh the good experiences you have.

A scifi short story I read was set in a somewhat idyllic future.

Robots did everything. Everyone was given housing, food etc. Health was covered and people lived virtually forever. Nobody worked, and you could travel and do anything you wanted.

The most prized thing, that everyone was desperate for, was having an original thought.

Reminds me another story about an idyllic world where almost nobody worked and everything was provided. At one point a crew showed up to repair a house, and everybody gathered around to watch, marveling at their work clothes and tools. One guy yearned to use tools so he started making little craft items at home, and trading them to people for worthless little tiddly wink tokens they used for friendly bets on sports. Then his neighbors started doing the same thing and they got a little economy going, using the tokens as currency, until the government got wind of it and squashed the whole thing because commerce was illegal.

immortality doesn't guarantee perpetual health, you're alive, but so broken and sick you wish you could die, but you can't

Yeah this answer.

Imagine being immortal and you get stuck somewhere.

Like in a giant land slide.

Alive, but stuck in nutty putty cave for eternity

Not eternity, just a few billion years until earth is vaporized by the sun going supernova.
Then you're free - to drift through empty space forever.

My knees hurt already. I can't imagine living with constant aging forever until you're just a crumpled pile on the ground and then it still goes on.

"I have no mouth and I must scream" could end up being a plausible way to spend eternity.

Just listened to that recently. I could see this being a thing.

I also couldn't believe how graphic it was for how old it is.

This was the premise of the Greek myth of Tithonus

In short, Eos fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal prince, and begged Zeus to grant immortality to him (but forget to specify eternal youth and eternal health) so she was forced to watch him age until he shrunk into a raisin and was eaten

Basically all of the time you’re alive will be after the heat death of the universe, where you will be floating in space, with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience. Complete darkness, complete silence, in a complete vacuum, for eternity. Every other particle in the universe is forever out of your reach. You know that you will have nothing forever. You will never see, hear, or touch anything again, for all of time, which will never end. The trillions of years that preceded your float through the void fade into a distant memory as you outlive twice as much time, four times as much, a trillion-trillion times as much, and infinitely more.

I wrote a story that features such an entity and what was interesting about it to me was how even the slightest glimmer of life beyond their void would lead to an all-consuming desire to experience "living" again.

That old person feeling of no longer being with "it", and what's "it" now being strange and scary probably compounds over the centuries.

And this is why elder vampires are so vengeful.

I absolutely love the scene in "Interview with the Vampire" where Lestat is found hiding away in a room, distraught by all the creations of modern civilization.

yes, but old people can get over that and just stop giving a fuck and accept that they're weird now. it must be liberating.

I'm not sure about this. Ever heard the phrase "the past is a foreign country"? Living through time would be like immersing yourself into a new country every couple of decades. You could even lessen the blow (and would probably have to in order to remain anonymous) by frequently moving around the world. People tend to give newcomers a certain amount of slack and with the enormous amount of knowledge and experience you would gain over time, you can easily and quickly immerse yourself in any new environment and adapt to whatever is "it" now.

Life will pound you into an uncaring jaded disinterested unloveable husk of a being after too many emotional scars from losing loved ones, too much of seeing humanity make the same mistakes, and too much watching the knowledge you gained turned irrelevant.

Or, life will beat into you an uncanny ability to converse and relate to others, even if fleetingly.

Watch The Man from Earth.

But do not watch the sequel. It ruins the whole beautiful thing.

Yes and No. You could argue that True Love was the factor between them

You don't need immortality for that. Only a bad decade in your 20'.

I've watched the Man From Earth a couple times. Can only recommend.

However it doesn't fit your description. Oldman says that his memory is basically limited. Just like any mortal's. Only the brightest, most impactful memories are retained and the rest is a blur. If you are forty plus, you barely have memories of your childhood today, unless you have recorded them as soon as you could and rehashed them frequently. Same for him. As such, he is constantly evolving with the world mentally (and physically apparently).

The first paragraph is how I imagine he was during the first few centuries of his life, when all the scars were fresh and he had no idea how to deal with it. From the sounds of it he has been in ruling positions, and may have even enjoyed it briefly, before he adopted the humble mindset that he has now and tries to inspire humanity with small acts of compassion.

(I write "adopted" but I like to think that his actions actually reflect the hazy consciousness of humanity at the time, and so maybe he was molded into this persona over the years, as humanity grew somewhat kinder? Or he learned that the highest value one can have is not through wealth or power, but through compassion, i.e. something that all humans would eventually learn, a.k.a humanity does have value if given a chance).

I do wonder how his skills have decayed. Can he juggle? Can he do a backflip, or it's been too long and he no longer remembers how? How elastic is his brain exactly, and what precisely is there left of him in there that just isn't a hazy imprint of his circumstances over the last few centuries.

Imagine a neural net with limited nodes that has been subject to more training data than it can handle. Eventually it just learns to approximate all the data it has seen (overtrained) and isn't elastic enough to predict or react to new stimulus, and becomes set in its ways. Is this the case with John? Or does he summarize old historical data and leaves himself with enough elasticity to learn new things from the last X decades?

Juggling might be in the same vein as bicycling, or swimming. Learn it and it's really hard to unlearn it. Or maybe like tying your necktie or shoe laces. You learn it once with more focus and then periodically if recalled you retain it.

Anecdotal, but I've learned how to flip the balisong over a couple days in my late teens at the cost of lots of cuts on my hand and fingers (more dramatic than it sounds really) without a guide. I haven't had one in three decades, but I got my hands on one a year or two back and I was able to recall the motion and technique in only a couple tries without any cuts. Even today when I think about it, I can do the flick motion and my hand and wrist instinctively yearns for the weight of the cool steel.

Yeah I figure that he has some skills that he can just "snap" back into, and clearly he still has some good reflexes when it comes to aggressive situations. In that sense, I guess he can choose to retain the skills that he still finds valuable (e.g. hunting, teaching, kindness, child-rearing(?))

Knowing the answer to some of history's biggest mysteries, because you were there, but being unable to speak about them because, 1, that would expose you, 2, nobody would believe you either way because nobody expects you to be THAT old.

Also, it is already frustrating seeing kids being dismissive or denying events that you yourself have lived. Imagine being thousands of years old and seeing so much shit, but those events are rarely retold, forgotten, or straight up denied by conspiracies or future governments that won't admit their fault on it.

Knowing the answer to some of history's biggest mysteries, because you were there, but being unable to speak about them because, 1, that would expose you, 2, nobody would believe you either way because nobody expects you to be THAT old.

IDK, I feel like researching for supporting evidence of a theory you already know is correct would be much easier than researching to try to piece together a theory from no information. I think you could put the truth out there as credible and well-regarded theories, even if there are incorrect alternative theories that people also have to consider.

Knowing my memory I'd forget it all very soon after it happened and need a history book to help me recall any of it and the stuff left out or distorted would end up warping that recollection enough that it'd be so unreliable I may as well believe the historians. I can scarcely remember the previous day as it is.

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

The rest of humanity will eventually evolve into something you don't recognize and can never be part of.

My thought. In 500M years, you would be like the slime that crawled out of the oceans to the dominant life.

Neanderthals wanted to live forever and now we have bigfoot.

At some point, our sun will go supernova and you will end up drifting through space.
And all your life before that point will be less than a blink of an eye compared to the time that follows:
Trillions and trillions of years until the heat death of the universe.
And even that time will be less than the blink of an eye compared to the eternity afterwards, when you drift through a black void without any stars.

Doesn't this also take into account the universe never does a snap back into itself?

People are commenting 'fates worse than death' and 'being made into a labrat by the 1%', but really, if you have infinite time to just do stuff and you can't be killed -- And you don't somehow squirrel your way into a position of power then what are you even doing with your time and immortality, oomfie?

The loneliness part is also questionable. I know OP said it's overly done, but I also think it's just wrong. If you're an adult you've had people in your life die before. It sucks. You miss them. But then you move on. And you meet other people. You'll still go ":(" when you think about the person and such... But life goes on.

And that's just life. It doesn't get any worse if you extend it longer -- If anything it gets better. You might have lost your beloved today, but you have another dozen lifetimes to heal your wounds and meet someone else and fall in love again and (...)

So here's some lower-stakes, frustrating inconveniences of being immortal:

  • Your favourite fashion? It's not just out of fashion. It's so out of fashion it is now considered 'historical costuming'. You can no longer find any articles like it at all. Because the only people even trying to recreate the techniques are costuming nerds and theater people who always exaggerate stuff
  • You got a song stuck in your head. It is either from before recording was invented, or any recordings of it that existed are too old to be reliably listenable. You have a song stuck in your head.
  • You used to really enjoy a job you did. That entire career path is now obsolete. As per the first paragraph of my post, if you're immortal you have probably snuck your way into the upper echelons of society at some point during your infinite time... But like. You're bored. You loved being a Court Jester, now there are no Court Jesters.
  • Actually tedium just in general. Sooner or later you'll run out of new things to try, because you'll have done everything that even remotely caught your eye already. So what the fuck will you do with your time? You'll eventually just get depressed and not do anything.

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.

I think there is a clear difference between being immortal and being indestructible. I would think if your planet breaks apart you'd probably die with it being crushed or whatever. Also always unclear if being immortal means you don't need to breathe air.

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.

Does your consciousness evolve to Godhood, and you reach back beyond time and create the universe which birthed you?

The fantastic animated show, Pantheon explores that very idea at the very end of its second and final season.

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 10^12^ - 10^14^ years. After that, you're going to be waiting around for proton decay (10^36^ - 10^43^ 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?)

Having to constantly find new hiding places for the blood chalice, and keeping up with all the latest scanning methods so you can develop countermeasures. Your secret is never truly safe.

I would assume that over centuries or eons, you'd amass enough wealth and power to comfortably circumvent those sorts of things. If you're not running the world after living for 2000 years, then you're a ley-who-say-her.

Discovering the upper limits to what the human mind can retain and just constantly forgetting all the shit you used to find important.

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.

Once 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.

I think I'd have enough time to build a rocket....

Losing all of the skills you gain. No matter how good you get at something, after a few centuries you'll have lost your edge. You can also only practice so many things concurrently without giving something up. At some point, years down the line, you might try to ride a bike again and completely fail to do it, or try to sing and fail to hit all the notes that came easily before, or do gymnastics but the muscles you need are underused. It doesn't matter that you spent years mastering every skill, your abilities will degrade over time. You'll never really be able to feel sure about your own abilities except for whatever you've done most recently.

You don't know the expression, "it's like riding a bike"?

If you haven't ridden a bike in 20 years, go try it. But now 2000 years.

But the famous thing about learning to ride a bike is that you don't forget, even after decades. I've just looked it up to double-check and all I got was articles about why you never forget. It's like saying you'll forget how to walk up stairs or something.

Having to keep creating fake identities to prevent people and governments from finding out that you're immortal. That would be a massive pain in the butt, especially in a world where mass surveillance of the population is common.

Unless you have a lot of money to rely on I don't even know if it's reliably possible right now. You're basically in the same situation as an undocumented immigrant.

And the more times you do it, it's like playing a Russian roulette over and over again, you'll eventually be caught.

This would just be an occasional nuisance I reckon. You'd get pretty good at it. Just like all the other mundane things we have to do in our mortal lives.

What I meant is that it would get more and more difficult with more mass surveillance. Think about it, in 1950 it would take relatively little effort to fake an identity by inserting fake documents into a few physical cabinets. In 2000, cyber security was so weak that hacking to some government agency to modify their databases would be relatively simple. Now it would require advanced social engineering, and is extremely risky, and on top of that, they have a lot of mass surveillance.

If we assume everything will have a biometric database, you'll have to find ways to change your fingerprints and face every few decades.

Over a long enough duration, you are guaranteed to be caught.

(Edit: grammar)

Boredom after some period of time, you will have some everything there is 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.

Government Bureaucracy.

Renewing a driver's licence or passport. The individual looking at your application will see the date of birth and raise a red flag.

Without getting into the heat death of the universe and all that, I can think of something that happens much, much sooner. I'm only middle aged and I already don't like where the world is going. Can you imagine being centuries, or eons past the era you identified with? Can you imagine how insufferable young people and old people alike would seem when you have centuries worth of life experience and wisdom? Can you imagine a horde of little edge lords on the internet confidently yet incorrectly telling you about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when you were there when it was signed?

If you have epilepsy or Parkinson's or MS, you're just going to likely get worse forever.

Time gets shorter. I've already experienced this going from my teens to my twenties and into my thirties. I can remember entire weeks of my childhood. By the time I was in my mid twenties, days and weeks blurred together. Now it's like months go by and I don't even notice.

People talk about it more as they get older. Eventually when you enter your 80s and 90s, it's like entire decades can come and go. So imagine when you're immortal. If you've been alive for 100,000 years, that's longer than writing has been around. Entire civilizations will have come and went.

But from your perspective, it's all a blur. Entire genealogies were experienced, yet those people barely registered in your mind. If you had a favorite food, maybe the recipe disappears when you went four centuries without eating it. Jokes and fashions you're familiar with are completely alien to everyone else. Are you even capable of noticing when things change at that point?

There's also the question of how human are you? Everything and everyone would seem inconsequential. Would you even be able to socialize with others, or would you be completely sociopathic? That's if you don't hurt anyone and get tossed in a jail cell. What happens if you spend a few centuries in prison? Fight in multiple wars? Would you even feel the slightest discomfort when you kill someone?

If it's the realistic kind where you just don't age, the statistical certainty that you'll eventually die in an accident, or to war or murder. Your odds of getting to the heat death of the universe without making backups is pretty slim.

If it's the kind where you're indestructible, you're highly likely to encounter someone who tries to bury you alive in a subduction zone eventually, because humans are like that, and then you get to spend eternity slowly moving into the scorching mantle.

I would hope to get realllly good in avoding people who'd put me in a subduction zone 😭

It would be an obsession of mine, if I was cursed with the inability to die under any level of duress.

I'm not saying it's common, but punishment by live burial is a thing, and billions of years is an awful lot of human history.

At least I won't be a snail in a metal ball full of salt.

EDOT: Typo, snail <-> small

The death of the sun will then eventually set you free into the gravity well of the sun where you'll live burning hot untill heat death of the universe. What to do after that is anyone's guess

Well, depends. The Earth is actually right near the edge of where the sun will expand to, so there's a chance the scorched glob that used to be Earth will stay in orbit. Either way, it will still be hot for a while, and you're ultimately stuck in something solid - be it a dead planet or a white dwarf.

There is such a thing as merciful death; it would not be good to be cut off from it.

Nobody is answering the prompt lol. Everyone says all of this shit all the time.

You live long enough to never feel at home. Sure the loneliness sucks or whatever, but who do you root for at the football game?

Having to buy new shoes for the rest of eternity. You know how much work I've literally just put into finding shoes that 1) don't suck and 2) aren't made with slave labor? It's impossible. Drives me insane. I'd found my own shoe company once I become immortal rich just to fix that problem alone. Maybe other stuff too we'll get there

I suppose on that note: it seems like a really bad idea to become a public figure after a while. Like you obviously don't want your immortality found out. You have to have like illuminati power before that point though, but it could happen at any time. Like if something happens and you become a news item (i.e. helping someone out and a video goes viral online). Not saying everyone is all that close to going viral, but over a sufficiently long lifespan you're effectively rolling that dice a lot.

Upsides: You can create a cult where they believe in you as a god, because you will live for eternity.

You know how the curse of pet ownership is that you will almost certainly outlive them?

That, but with everyone you love

I would only accept this kind of deal with the Devil if I had the power to turn people I care about into fellow immortals, which comes with its own pitfalls I'm well aware of (imagine holding a grudge for thousands of years), but still.

That, but with everyone you love

Agreed. You will have to move state to state after three decades. New identity, new job, basically new "life" so as not to raise any suspicions.

You do not wanna spend the rest of the eternity being a state government "lab rat"

I believe there's a movie about this.

I had a really nice washing machine. Then it broke. The manufacturer was dissolved 25 years ago.

I had a really nice cast iron pan. Then it fractured. Modern cast iron pans aren't smooth.

I had a really nice car. Then a part broke. Replacement parts haven't been available for 50 years.

I had a really nice flip phone. It was made by Nokia so it still works. People think it's weird that I use a flip phone.

I had a really nice peace and quiet. Then someone invented ambulances. Now I cower in the corner of my bedroom hiding from manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.

I wonder if it might engender an advanced sort of solipsism and callousness towards other people. After thousands of years of the world coming and going around you while you remain, would you even recognize other people as real or meaningful?

A lot of ways to die are excruciatingly painful, but you die, so you don't live with the pain. If you end up in one of those situations and don't die (because you are immortal), I imagine the psychological impact of the pain without immediate release could be enough to completely break you, mentally.

Cross the wrong people and you end up not dead, but irrecoverable. Cement shoes, buried alive kind of stuff. Cross a different set of wrong people and you become a labrat. To avoid either scenario, you'll be in a constant state of "undocumented" or false-documented which will keep you in a pretty consistent state of poverty.

There's a book I heard about where the main character is immortal. Nevertheless at one point he pisses off some mafia dudes, and they nail him inside a barrel full of urine and throw him in the sea.

Just a random thought, but it would take a lot of work (or institutional access to some portable toilets) to be able to get enough piss to fill an entire barrel

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.

Just depression in general. I don't want to live one lifetime, let alone never being able to die.

If you're immortal in a body that isn't broken then that might be a different story, but you'd still grow to love people only to have to lose them and go through that pain over and over.

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.

Getting trapped under something for a few thousand years.

The longer, the worse it is, not because of how bored you'd be, but the knowledge that you'd be more and more out of touch if ever found.

If we're talking magical immortality, as in you can't die, at all. Then the fact that however much enjoyment and experiences you get while the universe still exist, it will be followed by an infinite stretch of nothing after the heat death of the universe.

Then again, you have billions of years to come up with a solution to this problem.

Then there are options:

  • You find a solution. Great!
  • You do not find a solution, but spend whatever time is left in the universe working on it, and then spend infinite time in darkness. Not great.

Kind of a gamble :D

If you're injured and you survive with the scarring from said injuries. Well, good luck because you're now going to wear those and wish you had died from them. If you're incapacitated or amputated? Gotta live with that for years and years.

Sounds like you have time to figure out alternatives. Like cyborgetics or using cloned parts.

And robocop was born

That was a horror cause he wasn't willing. If he was willing then it would be like cult mechanicus, ghost in the shell, or Adam smasher. Embrace the certainly of steel! Or course if your brain is damaged and you can't die that is a curse.

Cancer. So much goddamn cancer. It doesn't matter what kind of immortality you have, you WILL get cancer. Repeatedly. Over and over. Forever.

That really depends on the type of immortality you get. Brain upload to a cyborg body doesn't get cancer.

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People, corporations, and other entities would over time gather more data about you. There's always some kind of information footprint that you leave behind. And you'd stand out from other humans by the way you talk (i.e. using slang from 200 years ago, and speaking about historic stuff with details that the general public is not aware of) and other traits, which makes you traceable.

You'd procrastinate things for 100s of years, until at one point you're simply no longer able to do it. Wanted to domesticate a saber-tooth cat some day? Too bad, they're extinct now. Wanted to visit the baths in ancient Rome? Well, it is not the same Rome anymore, and all the baths' floors are cold.

Science fiction is going to age poorly. A lot of it is already hilariously dated. Look at most of Star Trek. They're flying at FTL speeds through space with artificial gravity, teleportation, lifelike androids, and replicator technology, but their screens absolutely suck. More and more of those inconsistencies are going to add up over the centuries and make things ridiculous after a while.

The number of new things that people enjoy dwindles with age. Just about everyone agrees that the music that was being made when they were teenagers is the epitome of the art. Are you going to be able to enjoy anything when you're 2563 years old?

The older you get, the faster time apparently moves. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, on some days, even "The year 2000!!" still feels like it should be the future to me. I can't imagine what even a few centuries would do to this phenomenon, let alone a millennium or megaannum (I had to look that word up.)

On the upside, presuming I'm the only immortal, I'll be the only person currently alive to see if they actually finish that performance of Organ^2^/ASLSP in Halberstadt.

Scifi aging poorly is honestly a plus. I love sci-fi that contains incidental retro-futurism. Super high tech but everyone uses tape cassettes and coin operated everything? Sign me up. High tech but for some reason the style choices are all 20 years old?. Yes please.

The disappointment of experience winning lifetime supply of something but that would eventually turn into a lie

Having potentially thousands of years of embarassing moments of social awkwardness to think about. And, over the aeons, being relieved when the people you know and love die because they won't remember the things you're so ashamed of.

Nobody:

Your brain: remember that time you said the wrong word in 1374?

Not being able to kill yourself.

Either "Boredom: After some time you have seen basically everything." or "Can't keep up: The world changes so fast, and I'm, stuck in a mindset I acquired in 1543".

And: Bureaucratic nightmare. "We have you on file as being born in 1924, but you don't really look like a centennial. Can I see your passport instead of that of your great-grandfather, please?"

I cannot connect to the boredom one at all. Are there books, video games, stone tablets, cool rocks to look at? Outta here with that boredom nonsense.

On one hand, you have eternity to come to grips with everything you've done. On the other hand, it might take eternity to come to grips with everything you've done.

Seeing all of your friends and family die, knowing you'll never stop missing them.

Having the perspective of centuries. Seeing society make the same mistakes over and over again because they forget, but you never do. It would drive me mad. Already does, considering I have the ability to, and have, read history. I just imagine living it over and over to be tedious.

You'll be perpetually behind the times. People tend to get set in their ways even by their 30s. You'll constantly lag behind the trends, language, and tastes of the younger generation...

If you were the first to be immortal, you may not have the best version of immortality and it may render you incompatible with better, future types of immortality. Like magical regeneration that prevents you from getting a personality upload to a cyberbrain that is a million times faster and smarter than the squishy biological brain.

If other people are also immortal, the awkwardness of all of them eventually becoming your exes

"Hey, we talked about this. You stick with the 52 states while I herd my broken heart down south"

Family meals that take 3 restaurants No retirement

Rephrase?

I think they're saying this:

Family meals would comprise of three restaurants worth of people since they're all immortal

Separately, you can never retire since you will never hit retirement age

If you're immortal, you get to see your family expand to the points that organizing a single family meal requires 3 restaurants to house everyone.

Since you (presumably, otherwise it's a shitty immortality) don't get old, you don't get to retire

Retirement is a function of money/wealth, not age.

If you're immortal, you'd (not you specifically, just whoever in general) have to be a complete tool to go through hundreds/thousands of years without generating at least enough wealth to retire at some point.

I don’t think you’d remember a break up from hundreds of years ago, let alone be upset about it.

Vampires are always like this in stories. I feel like reality might be more like ergo proxy. Where what is a relationship that tastes 10 or 200 years compared to thousands?

Probably, but it depends on the person. I stopped caring about some relationships that ended after a year, but I'm still thinking about others decades later.

1 more...

Either humanity gradually grows to despise you for your ancient morals

or they don't ever meaningfully surpass where we're at today.

Forgetfulness. Think how forgetful people get after having lived a normal lifespan, now go for a few thousand+ years and you’ve probably forgotten whole centuries of your life. This is actually the premise of a solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire, you have to cross out and forget memories as you progress through the game, just forgetting whole parts of your life.

There's a Doctor Who episode with that idea in it too, the Doctor saves a girl in Viking times but brings her back forever, and when he meets her in mediaeval times she has a whole library of books that are just her memories that she's written down over the years.

Btw if you were actually immortal, after a while you would just go into shock and enter a vegetative state from all the psychological stress.

One of my books features an immortal protagonist and I've as such thought about this quite a bit. More than the answers already provided here, what I found interesting as a writer was the balance I needed to find between making an immortal detached from mortal values while still being engaging to mortal readers.

Said as a pithy question, if you can outlive everyone's decisions and mistakes, what would it take to make you do anything at all?

If the ultra rich find you out, you can expect lab-rat life, at least until all modern systems collapse. Death is the only thing those suckers fear, because regardless of their net worth, it comes for all, even if late. They would do anything to find out your trick

Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is

I think you're undervaluing loneliness. Loneliness isn't just missing some one. Loneliness means there's no point in connecting with people because they will just die. Loneliness means that no one knows the depth of your condition because it isn't available to them. It means that as they change and face new obstacles, you'll be oblivious to all of that. You'll not only see them die, you'll see the vitality deep out of their pores as they age. All the while you'll never know what that means personally or feel that slow slipping.

Also, super weird that your example is a breakup and people dying is something not worth registering.

I kinda disagree with you. Why would it be different from now? We know that people will die.

I've had good friends pass away at different times, and it hurts but eventually, I move on.

My only exception, with the knowledge I have today, is that I wouldn't have any kids. That attachment is straight up reptilian brain and that would be way too hard. Otherwise, it would be okay.

It's the difference between knowing you'll grow and graduate together with your classmates vs knowing you're only going to see them for that one month before you move away.

I suppose it depends on the rules of this specfic immortality. As someone who lives with chronic pain that literally never feels physically comfortable in any position, immortality sounds like a cruel joke. Not that I'm suicidal or eager to die, but the fact that it would progressively get worse and worse without any sort of end is.... horrorific.

Does yer dick still work when you’re like 150?

Yes, in the oncoming capitalist hellscape, even white dudes named Richard will need to work

LoL investing and compounding! I literally have all the time in the world.

If it's just you being immortal, loss of all family, and friends, and loss of new friends, rinse repeat forever. Eventualdieyoull watch society collapse and regrow (possibly), and the planet will die. Immortality is forever after all. Then you're left alone on a deserted dead planet. Electronics you have will eventually break and fade away to time. The sun will grow and die off, and it'll burn because you're immortal but still stuck on a planet that'll get enveloped, eventually. Living forever would be terrible unless it was forever until you died of something physical, just not age and illness.

Everyone else in your life that isn't immoral (if you're the only one who is) dies eventually, so every time you make a friend or start a family, you do so knowing that you will have to watch them all die someday.

Wow you're a real smart one, nobody has ever thought about that. Read the Question in the title again.

All the people trying to dissect you for science.

outlasting humanity and all its trappings

Idk id be super depressed if I was able to experience my family, friends, family's children, and so on die.

As OP mentioned, a lot of replies focus on loss, that friends will inevitably die and objects will break........ we already face that reality with regular life! That's hardly a downside of immortality itself.

i think that experiencing all the things & people i care about would be the worst of it.

either that or seeing us repeat history over and over again as a society complete with all of the indifferent cruelties it entails and studying it, but ignoring it anyways

If everyone gets to be immortal, imagine never being able to get rid of dictators. Putin's 600th won election.

People in the future wouldn't be allowed to have children, Earth will be filled to the brim with very old people and very few new ideas.

No matter how old, how experienced, or how talented you are, there's always some Asian kid that's better than you.

You gain some kind of magical immortality ahead of everyone else... But then, a few hundred years later, everybody else gains some kind of technological immortality that's way cooler/better, that your magical immortality is incompatible with. And you get left behind as the slow, weak, dumb, magical, biologically immortal human while everyone else is zipping around at light speed with gigabrains and shiny chrome spaceship bodies with 20 additional senses.