Poll of the Day > Immortal (in preferred state of your life) or able to travel the universe?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Nt
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Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.


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immortality, I like the idea that I can waste as much time as I want without having to worry about it being wasted.
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Immortality easy.
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Probably immortality, although the idea of a lone immortal is frightening. You'd eventually go crazy and imagine a world around you, maybe with some videogame board with a polling forum that never features enough polls.

Granted, that also depends on the kind of immortality. If you still hunger, thirst, can feel pain, it could be hell in some settings.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.

Not really. The latter is strictly a benefit without any possible drawback. You could explore as little as you want.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.

Because they're foreign to what we're used to? You say they're horrible but they can be equally as blissful
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mastermix3000 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.

Because they're foreign to what were used to? You saw they're horrible but they can be equally as blissful

In fairness, immortality can have a *lot* of potential drawbacks. It's not guaranteed to be a great experience.
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Immortality - Do you still suffer injury? If so there are a lot of ways the body can be damaged that would leave you begging for a death that will never come. Even if you're extremely careful, eternity is a long time for your luck to hold out.

Do you still age? Any gradual deterioration given enough time will leave you blind, deaf, bedridden and eventually deprive you of your mental faculties.

Is history worth surviving? Better hope humans develop space travel before they get killed in a war or some natural disaster. Do you have enough to take your mind off the passage of time while you wait around for another species to evolve far enough to do it? You wouldn't want to still be here when the sun burns out in 5 billion years.

Able to travel universe without fear of death - This implies immortality as long as you are traveling. There may not be anywhere worthwhile to go. You also might die the instant you reach your destination.

Neither one sounds that promising.
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Immortality, but only if it's the Wolverine type where I can jump into a volcano.
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wwinterj25 posted...

Immortality easy.

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Travel, hands down.. seeing everything there is, instantaneously; with zero side effects.
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Melon_Master posted...

Travel, hands down.. seeing everything there is instantly, with zero side effects.

Who said it was instantaneous? The description just says you don't have to fear death. It could involve some sort of stasis where you aren't aware of the passage of time but it would still take 100 years to get to the next star system.
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Immortality. Give me enough time and I could learn how to travel the universe out of sheer boredom.

BUT

if it's instant travel, anywhere, and the only death i'd have to worry about is a natural one (my oxygen needs were taken care of, etc)

then yeah. Instant travel. because living forever would suck if anything happened to humans, you'd be waiting a looooong time for some company.
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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Melon_Master posted...

Travel, hands down.. seeing everything there is instantly, with zero side effects.

Who said it was instantaneous? The description just says you don't have to fear death. It could involve some sort of stasis where you aren't aware of the passage of time but it would still take 100 years to get to the next star system.

If I'm not immortal in the second choice, it would have to be instantaneous travel. Otherwise, I would die of old age before arriving at the first destination.
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Melon_Master posted...

I would die of old age before arriving at the first destination.

That's where the stasis comes in.
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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Melon_Master posted...

I would die of old age before arriving at the first destination.

That's where the stasis comes in.

Who said there's stasis? You're adding realism to a hypothetical where immortality is an option lol.
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The universe would be pointless to explore if you weren't immortal anyway.
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Melon_Master posted...

Who said there's stasis?

I did. Try to keep up.
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Zeus posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.

Not really. The latter is strictly a benefit without any possible drawback. You could explore as little as you want.

Yes, which is why I said the other is pointless.

Either you're exploring the vast infinite expanse of space and probably going insane in the process, or you have this incredible power that you never actually use and it's kind of a huge waste.



mastermix3000 posted...

Because they're foreign to what we're used to?

Because our minds are literally not wired to conceive of them in any realistic way.

We can talk about them in abstract terms, but the fact remains that we can't even imagine what it would be like to experience either in a meaningful visceral sense. Issues of scale alone dwarf what our puny minds are capable of processing in the immediate moment. Imagine the most tiny, insignificant feeling you've ever had in your life, a time when you felt almost agoraphobic at the world stretching out around you with no seeming end. Now multiply that by numbers so high we don't even have words for them.

Humans get freaked out just being in the middle of the ocean, where the nearest other person is only a thousand miles away (or less). You can intellectualize what it would be like to be thousands of light-years away from home, but you'd never really be able to really internalize that immensity.

Being able to instantaneously teleport around the entire universe to specific pre-set landmarks and see spectacular views would be neat, but generally speaking, 99.9999999999999999999999999~% of the universe would appear to you as a black, featureless void. Your odds of accidentally happening on even one magnificent sight would be low, and your odds of turning it into a constant cosmic tourist trip would pretty much be nil.

And on the flip-side of the coin, immortality sounds great until you realize what "eternity" really means. In the short term you're watching everyone you've ever known and loved die, then you're watching everyone new you come to know or love die, and so on. In the longer term, you're watching the Earth slowly become incapable of supporting life and the entire human race inevitably dying, until the sun itself dies, at which point you're pretty much left standing on a cinder or floating in the void of space for billions of years until the universe itself dies (or falls into endless stasis). And that's not even getting into the odds that you'll get trapped somewhere at some point, and spend the rest of eternity buried alive or trapped in a tiny dark room.

Immortality always sounds awesome because most of us are afraid of death to some degree, but no one ever really thinks about all of the ramifications of living forever (especially if you don't have some means of ending your own life at will).


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Neither. One is a terrifying nightmare and the other is pointless.

Eternity and infinity are both horrible concepts for the human mind.

This

I'd go with the space travel because with immortality you'd outlive all the people and things you love and care for, as well as you'd outlast the planet itself. Not to mention how you'd be vulnerable to things like extreme pain or torture for eternity, for example drowning or being kept buried, or going back to the planet thing, drifting in space forever.
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immortalityisnotinvulnerabilityohmygod

the space travel, though, is the better choice. in some sense, this question is "live longer in ignorance, or live shorter with vast amounts of new knowledge". exploring the universe grants new knowledge on a scale we can't imagine or predict.
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I would absolutely hate immortality. That leaves me with the other option.
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Sahuagin posted...

immortalityisnotinvulnerabilityohmygod

The word is often used in that context, though. And in absence of specific clarification otherwise, it's just as valid to assume it means "cannot die" as much as merely "do not age".


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The word is often used in that context, though.

where? immortal beings can almost always be killed. (unless they are specifically immortal *and* invulnerable or nigh-invulnerable.)

the thing is, as I'm fond of pointing out, immortality only removes biological aging; it does not remove temporal aging.

that is, even if you're immortal, you will still accumulate injuries, your teeth will still decay, you will still get scars, your organs will still fail, your blood will still accumulate junk, eating poorly will still result in poor health, you can still lose your sight or hearing, you can still be paralyzed or brain damaged, you can still get cancer (in fact cancer is more or less *caused by* immortality), you can still lose or cripple limbs, and so on and so on.
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