Immortality - Is it worth it?

[defanatic]

If other things still affect you, just zone out on drugs as much as you can. If it gets "that bad".

[PeZook]

I always wanted to take a starship with the proper supplies and do a jaunt around our galaxy. No hurry: stay in a system for a hundred years, have your swarms of self-replicating robots leave strange and mysterious artifacts for other people to find, maybe mess with any civilization I discover or build Record everything. Move on.

A million years should be enough to complete a jaunt across the Milky Way and come back to see how Earth and humanity has changed in the meantime. If humanity died out, I could spend a thousand years to restart it, or ten thousand to craft the Moon by hand into an eternal monument to a dead civilization. If it survived and spread, hey, let's figure out what makes them tick now, share my discoveries, make myself famous before leaving for Andromeda.

When you arrive there, say hello to a newly discovered species and watch their paradigm shift totally after you tell them you come from the galaxy next door and yeah BTW here's some data on fifty million stars for your astronomers. If that ceases to amuse you, hop over to a dead system and start doing mad science for a million years or so. Start a cult, goading people to come and meet you.

What if you meet someone more advanced than you? Why, then the sky's the limit! Learn learn and then learn some more. Gather power. Expand your libraries.Who knows what wonders they might know?

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, the whole article that SM93 decided to steal his arguments from is a farce- it's a joke, and a poorly thought out one, not a serious intellectual argument. This affects the original post. Arguments (1), (3), and (6) are based on the idea that you are the only immortal person on the world, which is ridiculous. There's no plausible way for us to develop immortality that would affect only one person, resulting in that person outliving everyone they know and being endlessly pursued by people who want to copy the technique.

(4) and (5) are based on blind assertions about how the brain works; (4) in particular is totally ridiculous. It assumes that old people's sense that years go by more quickly than they used to is some kind of tangible reality that will keep going until your perception of the universe is occuring at a rate of, oh, one second perceived per minute elapsed, or something crazy like that.

(2) is an unexamined assumption- the writer can't imagine what he'd be doing in a hundred years, therefore he'd be bored, which is ridiculous. Old people are no more or less likely to be bored than anyone else, except insofar as physical infirmity forces them to be inactive. If you're immortal that won't happen, so what's the problem? It's very obvious that this article was written by someone young, and someone with little or no experience of the aging process's effects on others beyond the usual brainless stereotyping and juvenile "haha look at senile old Grandpa" bullshit.

(7) is based on a silly idea of how "immortality" might work- the idea that being immune to aging confers Superman-like invulnerability to being dropped into a pit full of lava, or no longer needing to breathe, or other ridiculous things like that. That's not immortality, at least not in any vaguely plausible sense that belongs in a discussion of the real universe.

Argument (8) isn't an argument at all; it's a bizarre attempt by SM93 to keep up the pretense that other, better arguments which he wasn't smart enough to think of exist.
______________

In short, his entire argument is ridiculous, and he should stop assuming Cracked is a useful source for well thought out intellectual discussion of complicated issues when any dumbass can write a Cracked article and as long as they tell enough jokes in the right tone of voice it'll get accepted.

While we might want to have an intelligent debate about the issue of immortality and the social implications, we'd do better to ignore the existence of the original post and ask other questions like:

What are the social consequences? If people remain healthy and functional indefinitely, will government end up cluttered with gerontocrats? How would we have to adjust our social institutions to ensure periodic, peaceful transfers of power?

[SpaceMarine93]

I, er, gracefully accept this rebuke.

Can someone please lock this thread out? I understand that this thread had generated some trouble, one for framing my premise / question in a stupid and unsophisticated way, asking the wrong questions, and me ripping material from a weak / improper source and without initially citing them, which I understand now is not acceptable in the forum. I want to end this discussion, if that is possible.

I would take Simon_Jester's advice and will start a new thread based on asking what the social consequences immortality could bring. I apologize for wasting other readers time with a stupid premise and for breaking some of the Forum's rules. I will try to avoid such things in the future

[Rye]

1.) Your family and friends would die off because of old age or illness, as will their children and grandchildren, while you persist, leaving you with severe emotional tramau, become lonely or causing you to disassociate with humanity.

The people blithely shrugging this one off are tools. They most likely just don't realise the impact others have on their lives and what their absence or the knowledge of their inescapable doom will do to a psyche. I think the best scenario here would be a person just learns to become a transient and move on and start a new life periodically, trying to forget the old one.

2.) Severe boredom, since there's only so much stuff that could be done to pass the time. We're talking potentially billions of years plus existence people

Again, totally true, boredom and loneliness do not bode well for the human mind. People spend much of their lives bored. We have to remember what Schopenhauer said here, "It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule." (Studies in Pessimism)

We often measure our lives in narratives that we relay to each other. Mostly these narratives are about frustration and suffering and unfairness. Unending life is unending suffering. To live is to crave and strive, moments of peace and contentment are few and far between. You've been sentenced to aeons of loss and having to put up with yourself as you get frustrated and fail at things, even though you've got less justification for failing than anyone else alive.

A scary aspect of this is also that humans are creatures of habit, so an immortal would likely end up as something of an OCD mess as habits accrue. There's a song by Nine Inch Nails called "Every Day is Exactly the Same" in which Trent conveys the sense of sameness and futility and boredom that comes from routine life. People feel pointless and unnecessary and in a state of living death now, with tragically short lives, what will they feel when given millenia of the same sunsets, the same people fucking each other over and daily frustration? You need a reason to persevere, and all things you are biologically programmed to care about are temporal by nature.

I think the sisyphean resolve of my fellow apes on this board are hubristic with little understanding of their mammalian psychology, no offence to you all.

3.) Humanity would continue to evolve around you, generation by generation, while your original, unevolved form remains, thus causing you to eventually become a freak of nature.

True enough. Likely they'll get wiped out by an asteroid.

4.) According to recent studies, time passes by faster in peoples perspective as you grow older since each moment they represent a smaller part of your life when you are older than when you a younger. A day would seem like an eternity for a toddler but around 5 minutes for an old man. Immortality would eventually cause you to percieve time in such way, when you are super old, events and people would explode around you. People you use to know would become less relevant to you. This is why Dr Manhattan became such a dick.

Also true; I remember my early life quite well and I recall that weeks seemed to take much longer, but I don't think you can extrapolate that to these scales; around adulthood, perception of time is mainly down to how busy you are, I don't think it'd automatically keep shifting smaller.

5.) You get older mentally. Imagine if your cell phone number changed every week, and every week you were forced to memorize the new one. It gets exponentially harder because all of those old numbers are still in your memory, clogging up the works. Then imagine someone asked you to instantly recall the number you had five numbers ago. Same case for immortal people. As time goes on, more and more memories pile up. Your brain can keep all that stuff organized for a while, but it's not like you can go into your brain and just delete files like cleaning up a hard drive. So useless stuff starts accumulating, clogging up the works and slowing everything down, like all those toolbars on your mom's Internet browser. Your body will be young, but you'll still be forgetting people's names and telling the same jokes to the same person twice in one day.

This depends on the mechanics of the immortality, to be fair.

6.) You can never be found out, unless you want millions of prospectors, opportunists, politicians, rich people, mobsters, scientists, and other types who want immortality coming to claim a piece of you and try to find out how to live forever.

True enough, but I don't think it'd be too bad if you "outed" yourself in the correct way.

7.) Chances are, you might accidentally get trapped somewhere and unable to move, act or do anything and unable to get help and nobody knows you are there. E.g. fallen into a cement mixer, trapped by magma which cools and harden, accidentally blown off your spaceship and drifting into deep space. For a normal person death may come as a release from such a situation, but for an immortal, not an option. Imagine being like this, FOREVER. Many people considers this as the most horrifying reason why immortality sucks

True; an unending locked in syndrome where your only hope is your mind disassociating from reality.

[SpaceMarine93]

On second thought, don't lock it out. I want to see how far this goes.

[Broomstick]

1.) Your family and friends would die off because of old age or illness, as will their children and grandchildren, while you persist, leaving you with severe emotional tramau, become lonely or causing you to disassociate with humanity.

The people blithely shrugging this one off are tools.

Being able to deal with it and moving on is not the same as "shrugging it off". It's sucky part of life, but you deal with the suck in order to have the good parts.

They most likely just don't realise the impact others have on their lives and what their absence or the knowledge of their inescapable doom will do to a psyche.

Yeah, actually I do realize the impact of others on my life is, and what it is to lose people, thank you very much. Sorry if it disappoints you that I haven't collapsed into a heap of despair over it.

2.) Severe boredom, since there's only so much stuff that could be done to pass the time. We're talking potentially billions of years plus existence people

Again, totally true, boredom and loneliness do not bode well for the human mind. People spend much of their lives bored.

Speak for yourself. I am seldom bored, and that's been true all of my life.

3.) Humanity would continue to evolve around you, generation by generation, while your original, unevolved form remains, thus causing you to eventually become a freak of nature.

True enough. Likely they'll get wiped out by an asteroid.

My, aren't YOU Mr. Sunshine.

You know what the big difference between you me? You're a pessimist. I'm an optimist.

[Panzersharkcat]

True enough. Likely they'll get wiped out by an asteroid.

But I want to see the planet get roasted by the sun!

Oh, and SpaceMarine93, you spelled "Assassins" wrong. *twitch*

[Rye]

Being able to deal with it and moving on is not the same as "shrugging it off". It's sucky part of life, but you deal with the suck in order to have the good parts.

Everyone you know dying, though? I know my parents are getting "pet fatigue" now, after a life of living with them and having them die all too soon.

Sorry if it disappoints you that I haven't collapsed into a heap of despair over it.

I doubt you plan on outliving everyone you know and love.

Speak for yourself. I am seldom bored, and that's been true all of my life.

You're a rarity. Still, I wouldn't expect to be able to extrapolate that to infinity.

My, aren't YOU Mr. Sunshine.

You know what the big difference between you me? You're a pessimist. I'm an optimist.

Oh no, a negative outlook. The real horror of life is having dark expectations in regard to other people and futility confirmed. Nothing lasts, and this promotes pessimism in good times and hope in bad. Except the immortal lasts, the immortal can be broken, the deepest human love and soul can be touched and destroyed and he won't have the peace of death to look forward to.

[Broomstick]

Being able to deal with it and moving on is not the same as "shrugging it off". It's sucky part of life, but you deal with the suck in order to have the good parts.

Everyone you know dying, though?

Go back to the post where I relate what happened to a friend of my family - exactly that happened to him at the tender age of 14. He's lived 70 years past that with every indication of being glad to be alive. Is everyone that resilient? Of course not. But some are.

Sorry if it disappoints you that I haven't collapsed into a heap of despair over it.

I doubt you plan on outliving everyone you know and love.

Given my age (youngest by nearly a decade) and state of health, yes, I fully expect to outlive everyone in my immediate family, probably by a few decades.

Which might be why I try to make new friends, some of them younger than me. So even if everyone I know today dies before me I'll still have friends and loved ones around I've acquired between now and then.

My, aren't YOU Mr. Sunshine.
You know what the big difference between you me? You're a pessimist. I'm an optimist.

Oh no, a negative outlook. The real horror of life is having dark expectations in regard to other people and futility confirmed.

Nope, I'm just tired of nihilist, emo younglings extrapolating their "the universe sucks" outlook to the rest of us. Not everyone feels as you do, just as not everyone feels as I do.

[NoXion]

I've come to think that an immortal would have much greater incentive to make the future a better place to live in - and because one can never be certain where one will end up on the socioeconomic totem pole, it would also be in the immortals' interest to ensure that future is better for the greatest amount of people. When your fortunes have all the time in the universe to wax and wane, wouldn't it at the very least be a sensible idea to try and arrange things so that when the chips are down, you aren't living a life of penury and/or discrimination?

[ArmorPierce]

The people blithely shrugging this one off are tools. They most likely just don't realise the impact others have on their lives and what their absence or the knowledge of their inescapable doom will do to a psyche. I think the best scenario here would be a person just learns to become a transient and move on and start a new life periodically, trying to forget the old one.

You're an idiot. Maybe people have a different outlook on life on you? People die all the time. You meet new people, make new friends and make new family. I spent most of my life moving from place to place, and have little family that I am any close to and the family I do have I care little about. There is very few people that are in my regular life that's been there for more than a couple years. This is not a foreign concept to me. I am a very well adjusted person... others very well me not be in my situation, like you it seems.

We often measure our lives in narratives that we relay to each other. Mostly these narratives are about frustration and suffering and unfairness. Unending life is unending suffering. To live is to crave and strive, moments of peace and contentment are few and far between. You've been sentenced to aeons of loss and having to put up with yourself as you get frustrated and fail at things, even though you've got less justification for failing than anyone else alive.

A scary aspect of this is also that humans are creatures of habit, so an immortal would likely end up as something of an OCD mess as habits accrue. There's a song by Nine Inch Nails called "Every Day is Exactly the Same" in which Trent conveys the sense of sameness and futility and boredom that comes from routine life. People feel pointless and unnecessary and in a state of living death now, with tragically short lives, what will they feel when given millenia of the same sunsets, the same people fucking each other over and daily frustration? You need a reason to persevere, and all things you are biologically programmed to care about are temporal by nature.

I think the sisyphean resolve of my fellow apes on this board are hubristic with little understanding of their mammalian psychology, no offence to you all.

This hasn't been a problem thusfar. You have that kind of emo/goth freak attitude and you are calling people not desiring continue existence tools Fine, you go ahead and die, I'll go be immortal. I have eternity to learn and do whatever I want.

[Rye]

You're an idiot. Maybe people have a different outlook on life on you? People die all the time. You meet new people, make new friends and make new family. I spent most of my life moving from place to place, and have little family that I am any close to and the family I do have I care little about. There is very few people that are in my regular life that's been there for more than a couple years. This is not a foreign concept to me. I am a very well adjusted person... others very well me not be in my situation, like you it seems.

So at no point does it both you that anyone or anything you love can't be there for a significant portion of your remaining life? Let's say you fall in love with someone who is your sun and stars, you'd do anything for them. You feel like every last minute is the most precious thing in reality. You also know s/he'll only last something like 60 years, something you have probably spent on the toilet up to this point. She gets old and haggard and succumbs to illness and you know that if you ever fall in love again, the exact same thing will happen. How would it feel to know that all love is doomed, even more so than it is for the mortals?

This hasn't been a problem thusfar.

Of course it hasn't, you're what, in your 20s? Multiply that up to a millenium.

You have that kind of emo/goth freak attitude and you are calling people not desiring continue existence tools Fine, you go ahead and die, I'll go be immortal. I have eternity to learn and do whatever I want.

I'm not sure why you think that's an acceptable remark just because someone has a contrary voice. And what would you do, forever, without it getting dull and repetitive?

[Purple]

So at no point does it both you that anyone or anything you love can't be there for a significant portion of your remaining life? Let's say you fall in love with someone who is your sun and stars, you'd do anything for them. You feel like every last minute is the most precious thing in reality. You also know s/he'll only last something like 60 years, something you have probably spent on the toilet up to this point. She gets old and haggard and succumbs to illness and you know that if you ever fall in love again, the exact same thing will happen. How would it feel to know that all love is doomed, even more so than it is for the mortals?

This sort of stuff happens to people all the time. People who's girlfriends die in car accidents or contract cancer at a young age or any myriad of things that can get you before your time. And guess what? People deal with it. The human mind is much more resilient than the kind of suicide give into despair type of person you think we are. At worst, an immortal will mope around for a decade or two and than get on with his or her life. After all, its not like he does not have eternity to cure all wounds.

Of course it hasn't, you're what, in your 20s? Multiply that up to a millenium.

By the time you get to your 5th wife and kids the 1st ones will be a distant memory at best.

I'm not sure why you think that's an acceptable remark just because someone has a contrary voice. And what would you do, forever, without it getting dull and repetitive?

Find new stuff to do. Explore the stars, read new books and playing new games coming out each year, stuff like that. The universe is constantly changing around us at a pace more suited to a person with a life span of 30. I think an immortal does not need to worry about boredom.

[PeZook]

So at no point does it both you that anyone or anything you love can't be there for a significant portion of your remaining life? Let's say you fall in love with someone who is your sun and stars, you'd do anything for them. You feel like every last minute is the most precious thing in reality. You also know s/he'll only last something like 60 years, something you have probably spent on the toilet up to this point. She gets old and haggard and succumbs to illness and you know that if you ever fall in love again, the exact same thing will happen. How would it feel to know that all love is doomed, even more so than it is for the mortals?

Didn't you just say life is all about pain and suffering and with no pain there is no life?

But more seriously, getting to spend 60 years with someone you love is still getting to spend 60 years with someone you love. In twenty thousand years it might even stop being a problem altogether.

Of course it hasn't, you're what, in your 20s? Multiply that up to a millenium.

Science keeps advacing. There's hundreds of thousands of careers out there, and new ones will appear, and there will always be something new to do. If you get bored with one, pick another. Spend twenty years travelling the globe, then become a manager somewhere, quit after making the big bucks and get a physics degree. Work in research for a century and then go on to develop video games before coming back with another degree and diving into the aerospace industry to build interstellar starships. Become a world-renowned expert in chocolate manufacture once you get bored with that and build the world's biggest remote controlled airplane in your spare time. Start a mercenary company and create a nation for you to rule for a couple centuries, before turning around and running away to build dams in Siberia...etc etc etc

There's incredible amount of stuff to do on Earth once you have unlimited time on your hands. And if you get bored with Earth, there's 400 billion stars out in the wider galaxy. I'm sure you could find another civilization or a hundred to study. As others have remarked, with enough time and resources, even the heat death of the universe is not an insurmountable problem.

[Rye]

There are all sorts of things that break people. People don't "deal with it" as well as you think, one of the many reasons mental illness is on the rise. Look at PTSD. The longer you live, the more likely you are to be eventually broken by something in an irreparable way. If you live over geological time, it's a practical certainty.

[Simon_Jester]

I still don't get the assumption that only one person would be immortal. I mean, how would this happen, in a way that isn't basically just "a genie gives you a wish?"

The solution to half the social problems of immortality is simply "maintain a social life with other immortal people, so that you do not have to worry about your entire inner circle dying on you."

[Broomstick]

So at no point does it both you that anyone or anything you love can't be there for a significant portion of your remaining life? Let's say you fall in love with someone who is your sun and stars, you'd do anything for them. You feel like every last minute is the most precious thing in reality.

Given my health and genetics it is quite reasonable that I could live to be 90. When I married my spouse he'd already greatly exceeded his life expectancy. I could well outlive him by 40 years. Guess what? I married him anyway even though the odds are I'll bury him. Why? Because I'd rather have 20 years with him than none.

Again, just because YOU'd not want that doesn't mean the rest of us would find it an insurmountable obstacle.

You have that kind of emo/goth freak attitude and you are calling people not desiring continue existence tools Fine, you go ahead and die, I'll go be immortal. I have eternity to learn and do whatever I want.

I'm not sure why you think that's an acceptable remark just because someone has a contrary voice. And what would you do, forever, without it getting dull and repetitive?

I have to agree, you seem to be spilling your "emo/goth freak" attitude around the place.

Look, how you feel is how you feel. No one (well, not me at least) is disputing that's how YOU see it. What I can't understand is why you seem put out other people regard the problem differently.

Yes, people die. At this point, I have more dead friends than live ones. I deal with it. I expect to outlive my remaining parent, my siblings, and my spouse. It will be sad, but I'll deal with it. None of that makes me want to give up on life, OK? I've got a reasonable idea of the emotional pain watching loved ones die brings on, having actually experienced it, and I'm reasonably sure I can handle it because I already have.

[Purple]

There are all sorts of things that break people. People don't "deal with it" as well as you think, one of the many reasons mental illness is on the rise. Look at PTSD. The longer you live, the more likely you are to be eventually broken by something in an irreparable way. If you live over geological time, it's a practical certainty.

Not really. Time cures all, and unless you have magical memory chances are that in 100 or 200 years you won't even remember what you were so sad about. And seriously, you can take 100 or even 1000 years to mope around and still have infinity to play with. Thats the point here. Human minds simply can not comprehend how long infinity is.

[ArmorPierce]

So at no point does it both you that anyone or anything you love can't be there for a significant portion of your remaining life? Let's say you fall in love with someone who is your sun and stars, you'd do anything for them. You feel like every last minute is the most precious thing in reality. You also know s/he'll only last something like 60 years, something you have probably spent on the toilet up to this point. She gets old and haggard and succumbs to illness and you know that if you ever fall in love again, the exact same thing will happen. How would it feel to know that all love is doomed, even more so than it is for the mortals?

I'll be sad about it and definitely think of her but I'll have and meet others. As it is, most 'love' is fleeting. Not to sound like a shit head douchebag or anything but if I was immortal it is unlikely that I would be faithful to a single person over several decades if I remain young and she ages.

Of course it hasn't, you're what, in your 20s? Multiply that up to a millenium.

There's so much to do. I can try a career, become an expert in the field, then start all over again with another career as many times as I want. I could go hang out at college and get degree after degree in things that interest me. This may be costly, but with just a few decades, I'll probably be a multi-millionaire with no need to ever work again if I managed the money right. Then I could take breaks and go to Las Vegas that last for however I want. Months, years, decades

I'm not sure why you think that's an acceptable remark just because someone has a contrary voice. And what would you do, forever, without it getting dull and repetitive?

Sorry I took offense to your 'tool' remark. If it wasn't meant to be offensive, condescending attitude I sincerely apologize. It is a very emo/goth outlook though.

[Starglider]

You also know s/he'll only last something like 60 years, something you have probably spent on the toilet up to this point. She gets old and haggard and succumbs to illness and you know that if you ever fall in love again, the exact same thing will happen.

By that logic no one would ever have another pet, after losing their first treasured dog/cat/etc.

[Justforfun000]

Wow...been a long time since I felt inspired enough to chime in on a thread...but dying has always been a problem for me. I accept the likelihood that the atheistic point of view is probably "correct". I held many varying beliefs before..but I find it hard to look at the natural world without a critical eye as to meaning..purpose..

Long story short...I agree with many that it makes sense we are just dust in the wind. Our lifespan as humans is infinitesimal in comparison with planets...stars..galaxies...why would our consciousness be something truly special? Especially when we lose those individual consciousnesses every waking moment when countless people die every day.

We are lucky to be alive every moment we breathe. If we keep loved ones living with us to enrich our living experience....we're even luckier..but do I believe there is any likelihood to life becoming "immortal"? Pshaw! Foolish, wishful thinking. Yeah a part of me wishes...but that's as ephemeral and unrealistic as wishing for a unicorn. Lets accept the truth..we are all going to die. None of us are getting out of this room alive.

Make the most of it. It WILL end. No one in all of recorded history has ever been reliably documented as an immortal. Period.

[Starglider]

Yeah a part of me wishes...but that's as ephemeral and unrealistic as wishing for a unicorn. Lets accept the truth..we are all going to die.

This is currently true, but there's no particular reason why it will continue to be true indefinitely. Outliving stars and galaxies is kind of out of scope right now, but the more direct problem of living 1000 years is certainly something we can solve with sufficiently advanced technology. Sufficiently effective life extension methods may or may not appear in our lifespans (I give it better than even odds), but regardless they will be developed eventually.

One of my absolute favourite things is when engineering progress renders thousands of years of philosophical navel gazing irrelevant, as a by-product of solving the real problem. I hope I get to see this instance.

[Top Cap]

Yeah a part of me wishes...but that's as ephemeral and unrealistic as wishing for a unicorn. Lets accept the truth..we are all going to die.

This is currently true, but there's no particular reason why it will continue to be true indefinitely. Outliving stars and galaxies is kind of out of scope right now, but the more direct problem of living 1000 years is certainly something we can solve with sufficiently advanced technology. Sufficiently effective life extension methods may or may not appear in our lifespans (I give it better than even odds), but regardless they will be developed eventually.

One of my absolute favourite things is when engineering progress renders thousands of years of philosophical navel gazing irrelevant, as a by-product of solving the real problem. I hope I get to see this instance.

What would you do with 1000 years of life even if you could be healthy for all or most of it, i think longevity has to come with a change in our cognitive processes amount other things hence evolution.

[D.Turtle]

What would you do with 1000 years of life even if you could be healthy for all or most of it, i think longevity has to come with a change in our cognitive processes amount other things hence evolution.

Read all of Fanfiction.net. Play all computer games that exist. Walk the entire Earth. Learn a hundred different jobs. Read every book ever written. Make it my goal to meet as many people as possible. Learn a hundred different sports. Teach generations of kids. Mentor hundreds of students. Write a hundred books. Travel the solar system. And so on.

Do you regularly see old people die out of boredom? Or do active old people do just as much as active young people?

There already is enough stuff today to keep anyone as busy as they want to for thousands of years. And the speed of new developments is picking up. Every new development opens up additional stuff that you can do if you have the time to. The idea that immortality would lead to boredom is ridiculous.