Immortality means different things to different people. My favorite mental game along these lines is to try to imagine the ramifications if eternal life doesn't include a better memory. I look back 20 years and think "oh yeah, I used to know a lot of statistics and calculus and French." And the thing that bothers me isn't that I no longer know those things, but that I rarely even remember that I knew them. In a hundred more years, would I have forgotten all my childhood friends? You bet. Ex girlfriends? probably. My brain in a hundred years would make for a thoroughly goofy personality. In a thousand years I wouldn't be even identifiable as the same person. If I am not mentally the same person, is there any point to keeping the body alive forever?
Immortality means different things to different people. My favorite mental game along these lines is to try to imagine the ramifications if eternal life doesn't include a better memory. I look back 20 years and think "oh yeah, I used to know a lot of statistics and calculus and French." And the thing that bothers me isn't that I no longer know those things, but that I rarely even remember that I knew them. In a hundred more years, would I have forgotten all my childhood friends? You bet. Ex girlfriends? probably. My brain in a hundred years would make for a thoroughly goofy personality. In a thousand years I wouldn't be even identifiable as the same person. If I am not mentally the same person, is there any point to keeping the body alive forever?