Living to 150 or so...

[--Pete]

Hi,

So what's the optimum age then, if you can pick and choose your age?

Knowing what I know now, or knowing what I knew then? If the first, I'd want to go back to my preteen days and try to arrange to stay in Wilkes Barre. If the second, Spring of '64. I'd join the Army right away instead of wasting the next eight months.

But who want's to live forever?

Forever? No. But there's still many books I want to read, movies I want to see, math and languages I want to learn, problems I want to work on and perhaps even solve. The big question is "Live how?" The way I was at forty, when I could beat 20+ year olds at racquetball, work 72 hours without rest, and learn a subject as fast as I could read about it? Or the way I am now, hardly able to walk 20 feet without resting, sleeping 14+ hours a day and still tired, unable to read more than a little at a time and even that penetrating slowly?

I'd personally choose a regular lifespan with no illnesses, disease, or cancers over immortality any day.

I'm not sure the two are really different,

I would not want to outlive my children or increase the likelihood of them passing unfortunately before my time - which after enough time, would most likely occur.

If all have access to the longevity treatment, then the only way you'd outlive your children is if they died by some misfortune. Exactly the same as it is now.

It would be change, yes, but there is some comfort to knowing you have a finite amount of time on this Earth. I'd gladly stick with that over immortality.

There's always the rope, the overpass, the gun. Immortality doesn't mean living forever. It means having a choice for when to die. Suicide is painless.

--Pete