Thread: What's more scary? The thought of death or existing forever?

Putting all religious and philosophical beliefs aside - which scenario seems of the more frightening of the two to you?

Death? Or existing in this reality forever? At first, the existing forever part didn't seem to bad... until I began of think of some insane number, like billions of years. That... scares the hell out of me, more then thinking about an existence that is like a deep sleep - completely neutral.

The optimal existence in my opinion would be similar to our sleep cycles. Everyday we go to sleep and take a break from reality. If we didn't sleep, guarantee we'd all go insane. The best existence would be one where after every life, you'd take a very long break (death), and come back without your previous identity. I mean, the way I see it, even paradise forever would get boring.

I would love to live forever, as long as it would be as good as the life I've had so far or better. The idea of eternal nonexistence seems really depressing to me, but I know that when I cease to exist I won't care one way or the other because I won't exist. But in being alive and being genetically programmed to want to continue to be alive, I would love to figure out a way to be immortal. I could never get tired of this.

Yea as long as your not like stuck there, forever staring at a ceiling because you can't move. That would be horrible. A million years staring at the same thing. Now if it like now where your in good shape and you can run around and play, then heck I would take living forever. I can guarantee I can find something fun to do, no matter how long I live for.

There's no way I'd want to live forever. I'd rather be non-existant.

personally, I find both to be exciting, and not scary at all.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I could never get tired of this.

Don't understimate the length of eternity.

After enough trillions of trillions years, you will have played all games of chess (10^40 possible positions), and Go (10^170 possible positions), read all the possible books (Lets round it to 30^1500000 for 500-pages "books" with all possible letters arrangement, even if they don't make sense), seen all movies, heard all music. Have engaged in all possible discussions and arguments. Climbed all shapes of mountains, done all possible dance moves, visited all possible alien planets.

You could still dive a bit more deeper in a Mandelbrot set or compute the next digit of Pi, but... that's not very exciting. (And all the Mandelbrot images discernable by your eyes were already in the "possible movies" that you already saw. Twice.).
The only possible way to stay sane would be to lose enough of your memory every millions years. Which would be cheating.


The only "good" way I see to live in eternity is if time itself disappears: "eternity" or "one instant" becoming the same thing.

Don't understimate the length of eternity.

Exactly. I wouldn't mind a few life-times of what I have right now.. but I don't know if I could do it forever. I mean like yeah I find myself entertained pretty easily these days, but I've been only been alive for what? 20 years? And my brain has only been "adult developed" for... 1-2 years? 20 years is nothing compared an enternity. 20 years is like a pico-second (10^-12) compared to a millenium. I could see myself being entertained for the next 10,000 years due to human advancement. But once we have visited every corner of the universe, seen everything there is to see, done everything there is to do... and let's not forget - it wouldn't be a great life all the way through. There would be periods of great stress. Periods where a person doesn't just experience one mid-life crisis, but many.

The only "good" way I see to live in eternity is if time itself disappears: "eternity" or "one instant" becoming the same thing.

This is one possibly scientific ending of the universe Weather we end in the Big Crunch, of Big Rip, time will end, and singularity will be reached. What exactly goes on then, I could not even begin to think about.

if you can think of a way to remember all those years, I will be impressed. I can quite happily read the same book many times provided I wait a few years before starting again, so as to forget several points of the story.

If the Twilight Zone has taught us nothing else, it's that living forever can be a horrible prospect!

If you have the power to forget things, enjoy a movie every year. Then there would be nothing scary about immortality. If you can't forget, that would get boring in like, 100.000 years.

I'd want to live forever.

As long as this forum continued! I'd always have something great to do

You people and your memory erasers bending the option :p

Don't forget, given infinite time you will hit great highs in your life, but you will also hit many points where you will have suicidal thoughts! Maybe not in 100 years, or 1000 years, but getting through those times would be tough - that would be my main concern of living forever.

I would definitely NOT want to live forever. Death (and the idea of finite timespans) is an integral aspect of our human experience. If you truly had infinite time at your disposal, I don't know what "time" would even mean, and I think our experience would be radically changed. Have you ever tried to relive a great memory and it just wasn't as good the second time? I feel like immortality would inevitably lead to trying to relive things that were only so wonderful because they were one-time events. Life is improvisation, facing the unexpected, reveling in a moment because you know it's one of a limited number of moments you have. I think these quotes relate:

"There's no story. It's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told." (Waking Life)

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." (W.M. Lewis)

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." (James Dean)

And here's an excerpt from a conversation I had once: Is value derived from terms of time? If you knew you had all the time in the world, if you were immortal, would it change the order in which you did things? Would there still be such thing as "priorities" (like when you say, "I can't wait for X"). Do we let some things take precedence because of the threat of death? Would you still make time to be with someone right now if you knew you would live forever and could theoretically see them infinite times in the future? I think it's critical that, limited by time, we do have to sacrifice some things to make time for others.

Finally, I think we only fear death out of a fear of the unknown. We fear the unknown more than the scariest products of our imagination. And life is all we seem to consciously know.

The thought of dying and becoming non-existant scares the shite out of me. I really hope that when I get older I lose this fear.

i think existing forever. sometimes i think if there is everlasting life after death, then what the fuck would i do forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

Living forever is really scary to me, while death doesnt scare me one bit. I really couldnt imagine living forever, It would be way too much, Every day i'd go crazier and crazier, knowing the days will never end.

I can't even stand the thought of living another year...eternity would be hell.

Existing forever is for me infinitely more scary than dying one day. Allthough as I currently see it our fates are both. Well there's no possible way to know for sure, but I'll figure that one out in time.

Living forever seemed to me to be the most frightening of the two because, If I think back to when I didn't exist, that doesn't seem that bad. However, then I remembered that I could forget things, and my feelings changed for a moment. I was dreading the stagnancy that would inevitably come from having infinite life in a finite universe. However, perpetual memory loss seems like a loop hole to this hell. But then again, this world surely isn't going to last forever. Something is bound to happen eventually. People will die off, hell life itself may die off...but you wouldn't. The world may freeze over, and you be stuck in those conditions forever...fun. Or maybe the world will turn molten, and there you are burning forever in endless oceans of lava. Or maybe the earth just gets destroyed somehow, hurling you into the infinite depths of space for all of eternity. Check out this website for a collection of doomsday scenarios. Could you imagine existing forever if/when some of that shit happens? Living forever seems like a surefire recipe for hell, eventually. Infinite boredom is the least of your problems, in fact, you’d be lucky if all that happened to you was boredom. Shit.

After a while the conditions wouldn't seem so bad though, you get used to them like back pain, or other things that i'm to lazy to come of with simliar situations for.

Are we talking immortality-style living forever? Like, in 10,000,000 years, I'm still the same age I am now? Because that leads me to believe that I don't have to worry about dying, which means I don't need to work at surviving, which means things like breathing and eating are now optional. I could deal with that.

Still, death doesn't scare me, nor does eternity, but they both did back when I was an agnostic.

Well living forever as a middle class teenager would be easy... I could do that for a LONG time... but we don't stay middle class teenagers. I'm already passed that, since I turned 20, and I sure wouldn't mind getting another decade of being 18. But the forever part, I don't know...

Living forever would be cool though. I mean, I do really like myself. Let's say supposedly there's reincarnation, I almost think I would opt to just be this me forever, you know?

Sure - as long as I have no recollection of my previous life Could you just imagine sitting here right now knowing what you are doing you've "been there done that" millions and millions of times!? It's like... have you ever listened to music before so much, that you just get so sick of the song and actually can't stand listening to it? Well, after a year you might be able to listen to it one or two times, but it gets old again, FAST. Like the Linkin Park Hybrid Theory album - I can't to some of those songs for more then 20 seconds (not counting the ones for nostalgia, and I still get bored of them quickly) and I haven't listened to them in years. If that applied to everything...

I guess not dwelling on something for to long would be KEY for a happy immortality. Move on to the next thing before you lose interest.

death is scary because I don't know when it will happen to me.

I used to think that existing forever would be horrible if you had to live by yourself...but now I think an eternity with the dimwits on this planet would be even more revulting. I would rather not have to deal with them...unless I could be selective about who I would have to share my world with, I wouldn't want to live forever.

I personaly thing that death will be the most interesting thing you can experience.