On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Frank Mayhar wrote: @> The other is that I'm reasonably sure that a greatly extended lifespan would @> not change a human in any really significant way. It would just be life, but @> without the bit at the very end, the ceasing-to-exist stuff. A surprisingly large amount of human culture is based around death and the preparations for it. Who knows what it would be replaced by if death weren't an issue, or if it happened less frequently? (For one thing, we'd all have children more slowly. Either of our own accord, or by law. And if we were immortal we'd have to stop having them entirely at some point. Which is /another/ section of our culture that would vanish.) @> We do, after all, live in the present. And this is just plain wrong. @> Personally, I think that someone who dislikes the idea of living a very, very @> long time (essentially forever) is either in a lot of pain or is simply very @> unimaginative. I've been the former but never the latter. :-) Depends. Presumably you're talking about the "don't shrivel up and turn into a cricket" variety of immortality, which is difficult to believe in. Then there are problems with memory; is there a larger storage capacity? Clearly the Dragaerans have one (which makes sense, since the Jenoine can enhance jhereg brains enough to have consciousness and memory despite their small size), but is that at all realistic? And how much point is there in living a thousand years if you can only remember a hundred of them?