Living as if Forever Were Possible

I was reading an article recently about the possibility that humans might one day be able to live forever. Not just live a bit longer, or reach the age of 120 in reasonably good health, but actually overcome ageing altogether. With the extraordinary progress we’re seeing in artificial intelligence, perhaps we’ll eventually develop the technology to repair our bodies faster than they deteriorate, cure diseases before they become serious, and extend human life indefinitely.

Of course, there’s an enormous difference between extending human lifespans and achieving immortality. Even if we could eliminate ageing, there would still be accidents, disasters and all sorts of other unpleasant ways to meet our end. And despite the excitement surrounding AI, there’s no guarantee that any of this will actually happen. Perhaps we’ll make extraordinary progress in medicine over the next few decades, or perhaps we’ll discover that some aspects of ageing are considerably more difficult to overcome than we currently imagine.

But it got me thinking about something rather different. Suppose we actually could live forever. Would we want to? And then another thought occurred to me. Suppose I could live forever, and I genuinely wanted to. Wouldn’t it be rather nice if other people wanted me to live forever too?

That led me to a rather ambitious-sounding aspiration:

Have a reason to want to live forever. AND make that reason compelling enough for other people to want you to live forever.

I rather like this idea. Not necessarily because I expect to become immortal, although I’m certainly not ruling it out, but because I think it’s a surprisingly useful way of thinking about how to live right now.

Would I actually want to live forever?

When people talk about immortality, one of the first objections that comes up is boredom. Surely, after a few hundred years, we’d have done everything we wanted to do? After a thousand years, wouldn’t we have seen enough? Wouldn’t existence eventually become repetitive, meaningless or simply exhausting? Perhaps. I suppose it’s difficult to know how I’d feel after my 800th birthday. I might be thoroughly fed up with the whole business by then, although I’d like to think McDonald’s would have introduced something interesting to the menu.

But right now, the idea of having considerably more time sounds absolutely fantastic.

I’ve spent a large part of my adult life trying to create a life that I genuinely enjoy living. Financial independence has given me the freedom to travel, spend time with people I care about, explore whatever happens to interest me, work on my own projects and occasionally spend an entire afternoon sitting in McDonald’s having philosophical conversations with AI. I don’t have to be somewhere at nine o’clock on Monday morning, and I don’t need to justify how I spend my time to an employer.

It’s a life I genuinely love. And the interesting thing is that I don’t feel as though I’m running out of things to do. Quite the opposite. The more I explore, the more possibilities seem to appear. I visit somewhere new and discover another place I’d like to visit. I learn something interesting and suddenly there are five other things I want to understand. I meet someone and discover an entirely different perspective on life.

And it’s not necessarily the extraordinary experiences that make me feel this way. Quite often, it’s the relatively mundane ones.

For example, I still regularly visit Japanese game centres to play Dariusburst, an arcade shoot-’em-up that’s been around for about fifteen years. I already own versions of the game on my phone, Nintendo Switch and PSP, so there’s absolutely no practical reason for me to travel to an arcade and pay 100 yen to play it. I could sit at home, or even in McDonald’s, and enjoy essentially the same game without spending anything.

But it wouldn’t be the same experience.

There’s something wonderful about the atmosphere of a real arcade. The noise of all the other machines, the tactile feeling of the physical controls, the lights, the people concentrating on their own games, and the unspoken sense of community among people who are all there because they love playing. We’re trying to be good at our games, perhaps improve a little, and occasionally appreciate somebody else’s impressive performance. Nobody needs to explain why we’re there. We just understand.

I can play the same game I’ve been playing for fifteen years, pay my 100 yen, and still walk away feeling that I’ve had a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The game itself hasn’t changed very much, but that’s not really the point. I’m not simply paying to play Dariusburst. I’m paying to experience playing Dariusburst in a Japanese arcade.

And I love that.

Or take something even simpler. Yesterday evening, I decided to walk from Shinjuku to Yoyogi-Uehara rather than take the train all the way home. There was no particular reason to do this. The train would have been quicker, and it wouldn’t even have cost me any more. But I felt like walking, so I did.

For about fifty minutes, I got to experience the Tokyo that I absolutely love. Huge overhead highways, cars and traffic, people going about their lives, shopping streets, bright lights and enormous illuminated buildings towering over everything. There’s something almost cyberpunk about walking through Tokyo at night, surrounded by all that infrastructure, technology and human activity. It’s an extraordinary environment, and I can simply decide to go for a walk through it whenever I feel like it.

I didn’t achieve anything particularly useful during those fifty minutes. I didn’t arrive anywhere I couldn’t have reached more efficiently by train. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and that seems like a perfectly good reason to have done it.

These are hardly once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I’ve played Dariusburst countless times, and I’ve walked through Tokyo at night on more occasions than I could possibly remember. But I still enjoy doing both. And perhaps that’s part of what makes me so enthusiastic about the prospect of having more time. I don’t need every experience to be new, extraordinary or somehow better than the previous one. Sometimes I can simply enjoy something I’ve already enjoyed a hundred times before.

In my recent article If Nothing Gets Better, I explored the idea that I’d be perfectly happy if my current general level of happiness continued for the rest of my life. That doesn’t mean I want every day to be identical, or that I don’t want to improve anything. It simply means that I no longer need the future to become better in order for the present to be satisfactory.

Now I’m wondering whether I could take that idea considerably further. If I could continue enjoying life, exploring new possibilities, developing friendships and discovering things I hadn’t previously imagined, why would I necessarily want that to stop after eighty or ninety years? Why not another hundred? Or another thousand?

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether living forever would eventually become boring. Perhaps a more interesting question is what kind of life would make living forever an exciting prospect.

A reason to keep going

I don’t think this means constructing some perfect existence in which every day is wonderful and nothing ever goes wrong. That would be a rather unrealistic standard, even with the assistance of a superintelligent AI. Bad things will still happen. People will disappoint us, plans will fail, circumstances will change and there will inevitably be periods when life is difficult. I’ve experienced enough of those things myself to know that happiness isn’t simply a matter of deciding that everything is wonderful.

But I also know that difficult periods don’t necessarily define the whole experience of being alive. My present life contains things that I once desperately wanted and couldn’t have imagined actually achieving. There are experiences and freedoms that make me enormously glad to be here, even though getting here wasn’t always particularly enjoyable. And perhaps that’s the important distinction. I don’t need a reason to believe that every future day will be good. I need reasons to believe that the overall adventure is worth continuing.

Those reasons don’t necessarily have to be particularly grand. I don’t need to discover the meaning of the universe, become the world’s greatest programmer or achieve something that will be remembered for centuries. I might simply want to see what happens next. I might want to visit somewhere I’ve never been, learn something I don’t yet understand, spend more time with people whose company I enjoy, or find out what extraordinary things humanity will invent over the next hundred years.

There’s something rather appealing about curiosity as a reason to continue existing. Every answer seems to open up more questions, and every new possibility creates opportunities that weren’t previously available. If the universe really is as interesting as it appears to be, perhaps a thousand years wouldn’t be nearly enough.

One of the things I particularly enjoy at the moment is discussing ideas with AI. I can start with a vague thought, explore it from several different angles, challenge my assumptions and gradually develop something more coherent. That’s often how these blog posts come about, including this one. The process of trying to understand what I actually think about something is itself enormously enjoyable, and having something that can engage with almost any subject makes it even more interesting.

I find it rather wonderful that I can sit in McDonald’s with a cup of coffee, have a lengthy philosophical discussion with an artificial intelligence, and come away with a new way of thinking about my life. That’s an experience that would have sounded like science fiction for much of my childhood, and now it’s something I can do whenever I feel like it. Who knows what similarly extraordinary possibilities might become ordinary over the next fifty or hundred years?

Of course, wanting to live forever doesn’t mean I have to commit to doing so. If immortality ever becomes an option, I imagine I’d quite like to retain the freedom to change my mind. An eternity that you’re not allowed to leave sounds considerably less attractive than one you can continue choosing.

But I’d like to build a life in which my default answer to the offer of another hundred years would be an enthusiastic yes. And that brings me to the second half of my aspiration.

Would other people want me to live forever?

It’s one thing to construct a life that I enjoy. But what about everyone else? Suppose I become extraordinarily good at enjoying my own existence. I travel around the world, eat delicious food, explore fascinating ideas, play computer games and generally have a wonderful time for the next thousand years. That might be fantastic for me, but would it be particularly fantastic for anyone else?

Perhaps not.

And this is where I think the second half of the aspiration becomes interesting. What if I could live in such a way that my continued existence was something other people genuinely welcomed? Not because I was indispensable, or because humanity would collapse without me, but simply because having me around made life a little better for other people too.

There are plenty of ways that might happen. I could make someone laugh, help them solve a problem, introduce them to an interesting idea, encourage them to try something new, or simply spend time with them doing something we both enjoy. I could make an app that improves someone’s day, write something that changes how they think about their circumstances, or share an experience that becomes a happy memory. I might even help someone discover that life can be considerably more enjoyable than they previously imagined.

That last possibility particularly appeals to me.

For much of my life, I was working towards a future in which I would have more freedom and control over my time. Now that I’ve achieved it, one of the things I enjoy most is discovering just how much pleasure there is in relatively ordinary experiences. Playing an old arcade game, taking a spontaneous walk through Tokyo, having a good conversation, or simply following an interesting thought wherever it leads.

I don’t think everyone needs to pursue FIRE or live the way I do. Different people want different things, and the circumstances that make my lifestyle possible aren’t available to everyone. But perhaps sharing my enjoyment of life can help other people discover more of what they enjoy about theirs.

And perhaps the benefits don’t even have to depend on my continued presence. If I help somebody discover an interest they might otherwise never have explored, that interest could enrich their life for years. If I encourage somebody to approach a problem differently, they might continue benefiting from that perspective long after our conversation has ended. Something I write might even help somebody I’ve never met. There’s something rather satisfying about that possibility. I don’t necessarily have to be present for somebody to benefit from my existence.

Of course, I can’t control whether any of this actually happens. I might write something I consider profoundly insightful that everybody else finds completely uninteresting. I might try to help somebody and discover that they would have preferred me to mind my own business. But I can at least try to give people good reasons to be glad I’m here. And if I can do that, perhaps my own happiness becomes something that extends beyond me.

Not indispensable. Desirable.

There’s an important distinction here that I don’t want to lose. I don’t think anyone should have to justify their right to exist by demonstrating that they’re sufficiently useful, productive or popular. That would be a rather unpleasant way to organise society, and it would also turn my nice philosophical aspiration into yet another performance review. I’ve spent enough of my life trying to escape those!

Nor do I think the objective should be to make myself indispensable. In fact, I’d rather not be indispensable. If somebody’s happiness depends entirely on my continued presence, that sounds like a fairly precarious arrangement for both of us. What I’d much prefer is to be desirable, in the simple sense that other people are glad I’m around. Their lives don’t depend on me, but they’re a little richer, happier or more interesting because I’m part of them.

And there’s a selfish element to all of this, of course. I’m not suggesting that I should dedicate my existence to making everybody else happy while nobly ignoring my own interests. Quite the opposite. I’m starting with the assumption that I want to enjoy being alive, and then asking whether I can find ways of enjoying my life that make other people’s lives more enjoyable too.

After all, I can only experience the world from my own perspective. I can try to understand how other people feel, and I certainly hope to become better at doing so, but ultimately I’m still me. Even the pleasure I get from making somebody else happy is something I experience myself. And I don’t see anything particularly wrong with that. If making somebody else happy makes me happy too, that sounds like a rather satisfactory arrangement for both of us.

Be charitable, certainly. But charity starts at home.

In fact, perhaps the selfish element is part of what makes the aspiration sustainable. If I genuinely enjoy being helpful, interesting or enjoyable to spend time with, then contributing to other people’s happiness doesn’t have to be something I reluctantly do at the expense of my own. It can be part of what makes my own life worthwhile.

Of course, there’s a potential complication. What if I do my best to be a positive presence in other people’s lives, but they don’t particularly appreciate it? Well, that’s their prerogative. I can’t force anybody to like me, value my contributions or want me to stick around for another thousand years. Nor would I particularly want to. Trying to make everybody approve of me sounds like a thoroughly miserable way to spend eternity.

I can try to give people good reasons to be glad I’m around, but ultimately it’s up to them whether they feel that way. That’s why I think it’s important to treat this as an aspiration rather than an obligation. If I decide that I must make other people happy in order to justify my existence, I’ve simply invented another external demand to satisfy.

Instead, I can choose to become somebody whose presence others might welcome, partly because I think that would make my own life more enjoyable too. This doesn’t have to be a trade-off between selfishness and selflessness. The two aspirations might actually reinforce each other. The happier and more secure I am in my own life, the more time, energy and attention I may have available to share with others. And the more I share experiences, develop friendships and contribute to other people’s happiness, the richer my own life may become.

Perhaps one of the nicest things about being alive is that enjoyment doesn’t always have to be a limited resource. Sometimes sharing it creates more of it.

What if AI changes everything?

Of course, there’s still the rather ridiculous possibility that we might actually get to test some of this.

Artificial intelligence is progressing at an extraordinary rate, and I don’t think anyone can confidently predict what the world will look like in fifty years, let alone five hundred. Perhaps AI will help us solve ageing. Perhaps we’ll develop technologies that allow us to replace failing organs, repair damage at a cellular level, or eventually achieve things that currently sound like science fiction. Or perhaps ageing will prove extraordinarily difficult to overcome, and we’ll all continue living roughly the same lifespans as previous generations.

I have absolutely no idea. But I do find it rather exciting that the range of possibilities seems so enormous. If humanity continues making technological and scientific progress, who knows what might eventually become achievable?

And there’s another aspect of AI that makes me think about my aspiration in a slightly different way. Suppose AI eventually becomes vastly more intelligent than humans. Perhaps it will be able to write better software, produce better music, solve more difficult problems and explain philosophy more clearly than I ever could. What would humans have left to offer?

Well, perhaps the answer is that we don’t necessarily have to offer anything extraordinary.

Even if an AI could do almost everything I can do considerably better, that wouldn’t make my own experiences worthless. A professional musician doesn’t make my enjoyment of listening to or playing music meaningless. A grandmaster doesn’t invalidate somebody else’s enjoyment of chess. And a superintelligent AI wouldn’t necessarily diminish the pleasure I get from thinking, learning, creating or simply experiencing the world.

I wonder whether we sometimes place too much importance on what people can produce or achieve, rather than simply appreciating the fact that they’re here. If machines eventually become better than us at almost everything, perhaps we’ll have to reconsider what makes our own experiences worthwhile.

I explored some related possibilities in my recent article Boldly Going Where Nobody Has Gone Before. We still understand surprisingly little about consciousness and the ultimate nature of subjective experience. Perhaps future discoveries will transform our understanding of what it means to be alive. But even without any extraordinary revelations about consciousness, I think there’s something appealing about the idea that a life can be valuable simply because it’s being experienced and enjoyed.

And perhaps a future superintelligence would recognise that too. Maybe it would value humanity not because we’re particularly useful, but because we’re interesting creatures who experience the universe in our own distinctive ways. Maybe the universe is better with us in it.

And perhaps, if we become particularly good at enjoying existence and helping one another enjoy it, even our hypothetical AI overlords might conclude that we’re rather nice to have around.

I’d like to think so, anyway.

Living as if forever were possible

There’s another reason I like this idea, even if none of the science-fiction possibilities ever become reality. It changes the way I think about the future.

If I assume that life is inevitably going to become progressively less interesting as I get older, then perhaps I’ll gradually start behaving as though that’s true. I might become less curious, less willing to try new things, or less interested in developing abilities that take time to grow. But what if I approached life as though I might have hundreds of years ahead of me? Wouldn’t it make sense to keep learning? To look after my health? To remain curious about the world, develop new interests and keep finding ways to make life enjoyable?

And wouldn’t it also make sense to become increasingly good at making life enjoyable for other people? After all, if I really did have another thousand years ahead of me, I’d quite like to spend them surrounded by people who were pleased I was still around.

Of course, most of those things make sense even if I only have another twenty or thirty years. And there are practical differences between preparing for a normal lifespan and genuinely expecting to live for centuries. I probably shouldn’t start making financial plans based on the assumption that I’ll still be paying rent in the year 2500. But as a way of thinking about how I want to live, I rather like it.

It also encourages me to think beyond the idea that life has a particular destination. I don’t need to spend the next twenty years working towards some final achievement, after which I can declare the whole exercise complete. Perhaps there isn’t a final destination. Perhaps I can continue exploring, learning, enjoying myself and finding new possibilities for as long as I’m here.

There’s no requirement to become extraordinary. I don’t need to make some enormous contribution to humanity or transform myself into a permanently cheerful fountain of wisdom. Some days I’ll be helpful, some days I’ll be selfish, and some days I’ll probably spend far too long playing computer games. But perhaps I can gradually become someone who enjoys life more, understands it better, and helps other people enjoy it too.

That seems like a worthwhile direction to travel in, however long the journey turns out to be.

Another thousand years? Yes, please!

So I’ve ended up with two aspirations that I think complement each other rather nicely.

The first is to have a reason to want to live forever. To create and maintain a life that I genuinely enjoy, with enough curiosity, experiences and possibilities that I would enthusiastically welcome the opportunity to continue living it.

The second is to make that reason compelling enough for other people to want me to live forever too. Not by making myself indispensable or proving that I deserve to exist, but by living in a way that gives other people good reasons to be glad I’m around.

Neither aspiration requires immortality to become possible. I can start working towards both of them right now, and the benefits are available regardless of whether I live for another thirty years or another three thousand. I also don’t need to achieve either aspiration perfectly. There will be difficult periods, times when I don’t particularly enjoy life, and occasions when I’m probably not much fun to be around. That’s part of being human. The point isn’t to pass some imaginary test of whether I’m worthy of eternal life. It’s simply to have a direction that I find appealing.

And perhaps the really nice thing is that the two aspirations don’t have to compete.

I want to live forever because I enjoy being alive.

Other people might want me to live forever because I help them enjoy being alive too.

If I can manage both of those things, I think I’ll have done rather well.

And if somebody eventually invents an immortality machine and asks whether I’d like another thousand years, I’d love to be able to say, “Yes, please!”

It would be even nicer if the people around me said, “Yes, please!” too.