What Would Transhumanists Do With 100 Extra Years of Life? Space Travel? Alien Sex? Helping Others?

Radical Life Extension / Immortalism is a primary goal of the vast majority of transhumanists. But what, specifically, do we want to do with the extra time? (Terasem Survey, Part 2)

The 8 questions from the poll are pretty typical things for people to favor and they are great things to pursue. Are they necessarily the things to bend the future around, or are people still waiting for a progressive/holistic redefining, a reform of the way people approach enjoying life? Instead of those things, why not approach life via the big picture and then go from there? Now that the frontiers are opening up in that further way, I can’t see why we wouldn’t. How do we get a grasp on, sum up, the big picture of existence though?

We could be wrong, but a lot of debate, thinking and time has gone into this unofficial index of sorts to the big picture of existence: https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/531567_4124983043546_907075928_n.jpg

I like the notion of listing the more detailed things there are to do to like you do. Another nice list like it is here: http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/5394-the-first-1000-things-to-do-before-you-die/page__st__60__gopid__528920#entry528920

From reading the comments you posted, the other thing transhumanists want to do with an extra 100 years of life is to learn more things in general.  Personally I’m surprised spending time with family and loved ones is relatively low on the list because you would think you wouldn’t want to live longer without them.  1# and 2# are very understandable and 2# would probably what I would do with and extra 100 years.

“why not approach life via the big picture and then go from there?”

Maybe because a) people in western society and too preoccupied with their own personal lives to know what the “Big Picture” is and b) pretty much everyone else in the world are still just trying to live.  Maybe its important that we focus on quality of life before quantity of life as they say.

“Personally I’m surprised spending time with family and loved ones is relatively low on the list because you would think you wouldn’t want to live longer without them”

Chris, a world that could ‘give one’ an extra hundred years of life, could possibly encourage chosen family (those you pick to be your family, i.e. best friends) so that one wouldn’t need/want biological family. What’s the problem with loved ones? You are 21, right? so you don’t have many—or any—nonfamily loved ones of 15 years ago in your life anymore.
True, biological family are biologically irreplaceable, for now at any rate, but not loved ones. From a spiritual perspective, people in our lives should not be interchangeable- but they are. At a college/university, they often play musical beds like children play musical chairs, and who is to say they, over the age of 18, are wrong? The world is filled with Merry Go Round relationships. On off, in out, hello goodbye. There’s no accountability—no rhyme or reason that one can see.

@ Intomorrow

“a world that could ‘give one’ an extra hundred years of life, could possibly encourage chosen family (those you pick to be your family, i.e. best friends) so that one wouldn’t need/want biological family.”

If that is the case why would Ray Kurzweil want to bring his dad back?

“The world is filled with Merry Go Round relationships. On off, in out, hello goodbye. There’s no accountability—no rhyme or reason that one can see.”

Sometimes yes, but not always.  I’ve know couples, close friends, etc in and out of my family that have maintained bonds with each other for decades (50 years give or take if I recall correctly).  They’ve had their ups and downs but they’ve always managed to go through it all.  Come to think of it, you’re post to me what the Main antagonists from my novel series says: “Never love anything, you only lose it in the end.”  If transhumans end up accepting that, then I openly oppose them.

“If that is the case why would Ray Kurzweil want to bring his dad back?”

Perhaps Ray’s dad was an extra-special guy.
There is a dualism involved, Charles Manson fathered children- do you think after he dies his kids would want to reanimate him? Maybe.. but if they decide they do not want to do so, who would blame them for it?
As for your someday possibly opposing transhumanism, you might wind up encouraging transhumanism by opposing it; you must have notioced by now how reactive things are.
And also, you don’t know what goes on behing closed doors: the people who appear to have rtheir faith reposed in each other may have secret lives you know nothing of. At any rate, you are 21—when you are 121 you might not know the same people.

“when you are 121 you might not know the same people.”

Guess its a good thing I’m currently single (haven’t had a girl friend yet).  BTW, I’ll be 21 next month.

Only thing for certain is nothing is certain: the biosphere might be destroyed or severely damaged, no one can predict the future, it is educated guesstimates. You can’t count on knowing the same people decades from now; they move away, drift off to other friends, die, etc.
Knowing the same people your whole life would be an exception to the rule of our being shuffled like cards in a deck, that’s how things change (WWII ended the Great Depression and them rearranged the world; we can agree in the abstract negative change doesn’t have to be the way life changes, but it does change that way—pressure builds up and there are explosions, the Arab Spring was evidence of such right on your TV).

I don’t even think there are are genuine friendships, only alliances.

“Guess its a good thing I’m currently single (haven’t had a girl friend yet).”

Though it is none of my business, it might be better to have a ‘bot girlfriend, the dating scene is insincere, which relates to change: in the ‘50s a couple could live a relatively utopian (small case ‘u’) life; today there is too much dislocation—and it has been that way since the ‘70s. The ‘70s was the first decade of thorough-going dislocation, and was it ever a mess; I remember it as a comedy, a farcical sitcom (e.g. ‘Three’s Company’).
Don’t know if religion is a positive, btw, however religion isn’t much relatable to technopressivism. I like religion/spirituality for two reasons: having been brought up in a more religious time; and because, frankly, less intelligent/educated people still appear to need religion to cope. Religion can and does keep families and couples together—yet this is making a virtue of necessity, it is saying we can’t cope with change, complexity-complication and dislocation, so we need religion/spirituality to filter reality for us.

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