If you were a mutant

[Faschistisches Land]

Hmm, so I have to pick only one power?

If I had to pick one it would be the ability to manipulate space-time.

Finally, I will be able to open that damn pickle jar

[Calladan]

I'm no psychologolist, but I don't think one's life would necessarily become incessant pain and misery if one loses a certain number of loved ones.

If you insist on falling in love - proper, true, ass-backwards, can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything else love then you are forced to watch them grow old and die - what else would it be?

The alternative - I accept - is you grow cold and isolated and never make friends or truly fall in love. But dear gods above, that just sounds infinitely worse!!!

Plus I am not talking about "a certain number" - I am talking about an infinite number.

But some people see their siblings die. Roughly half of people will see their spouse die. They cope. Many people go on to marry again.

And they will grow old and die. And then you can marry again, and they will grow old and die, (and then I will run out of space to type these words because NSG isn't as infinite as the lifetime of an immortal), and then you can marry again, and then they will grow old and die.

Your entire existence will be a mountain of corpses? Only if you're a particularly committed mass murderer. There'll be loads of stuff in between. Death doesn't happen that often.

You do understand what immortal means, right? Every person who is born will die and you will still be alive. Death will be the only thing that is constant. Well - death and taxes and probably boredom.

I don't think Me is a perfect example. For one thing, she's fictional.

So is immortality

[Ethel mermania]

Maybe don't buy an aircraft carrier, just in case a mountain of pennies erupts from your pockets.

It wouldn't have to be in small coins, you know. Could be stacks of bills, or perhaps a check for the right amount.

Ok, so maybe not an aircraft carrier. A Porsche would be more practical.

Especially with the free parking powers. Truly the best of super heros.

[Ifreann]

I'm no psychologolist, but I don't think one's life would necessarily become incessant pain and misery if one loses a certain number of loved ones.

If you insist on falling in love - proper, true, ass-backwards, can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything else love then you are forced to watch them grow old and die - what else would it be?

It would be normal life. You suffer loss, you deal with it, you carry on. It's not like your psyche has hitpoints and if you lose too many you can never be happy ever again.

The alternative - I accept - is you grow cold and isolated and never make friends or truly fall in love. But dear gods above, that just sounds infinitely worse!!!

Well if you're going to live forever you could do both. Take a decade off from society every once in a while.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

I'm no psychologolist, but I don't think one's life would necessarily become incessant pain and misery if one loses a certain number of loved ones.

If you insist on falling in love - proper, true, ass-backwards, can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything else love then you are forced to watch them grow old and die - what else would it be?

The alternative - I accept - is you grow cold and isolated and never make friends or truly fall in love. But dear gods above, that just sounds infinitely worse!!!

Plus I am not talking about "a certain number" - I am talking about an infinite number.

But some people see their siblings die. Roughly half of people will see their spouse die. They cope. Many people go on to marry again.

And they will grow old and die. And then you can marry again, and they will grow old and die, (and then I will run out of space to type these words because NSG isn't as infinite as the lifetime of an immortal), and then you can marry again, and then they will grow old and die.

Right. Great!

Your entire existence will be a mountain of corpses? Only if you're a particularly committed mass murderer. There'll be loads of stuff in between. Death doesn't happen that often.

You do understand what immortal means, right? Every person who is born will die and you will still be alive. Death will be the only thing that is constant. Well - death and taxes and probably boredom.

Yes, I understand what immortality is. I don't understand how that makes "your entire existence" about death and corpses and stuff. Unless you have a quite extraordinary number of friends and relatives, you're not going to be attending funerals and death beds for more than a tiny fraction of your very long (I'm assuming not eternity, since the Universe isn't going to be habitable for eternity) life.

I don't think Me is a perfect example. For one thing, she's fictional.

So is immortality

Right, but while we can speculate about how real humans might react in a "what if?" scenario, you can't bring up a fictional character as a case study. That's why I referenced the fact that actual people manage to suffer bereavement and live, rather than pointing out that Spike from Buffy seems mostly all right.

[Valrifell]

-snippy-

Let's talk about the unintended consequences of going immortal other than the regularly growing emotional scars:

-Humanity will evolve without you
--You'll stick out after the first couple thousand years of being immortal
--Pathogens which you're not used to will be a nuisance
--Language will rework itself

-You'll eventually forget a lot of stuff
--The older you get the more everything starts to blur together

-Statistically speaking, you will eventually lose every single portion of your body that can be cut out.*
--*of course, with a healing factor this wouldn't be much of an issue, but that would mean that suicide is not an option

-You are not protected from mental scarring or developing mental illness (other than the neurological ones), and will develop all of them throughout your infinite lifespan

-A (strong) healing factor + immortality means watching the heat death of the universe and the death of the Earth by firey sun, of course by that time you'll already be suffering from crippling loneliness with no way out.

-You'll see the extinction of mankind and its replacement with giant crab-creatures and giant butterflies on a very warm planet Earth.

All-in-all, not quite sure why you'd want to corner yourself to an eventual life of complete solitude at one point or another without giving yourself an "out" to your eventual completely painful life. I'd only accept immortality with the option of inter-dimensional travel so it'd always be fresh. Even then, I don't foresee myself wanting to keep that up indefinitely.

[Proctopeo]

The ability to summon genies that know exactly what you mean and will grant your wishes that way, with no limit.

Hopefully with the side effect of getting a lamp every time I summon a genie.

[Calladan]

If you insist on falling in love - proper, true, ass-backwards, can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything else love then you are forced to watch them grow old and die - what else would it be?

It would be normal life. You suffer loss, you deal with it, you carry on. It's not like your psyche has hitpoints and if you lose too many you can never be happy ever again.

Yeah - I am not sure I agree. You lose one or two people in your life, I can see you carrying on.

You lose one or two THOUSAND People in your life....... you don't think that would have a bigger impact?
You lose one or two HUNDRED THOUSAND people in your life?

Am I the only one who is thinking about these numbers? We are literally talking about the rest of time - the sun might not burn out for 5 BILLION years. That is quite a long time when you break it up in to 70, 80 year fragments.

The alternative - I accept - is you grow cold and isolated and never make friends or truly fall in love. But dear gods above, that just sounds infinitely worse!!!

Well if you're going to live forever you could do both. Take a decade off from society every once in a while.

Even with that....... I am not convinced.

If you insist on falling in love - proper, true, ass-backwards, can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything else love then you are forced to watch them grow old and die - what else would it be?

The alternative - I accept - is you grow cold and isolated and never make friends or truly fall in love. But dear gods above, that just sounds infinitely worse!!!

Plus I am not talking about "a certain number" - I am talking about an infinite number.

And they will grow old and die. And then you can marry again, and they will grow old and die, (and then I will run out of space to type these words because NSG isn't as infinite as the lifetime of an immortal), and then you can marry again, and then they will grow old and die.

Right. Great!

Yeah..... not quite the response I would have. But to each their own.

You do understand what immortal means, right? Every person who is born will die and you will still be alive. Death will be the only thing that is constant. Well - death and taxes and probably boredom.

Yes, I understand what immortality is. I don't understand how that makes "your entire existence" about death and corpses and stuff. Unless you have a quite extraordinary number of friends and relatives, you're not going to be attending funerals and death beds for more than a tiny fraction of your very long (I'm assuming not eternity, since the Universe isn't going to be habitable for eternity) life.

See above, re 5 billion years. And it might not be all about death, but (just to be blunt, and I can't think of a better way to phrase it) the average corpse to person ratio in a life is what? 4 to 1? 5 to 1? Maybe 10, 20 to 1 at a push if it is a big family. (This is people you love, and mourn. Not people you might kill - that is an entirely different matter!)

So if you live for 5 billion years, and only get married once every 50 years, and have 2.4 children, that's 240,000,000,000 children plus 100,000,000,000 spouses, for a grand total of 340,000,000,000 dead bodies - people you have loved and lost.

To me, that seems quite a lot of people to mourn for one person.

Plus - what happens when everyone else is dead? You would be alone, for the rest of time. Or if there is a nuclear war? It really doesn't bear contemplating.

So is immortality

Right, but while we can speculate about how real humans might react in a "what if?" scenario, you can't bring up a fictional character as a case study. That's why I referenced the fact that actual people manage to suffer bereavement and live, rather than pointing out that Spike from Buffy seems mostly all right.

*shrug* Since we have no real life reference to deal with, using examples of various immortals is my best reference.

And as for "real life", I can only speculate about me. And all I can see is losing someone I love, then stopping ever truly loving again to avoid getting hurt in the future. Which - to me - is a fate worse than death.

(Again - I am really a very cheerful, happy person, I swear!)

[Aellex]

I've never understood this attitude. Unless you die very young, you'll probably see half of those people grow old and die. Regular people suffer loss and cope. Immortality means there'll always be more people for you to love, people you'd otherwise never have the chance to meet because they won't be born for another century.

I have got used to the idea (more or less) that I will probably have to watch my grand parents and parents die. But my siblings? My children? My grand children? My GREAT-GRAND CHILDREN? Seriously? You really expect to watch them grow old and die?

There's a line in Babylon 5 that pretty much sums it up :-

"To live on as we have is to leave behind joy and love and companionship because we know it to be transitory, of the moment. We know it will turn to ash. Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is eternal."

Then there is Me, from Doctor Who. She is another perfect example of why immortality is a curse, not a gift. I honestly could not see it as anything else.

> "Immortality means there'll always be more people for you to love"

And every single one of them will be born, will grow up, will grow old and will die, and you will feel the pain of their loss. Your entire life - your entire existence - will eventually be a mountain of corpses, of loss, of death and of misery.

Who would want to live like that?

(And keep in mind I am one of the happiest, peppiest people you will ever meet. I am not a depressed person - I am cheerful to a fault )

Tots agree with you on that one. I see only two outcome for an immortal life, either a fall into madness or one into sadism. In both case, you'll have made a living hell for both you and people around you.

[Ifreann]

It would be normal life. You suffer loss, you deal with it, you carry on. It's not like your psyche has hitpoints and if you lose too many you can never be happy ever again.

Yeah - I am not sure I agree. You lose one or two people in your life, I can see you carrying on.

You lose one or two THOUSAND People in your life....... you don't think that would have a bigger impact?
You lose one or two HUNDRED THOUSAND people in your life?

Why would that be worse than losing one or two people? A few people you love die every however many decades. Probably spread further apart as medical technology advances. So, you have decades to deal with that loss.

Am I the only one who is thinking about these numbers? We are literally talking about the rest of time - the sun might not burn out for 5 BILLION years. That is quite a long time when you break it up in to 70, 80 year fragments.

Forever is famously a very long time.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

-snippy-

Let's talk about the unintended consequences of going immortal other than the regularly growing emotional scars:

-Humanity will evolve without you
--You'll stick out after the first couple thousand years of being immortal
--Pathogens which you're not used to will be a nuisance
--Language will rework itself

-You'll eventually forget a lot of stuff
--The older you get the more everything starts to blur together

-Statistically speaking, you will eventually lose every single portion of your body that can be cut out.*
--*of course, with a healing factor this wouldn't be much of an issue, but that would mean that suicide is not an option

-You are not protected from mental scarring or developing mental illness (other than the neurological ones), and will develop all of them throughout your infinite lifespan

-A (strong) healing factor + immortality means watching the heat death of the universe and the death of the Earth by firey sun, of course by that time you'll already be suffering from crippling loneliness with no way out.

-You'll see the extinction of mankind and its replacement with giant crab-creatures and giant butterflies on a very warm planet Earth.

All-in-all, not quite sure why you'd want to corner yourself to an eventual life of complete solitude at one point or another without giving yourself an "out" to your eventual completely painful life. I'd only accept immortality with the option of inter-dimensional travel so it'd always be fresh. Even then, I don't foresee myself wanting to keep that up indefinitely.

Now these I think are much better. I can certainly see arguments against immortality, depending on what the specifics are, I've just never been convinced by the "other humans will die around you" one.

Although giant butterflies are not an argument against anything. Who wouldn't want to ride a giant butterfly?

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

Immortality, healing factor, telepathy, and shapeshifting are preferred in that order. I want more time, it'd be nice if injury and illness weren't a concern, and knowing what people are thinking would be useful as would changing my appearance.

Alternatively, if that's too much, the ability to transfer my consciousness into other people. It'd basically give me everything in the earlier list as long as I could hop from body to body.

For me, immortality just means growing everyone you love, everyone you adore, growing old and dying right in front of your eyes. I really cannot imagine a single worse thing to happen to someone.

Yeah, but who cares? You'll just forget eventually. And besides, think about all the fun stuff you can do! Want to make a quadrillion dollars? The world is your oyster. Want to cure every disease on the face of the planet? It'll take a few years to learn the necessary skills and treat the ailments, but you can do it. Want to become fluent in 165 different languages? You've got the time.
And if it was a process (ex. an elixir of immortality) or other modification (ex. vampirism, heavily irradiating yourself, dousing yourself in a special combination of normally-lethal chemicals) you can replicate it and make your family immortal, too.

[The Emerald Legion]

And every single one of them will be born, will grow up, will grow old and will die, and you will feel the pain of their loss. Your entire life - your entire existence - will eventually be a mountain of corpses, of loss, of death and of misery.

Who would want to live like that?

(And keep in mind I am one of the happiest, peppiest people you will ever meet. I am not a depressed person - I am cheerful to a fault )

That sounds like the single greatest existence a human could possibly hope for. Who doesn't want to stand atop a mountain of corpses and scream their defiance at a universe that, for all it's attempts, cannot make them die?

[Luminesa]

For me, immortality just means growing everyone you love, everyone you adore, growing old and dying right in front of your eyes. I really cannot imagine a single worse thing to happen to someone.

Yeah, but who cares? You'll just forget eventually. And besides, think about all the fun stuff you can do! Want to make a quadrillion dollars? The world is your oyster. Want to cure every disease on the face of the planet? It'll take a few years to learn the necessary skills and treat the ailments, but you can do it. Want to become fluent in 165 different languages? You've got the time.
And if it was a process (ex. an elixir of immortality) or other modification (ex. vampirism, heavily irradiating yourself, dousing yourself in a special combination of normally-lethal chemicals) you can replicate it and make your family immortal, too.

...But you're lonely...

[Luminesa]

Hmm, so I have to pick only one power?

If I had to pick one it would be the ability to manipulate space-time.

Finally, I will be able to open that damn pickle jar

Found the Mayor guys!

[Anywhere Else But Here]

Yeah, but who cares? You'll just forget eventually. And besides, think about all the fun stuff you can do! Want to make a quadrillion dollars? The world is your oyster. Want to cure every disease on the face of the planet? It'll take a few years to learn the necessary skills and treat the ailments, but you can do it. Want to become fluent in 165 different languages? You've got the time.
And if it was a process (ex. an elixir of immortality) or other modification (ex. vampirism, heavily irradiating yourself, dousing yourself in a special combination of normally-lethal chemicals) you can replicate it and make your family immortal, too.

...But you're lonely...

None of that necessitates loneliness. In fact, I daresay you'd need someone to teach you those languages or help you cure those diseases.

[Valrifell]

...But you're lonely...

None of that necessitates loneliness. In fact, I daresay you'd need someone to teach you those languages or help you cure those diseases.

Still can't retain that knowledge indefinitely and you would inevitbily start feeling isolated from a society that changes around you.

[Calladan]

(grin) So far all the arguments for immortality seem to become either lonely and isolated or a world class sociopath who wants to conquer the world and rule it forever. Neither of these are making it any more appealing

I think, with all due respect, I am going to stick to my original answer (to go through life with the ability to remain unnoticed when I want to) or possibly the ability to always have the correct change when I need to. Which would not really be a mutant power per se, but would be far more useful than a lot of other powers for day to day life.

[Sovaal]

(grin) So far all the arguments for immortality seem to become either lonely and isolated or a world class sociopath who wants to conquer the world and rule it forever. Neither of these are making it any more appealing

I think, with all due respect, I am going to stick to my original answer (to go through life with the ability to remain unnoticed when I want to) or possibly the ability to always have the correct change when I need to. Which would not really be a mutant power per se, but would be far more useful than a lot of other powers for day to day life.

I mean there's a reason that Tolkien's gift to men was death.

[Thermodolia]

(grin) So far all the arguments for immortality seem to become either lonely and isolated or a world class sociopath who wants to conquer the world and rule it forever. Neither of these are making it any more appealing

I think, with all due respect, I am going to stick to my original answer (to go through life with the ability to remain unnoticed when I want to) or possibly the ability to always have the correct change when I need to. Which would not really be a mutant power per se, but would be far more useful than a lot of other powers for day to day life.

Idk I still like the idea of invisibility and a deadpool style healing factor

[Sovaal]

(grin) So far all the arguments for immortality seem to become either lonely and isolated or a world class sociopath who wants to conquer the world and rule it forever. Neither of these are making it any more appealing

I think, with all due respect, I am going to stick to my original answer (to go through life with the ability to remain unnoticed when I want to) or possibly the ability to always have the correct change when I need to. Which would not really be a mutant power per se, but would be far more useful than a lot of other powers for day to day life.

Idk I still like the idea of invisibility and a deadpool style healing factor

Until you get like impaled an immobilized and suffer from what would otherwise be a slow and painful death but without the death part.

[Computer Lab]

Heat manipulation. I could brew tea without needing any source of fuel!

With enough control, you could create wind and ocean currents to navigate the world however you please, make basic illusions, and defend yourself from enemies. What could be better?

[Thermodolia]

Idk I still like the idea of invisibility and a deadpool style healing factor

Until you get like impaled an immobilized and suffer from what would otherwise be a slow and painful death but without the death part.

I wouldn't suffer as I'd heal too fast. Deadpool can survive decapitations.

[Sovaal]

Until you get like impaled an immobilized and suffer from what would otherwise be a slow and painful death but without the death part.

I wouldn't suffer as I'd heal too fast. Deadpool can survive decapitations.

Well, uh, fire?

[The Orion Islands]

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