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Would you rather live a thousand years or never get sick?

 
gardener
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Would you rather live a thousand years, with each stage of your life being proportionately longer (not living your normal lifespan and then being elderly for nine hundred years), or live a regular lifespan without ever getting sick?

For the first option, say, when you’re two hundred years old, you feel physically like you’re twenty. Five hundred, fifty. Etc. For the second, you live to a hundred, but never get sick once.

Let’s assume for simplicity that everyone around you would also live to a thousand years like you.
 
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I'm a quality of life kind of guy so I would go with never getting sick.
 
M Ljin
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Also, with the thousand years, there is high risk and high reward. Maybe you end up afflicted with Alzheimer’s for the span of a regular lifetime. Or maybe you spend part of your abundance of time researching medicine, and manage to get through really healthily.
 
master steward
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I long ago figured out that living forever was a really bad idea, for many, many reasons.

I will totally go with a regular life and no illness.
 
master pollinator
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100 year lifespan with never getting sick. I've been sick. I was so sick I could only chop veggies for 20 minutes at a time, then back on the couch for an hour. It sucks being sick.

(In other news, I'm back to 40 hour week stand up job, with still enough gumption to garden!)
 
pollinator
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I'm another for the "never get sick" camp.  I have a throat thing right now and its super irritating.  Plus its hard enough to keep up with new things as a late 30s person, much less a 900 year old person oof.
 
master gardener
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I'm 54. Living to 90 already sounds like hell and I haven't really gotten "old" yet. I'll take the never getting sick package!
 
pollinator
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Never get sick. Ugh I just got over being sick for a month......... Plus the future is going to suck, probably.

I would take 10 loops around 1900-2000 though!
 
M Ljin
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Dan Fish wrote:Never get sick. Ugh I just got over being sick for a month......... Plus the future is going to suck, probably.

I would take 10 loops around 1900-2000 though!



Wow, that’s twenty world wars and I-don’t-know-how-many genocides! Are you sure?

Personally I don’t like getting sick, like anyone else, but think it could be quite interesting to live a thousand years and watch old forests grow up from overgrazed pastures, and see history as it passes.
 
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I would go for the thousand years. The continuity of your life and the things you could do would be incredible.
 
pollinator
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Never get sick.

Thousand year lifespan makes me think of the story “Island of the Immortals” by Ursula K. LeGuin.
 
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Never getting sick, no question! I mean, who wants to deal with sniffles, coughs, and all that jazz, right? Imagine having endless energy and feeling tip-top every day. No more canceling plans or missing out on fun stuff because of a pesky cold or flu. Plus, staying healthy means you can fully enjoy life without any interruptions. So yeah, give me that immunity boost any day
 
Rusticator
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I already live with frequently debilitating chronic illness. I'd be thrilled to never get sick, and would never want to outlive all my friends and loved ones. The heartache would be awful!
 
pollinator
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Finally, an easy one!
I would love to never get sick. Robust health as long as I lived?
Yes, please.
 
steward & author
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Living a long life seems like a horrific punishment, especially if we don't know in advance to invest in gold or whatever so we don't have to work if we don't want to. All friends and family dead.  The world changing and what was polite behaviour seems to flip on the head every 50 years.  No, I don't think I would enjoy living to 100, levelon a thousand.

Being healthy, I wouldn't mind finding out what that feels like,  sounds nice,
 
master steward
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Healthy.  

 
Christopher Weeks
master gardener
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It's funny, I just read this and didn't remember it from when it was new. But I see that I answered 17 months ago! Now I'm going to answer the opposite -- I'm contrarian even to myself. Assuming that the same real-life level of ability to terminate my own life exists, then I'll take the 1000 years. From this:

For the first option, say, when you’re two hundred years old, you feel physically like you’re twenty. Five hundred, fifty. Etc.


it sounds like I'd get three hundred years basically never getting sick anyway, so that's a win over 100 years of never getting sick. And if I want to linger on with gradually increasing infirmity, I can make that choice day by day, just like I do right now.
 
steward
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I am rarely sick and want to stay that way so I want to ...

live a regular lifespan without ever getting sick
 
steward
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I could get social security for 933 years!  Ok, really I'm thinking that I would love to work on my forest gardens for 1000 years.  Can you imagine?  I'm ok with getting sick.  Makes the non-sick times extra sweet.
 
M Ljin
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Exactly! I would love to see the trees turn from old field into old growth and on.
 
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