View Single Post
  #1  
Old 09-29-2006, 05:12 PM
Lestat Lestat is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 4,304
Default Stupid stuff I think about

I'm not sure what the odds are of someone dying in a plane crash during their lifetime, but let's say they are 1 in 300,000. Let's say the odds of someone dying in an automobile accident are 1 in 70,000. These might be way off, but they are still close enough for the purpose of the question I'm going to ask...

With the above odds any rational person shouldn't think twice about getting on a plane or driving in a car. The odds are still overwhelmingly small their life will end due to a mishap. But that's only because our current lifespans, right?

What if science one day makes it possible for us to live to be 2 million years old? Now we could actually "expect" to die from a plane or car mishap during our lifetimes. So if we could live to 2 million years old, would that mean it would be perfectly logical to avoid air and car travel?

What I think it means is that a 2 million year lifespan would be utterly worthless to us. In other words, even if it were biologically possible to extend our lives to 2 million years old, we could not come close to fully reaping the benefits of such a scientific breakthrough.

Of course, this is all common sense, but I never thought of it in this way before. Even if we could live for 2 million years it would be useless, because we'd die well before that anyway. Just the stupid stuff I think about sometimes.
Reply With Quote