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Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

In the Arthur C. Clarke novel City and the Stars, human civilization has survived a billion years and human lifespans could too, theoretically. There, most humans live as long as they can until boredom overtakes them. Then then they sort of clean up their memories -- keeping only the most valuable memories and deleting the rest -- and then go into hibernation for thousands of years. Society has reached a steady state so very little changes over time, but just enough for a person to rise from hibernation and start a new life.

I suspect that limits of human psychology will probably result in a society like this, if we were to ever stretch our lifespans into millions of years.

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Ever since I hit mid-forties a while back and realised that chances are 'the road ahead is shorter than the road behind', I honestly don't remember ever feeling truly bored. Even while doing tedious stuff like waiting for a bus or in a waiting room, I'll find something to occupy my mind; reading, doing a crossword, doodling, or just watching the world go by.

When I was a youngster, on the other hand, I was quite capable of complaining; "I'm bored!" even when surrounded by all my toys, books and the television and with the sun beaming in the sky.

I think boredom is a luxury of youth.

Nothing motivates like knowing you have a limited amount of time.

> I think boredom is a luxury of youth.

It was, in our time.

This was made possible by humans being governed by a benevolent AI coupled with robots doing all the maintenance work. Great book. There is a short story by Borges The Immortal covering a similar topic in a more nihilistic manner.

Ah yes, they were called the eternity circuits.

>until boredom overtakes them.

What's wrong with being bored? I only live 100 years and I spend the majority of my life being bored. I want to be immortal so I can spend eternity being bored.

The people who claim they don't want to be immortal because they don't want to be bored don't get human psychology... Humans generally prefer being bored over being dead, period.

I think the value of boredom is that it nudges to do something. Introspection, creativity are the best examples that come to mind.

Being bored because of having literally nothing interesting left to do sounds depressive. I don't know what the novel's idea was, but this is what I would tell if I was going to write such a novel (alas, I'm not bored enough to do that).

I don't think anyone really knows what or how people's thoughts would change if they were to live to a thousand years (or a million, whatever).

Given that, I think there are probably different feelings which we all call bored. There is bored in the immediate term, bored in general, and ennui.

That notion goes both ways. How do you know we'll be so bored that we'd give up immortality? Extrapolating from information we already have I'd say we get plenty bored with about 80 years of life... I think we'd do well with another million.

> Humans generally prefer being bored over being dead, period.

Solitary confinement sounds like the ultimate form of boredom. If you were locked in it with no hope of release, there's a good chance you'd eventually start looking for ways to commit suicide.

We have examples of this in modern society. Actual prisons where people can spend an entire lifetime.

Most people don't commit suicide.

> We have examples of this in modern society. Actual prisons where people can spend an entire lifetime.

> Most people don't commit suicide.

Eh, not so much. Most solitary confinement in modern prisons is temporary and prisons have polices to prevent suicide (that are not perfect, but are still effective to some degree). Solitary confinement, even as it exists, definitely increases suicidal ideation.

>increases suicidal ideation.

Like suicide prevention ideation does not mean all people in solitary confinement want to commit suicide. I venture to argue that most people won't.

That's very similar to Ashildr in Dr. Who. The character was an immortal who did not have perfect memory. She would write down her memories, but would sometimes rip out pages or burn entire journals to let her memory fail and then forget. She survives to the end of the universe and then a bit more, in the show at least.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Ashildr

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