If we extend lifespan, the greatest challenge is going to be boredom

If we extend lifespan, the greatest challenge is going to be boredom. Because the pattern seems to be that when you're young, you're amused by very short-term games. You're amused by playing soap bubbles or Legos that are right in front of you and have no longer-term meaning. Then you go into video games and board games that might last you for days or weeks. Eventually, you go into playing social games that might last you for months or even years.

Then you go into college and, uh, work, and you play building company and career games. You play mating games that might last you a decade, and then you have children. You play the children game, and that might last you several decades. Afterward, you play The Meditation and spirituality game, and that might last you for many, many decades until you die.

But if you have a lifespan measured in the hundreds and thousands of years, you're going to have to play really long-term games to hold your interest. I'm not even sure what those games look like. Obviously, they're open-ended; obviously, they're of infinite nature. However, almost any game becomes boring. So the challenge for any creature sufficiently long-lived is what game to play that I haven't yet seen through and that will last me till the end of days.

Every time people talk about longevity, I think about this. Um, not as well articulated as you just laid everything out, but I think that sums it about right. Eventually, I'm like, "Well, what am I going to do?" You know, you're aging. You will age out of trends. You will age out of your friends; they might pass away if you're living longer than everybody. So I think longevity is just a path to loneliness in the end.

So rather than trying to live longer, why not try to live more and put more in the years that you have? After my daughter was born recently, it was the first time I felt like I actually did want to live longer because I wanted to see her grow. I wanted to see her grow into a mature adult, and I don't want to leave the world too early to see that.

But that's really the only thing that's got me motivated to stay alive longer now. I wouldn't want you to take what I said as an argument against longevity; longevity and health span are good goals, and everybody wants to live longer and healthier. It's always going to be your choice of how you want to spend that time.

Eventually, you may end up just a Buddhist monk meditating, or you may end up loving and enjoying every moment, or you might just take on longer and longer-term goals. I just think the nature of the game that you're playing will change towards much more infinite games and finite games, to use James Carse's terminology.

And it should just be your choice. So I'm very, very pro-longevity. I'm just pointing out that there are these looping games that we play in life, and as you live longer and longer, the nature of these games is going to change. You're going to get tired of certain games until perhaps you see through the game entirely. But even then, I'll take the choice of health and lifespan over old age and death.