Part IV: The Personal

Some say life is short; others, like Chris Rock, say that life is long, especially if you make stupid decisions.

I would say both of these statements are true. If you make really stupid decisions, you can get stuck with their consequences for a long time. At the same time, the only reason you'll ever be feel stuck with such consequences is that life isn't all that long.

Say you sunk your years-long savings into a very bad investment — say, a BDSM club for seniors — and you won't get that money back. With a normal lifespan, you will be feeling that, and the time it is going to take to financially recover from that loss will be painfully long and will have taken much of your life.

But what if you could live 400 years? You sunk ten years worth of savings into something stupid? Whatevs. You'll have a lot of other such decades to make up for them.

Same with any other disappointments in life: a lot of time to get over them and/or make up for them. You'd be the same way we talk to youngsters in their 20s: "Oh, well. That's what your youth is for: to take risks, try things. And if it doesn't work, you'll have the time to move on and build something else that's more stable."

Practically one's whole life would be like that '80s song: forever young, which means one could try new, risky things for as long as one feels like it. Risky, as in, short of death, obviously, because you can't recover from that. So if that BDSM business fails, no biggie, you'll try over and over again, preferably in something else. Don't want to marry now? Sure. Don't feel like buying a home now? You'll do it in a hundred years or so.

Younger both physically and in time-orientation. How psychologically relaxing is that?!

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See also:

Part I: Concerns about Overpopulation

Part II: Old-Age Suffering

Part III: A Much-Richer Society