Living vs. Survival

[The-Great-One]

I pose to you a choice.

You have some of the greatest minds in the world all getting together. We give them 30 years to work on something. You are given two choices for them to work on. Naturally all of their time and work will have to go towards only one, it cannot be both.

You can have them work on space travel, so that we can populate the solar system and possibly beyond that, so that we can survive as a species.

-or-

You can have them work on immortality, so that aging will be a thing of the past. We will grow old, but will never die, so that we can continue to live and prosper.

What would your choice be and why?

[Fenny]

I'd really want immortality, but at the same time, I wanna be known for helping humanity prosper. I'd pick #1.

[Troisnyx]

What is to stop immortal humans from space travel? Of course it'll pose all sorts of problems. An aging population would be irreversible so blunders like China's one child policy will never be stopped. And does immortality preclude any immunity to disease and frailty? Does it include the ability to work? -- if it does, great. The world's workforce could be twice as strong as it was before. If not, we'd only have the same problem we do now, just... worse. Many enterprises would have to cater to the old population first and foremost. In some societies I could imagine that a policy like this would completely sap the life out of people.

So, no immortality. Space travel is probably the better idea.

[larrynachos]

The correct answer here is immortality, then space travel. However, immortality is a really bad idea, so I would have to go with space travel.

[aListers]

Space travel. I don't want too much power in one person's hands so having a human empire that allows us to only live temporarily is better than having immortality on earth - even if that means that you can later research space travel.

[FinaLee]

More questions would need to be answered for me to reach an informed decision. How long would it take for space travel to become successful? How reliable would space travel be? How far can we go with this technology?

How immortal would we be? Would we be immune from just dying of age, or would we no longer be subject to the influence of disease and trauma? What are the economic effects of nobody really dying anymore?

[Bit]

Immortality would probably be pretty sh*t. We'd just have a planet full of permanent old people. That would suck.

So I'll go with space travel.