Silly pics...what'cha got??....maybe NSFW

[hepcat]

But being in the right time and the right place repeatedly throughout history? Nah, that’s just a bad trope.

[Jaymann]

Counterpoint: If you've been alive for thousands of years you could be extremely well educated. You may not know the future, but you have seen empires come and go and might have incredible insight into where things are heading.

[hepcat]

Why would you care if you were thousands of years old. If I’m 10,240 years old, I’m not going to take a 3 month boat trip because some guy in the Americas has been talking about hanging a key off a kite line and flying it in a storm.

But more importantly, the smartest guy in the world wouldn’t know what day Caesar was going to be stabbed in order to show up for the after party.

It’s a ridiculous narrative device that makes me chuckle whenever I come across it…and if the show has an immortal, I’m going to come across it.

[Blackhawk]

Our brains didn't evolve to work for that long, and it would cause problems that most people haven't thought of.

First, memory is perishable. I remember the basics of how to tie fishing flies, even though it's something that I haven't done in 35 years - but only the basics, despite knowing tomes worth at the time. My semester of ancient Greek? Almost entirely gone. The plot of my favorite 80s TV show? Barely there at all. You could be extremely well-educated, but you wouldn't be able to maintain the knowledge of the equivalent of a couple of dozen degrees for hundreds of years.

You'd likely also experience more and more issues with memory compression. The first time you drive down a back road, you remember it. Now let's say that you drive that road every day for five years. You'll remember the time you hit a deer, and the time that you spilled hot coffee on your leg, but the hundreds of other times will blur together. Our long-term memory tends to compress similar memories together. Having similar experiences over and over leads to fewer and fewer specific memories.

It's the reason that time seems to go faster as you get older - as you experience more things, more and more of your memories are similar to other memories you have, and they get mashed together. When you think backwards to how long ago something was, your sense of time isn't like some sort of temporal depth perception, it's a timeline of events. You remember X number of things from the past year, therefore the past year seems to be of Y length. When you're 8 years old, almost everything is new, so there are lots of entries on a year's timeline. When you get older, more and more of what we do gets compressed, and there are fewer entries. When we look back over the past year, there's not as much there, and it seems like it went faster than the years when you were 8. Want to feel like time is going slower and have more memories to hold on to? Then do new things. Drive different routes, eat at different places, talk to different people. Novel experiences = more memories than repeating the same old experiences again.

Imagine living a thousand years. There would be very few novel experiences. Practically every memory would get compressed into hundreds of other, similar memories. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if that effect reached a point at which it became crippling, when everything you experience gets mangled after a few nights sleep. You'd be like the man (whose name I can't recall) who got a spike through the head and lost the ability to create long-term memory. He'd meet the same people every day, and not remember them. There was no yesterday for that man - or, rather, the day before the injury was always yesterday to him. He'd wake up every day thinking it was the same day, a sadistic twist on Groundhog Day.

And then there'd be the issue of everyone you ever cared about dying. As time starts to seem faster and faster, you'd lose people so often that eventually you'd either break from it, or regular human lives would cease to have meaning - they'd be flickers of experience, and you'd have whole generations of friends and family that you'd forget. My best friend when I was little was named Scotty, and he and I knew everything about each other. Today? I remember that his name was Scotty. In a century? I'd be lucky to remember that I had a friend. In a thousand years?

So, no. Unless it came with a major upgrade to my infrastructure, immortality would suck.

[Kraken]

I would accept immortality on a contractual basis. Having recently turned 67, I just signed an agreement obligating me to live until 70. After that negotiations reopen.

But we're damaging the words:silly pics ratio.

[Brian]

For a good movie tackling the questions of (near) immortality, check out The Man From Earth.

It addresses some of the tropes mentioned in this thread and is an excellent, slow burn type of movie that, unfortunately, gives away the answer in the end of the movie.
I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they had left the question unanswered.

[GreenGoo]

For a good movie tackling the questions of (near) immortality, check out The Man From Earth.

Enjoyed. It's a small group of people talking in a small room for 90 mins, just a heads up.

[Jaymann]

For a good movie tackling the questions of (near) immortality, check out The Man From Earth.

It addresses some of the tropes mentioned in this thread and is an excellent, slow burn type of movie that, unfortunately, gives away the answer in the end of the movie.
I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they had left the question unanswered.

My only gripe with that movie is there is no way an immortal caveman would look like a white Anglo-Saxon American.

[Brian]

True, but the talent pool for cromagnon actors is surprisingly small.

[Max Peck]

To be fair, the modern world of Hollywood would confuse and frighten them.

[Blackhawk]

The modern world of Podunk Hollow would confuse and frighten them.

[hepcat]

True, but the talent pool for cromagnon actors is surprisingly small.

It's what, Ron Perlman and Clancy Brown? Maybe David Harbour?

[Brian]

And Richard Kiel but he passed in 2014.

[hepcat]

Of course, they all fail to measure up to the late, great Rondo Hatton.

[Jaymann]

Jeffrey Daniel Phillips is alive and well.

[hepcat]

Anyone can do it with makeup. It's the greats that can do it with a grimace and a hat.

(little know fact: Cro-Magnons loved hats and would often change their headware up to a dozen times a day to match the color scheme of their surroundings)

[disarm]

You'd be like the man (whose name I can't recall) who got a spike through the head and lost the ability to create long-term memory. He'd meet the same people every day, and not remember them. There was no yesterday for that man - or, rather, the day before the injury was always yesterday to him. He'd wake up every day thinking it was the same day, a sadistic twist on Groundhog Day.

FWIW, this is mixing up two different stories...

Henry Molaisin underwent a surgery to treat epilepsy that removed the hippocampus for both sides of his brain, resulting in a complete inability to store new memories.

Phineas Gage had ramping rod blown throughout and front desk his brain effectively giving him a frontal lobotomy. This left him with violent mood swings and severely diminished ability to control his emotion. Records from that time aren't great, but there is some evidence that his condition improved considerably in the years following the accident and he may have been close to his pre-accident self by the time he died.

And because we're had way too many posts without a picture...

[Blackhawk]

I'm pretty sure it's a different individual from either, something that was covered in a class on memory and learning I took a few years ago. He came up again later in a different book, but I don't remember ( ) which one it was.

[GreenGoo]

I 100% agree with that PSA. I've taught my kids that we are kind and polite and generous, except when driving. Not taking the right of way when it's your turn is a recipe for danger, accidents and death. The only reason we can all drive giant metal kinetic bombs in close proximity is because we all know and follow the same set of rules. Changing those rules on the fly without the knowledge of (most) those around you is likely to result in very bad things.

It's also why those disobeying the rules for their own gains are incredibly selfish, dangerous people. You need to be particularly vigilant around those people.

[Paingod]

I absolutely ignore people trying to be nice on the road.

If you stopped 1 millisecond before I did at the sign, I will sit there and stare at you with flat dead eyes while you flash your headlights and try to wave me through. I'm sure you can see around that corner while you flail your arm out the window for me to pass you uphill; I'm not going to because I can't see it.

[Jolor]

I remember a new driver telling me (very proudly) that they wanted to change lanes so CAME TO A COMPLETE STOP, put on their turn signal, did a shoulder check, and then made the maneuver.

Middle of winter. Three lanes east & three lanes west.

[Holman]

That said, it could be a pretty good twist to write a story/movie about the Barney Fife of immortals. Always screwing things up and just floating through 2,000 years of life having to be bailed out all the time by his immortal friend, Andy.

Not quite this, but consider the magnificent Harry Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser.

Flashman is an amoral English rogue and scoundrel who nevertheless finds himself involved in every military crisis of the Victorian age (including somehow managing to serve as a military advisor on both sides of the American Civil War). He betrays every oath, commits every sin, and generally winds through world history fucking things up to his own benefit for about 80 years. The books are hilarious.

[Holman]

Our brains didn't evolve to work for that long, and it would cause problems that most people haven't thought of.

First, memory is perishable. I remember the basics of how to tie fishing flies, even though it's something that I haven't done in 35 years - but only the basics, despite knowing tomes worth at the time. My semester of ancient Greek? Almost entirely gone. The plot of my favorite 80s TV show? Barely there at all. You could be extremely well-educated, but you wouldn't be able to maintain the knowledge of the equivalent of a couple of dozen degrees for hundreds of years.
[...]

This sounds like the premise of the fascinating solo RPG Thousand Year Old Vampire (available here as PDF only).

[em2nought]

I hate when people try to violate the rules of the road as a nice gesture or with more nefarious motives. I'm not pulling out in front of you at your behest when you have the right of way only to have you ram into me.

[Blackhawk]

You can be polite as long as you're polite within the rules. Changing lanes to make room as someone is merging, slowing down to let the semi trying to get out of a turn lane get over, and so on.

[Jaymann]

How about a funny cat video?

[McNutt]

[hepcat]

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing…

[McNutt]

A confusing perspective

[Max Peck]

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing…

At first glance,

Spoiler:

it looks like the girl in back has weirdly long legs while the girl in the middle has weirdly short legs.

[Jaymann]

The girl in the back has a pointy elbow, the girl in the middle has no elbow, and the girl on the right is hiding her elbow.

[Kraken]

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing…

At first glance,

Spoiler:

it looks like the girl in back has weirdly long legs while the girl in the middle has weirdly short legs.

OK, got it. I like the disapproving woman in the background with her arms akimbo.

[Isgrimnur]

[hepcat]

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing…

At first glance,

Spoiler:

it looks like the girl in back has weirdly long legs while the girl in the middle has weirdly short legs.

Ah, got it, thanks,

[Carpet_pissr]

I will be forty in four months. I have (some) wrinkles, (numerous) grey hairs, and (several) liver spots. Some days a walking stick would not be out of the fucking question.

To whack the kids on your lawn?

[Carpet_pissr]

Same story you used when Hannibal handed you the reins to an elephant, I see.

side note: i love the narrative device that is used in EVERY story or show about an immortal person. they're ALWAYS shown interacting with the most famous people or events in history. how they just happen to know which person or even will stand the test of time is never answered. if i were immortal, I'd always be the guy who showed up for the invention of the leather shoe lace or the opening of the 24th Chuck E. Cheese or something.

Precisely why there would be no stories or shows about you.

[hepcat]

Too late. Jesus Christ: Superstar was released decades ago.

[Isgrimnur]

I see you more as a Technicolor Dreamcoat kinda guy.

[hepcat]

I have had so many movies made about me I've lost track.

[Unagi]

Napoleon Bonaparte?