Immortal Spectrum

[ElijahW]

As I've said, my background is not in biology, so my scientific thought process isn't quite there. Philosophy was my other remote specialization besides religious studies, so in that way, I'd consider that logically, it is possible, though the consideration that our hygiene wasn't the best, particular for teeth, means that it's not likely we lasted terribly long with even a fairly simple diet, just with cavities and tooth decay's wear and tear

Those words are like a hug to my brain.

I agree about the teeth being an issue but I also see the evolution of our teeth not really keeping up with us right now either, in regards to durability and lasting the length of our lives. Maybe if the longevity is produced by a spectrum of growth hormones being produced then there was a regenerative effect on the teeth as well, producing more than the typical two sets.

Structural change could be those related to sexual attraction. Evolution is a process of a species population, so theoretically humans could have come from a particular tribe of proto humans.

Yeah, in my more militant feminist days I believed in a period of primitive matriarchy, that changed the survival of the fittest benefiting the strong, to those being selected by women, which produced a different kind of man, from them favoring different traits. I was looking for some internal conflict to explain the intellectual jump.

I also had the runt theory. They say that humans dna is so similar that it points to us having a really low population at some point. The low population alone is used by some in the scientific community to justify our intelligence, by suggesting that when push came to shove only those who were more intelligent survived, while the dumber of our species was weeded out. I agree that type of general improvement is ongoing I just think that it is a common and gradual improvement that lots of species should experience, and what we are looking for something unique.

What I did consider possible was that when the population got low and children got scarce we could have picked up the habit of protecting the runts, instead of weeding them out. Still outcast in the group but allowed to live it creates a division in the pack that leads to an internal conflict that most species aren't dealing with. Basically the war between the jocks and the nerds goes back to the origin of our intelligence, when smaller members of a group had to adapt to prosper within the group because strength wasn't going to be an option.

I still think that conflict has evolved our thinking but more with ideas we use. The actual physical change we are trying to explain we need to include why we are no longer still evolving that way.

Animals and plants have markedly different cellular structures as I recall, so that's a factor, since our cells take in sunlight very differently. Also, no osmosis.

Yes they are different so I think that another more complex way evolved to convert light into energy. Not sure what that development was but we see the ability to use light to help with the formation of organic compounds (VitD) in the skin so we know that there are possibilities in the creation of other organic compounds to be used for energy. Again this isn't too far fetched to imagine if it wasn't humans that was being discussed as making this advancement. But when you look at what kind of animal we were, (if we assume the aquatic hypothesis) then we have an animal that may have been in a pretty good position to make that jump.

Being the hairless monkey may have had an advantage, in that the typical fur that was preventing the sun from being fully utilized was gone. Compound that with on the beach we didn't have the trees or tall grass to use from cover from the sun, so we were getting lots and lots of exposure to it. Also this theory would explain why the development was so temporary and stopped. If the sun is tied to our evolutionary advantage; then as soon as we develop the intelligence to clothe ourselves, or build rudimental shelter, or expand our diet that takes away the dietary need for the sun, we lose that advantage.

Incorporeal may be better in that regard. There is still some natural "material" basis perhaps, but there is no real tangible aspect to it, perhaps

"Incorporeal" is interchangeable with "immaterial", so you are going to run into the same issues. Why not "supernatural" again? If it seems like a natural body that has some super qualities, like being permeable or flight then it seems like a decent word, if not for some baggage it comes with.

I'm not giving up on living, I'm accepting that I will die as a part of nature

This thinking was a lot more understandable in Buddha G's time, when the world seemed constant, so the idea of society progressing rapidly wasn't a consideration. Today though we can see that rapid progress isn't only a rational consideration but our reality. Yes your death may be inevitable but so may be the progress of humanity that leads to the ability to resurrect the dead. The question right here would be is everyone going to be able to handle or want that life? Is the disdain towards living we often see here based on the crappyness of the lives here (not finding love) or are just some people not built mentally for living? Or if everyone had faith in the resurrection would everyone be signing up?

 

[muichimotsu]

Those words are like a hug to my brain.

I agree about the teeth being an issue but I also see the evolution of our teeth not really keeping up with us right now either, in regards to durability and lasting the length of our lives. Maybe if the longevity is produced by a spectrum of growth hormones being produced then there was a regenerative effect on the teeth as well, producing more than the typical two sets.

So we lost that at some point? Not sure if that would still grant us that much more longevity.

Yeah, in my more militant feminist days I believed in a period of primitive matriarchy, that changed the survival of the fittest benefiting the strong, to those being selected by women, which produced a different kind of man, from them favoring different traits. I was looking for some internal conflict to explain the intellectual jump.

I also had the runt theory. They say that humans dna is so similar that it points to us having a really low population at some point. The low population alone is used by some in the scientific community to justify our intelligence, by suggesting that when push came to shove only those who were more intelligent survived, while the dumber of our species was weeded out. I agree that type of general improvement is ongoing I just think that it is a common and gradual improvement that lots of species should experience, and what we are looking for something unique.

What I did consider possible was that when the population got low and children got scarce we could have picked up the habit of protecting the runts, instead of weeding them out. Still outcast in the group but allowed to live it creates a division in the pack that leads to an internal conflict that most species aren't dealing with. Basically the war between the jocks and the nerds goes back to the origin of our intelligence, when smaller members of a group had to adapt to prosper within the group because strength wasn't going to be an option.

I still think that conflict has evolved our thinking but more with ideas we use. The actual physical change we are trying to explain we need to include why we are no longer still evolving that way.

Mutations don't always consistently manifest themselves, if I understand biological evolution even remotely well. The mutations persist in a recessive trait, perhaps, especially if the environment doesn't favor those traits as dominant after a time

Yes they are different so I think that another more complex way evolved to convert light into energy. Not sure what that development was but we see the ability to use light to help with the formation of organic compounds (VitD) in the skin so we know that there are possibilities in the creation of other organic compounds to be used for energy. Again this isn't too far fetched to imagine if it wasn't humans that was being discussed as making this advancement. But when you look at what kind of animal we were, (if we assume the aquatic hypothesis) then we have an animal that may have been in a pretty good position to make that jump.

Being the hairless monkey may have had an advantage, in that the typical fur that was preventing the sun from being fully utilized was gone. Compound that with on the beach we didn't have the trees or tall grass to use from cover from the sun, so we were getting lots and lots of exposure to it. Also this theory would explain why the development was so temporary and stopped. If the sun is tied to our evolutionary advantage; then as soon as we develop the intelligence to clothe ourselves, or build rudimental shelter, or expand our diet that takes away the dietary need for the sun, we lose that advantage.

I'd prefer to have a life that's shorter in that regard, even if we assumed this to be remotely true, though it seems science fiction in claiming our evolutionary ancestors could convert sun into sustenance of some form

"Incorporeal" is interchangeable with "immaterial", so you are going to run into the same issues. Why not "supernatural" again? If it seems like a natural body that has some super qualities, like being permeable or flight then it seems like a decent word, if not for some baggage it comes with.

Incorporeal and immaterial could instead imply 90% energy with 10% matter as a matter of some necessity, maybe even less than that, down to the minimum 1% or so. I'm not sure what the sci fi explanation is in terms of those entities, the first that I can think of being from Star Trek's original series

This thinking was a lot more understandable in Buddha G's time, when the world seemed constant, so the idea of society progressing rapidly wasn't a consideration. Today though we can see that rapid progress isn't only a rational consideration but our reality. Yes your death may be inevitable but so may be the progress of humanity that leads to the ability to resurrect the dead. The question right here would be is everyone going to be able to handle or want that life? Is the disdain towards living we often see here based on the crappyness of the lives here (not finding love) or are just some people not built mentally for living? Or if everyone had faith in the resurrection would everyone be signing up?

People may not be able to cope with the difficulties of life as it is, so they look for some escape in the form of living forever in paradise.

 

[ElijahW]

So we lost that at some point? Not sure if that would still grant us that much more longevity.

Lost the growth hormone boost or the extra teeth? The growth hormone is a commonly occurring hormone that decreases with age but increases with fasting, which in this theory we were in doing more regularly. Fasting seems to be a signal for the body to repair, which is why the practice of fasting has been held so long by ancient man, and even utilized by animals when sick.

The issue would be finding something to stabilize the fasting states. Typically a fasting/starving animal recovers and finds more food in order to put on the weight it lost. If it doesn't, then odds are it's probably going to starve to death. Maybe the seaside provided just enough sustenance, be it sunlight or seaweed, to keep us alive. Or maybe having such a narrow habitat to feed from caused us to have a lot more periods of hunger than an animal would normally experience who had a larger area and more diverse food source.

Mutations don't always consistently manifest themselves, if I understand biological evolution even remotely well. The mutations persist in a recessive trait, perhaps, especially if the environment doesn't favor those traits as dominant after a time

I'm not sure what point you are responding to. Mutations aren't considered the driving force behind the evolutionary change here but instead small adaptations to the environment on the epigenetic level. Not saying that mutations (genetic mistakes) don't and haven't played a role in evolution but they aren't the only thing evolving us forward.

I'd prefer to have a life that's shorter in that regard, even if we assumed this to be remotely true, though it seems science fiction in claiming our evolutionary ancestors could convert sun into sustenance of some form

It does seem like science fiction or at least theoretical science. But again, if we weren't talking about us, then this wouldn't sound as much like science fiction. And if we treated this issue as if we landed on an alien planet to figure out the intelligent species, then it also wouldn't sound too radical.

Say we were examining the life on an alien planet, and saw that half the living things aged (animals) and half the life (plants) didn't have that ticking clock unless it was from a lack of exposure to the sun. What would we think if we saw a single animal that has shown signs of not aging, by being able to sustain itself for enough time to make an intellectual jump over the other mortal animals? Wouldn't we assume that some quality of the life that doesn't age(plants) has been adapted to by an animal that did? That quality looks like what is the natural adaptation of an animal in a situation without solid food if it wished to survive and be considered the fittest.

Incorporeal and immaterial could instead imply 90% energy with 10% matter as a matter of some necessity, maybe even less than that, down to the minimum 1% or so. I'm not sure what the sci fi explanation is in terms of those entities, the first that I can think of being from Star Trek's original series

Those words don't imply that though. There may be a word that does if we can see what the difference between the idenity of matter and what you are describing. Matter seems to have a lot of variaty to what it can do so clarifying what quality this new body posses that makes it distinct from what matter could do would be the main issue for finding a correct label. I still say supernatural because you are putting forward a body that the understanding comes from nature but with super qualites.

People may not be able to cope with the difficulties of life as it is, so they look for some escape in the form of living forever in paradise.

So you think it's people who don't want immortality just can't cope with this life, so don't think they can cope with the next one being even longer? Do you think it has to do with the life they have or the mental make-up?

I'm one of those looking for an escape from death and have a hard time understanding others who aren't. In my story, for plotting purposes, I have the first humans capable of immortality not being able to handle it but I haven't found a good reason for that behavior, not from someone thousands of years old.

 

[muichimotsu]

Lost the growth hormone boost or the extra teeth? The growth hormone is a commonly occurring hormone that decreases with age but increases with fasting, which in this theory we were in doing more regularly. Fasting seems to be a signal for the body to repair, which is why the practice of fasting has been held so long by ancient man, and even utilized by animals when sick.

The issue would be finding something to stabilize the fasting states. Typically a fasting/starving animal recovers and finds more food in order to put on the weight it lost. If it doesn't, then odds are it's probably going to starve to death. Maybe the seaside provided just enough sustenance, be it sunlight or seaweed, to keep us alive. Or maybe having such a narrow habitat to feed from caused us to have a lot more periods of hunger than an animal would normally experience who had a larger area and more diverse food source.
I'm not sure what point you are responding to. Mutations aren't considered the driving force behind the evolutionary change here but instead small adaptations to the environment on the epigenetic level. Not saying that mutations (genetic mistakes) don't and haven't played a role in evolution but they aren't the only thing evolving us forward.

Probably the extra teeth. Growth hormone isn't outside the realm of possibility, but it's on the boundary.

Fasting isn't necessarily what I would call simply having points where you didn't have food. Fasting is a voluntary choice to not eat food, if you're in the wild and don't have food, that's starvation.

Bottom line is that genetic changes are where evolution begins, we can agree on that

It does seem like science fiction or at least theoretical science. But again, if we weren't talking about us, then this wouldn't sound as much like science fiction. And if we treated this issue as if we landed on an alien planet to figure out the intelligent species, then it also wouldn't sound too radical.

Say we were examining the life on an alien planet, and saw that half the living things aged (animals) and half the life (plants) didn't have that ticking clock unless it was from a lack of exposure to the sun. What would we think if we saw a single animal that has shown signs of not aging, by being able to sustain itself for enough time to make an intellectual jump over the other mortal animals? Wouldn't we assume that some quality of the life that doesn't age(plants) has been adapted to by an animal that did? That quality looks like what is the natural adaptation of an animal in a situation without solid food if it wished to survive and be considered the fittest.

It would almost be accidental in nature that an animal could have that occur to their genetics, not something willed.

Those words don't imply that though. There may be a word that does if we can see what the difference between the idenity of matter and what you are describing. Matter seems to have a lot of variaty to what it can do so clarifying what quality this new body posses that makes it distinct from what matter could do would be the main issue for finding a correct label. I still say supernatural because you are putting forward a body that the understanding comes from nature but with super qualites.

Like plasma state of matter, you mean? That's something I didn't consider. Pure energy, one might say, is pure potential, if we consider all energy to be a result of chemical changes in matter, so pure energy would be static in nature

So you think it's people who don't want immortality just can't cope with this life, so don't think they can cope with the next one being even longer? Do you think it has to do with the life they have or the mental make-up?

I'm one of those looking for an escape from death and have a hard time understanding others who aren't. In my story, for plotting purposes, I have the first humans capable of immortality not being able to handle it but I haven't found a good reason for that behavior, not from someone thousands of years old.

People have difficulty coping with this life, so they try to make a life that's ideal for them. In many cases, this would mean a life that doesn't end.

It could be mental makeup, but I honestly never really wanted to live forever, because I accept death as part of nature. It will happen, doesn't mean I welcome it either.

 

[ElijahW]

Probably the extra teeth. Growth hormone isn't outside the realm of possibility, but it's on the boundary.

The google says that 2 percent have an extra set currently so we can just go back to old fashion selection of traits that were beneficial like extra sets of teeth back then. I think that if it wasn't growth hormone related though, it would be more likely to be an erratic manifestation of extra teeth that wouldn't be beneficial.

Fasting isn't necessarily what I would call simply having points where you didn't have food. Fasting is a voluntary choice to not eat food, if you're in the wild and don't have food, that's starvation.

In this sense, fasting is metabolizing stored energy (fat). Starvation starts when you start eating your body's muscle. You enter fasting states all the time without you being aware of it but probably have never actually starved any.

Bottom line is that genetic changes are where evolution begins, we can agree on that
It would almost be accidental in nature that an animal could have that occur to their genetics, not something willed.

Ehh, I think it often begins with the environmental stimuli, that is followed by a biological response to the stimuli, next it is altering the epigenetic level, due to that altered expression of a trait physically. Now it could be a random mutation that leads to a biological change, that makes handling environmental stimuli possible, and that I would consider an accident. I wouldn't consider what I'm suggesting as being willed by the animal or anyone else, but that it is a response that is a correct one, given the specific stimuli.

The reason the response is correct is because from the beginning of evolution the structures and organisms that responded correctly to the environment are preserved and passed that information on, so that after enough time we have inherited bodies that are fairly good at responding correctly to the environment they are in. This makes our genetic change less of an accident and more an inevitable step of evolution for life on a planet, given enough time.

Like plasma state of matter, you mean? That's something I didn't consider. Pure energy, one might say, is pure potential, if we consider all energy to be a result of chemical changes in matter, so pure energy would be static in nature

Bingo! Static is they word that describes what an afterlife would be like without matter. Like I think I said earlier, the division for an afterlife would be an immaterial and static, or material and fluctuating like the life we are familiar with.

People have difficulty coping with this life, so they try to make a life that's ideal for them. In many cases, this would mean a life that doesn't end.
It could be mental makeup, but I honestly never really wanted to live forever, because I accept death as part of nature. It will happen, doesn't mean I welcome it either.

I don't have any problem understanding the coping mechanism, I live with that. The unacceptable of the loss of a loved one isn't anything I need help understanding, it is the other side who is accepting of it that I have a hard time with.If you've lost a loved one and have no concept of accepting that, much more the inevitable loss of everyone else you love, then I can totally relate. The other side I really can't be sure what is talk and what the truth is because it is just too foreign to me.

If it is mental make-up, do you think it is ideological or structural/chemical? Meaning, say your loved ones were in the distant future, after they had been resurrected, and were deciding if they should bring you back. Would they need to convince you of something about immortality being acceptable, or would they need to change something about your chemistry/brain structure, so that you saw life as something you wished to continue indefinitely with?

 

[muichimotsu]

The google says that 2 percent have an extra set currently so we can just go back to old fashion selection of traits that were beneficial like extra sets of teeth back then. I think that if it wasn't growth hormone related though, it would be more likely to be an erratic manifestation of extra teeth that wouldn't be beneficial.

Some people don't even get the vestigial wisdom teeth, so a lot of this gets into recessive/dominant traits. It might've been beneficial in the past, like, say, when we had different diets

In this sense, fasting is metabolizing stored energy (fat). Starvation starts when you start eating your body's muscle. You enter fasting states all the time without you being aware of it but probably have never actually starved any.

A fair clarification, but inducing hunger seems a bit pointless unless it has more practical benefits, at least to me

Ehh, I think it often begins with the environmental stimuli, that is followed by a biological response to the stimuli, next it is altering the epigenetic level, due to that altered expression of a trait physically. Now it could be a random mutation that leads to a biological change, that makes handling environmental stimuli possible, and that I would consider an accident. I wouldn't consider what I'm suggesting as being willed by the animal or anyone else, but that it is a response that is a correct one, given the specific stimuli.

The reason the response is correct is because from the beginning of evolution the structures and organisms that responded correctly to the environment are preserved and passed that information on, so that after enough time we have inherited bodies that are fairly good at responding correctly to the environment they are in. This makes our genetic change less of an accident and more an inevitable step of evolution for life on a planet, given enough time.

There could be triggers for the genetic switches, as they're referred to. It's supposedly an explanation for some mental health issues appearing later in life. Stressors and such can initiate the genes to change, even if it's just a single change on a single chromosome or even allele.

The accidental nature is there, but admittedly there are still laws and order to the process of evolution in some sense of the word.

Bingo! Static is they word that describes what an afterlife would be like without matter. Like I think I said earlier, the division for an afterlife would be an immaterial and static, or material and fluctuating like the life we are familiar with.

Even a fluctuating life can be argued to be slow down to a crawl for an immortal. A series I follow noted that the longer you live, the less surprises you have, since you've experienced so many things. Your brain wouldn't even process those things you have previous experience with nearly as slowly as newer things, so you go through life bored eventually, especially if you aspire to find interesting things in life. You'd more quickly run out of new things

I don't have any problem understanding the coping mechanism, I live with that. The unacceptable of the loss of a loved one isn't anything I need help understanding, it is the other side who is accepting of it that I have a hard time with.If you've lost a loved one and have no concept of accepting that, much more the inevitable loss of everyone else you love, then I can totally relate. The other side I really can't be sure what is talk and what the truth is because it is just too foreign to me.

If it is mental make-up, do you think it is ideological or structural/chemical? Meaning, say your loved ones were in the distant future, after they had been resurrected, and were deciding if they should bring you back. Would they need to convince you of something about immortality being acceptable, or would they need to change something about your chemistry/brain structure, so that you saw life as something you wished to continue indefinitely with?

If it was so simple as a deterministic change, I wouldn't want it, since that makes us automatons, practically speaking.

And ideologically, I don't sync with my family in many ways, I've found, especially immediately so. My family is christian, I'm a secular Buddhist, they like to think our pets are in heaven with them, I accept the inevitability of our demise and mourn them as best I can, they'd want to live with relatives in eternity, I prefer to keep them alive as memories that I pass on to others. I could tell stories about my grandfathers, etc, and that survival is far more significant than eternally hanging around. And my great grandmother is suffering the starting phases of Alzheimers, so in a sense, that's just life letting us know that things inevitably change and we shouldn't strive to get to some ideal state. We should remember people as they were, but also acknowledge that they will not always be even remotely like that

 

[ElijahW]

Some people don't even get the vestigial wisdom teeth, so a lot of this gets into recessive/dominant traits. It might've been beneficial in the past, like, say, when we had different diets

Yeah some of my adult teeth decided they didn't feel like showing up which is why I'm skeptical of our teeth being able to keep up evolutionary with anykind of prolonged life without somekind (HGH).

A fair clarification, but inducing hunger seems a bit pointless unless it has more practical benefits, at least to me

Immediately to you it helps with obesity based health issues if you don't. From a prolonged evolutionary standpoint it gives us time to overcome that obstacle. For example from the starvation response wiki: "The human starvation response is unique among animals in that human brains do not require the ingestion of glucose to function" That is a unique adaptatoin we developed to cope with starvatoin. What is being suggested is one more that would utilize the excess carbon dioxide that an animal normally produces, intead of just wasting it.

There could be triggers for the genetic switches, as they're referred to. It's supposedly an explanation for some mental health issues appearing later in life. Stressors and such can initiate the genes to change, even if it's just a single change on a single chromosome or even allele.The accidental nature is there, but admittedly there are still laws and order to the process of evolution in some sense of the word.

I think the major trigger is fat, which lets us know it time and acceptable to reproduce because the environment can obviously support it. With the plants the triggering of the reproduction cycle is tied to the starting of the death cycle, so maybe there is some connection there.

Even a fluctuating life can be argued to be slow down to a crawl for an immortal. A series I follow noted that the longer you live, the less surprises you have, since you've experienced so many things. Your brain wouldn't even process those things you have previous experience with nearly as slowly as newer things, so you go through life bored eventually, especially if you aspire to find interesting things in life. You'd more quickly run out of new things

I'm gonna throw a couple more ideas at you. I think that is kinda true but my belief is that it isn't surprise as much as emotion that the surprise brings is the key element. Back in my astral projection/lucid dreaming stage I was really focused with the workings of the mind and in particular why I had such difficulty with dream recall even in lucid experiences. I came to the conclusion that emotion was not only the key into dream recall but also long-term memory recall. This means two things for the potential development of any immortal humans.

One: We could potentially develop better control and increase our emotional responses to mundane actions. we kind of make the division between logic and emotion with logic being the better and emotion being the lesser response but control over emotion may be the key to enduring immortality. We are raised from birth to control our emotions when we are trained to not cry when our parents leave us, and it continues from there to diminish our emotional response until we our docile sheep. Maybe that isn't the right path to take as far as handling immorality is concerned.

Two: Our ability to remember thoughts is terrible and that could actually be used to an advantage for those facing immortality. They are so terrible at being recorded that if you focus on your thoughts you enter a state where time doesn't seem to pass. The same reason we forget our dreams so easily and can forget what we were talking about mid sentence can be used to deal with prolonged time if utilized properly. The reason for the frontal lobe development may not have been about planning but about daydreaming as a way to kill the time. The more you are aware of the world the slower time passes and the more you are in your thoughts the faster.

So we could develop better emotional control to make the world more memorable or we could develop better mental control to make it seem like it is moving faster.

If it was so simple as a deterministic change, I wouldn't want it, since that makes us automatons, practically speaking.

If you are an automation then you could be made to care about not being an automation. Hopefully of your own accord.

And ideologically, I don't sync with my family in many ways, I've found, especially immediately so. My family is christian, I'm a secular Buddhist, they like to think our pets are in heaven with them, I accept the inevitability of our demise and mourn them as best I can, they'd want to live with relatives in eternity, I prefer to keep them alive as memories that I pass on to others. I could tell stories about my grandfathers, etc, and that survival is far more significant than eternally hanging around. And my great grandmother is suffering the starting phases of Alzheimers, so in a sense, that's just life letting us know that things inevitably change and we shouldn't strive to get to some ideal state. We should remember people as they were, but also acknowledge that they will not always be even remotely like that

Ahh man right now I'm in such a bad place I can totally relate to not wanting to live eternally or at all. It all comes down to love. If you don't have that then this world sucks to no end.

Find love and don't knock your parents for believing they are going to see their pets again. It's reasonable if you understand it that way... not saying they do. Making the first photocopy or any technological advance goes from impossible to difficult to everywhere pretty quickly. The resurrection of the dead when it happens is going to be similar where the first resurrection of a person is going to be difficult but after the tech is developed it gets massed produced and grabbing a pet out of the aetherprint is no issue. I have a few pets I'm in debt to that I will have to bring back.

I'm prob not going to have time to respond back to the post for a while. I have to figure out how two people can save the world without money and if I don't I have to figure out a proper way to martyr myself like a true christian should.

 

[muichimotsu]

Yeah some of my adult teeth decided they didn't feel like showing up which is why I'm skeptical of our teeth being able to keep up evolutionary with anykind of prolonged life without somekind (HGH).

Would depend on how teeth growth reacts to genetic triggers, etc

Immediately to you it helps with obesity based health issues if you don't. From a prolonged evolutionary standpoint it gives us time to overcome that obstacle. For example from the starvation response wiki: "The human starvation response is unique among animals in that human brains do not require the ingestion of glucose to function" That is a unique adaptatoin we developed to cope with starvatoin. What is being suggested is one more that would utilize the excess carbon dioxide that an animal normally produces, intead of just wasting it.

We waste it, but plants use it to give us oxygen, so it has a holistic function in nature, one could say

I think the major trigger is fat, which lets us know it time and acceptable to reproduce because the environment can obviously support it. With the plants the triggering of the reproduction cycle is tied to the starting of the death cycle, so maybe there is some connection there.

Reproduction in human minds isn't strictly about survival all the time, though that doesn't make it right by any means to do so, merely because you have a strong desire.

I'm gonna throw a couple more ideas at you. I think that is kinda true but my belief is that it isn't surprise as much as emotion that the surprise brings is the key element. Back in my astral projection/lucid dreaming stage I was really focused with the workings of the mind and in particular why I had such difficulty with dream recall even in lucid experiences. I came to the conclusion that emotion was not only the key into dream recall but also long-term memory recall. This means two things for the potential development of any immortal humans.

One: We could potentially develop better control and increase our emotional responses to mundane actions. we kind of make the division between logic and emotion with logic being the better and emotion being the lesser response but control over emotion may be the key to enduring immortality. We are raised from birth to control our emotions when we are trained to not cry when our parents leave us, and it continues from there to diminish our emotional response until we our docile sheep. Maybe that isn't the right path to take as far as handling immorality is concerned.

Two: Our ability to remember thoughts is terrible and that could actually be used to an advantage for those facing immortality. They are so terrible at being recorded that if you focus on your thoughts you enter a state where time doesn't seem to pass. The same reason we forget our dreams so easily and can forget what we were talking about mid sentence can be used to deal with prolonged time if utilized properly. The reason for the frontal lobe development may not have been about planning but about daydreaming as a way to kill the time. The more you are aware of the world the slower time passes and the more you are in your thoughts the faster.

Awareness could developed with immortality, but ultimately your information intake would arguably slow to a crawl since you'd eventually experience so much, even in its fullness, that you'd grow bored of things, especially if you had savored them.

Emotions are one thing, but psychology in general is another thing above our mood and such, since it gets into perception of reality and the like

So we could develop better emotional control to make the world more memorable or we could develop better mental control to make it seem like it is moving faster.

I don't think the world would be more memorable without death, since that's just part of things. It isn't purely resignation, but acknowledging a give and take with things. We cannot truly appreciate things if we can just replace them so easily or even bring them back. Valuation comes from the temporary aspect of what we possess for a limited time

If you are an automation then you could be made to care about not being an automation. Hopefully of your own accord.

Then the whole thing becomes moot and you're subject to someone else's whims

Ahh man right now I'm in such a bad place I can totally relate to not wanting to live eternally or at all. It all comes down to love. If you don't have that then this world sucks to no end.

Find love and don't knock your parents for believing they are going to see their pets again. It's reasonable if you understand it that way... not saying they do. Making the first photocopy or any technological advance goes from impossible to difficult to everywhere pretty quickly. The resurrection of the dead when it happens is going to be similar where the first resurrection of a person is going to be difficult but after the tech is developed it gets massed produced and grabbing a pet out of the aetherprint is no issue. I have a few pets I'm in debt to that I will have to bring back.

Eternity, either in a good or bad circumstance, is not desirable, for either one stagnates existence in a way, because you don't have the change that makes life that much more enjoyable

I don't knock my parents for loving their pets, as I also loved my pets. But the difference is their approach to mourning. They eventually are happy because they have gotten over their own temporary sadness and also have heaven to look forward to. I get over my feelings and then cherish their memory without wanting them to come back, which I view as selfish in its own way and unnecessary to living completely. Complete existence is learning to let go as much as possessing what is necessary.