Does this mean that even mortal enemies stop giving a damn after a while? There are people old enough to already be suffering from immortality blues. They're they're the ones to be watched for insight into this problem. Unfortunately, I don't recall the books really covering them much, so its hard to say what they are like beyond few scraps we have. ---- Anyways, I have considered many solutions to this problem: Load an old backup. If you have good backups, you could try to load an old one that still has the vigor to live life when you get lose too much vigor to keep going. You could shut yourself into cold storage, sit back and watch, or try to get involved with the activities of your fork in a supporting role. Technologies might exist to even upload the required new skills for your fork to be competitive in the modern age. How well this will work would depend on the views at the time. In AF 10, alpha forking is illegal for many reasons, which include that there are still people who are in cold storage and your alpha is taking up room that one them could occupy. AF 400? Impossible to say what it will be like, but chances are there would be enough resources to sustain many forks without (much if any) objections from others. Die. Complete erasure of yourself and all backups. Not a popular solution, as it might not sit well for many, but few has lived centuries and none have lived millennia. Once a sufficiently large population of people who have lived several centuries exist, there might be a paradigm shift much like there has been a paradigm shift over the right to die with dignity for those with terminal illnesses. I'm thinking there might be a point where you've done all that you could do or all that you care to do. Any further existence would be pointless. It might be possible to use technology to change yourself into something that can do more and would see meaning to exist for a bit longer, but not all will want to take that path. A large number of Jovians care not to. You might even seriously believe in an afterlife, so living a bit longer means denying yourself things like heaven or reincarnation. You might even believe in Nirvana, a state where suffering ends as does the cycle of rebirth. Avoid the worst possible outcome. Humanity now has immortality. You can live forever and enjoy life forever, but there is also technology to put you into a virtual hell. Literally. It is possible for someone to steal a fork of you and put it through a torture simulation forever. You might decide that you want to avoid that possibility at all costs, which might require some drastic choices for yourself that most people would not make. Create an ideal child or desired reincarnation to replace you. You might desired a child with certain traits that would make you happy and proud. Perhaps you see flaws in yourself that you wish you didn't have, or desire traits that you don't have. With the technology in EP and technology that might eventually exist, you could try to create a new person with all the traits you desire them to have. This person would be more than just a new person, they could be your replacement. Once you are satisfied with the results, you can do whatever you feel you need to do or appropriate once you've been replaced or have a successor. Reset yourself. You could try to reset yourself to some kind of default factory settings. Tricky for those who were never born with one. The first time doing this might involve trying to figure out your core traits and create a new ego that has them. You might then copy over important stuff, but as little as possible. You are trying to reset yourself, not rebuild yourself. It might be wise to give your reset a basic familiarity with your old life, maybe to the extent that they feel like they have read a book once of covering your whole life. Other than that, you let them choose their own life choices. Do whatever it takes to keep going. You could try running on sheer determination, but you will likely need to edit your own mind at some point. Perhaps editing it to the point where you become a posthuman. Or even an exhuman or seed intelligence. Perhaps you will offer copies of your backups to anyone who will take them to ensure a copy of you exist out there somewhere. Its hard to say what you'll need to do, but how determined you are will dictate many of your choices. Fork and take multiple paths. Send different forks of yourself to different places and different opportunities for life. Maybe force some of your forks into positions where they will have to make choices they might not want to. Maybe one or more will have something interesting to tell the rest a few decades later. Hand control over to AIs and sleep until something interesting happens. Perhaps the mistake of immortality is wanting to be alive and awake for every moment until the last iota of time that the universe has. Maybe the better solution is to put yourself into cold storage until significant or interesting moments happen and leave the real work to AIs that can't get bored. Live via XP. Stop living your life and enjoy a lot of XP. Don't just enjoy it, take the technology further and stop yourself from having your own thoughts while enjoying XP. If you are not having your own thoughts, you will probably not be suffering immortality blues. You might even exit with some new ideas (once you have time to process what you've viewed).