Would life extension make us less human?

Eternal bore
Instead of worrying about what longer life will do to our sense of humanity, Callahan and Hackler wonder what the heck people are going to do with all their extra time. Longer life means more time for boredom to creep in.

"Let’s face it, most peoples' jobs aren’t all that fascinating," Hackler said. "They put in a 9-to-5 and they’re glad to have the weekend. So you wonder if having twice as much of this is a good thing, or if you’d get totally burned out."

Hackler can't imagine himself ever getting tired of living, but he knows not everyone will feel same way. Determining how much ennui the average person can bear will be important if life extension ever becomes a reality, Hackler says, because extended boredom could result in prolonged unhappiness or higher incidences of suicide.

Against concerns of chronic boredom, those in favor of extending life spans significantly say, "speak for yourself." Aubrey de Grey from the University of Cambridge believes longer life will invigorate people to do the things they've always wanted to do. "There are things that no one attempts today because they feel they'll never get them done in a lifetime," de Grey writes. "If a lifetime is a lot longer they'll try them."

Callahan thinks this kind of thinking gives the average person too much credit.

"I don't believe that if you give most people longer lives, even in better health, they are going to find new opportunities and new initiatives," Callahan has said. "They will want to come and play more golf maybe, but they aren't going to contribute lots of brand new ideas, at least the ones I know."

Even if people had all the time in the world, they will never be able to do all the things they wanted to do, Callahan argues.

"Even if you've seen everything, you might say 'Well, I want to go see India once again,'" he told LiveScience. "It seems there's a possibly never-ending cycle there."

If people end up doing most of the things on their to-do lists by the time they reach 80, then perhaps that is good enough.

"The fact that there are still some countries that I've never been to does not ruin my life," Callahan said. "I've never been to Nepal or Antarctica but it's hard to work that up to some great tragedy of my life."

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