Introduction

I, Timothy Le, will read literature about the philosophy of immortality, and I will share an overview of the various perspectives I find. This will allow us, the audience and I, to better decide upon the debate for or against immortality, but more importantly (because I fear that we are still quite far from achieving immortality despite scientific advancements and thus choosing whether or not to implement immortality is irrelevant), I hope that from the density of ideas I hope to procure, all of the audience will be able to glean at least one idea that connects with them and will allow them to live with more clarity and thus confidence. Finally, the topic of immortality was reborn in my head a couple weeks ago in a New York City hotel when I thought that it would be a divine comedy/tragedy to have died a few days before immortality was invented, but then I remembered that not everyone thinks that immortality is such a great thing. That inspired this descent. 

I will not research possibilities for achieving immortality because there are a multitude of scientific domains to explore in discovering the modern state of research about immortality (for example, consider the initial branching point in our exploration: physical or digital immortality; just that question alone implicates numerous complexities of which discussion would be jargonistic and thus boring). In addition, I will not research the treatment of immortality throughout culture (such as fictional works and religion) although it is an interesting topic; but really, it is the fact that it would be so interesting that I feel that I would not be able to do it justice in the time I am given. For both of these topics, I also just simply do not wish to add such a burden of research and topics to one that is already the most useful and thus the most deserving of discussion.