If we should be immortal -- truly invincible, for example through a medium that is indestructible or as information that is easily stored and copied and thus disposable -- then what goals could we have? [,,,] Most of our current goals regard self-preservation or self-continuation in one way or another.
If we self-consciously value the futile pursuit of self-continuation over actual self-continuation, it seems to me that something's gone seriously wrong somewhere.
I also think that some serious inferential distance problems show up for almost everyone when they start thinking about perfect immortality, ones that tend to be wrongly generalized to various imperfect forms of life extension. But that's less immediately relevant.
If we self-consciously value the futile pursuit of self-continuation over actual self-continuation, it seems to me that something's gone seriously wrong somewhere.
Just because that would be a ridiculous way to be, doesn't mean it isn't that way. (We weren't designed afterall.) Suppose underlying every one of our goals is the terminal goal to continue forever. (It seems reasonable that this could be the purpose of most of our goals, since that would be the goals of evolution.) Then it makes sense that we might report 'shrug' in response to the question,...
via.
Sounds like sour grapes. I'd heard of people holding such sentiments; this is the first time I've actually seen them expressed myself.