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Brillyant comments on Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously - Less Wrong
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I think we have a profoundly different expectation for what a future with sufficient technology for immortality might be like. It seems you think it will look alot like 2014, but with immortality. I'd imagine it will be basically unrecognizeable from our current world, so much so that it is relatively useless to speculate about the details.
I also think you are discounting how powerful an aspect of experience novelty can be, and therefore how trivial giving birth to your 100th, let alone 10,000th child might be.
As far as taking pleasure from your animal-nature: Cool. It isn't bad. I'd argue your desire for life is fundamentally identical to your love of fatty food. It serves an ultimate purpose (pass on the replicators), and simply basing your (wannabe eternal) existence off of the hedonistic side-effects of these sorts of drives will lose its appeal over the course of eons.
The idea that death is bad 'cuz good stuff could be happening in our potential lives after we are gone is not compelling to me at all. It's an opportunity cost argument, right? Okay. Except you cease to exist in this particular case.
Anyway, good to chat with you. I'd love to hear any other thoughts you have. At this point, I'm tapping, as I don't have anything else to say in this discussion with you.
A last word from me as well, then.
I agree that a world in which immortality would be possible would look very different from today's, but that's because the development of immortality would require technological advances (maybe nanotechnology) that would change the world by themselves even if they didn't lead to immortality. Immortality by itself wouldn't make the world look that different, though - funeral homes would go out of business, and maybe hospitals as well, but other than that, it wouldn't make a huge difference.
I think novelty is highly overrated as a source of value. Certainly, it's nice to play a good new game or something like that, but as far as possible sources of value, it's quite low on the list. Regarding having children, the parent-child bond is part of human nature, so I don't think it'll ever become trivial. As for hedonism, I don't expect it to ever lose its appeal, especially as new fun things are created.
Yes, it is an opportunity cost, and the fact that you wouldn't exist is the problem, because it means that instead of getting something positive, you'd be getting nothing.