The following would be a better argument, IMO: No, it wouldn't, because you are presupposing that one already understands why one would want to do such a difficult thing. The whole point of pointing out the implications of acceleration in mortality is to point out real mortality rates can imply very long lifespans and that squaring the curve would have major and desirable implications.

Making up numbers is not the way to do this, then. If you want to introduce people to the idea that very long and healthy lives are possible and desirable, a historical perspective would be good. Or you could discuss how we lead relatively healthy lives until about 60, and then somehow the decay kicks in - which is really a shame because we've been healthy for so long, and there shouldn't be a moral reason why it can't stay this way.

Only once the potential benefits have been established does anyone care about how feasible fixing it would be. There are two blades to the idea of 'cost-benefit', and you are dismissing out of hand anyone even trying to roughly estimate the latter.

No I'm not. I agree that living happily ever on would be an enormous win for most humans. And if the author must, they are free to write fiction on how much better the world would be.

Additionally, my point is not that it's ultra-mega-hard to extend the human lifespan, and that we shouldn't even try. But we have to take into account how the system actually works, and then start from there. That is, we have to build a model, then see if we can improve the situation (i.e. extend human lifespan to 1000 years) by varying parameters within the model.

If that's not possible (it's not possible if mortality follows a doubly-exponential curve with a hard cutoff around X years, where X might be extended by 50% - if things go well), we go see if we can circumvent the model, so that it doesn't apply anymore. Blood donations might be a stab at this. Calorie restriction isn't.

To use your atom example:

Right now, our power sources like coal and oil produces X joules per gram; but we can see by simply calculating E=MC^2 that the potential energy of somehow tapping into mass-energy conversion rather than normal chemical potentials would generate multiple orders of magnitude more energy than from normal strategies. This is tantalizing and even believable.

There's a difference between this, and the original writing. You already have a good reason why the real energy content of matter should be way higher than it appears to be. The only grounds on which someone would reply to this

That's just not how the relevant model works. Thusly, I don't think the arguments brought forth are good enough to warrant the claim that atomic energy is possible.

would be that the author of the piece on E=mc^2 then goes on discussing various techniques to increase the energy output of coal burning, perhaps using a novel oxidizer or special reaction conditions. That would be silly, after one has understood why chemical potential energy is so limited.

But, in a way, the author of the original article does exactly this by discussing the impact of various drugs or treatments like calorie restriction. Only that the limits set by the Gompertz model - not the parameters, but the model - and a way to overcome the Gompertz curve - are not discussed.

I have a feeling that I don't understand your point or how it relates to mine, or that I don't see that you would understand my point.

Also I'm getting a hostile vibe from your reply, so while you may answer and I will read your answer, I won't reply to that anymore as this kind of stress negatively impacts my expected lifespan.