Fischer, who attended the seminar, raised the question of hubris, noting how religion and literature recount punishments to those who seek immortality or omniscience, including Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the Bible and the Faust legend of a doctor selling his soul to the devil.

"The whole perception is that we overreach when we seek immortality, and then we get into trouble," he said.

[...]

Death, he said, "seems like a scary thought." But the best reaction, he added, is to live "as long as possible in a healthy and productive way and figure out how to accept death gracefully when it comes."

To steal a joke from Tom Lehrer —

Fischer has a cause: immortality. He's against it.