I enjoyed this discussion very much and hope that Eliezer will excuse the distraction from the main topic, since he is after all very much interested in this. Will make one last point. What I find extraordinary is that most of you seem to assume the sophisticated, critical, elaborate thesis is that death should not be accepted, and that the contrary opinion is somehow primitive. This is silly. There is no living creature on earth who does not have the level of intelligence necessary to conclude that death is bad. Which of course does not mean the opinion is wrong. It could be right, but what it certainly is not is a testimony to great intelligence.

It is not a question of what you expect. Christians in the past expected to live forever and that did not detract from their lives. Thank you for your kind responses to my views.

What is the postulate of objectivity as for instance someone like Monod describes it? Seeing the world as if you were dead, as if you were not there to see it, seeing the world as it would be without your seeing it. Without death this possibility is not even conceivable. That in broad strokes. More generally, you simply cannot talk about what life will be like without death using a concept of life that only makes sense when death exists. Don't you see the bias, the radical bias, in this approach?

Of course if I could become immortal and not change anything else I would welcome it. There is not even any point arguing about that and I don't think anyone denies it would be desirable. The question is whether you can do that, because mortality is the most fundamental fact about us. Nothing will be the same afterwards, so it is rather touching but fundamentally misguided to speak how we would do the same things but have more time to do them well, etc. I for one do not see what the point would be in acquiring knowledge if I never died, which rather speaks against Michael Vassar's utopia. As for the scenarios where we just extend life and do not eliminate desth altogether, I think you will agree that after some yipping point the distinction is nugatory because we no longer conceive of a limit and will direct our efforts to extending the lifespan further. Finally, as for measuring empirically what it would be to live without the prospect of death, I can't see how we can measure something that does not exist yet.

That no matter how long you live, the exact same opportunity will never come again is a view I fear depends on the existence of death and would disappear without it; that is the nub; so there may some be anthropic bias in your view, Nick.

"And if your expected productive lifespan were a thousand years, there would still be challenges big enough that you'd only get one shot at them. They'd just be bigger, harder challenges."

Good point. I have nothing againt extending it to a thousand years after we have very carefully thought up a new life to go with the new lifespan. We haven't even done that for the current four score and ten years, for christs sake! Of course that makes my life better. Compare that moment of the missed opportunity with buying a pair of jeans. It is better because it cannot be iterated. And if religion talked about it so much, I would suggest transhumanists smoke out their cached religious thoughts more fully.

Evidently, you know, talking to people of average intelligence we are always going to sound deep, especially on social occasions when we tailor our conversation to the listener. But that has nothing to do with the particular view you defended. Someone defending that death gives meaning to life with better arguments than those people had would elicit the same response.