You haven't really justified anything you've said. What is the ethical question? Why must it be fear of death rather than simply wanting more of life -- more time to spend with people you love, to do exciting things, to learn everything there is to know?
> Why must it be fear of death rather than simply wanting more of life
The only thing you are capable of is converting time into something else. Time is always the scarcity factor.
So what if we had unlimited time? Would you pursue greatness and projects that take hundreds of years to complete?
Unlikely.
Let's take a look at something that is also scarce and that everybody is familiar with. Money. Would you say that the overwhelming majority of people who have lots of money engage in long-term projects to do interesting things ... or do they spend it on vain things like mansions, expensive cars, yachts, planes, etc?
If you had an infinite amount of time, the first thing you would do is re-watch every episode of Star Trek, not embark on the discovery of warp drive. That's the truth nobody wants to face. The overwhelming majority of humanity is unbelievably vain and the part that isn't, is primarily motivated by scarcity. They understand they have a very limited amount of time to live and they want to get something amazing done within that time. Removing that scarcity factor will make them just as vain as you and me.
EDIT: Fixed my inability to use the English language.
I hate to be "that guy", but you misspelled a certain word three times in your comment. I leave it to you to figure out which one.
But I agree with you, in the sense that having a "deadline" is what motivates people to accomplish things. Like if your boss or teacher doubles the length of time to finish a project, it doesn't mean you'll work twice as hard, but rather that you have more time to put it off.
> It's really depressing knowing that I just don't have time to do them all.
If you let go of your ego a little bit, you'll realize that 99% of the ideas you have are moronic. That applies to all of us.
Knowing that you can't pursue all of them forces you to pursue the 1% that aren't absolutely asinine. People don't realize just to what extent our mortality filters out the garbage from our lives.
Easier said than done. How will you know which are the 1% worth pursuing? There have been a lot of ideas that people have thought to be moronic and despite that ended up being extremely important.
So, because people would watch too many star trek episodes, we should have them die? Doesn't sound too ethical. There is no moral argument for death. As Aubrey de Gray explains, will you ever come to a point where you are perfectly healthy and happy and then decide to just die because the date of your birth was "too" many years ago. I don't think you would decide to do that, even if you had been alive a million years.
I would encourage you to be skeptical of arguments of this form, "I can't imagine X, ergo it's probably not true."
There are many things that people at age 10 can't imagine about people at age 20, or 20 imagining 40. There's no particular reason to believe that problem goes away.
Aubrey de Gray's argument is more like - when would you choose to die. You're sitting there, perfectly happy and healthy, your existence has no negative impact on anyone else's. Will you just get up and say - I'll die now, for no apparent reason.
For the record, I'm entirely in favor of serious long-term investment in medical research, and I agree that infinite X (where X is lifespan, health, or any other thing we like) sounds pretty swell.
That said, I'm pretty sure that's the same sort of argument I'm suspicious of. It's not an honest question that "will you"; it's an argument that the answer to that must be no. Not because of any evidence that has been presented, but because you can't think of any answer.
And I think it works because he's assuming an answer to the question he's purportedly asking. We don't really understand what minds are or why bodies age. We don't even understand exactly what happiness is. And he's presuming that a choice like that is possible.
What we do know is that a choice like that is currently unavailable, and I think it's dangerous to build too many sky castles on the assumption that it is.
