Imagine a world in which Xi, Kim Jong *, and a host of other wealthy dictators were immortal, and the rest of us pee-ons were not. I believe that is the future of high tech immortality.
And clearly death doesn't end the dictatorship.
Just because only a few people could afford a CT scan when it first came out doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep developing it for the wife benefits we will see in the future.
Would you think "whew, I really dodged a bullet there", or would you think "fuck that clone, I don't want to die!" ?
That whole mindset is utterly alien to me. I guess it all comes down to how you feel about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity
I often read stories about innocent younger people dying from something tragic; However, why do I almost never wake up to, "<evil tyrannical dictator> has unexpectedly and peacefully passed away in their sleep?"
Brave new world I guess?
In the last half century give or take some years, half of Europe and Latin America nations have successfully and peacefully made this transition. And only Venezuela has returned to dictatorship.
Do you think Putin will ever be overthrown?
No idea. Formal democracy is still in place, so there's hope.
At any rate, very few people are actually working on “immortality”. Most of us squander our time bullshitting on the Internet. There’s little danger of solving immortality for several generations.