I still haven't been sold on a need for immortality. We have people live longer than they like now. Why extend any further past this?
Our comments therefore cancel out.
(Our of curiosity, the people you talked to - were they elderly, in failing bodies, with failing minds, seeing nothing in their personal future but slow and steady degradation? Might they think differently if their quality of life could be improved?)
Let's say I have a 500 year lifespan, all except the last 10 or so with health and vigor.
Well at that point, the opportunity cost of skill mastery becomes tiny. Spend 20 years learning to become a really great piano player, and another 15 learning parkour. Master 3 or 4 martial arts, that is a good 20-30 years each. Homestead for a decade or two, doing everything from scratch by hand. Spend a couple decades doing volunteer work.
1 minute of ideas and I'm up to 150 years so far.
I agree that need to achieve a post-scarcity society, which would involve a lot of uncomfortable trade-offs. E.g. if we just have food that we can 100% automate the production of and that doesn't cause any ecological harm, we'd dramatically limit what food exists for human consumption. Same goes for transit, consumer goods, and so forth. I honestly think that if humanity wanted to, we could transition to post scarcity in a few decades using today's technology, but it would be a drop in quality of life for the first world (no more steaks!) so there is no real motive by those with power and money.
Sure there are sensory inputs I'd miss. But as long as IO in the form of text and/or audio is working, with or without augmentation, I'm confident it would be worth a try. Vision would be a nice to have.
"No please don't!" Said the brain nobody was listening to anymore...
I'd also cede things like property rights in exchange for long term care. People do this today! But a BIV's needs would be simpler than full body care. All I'd need would be physical protection, temperature control, food, and a network connection. :)
It is a matter of perspective. I find daily joy in movement and motion. There are thousands of foods I have yet to try, innumerable combinations of spices I have yet to experience. Heck, a very large number of flower varities I haven't smelled!
If you get up every morning and hate eat your breakfast, your day will be off to a terrible start. If you get up and look forward to the new type of sausage you got from the farmers market over the weekend, then life is pretty grand!
>There's a finite amount of ... experiences
I very much doubt that is the case in anything but the most pedantic, philosophical sense.
Putting off your opportunity to make that insight by fantasizing about immortality and indefinite life extension mostly just makes your life more difficult and stressful.
The word "fantasize" especially is bizarre - we're discussing a premise (arbitrarily extended life), and you're using a word that escapes the premise (a synonym for "it's not real").
As a premise, it might not be psychologically good for people if it was real.
There is no warmth without cold; there is no life without death.
But I would sign up to be a brain in a vat as long as I could read and write. Someday, Fyodor, someday.
Personally I'd be interested in seeing what sort of insights I could come up with over the course of a couple thousand years.