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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

I'd be interested to see how many people would actual avail of a service like that. Religious people who believe in an after-life probably wouldn't but I'm sure a lot of others wouldn't either. Steve Jobs quote "Death is very likely to be the single best invention of life because death is life's change agent." appeals to me and people with that perspective probably wouldn't want to live infinitely.

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>Religious people who believe in an after-life probably wouldn't

Perhaps not the very devoted, but for the rest, I'm sure they would. Just as they will avail themselves of healthcare services if they get cancer, wear seat belts, avoid flying with dodgy airlines, and a myriad of other ways they seek to avoid death.

>Religious people who believe in an after-life probably wouldn't but I'm sure a lot of others wouldn't either.

Once the certainty of death leaves, people will become a lot less religious. As Woody said, we're looking for distraction, and religion is a good distractor: "don't worry about death, there's this wonderful afterlife."

Life extension is not forever. Eventually, temperature, mass, kinetic energy, lack of sustenance, or chemical reactions will catch up to you in the form of accidental death.

Indeed. Based on current mortality statistics[1], only 2% of us would manage to live 10,000 years without succumbing to accidental death of some kind, and the number that would make it 100,000 years is just vanishingly small.

EDIT: This is more a consideration with respect to "cure for ageing"-type advances, not so much the mind-uploading scenario.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm

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