Spong

What is the purpose of ignoring the distinction between indefinitely long life and literal indestructibility? The actual issue raised by this thread, and the only one relevant to human life in reality is the potential for achieving, through technology, indefinitely long lifespans. That is simply not an issue with any resemblance to Ayn Rand's indestructible robot.

I find it completely astounding that some individuals seem to have conluded that if the alternative between life and death is the ultimate basis of human values, then the actual failure to meet that standard, the actual occurance of the complete annhilation of all your values is somehow necessary to make them values in the first place. That is spectacularly fallacious.

The point of an ultimate end is to achieve it. The fact that the potential to fail to bring about that end is what necessitates a code of values to guide your actions does not mean that you therefore should fail at your acheiving that end. It means precisely the opposite--you should always acheive it.
If the highest moral purpose of your actions is to ensure the continued existence of a life proper to a rational being, then how, at some arbitrary number of years in the future, will it suddenly become desirable to extinguish that life?

A good general rule is that when you start sounding like Leon Kass you should check your premises. "Finitude" (i.e. a short lifespan) is not a value.

And the idea that you'd "get tired" or bored and simply give up after a few centuries is one of the most apathetic, unambitious, passionless, unimaginative statements of pathological ennui that I can conceive of. It represents a seriously impoverished view of the future that is possible if a rational philosophy takes hold, of the values that one could potentially pursue and create given a radically advanced state of science, and of the phenomenal extent of the human potential. More often than not, simply to make the claim is indicative of a lackluster sense of life and an inert mind.
It's often been said that in the scenario of longer lifespans, only boring people will get bored...
For the record, I certainly don't think that anyone who ever makes this claim is boring, etc., but I do think they haven't thought the matter through or considered its nihilistic implications.

These attitudes have life or death consequences for all of us, because their prevelance in the general population contributes to the widespread indifference or outright hostility toward the incredible promise of aging research. But whether such research will go ahead with sufficient funding, and whether it will escape being stifled, through the force of the state, by its many ideological enemies has real bearing on whether we will see any practical benefit from it in our own lifetimes.