I suspect a significant portion of what’s going on is that there’s a core kernel of truth to what they’re saying—something along the lines that they’re hesitant to stagnate. “not dying”, to me, involves also greatly increasing my ability to change, to the point where in 500 years I’m such a different person that I’m more comparable to a descendant of myself than to my current self. I think people rightly recognize that without that level of self-mutability, extending lifespan leads to your “soul”/your informational self getting old.
the other answers have plenty of truth to them too—cope, expecting life to get worse, pessimism about the possibility, etc.
but consider: the old kind of immortality of mammalian life is the non-self-preserving kind, where you have kids, and people are very used to that and sort of intuitively know that if they live a long time they’ll be messing with that deeply fundamental dynamic; I think much of what makes the mutability of selfhood of having kids good needs to be ported over to the individual self in order for serious longevity to be at all a good idea, the ability to stay mentally curious and mutable for a much much more extended period so as to continue mentally adapting to new circumstances.
I suspect a significant portion of what’s going on is that there’s a core kernel of truth to what they’re saying—something along the lines that they’re hesitant to stagnate. “not dying”, to me, involves also greatly increasing my ability to change, to the point where in 500 years I’m such a different person that I’m more comparable to a descendant of myself than to my current self. I think people rightly recognize that without that level of self-mutability, extending lifespan leads to your “soul”/your informational self getting old.
the other answers have plenty of truth to them too—cope, expecting life to get worse, pessimism about the possibility, etc.
but consider: the old kind of immortality of mammalian life is the non-self-preserving kind, where you have kids, and people are very used to that and sort of intuitively know that if they live a long time they’ll be messing with that deeply fundamental dynamic; I think much of what makes the mutability of selfhood of having kids good needs to be ported over to the individual self in order for serious longevity to be at all a good idea, the ability to stay mentally curious and mutable for a much much more extended period so as to continue mentally adapting to new circumstances.