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Only if you assume a priori that there is no afterlife, or even if there isn't, you assume that there are actual ways to significantly extend life or outright prevent death.
That's not cheating death, that's making a shitty copy of yourself but it isn't even you. How does that avoid death whatsoever?
Again, this is all madness caused by people who have rejected God and are trying to replace Him with themselves (or technology, or any number of substitutions). It is the destiny of all men to die, kings and vagabonds alike, and you cannot and will not escape it. Run from it, cry about it, rage against the dying of the light, squander your children's inheritance trying to defeat it, but you will always fail. And even worse, you'll make the life you do get to live worse by worrying needlessly about what you cannot change.
In your post a few weeks ago you talked about how you oneshotted yourself with an AI image of what your children could have looked like. Even from a purely secular point of view, children are the preferred method of achieving immortality for most of history. If you want immortality, have a big family. That option is closed off to me due to infertility, but I've made peace with that. But instead of chasing useless pipedreams of immortality, do something that will leave your indelible mark on the future of the world.
These are pretty reasonable assumptions to make. Besides, as a doctor, my job usually involves extending life or preventing death. We could do better at it, but that's an engineering challenge, not a logical impossibility.
It's not that I "assume" such things, but rather that no life after death is the null hypothesis, and religious thinking to the contrary is hardly convincing. We might all reincarnate as Boltzmann Brains after eons, but I still prefer concrete, present-day solutions.
And why exactly would it have to be a "shitty" copy? The human body, including the human brain, runs on the laws of physics. The laws of physics can be simulated on a computer to arbitrary accuracy. A game of chess is still a game of chess, all relevant parameters are conserved whether using wood, plastic or bits. No reason we can't say the same for human brains.
My conception of personal identity is pretty flexible, but it is in no way stretched beyond breaking point by the notion that a digital copy of me is - for my purposes - interchangeable with me. In many aspects, it's nothing but a straight upgrade. If I want to be stronger, faster, more durable, more intelligent, it helps to be an entity in-silico rather than a meat computer.
I mean, all well and good, but your attempt to convince me that I'm making unreasonable assumptions is rather undercut by the fact that you're making far bigger ones. God is a really poor candidate for ontological simplicity, and even worse as health insurance.
Like, the reasons to believe in your God are not very convincing, and even I concede that we might be unavoidably hard-capped by ever diminishing supply of negentropy in the universe. If he's real, and also timeless, I'm sure he won't mind if he was to wait a few quadrillion years for my immortal soul as opposed to this century. Since Christians believe in medical care and extending healthy lifespan, there are no downsides I can see.
Having children is better than nothing, when it comes to leaving your mark on the world. But it is still a pale imitation of actually staying alive and healthy to tell people about it. I do intend to have kids, and I'm sorry to hear about your fertility issues. But doesn't change the fact that my kids would also like to have me around too. When I talk about life extension, it's not just me being selfish, but thinking about my parents, and my grandfather, and all the other humans alive who would like to keep on being with their loved ones.
I am rather familiar with the technical challenges of human life extension. When I claim that it is possible, I can only hope it is a semi-informed claim. This is not at odds with it being incredibly difficult, which it is. Difficult isn't insurmountable, we went to the moon and will be back. That was as much of a "pipe dream" for almost as much of recorded human history.
It was the destiny of all men to experience half of their children dying before adulthood. You couldn't save them, whether you were a king or a pauper. And yet, look at us today. Soon, any death might well be the same kind of tragedy that is the passing of a child. We can all live for so much.
From the perspective of dodging death, any copy is shitty, because it's a copy. None of the things that make death scary are alleviated by having one, and you never addeess the difference between prolonging your life and copying, or make an argument for why they should be treated interchangeably.
How would you feel if we could achieve a 1 to 1 The Prestige style copy where the copy believes they're the real one? I know hand waving getting there has real 'draw the rest of the owl' energy but I'm interested in your answer anyway.
Sounds horrifying? He'd love my wife as much as I do, be as attached to my entire life as much as I am, and think I'm the fake?
How doesn't this end with one of us dead, or feeling cucked for the rest his life?
I don't know if it's a mark of emotional health or the opposite, but I would love to have another me around the place. Like anyone, I spend lots of time in my own company anyway, I would expect me to understand me better and cooperate with me better than anyone.
Would you also love letting them have a go at your wife?
It's not relevant right now, and my feelings might change once it is, but I don't see why not. It's me. Being jealous of yourself seems silly. Especially since I know the other me wouldn't be jealous either, so it's not like I need to worry about him going behind my back. I am the one person in the world I genuinely, absolutely trust.
As long as you can't see the world through his eyes, hear it through his ears, be aware of his every thought and feeling, and directly control what he does, he's not you.
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