I have never understood concepts like "Without death, we would not truly live", or saying that death defines us as living things. I can see the reasoning, but it appears an absolute logical fallacy. True, our human bodies are not intended to last forever, and thus we have physical and mental limitations, but with infinity to circumvent these, they could be overcome. I suspect someone made up these things to be poetic or to console themselves about mortality, and they've stuck around.
Picture if you will a village, in the center of which is a doorway. All who pass through the doorway never return. You may spend forever on this side of the doorway, and though this is not a guarantee of good life, it is at least a guarantee of continued life. On the other side lies the unknown, however, and in theory with infinite time you will eventually go through regardless - what else is there for you to do? This mentality baffles me, that just because it is unknown we should embrace it because there is the POTENTIAL for good. Would you blunder aimlessly in the dark because you might run into a great fortune? What if you just run into a wall?
You might well go insane if you lived forever. No, matter of fact, regardless of your augmentation you WOULD go insane, but with eternity, you would eventually come back down from that madness and have a period of sanity. Sooner or later the madness would return, and so forth. This should not be a reason to avoid immortality - we all risk madness in our regular lives, and sometimes with no promise of seeing it cured. The immortal would have time enough to experience everything, the good and the bad. It's part and parcel of the deal.
There's also the perception that a life must end so that its' story may be finished. Call no man happy until he is dead, as the Greeks said, for even at the last minute his fortunes might reverse. This is utterly baffling to me - would you really want to risk utter oblivion just so your story could have an end? Could look good on paper just in case anyone wanted to hear it? The immortal would be immune from the Greek's observation of happiness, as if there is no prospect of end then there is no prospect of final fortune. If anything, you would be free to pursue happiness on a day-to-day basis without fear that you were wasting your time.
Against all angles, it seems superior to me that one should live forever rather than not. We cannot have information on eternal life to make an informed decision, this is true, but since we also cannot have information on what happens after death, the only sensible option seems to be to delay that event as long as possible. Eternal life will bring suffering and joy in absolutely equal qualities, as each will be as infinite as time itself. Just what, in concrete terms, is the downside?
