I think you missed the author's point. The article wasn't about gaining more (or infinite) time. It was about maximizing your joy in life by living in such a way that you can be proud of your accomplishments without being overwhelmed by the need to continually out-do yourself or others. How long you live is completely irrelevant to that point. And if you are not enjoying your life because you're feeling so pressed and anxious, then living forever won't change that--that's a mentality problem.
Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival.
While I can agree with the author's point I think it was poorly expressed (your summary is better) and the way he suggests embodying the point seems contradictory to making an effort against Death. Though I think if people did have a certain expectation to live billions of years we wouldn't have very many hurried people around, though that's just my own speculation.
> Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival.
At least the disappointment would be brief since by the time you're close enough to death to feel it you won't be alive much longer. Though I would find it pitiable that a person refuses to be happy their entire life and would only be happy being essentially immortal; it seems like many 'immortalists' are actually quite content in their current lives but want that to go on as long as possible.
They would also take great effort to find black swans and long shot. Living a really long life can make you ambitious.
If you're an old 75 years old, than you might be predisposed to the short term.
The young don't know they have it, and the old don't care.
If you're going to live on the average lifespan of a 100,000 thousand years and improving, than 50 years is no problem to be wasting your time on big projects.
You can wait for your space probes to report to you, make big colonization effort that span centuries, and solve scientific questions that will take decades to unravel.
The unfortunate, but probably avoidable downside: the rich old people most interested in and capable of affording life extension therapy give so much inertia to the status quo that humanity's progress is thrown to a screeching halt.
Ironically, such a world would have to be populated by people born after the epoch, not before, to fully take advantage of the conceptual freedoms it would have to offer.
If reasonattlm is right, it may be worthwhile for me to work my tail off and sacrifice peace of mind in the short term in order to live forever in the long term. So what he says is somewhat relevant.
You're assuming "working your tail off" has something to do with becoming rich. I've seen little evidence to that effect and a great deal that contradicts is.
No one worked harder then the miners and few died poorer.
Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival.