1. We already know what our society looks like with death.
2. It's easy to imagine the good things that come from a lack of death. We're more likely to underestimate downsides.
When dealing with a complex system, I'm skeptical of change. Following Nassim Taleb's ideas, the onus is on someone proposing a change to show that it will improve the system.
I don't want to die of cancer. I don't think anyone does. How far do I need to go to argue in favor of proposing a change in the form of cancer prevention and/or treatment?
I think I can inductively argue that given a set of possible ways of dying or becoming incapable there will always be one or more candidates which everyone would be happy to see eliminated.
There are going to be downsides to increased lifespans, but it's hard to imagine anyone convincingly arguing at any given point in the future "we need to stop increasing lifespans because it's just too hard to get parking spots/nice beachfront land/tenure". Let's suppose hard limits are placed on procreation to offset increasing lifespan, would that be enough? Any restriction which allows people to have one or fewer children each (let's call having a child the old-fashioned way counts as each person making 0.5 children) will cap population — advanced countries drop below replacement without legal enforcement already.
That's a different argument. I think it's the likeliest route to immortality, if we ever get there. There wouldn't ever be a 'immortality, yes or no' referendum.
1. We already know what our society looks like with death. 2. It's easy to imagine the good things that come from a lack of death. We're more likely to underestimate downsides.
When dealing with a complex system, I'm skeptical of change. Following Nassim Taleb's ideas, the onus is on someone proposing a change to show that it will improve the system.
That said, the 'download' idea sounds neat.