Once you are dead you won't be aware life is no longer continuing. The only sticking point is the time leading up to death when one's fear of death makes them miserable. If the person can do away with the fear then they'll maximize their happy moments in the short time we have in this world.

Since death is inevitable due to the eventual heat death of the universe, then from an operations research perspective it makes much more sense to focus effort on getting rid of the fear of death than trying to end death itself.

> Since death is inevitable due to the eventual heat death of the universe, then from an operations research perspective it makes much more sense to focus effort on getting rid of the fear of death than trying to end death itself.

I don’t think that’s true from a global optimization perspective. If you’re trying to maximize contented moments, it makes sense to spend time thinking about how to extend life (assuming you’re talking about the number of happy moments for people who are currently alive), even if those moments still must eventually cease. Because trillions of years of happy moments is a lot more than 80-100 years of happy moments. Only if you’re trying to minimize unhappy moments does removing fear of death become a better goal.

However, from a local optimization perspective, since there is little anyone can individually do about their medium term probability of death, I agree that figuring out how to cope with and minimize that fear is probably the best strategy.

Right, I mean from the individual's perspective, since why should the individual care about optimizing an aggregate the individual will never experience?

There's probably a middle ground between 80 years of life and the several billion any potential heat death will take to manifest.