The aliens ask you for advice about how to live. Would you recommend that they all commit suicide at age 100, because it will be so good for them and their society?
Always flip the default and ask, will you switch back.
The problem with this line of thinking is that no one is ever going to eliminate death, ever. Even if you completely eliminate aging, people are still going to die at some point, whether it's from war, or natural disasters, or accidents, or murder. Making people ageless isn't going to keep them from dying when a piano falls on them.
So pontificating about humans living until the heat death of the universe is utterly pointless. Statistically, even without aging, humans aren't going to live beyond 1000 years most likely.
Dystopian as in our status quo? (Also, monopoly on violence is essentially a monopoly on whether your life continues.)
And the wealthy’s monopoly on wealth will only consolidate.
It reminds me of two quotes:
“Science progresses one funeral at a time” (paraphrasing Planck’s principle).
“[…] Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. […]”
That’s probably what worries me most, when it comes to extended or unending lives.
Moreover, while longer lifespans may drive calcification, they would also promote long-term thinking. How would we vote about the climate differently if we knew we'd be around for a couple hundred years?
Would we act more in favor of the general long-term good, or would we scramble even more to get ours now in order to secure our own future? I'm not so sure cooperation would win.
It is easy to see why an individual would choose life over death, if one has the means for a comfortable life. A second order question would then be: would the society value your life over their own? Even as we speak, many thousands are dying of preventable causes, including man made starvation. There is no way immortality will be accessible to all, and will only increase inequality.
I'll happily change my mind if we can fix world hunger and homelessness before conquering death.
I would be careful at citing that quote as evidence for how science work, especially when considering the historical uniqueness of the last two centuries or so.
This article said it's more complicated than that and more hopeful.[1]
1. https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/11/07/does_sc...
At least one can be sure: Death is such a fundemantal part of life that every social norm we take for granted (thus not even noticing it exists) will be uprooted.
Technically that doesn't need to be a bad thing. It just makes it so much more likely that advocats of ending death are overlooking the bad parts.
Plus, I can't think of a scenario where, once this technology exists to extend life indefinetly, the state's monopoly on power won't turn into a dystopian monopoly on life.