Forever is a very long time. I can believe that one of my backup duplicates will be able to take over where I left off when the private space yacht fell into the sun, or was obliterated by a stray mini-black hole or an unexpected supernova, or whatever.
But don't you consider the death of the operational self a death? Or the certainty of change accumulating to make a very old individual so different from a younger self that the whole question of "self" becomes problematic? Or the strong possibility of the heat death of the universe, an imploding big bang, or the eventual decay of all subatomic particles?
I've been seeing this coming for over a decade, and I look forward to a very, very long life, but I still think that all alive to day will die eventually. It may take thousands, or millions, or billions of years. But it will happen.
Then again, maybe my understanding of life and death will be so changed after a million years of existence, that I will laugh at the foolish notions of my youth of the first thousand years!
Then again, maybe my understanding of life and death will be so changed after a million years of existence, that I will laugh at the foolish notions of my youth of the first thousand years!
"Then again" is right! Perhaps with such a long time span -- millions or billions of years, let alone just a thousand years -- considering the trilogy of advancing curves, knowing that the universe exists via the laws of nature it is prone to being harnessed under the control of conscious beings. Perhaps it already is, just not by us Earthlings yet.