All the usually offered counterarguments to the idea that death is evil boil down to one universal counterargument:
If there is no death, then there will be a bad phenomenon X (overpopulation, cessation of progress, eternal dictatorship, boredom), therefore, death is necessary.
However, this universal counterargument does not work:
The counter-argument does not tell us that death is not evil. He tells us that, from the point of view of altruism, there are situations when death is necessary, for example, it is supposedly needed to combat overpopulation.
The counter-argument does not deny the evil of death. It talks about the collision of the value "not to die" and some other value Y (progress, the good of mankind), and then argues that the second value is more important.
If there is a way to achieve the value of Y without people dying, then death is not needed.
For example, if at the birth, each person is granted so many resources that it will be possible to provide her with resources for entire endless life, then overpopulation will cease to be a problem. Overpopulation is only a problem because of the clash between the idea of finite resources and the prospect of exponential proliferation.
The counterargument also does not work because it is not central. The negative X phenomenon can persist even if death continues. Lack of progress, eternal dictatorship, overpopulation and degradation are possible in societies where people have short life expectancy.
Yup, most people don't think clearly. Most public arguments are bad. It's not unreasonable to transform the common argument into "other people should die because I (and my in-group) will have a better future without them".
This is a VERY hard thing to argue against, as there's some truth in it. Even if you extend it to "and I accept that I will die in the future, as part of this equilibrium", it's pretty strong, as we have an actual working example, unlike any counter-proprosal. You can point out that it's not utilitarian (as it values different individuals differently). To me, that's a truth-derived feature, not a bug - people are not, in fact, equal.
Not all humans have that preference at all times in their life - I've known a few who chose to die (including some who I understood and supported the choice), and MANY who didn't choose to suffer more in order to live longer. Your induction is invalid.
Many people have preferences and revealed preferences that I'm willing to ignore or actively prevent. I like having laws against assault, for instance. So pure preference adhesion is not a sufficient definition of altruism to apply here.
Also, I'm only altruistic on some topics, and not perfectly so. I like many people, and I like people as a concept, and all else equal, I prefer that even strangers be happy, all else equal. But all else is NEVER equal, and I honor some other-peoples-preferences far less than others, and I care more about people closer to me than further.
I suspect that attempts to generalize on these topics are doomed to fail. Most people don't have consistent utility functions, let alone values. And there's LOTS of behavioral data showing that a very large number of people don't care very much about distant strangers.
All the usually offered counterarguments to the idea that death is evil boil down to one universal counterargument:
If there is no death, then there will be a bad phenomenon X (overpopulation, cessation of progress, eternal dictatorship, boredom), therefore, death is necessary.
However, this universal counterargument does not work:
For example, if at the birth, each person is granted so many resources that it will be possible to provide her with resources for entire endless life, then overpopulation will cease to be a problem. Overpopulation is only a problem because of the clash between the idea of finite resources and the prospect of exponential proliferation.
The counterargument also does not work because it is not central. The negative X phenomenon can persist even if death continues. Lack of progress, eternal dictatorship, overpopulation and degradation are possible in societies where people have short life expectancy.