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if you were in a burning building, you would try pretty hard to get out. Therefore, you must strongly dislike death and want to avoid it. But if you strongly dislike death and want to avoid it, you must be lying when you say you accept death as a natural part of life and think it’s crass and selfish to try to cheat the Reaper.
Won’t it be the case that someone who tries to escape from a burning building, does so, just to avoid the pain and suffering it inflicts? It would be such a drag to be burned alive rather than a peaceful painless poison death.
That doesn’t help much. If people were told they were going to be murdered in a painless way (or something not particularly painful—for example, a shot for someone who isn’t afraid of needles and has no problem getting vaccinated) most would consider this a threat and would try to avoid it.
I think most people’s practical attitude towards death is a bit like Syrio Forel from Game of Thrones—“not today”. We learn to accept that we’ll die someday, we might even be okay with it, but we prefer to have it happen as far in the future as we can manage.
Signing up for cryonics is an attempt to avoid dying tomorrow—but we’re not that worried about dying tomorrow. Getting out of a burning building means we avoid dying today.
(whether this is a refinement of how to understand our behaviour around death, or a potential generalized utility function, I couldn’t say).
Should be noted that “tomorrow” stands in for “in enough time that we operate in Far mode when thinking about it”, as opposed to actual tomorrow, when we very much don’t want to die.
Come to think of it, a lot of people are all “Yay, death!” in Far mode (I’m looking at you, Epictetus), but much fewer in Near mode (though those who do are famous). Anecdotal evidence: I was born without an aversion for death in principle, was surprised by sad funerals, thought it was mostly signalling (and selfish mourning for lost company), was utterly baffled by obviously sincere death-bashers. I’ve met a few other people like that, too. Yet we (except some of the few I met in history books) have normal conservation reflexes.
There’s no pressure to want to live in Far mode (in an environment without cryonics and smoking habits, anyway), and there’s pressure to say “I don’t care about death, I only care about $ideal which I will never compromise” (hat tip Katja Grace).
I was just pointing to the opinion that, not everyone who tries to escape from death are actually afraid of death per se. They might have other reasons.
Won’t it be the case that someone who tries to escape from a burning building, does so, just to avoid the pain and suffering it inflicts? It would be such a drag to be burned alive rather than a peaceful painless poison death.
That doesn’t help much. If people were told they were going to be murdered in a painless way (or something not particularly painful—for example, a shot for someone who isn’t afraid of needles and has no problem getting vaccinated) most would consider this a threat and would try to avoid it.
I think most people’s practical attitude towards death is a bit like Syrio Forel from Game of Thrones—“not today”. We learn to accept that we’ll die someday, we might even be okay with it, but we prefer to have it happen as far in the future as we can manage.
Signing up for cryonics is an attempt to avoid dying tomorrow—but we’re not that worried about dying tomorrow. Getting out of a burning building means we avoid dying today.
(whether this is a refinement of how to understand our behaviour around death, or a potential generalized utility function, I couldn’t say).
Should be noted that “tomorrow” stands in for “in enough time that we operate in Far mode when thinking about it”, as opposed to actual tomorrow, when we very much don’t want to die.
Come to think of it, a lot of people are all “Yay, death!” in Far mode (I’m looking at you, Epictetus), but much fewer in Near mode (though those who do are famous). Anecdotal evidence: I was born without an aversion for death in principle, was surprised by sad funerals, thought it was mostly signalling (and selfish mourning for lost company), was utterly baffled by obviously sincere death-bashers. I’ve met a few other people like that, too. Yet we (except some of the few I met in history books) have normal conservation reflexes.
There’s no pressure to want to live in Far mode (in an environment without cryonics and smoking habits, anyway), and there’s pressure to say “I don’t care about death, I only care about $ideal which I will never compromise” (hat tip Katja Grace).
I was just pointing to the opinion that, not everyone who tries to escape from death are actually afraid of death per se. They might have other reasons.
Death from old age often involves drowning in the fluid that accumulates in your lungs when you get pneumonia.