And while I can’t prove it, I think a society where people live to (even) 200 is extreme hubris, playing with fire. Individuals have an incredibly strong motivation to keep themselves alive. If it runs against the common good (which it could in any number of ways) it would be very hard to stop. I’m not sure how LWers got so terribly afraid of death—usually atheists accept death.
When you accept that “death” is the end of existence, and I mean really the end of it, then you don’t accept it. At least, I haven’t been presented with a philosophy that would support seeking death if all things were equal. Maybe if your death somehow saved or preserved the lives or happiness of others, but that’s not the issue.
So, when you ask why LWers got “terribly afraid” of death, i’d say that this community seems to embrace the truth of death. It’s the end. Why would you choose to cease if there was a chance of continuing beyond, and that chance didn’t take away anything from anyone?
I know I’m not presenting anything new, but I thought the clarification (of my understanding) might help.
Thank you for clarifying. Sure, if you’re enjoying life and there’s no cost to going on living, we’ll all choose that. The question is how much we’ll pay to keep that chance of living a while longer.
In response, I’d say that somehow the focus is too narrowly on any one point in time. At any given moment, it’s terrifying to think you’ll die and you’ll do a great deal to avoid it at that moment. But as we talk of pre-committing in game theory situations, you might want to pre-commit regarding death too. You might say you don’t want extraordinary measures taken. (Analogy: I would choose to submit to torture rather than have a thousand others tortured in my place—but don’t give me a panic button to reverse the choice during my actual torture!)
I sometimes sense here people saying, “Well, I’m going to live a very long time and then get my brain uploaded” and I think it’s a way of dismissing death—waving it away to some indefinite future so you don’t have to get that sick feeling contemplating it in the present. But it doesn’t really help. The computer’s going to crash at some point too. You’ll get more comfort for no less reality believing Jesus is your savior.
My father was receiving hospice the last few weeks of his life in a nursing home. There was a no-hospitalization understanding, but during a crisis, the duty nurse called an ambulance for him. The hospice nurse said that if she’d been called in a timely fashion, he probably would have died that day. Instead, I got to visit him in the hospital the next day. It was odd thinking in that moment that he was alive right then and could answer my questions, while our agreed plan had been for him to be dead by then. Note, though, that he had not a shred of joy in living and died a few days later anyway. (Yet if given a button to kill himself I doubt he’d have pushed it). Looking back a couple years later, I remember the oddness of that moment, but those few days didn’t really matter very much. They mattered less than some other four days of his life spent in a notably non-optimal fashion, and who of us doesn’t have oodles of such days?
For fictional support, I’d mention two books. First, in the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula LeGuin, Ged’s achievement is being so comfortable with the inevitability of death that he can perform a totally exhausting and painful feat of magic to seal a hole in the world that allows a corrosive form of immortality—sealing it off for him as well as everyone else. And the world rights itself. The second is the Hyperion/Endymion series by Dan Simmons, where the right action is giving up the ‘crucifixes’ that bestow immortality. The brave girl enjoys her last few days of life even knowing she’s going to volunteer to be roasted alive to make the galaxy a better place. The day is worth enjoying even if it is your last.
I say there’s no real way of making sense of death. We’re programmed by evolution to work hard to postpone it, which was adaptive in our environment of evolution. As a nasty side effect, we know we’ll eventually lose no matter what we do. But few of us kill ourselves in despair at that realization, and we still will risk death saving our children—both also adaptive.
I’m sure nothing I’m saying is original either, and others have said it better.
When you accept that “death” is the end of existence, and I mean really the end of it, then you don’t accept it. At least, I haven’t been presented with a philosophy that would support seeking death if all things were equal. Maybe if your death somehow saved or preserved the lives or happiness of others, but that’s not the issue.
So, when you ask why LWers got “terribly afraid” of death, i’d say that this community seems to embrace the truth of death. It’s the end. Why would you choose to cease if there was a chance of continuing beyond, and that chance didn’t take away anything from anyone?
I know I’m not presenting anything new, but I thought the clarification (of my understanding) might help.
Thank you for clarifying. Sure, if you’re enjoying life and there’s no cost to going on living, we’ll all choose that. The question is how much we’ll pay to keep that chance of living a while longer.
In response, I’d say that somehow the focus is too narrowly on any one point in time. At any given moment, it’s terrifying to think you’ll die and you’ll do a great deal to avoid it at that moment. But as we talk of pre-committing in game theory situations, you might want to pre-commit regarding death too. You might say you don’t want extraordinary measures taken. (Analogy: I would choose to submit to torture rather than have a thousand others tortured in my place—but don’t give me a panic button to reverse the choice during my actual torture!)
I sometimes sense here people saying, “Well, I’m going to live a very long time and then get my brain uploaded” and I think it’s a way of dismissing death—waving it away to some indefinite future so you don’t have to get that sick feeling contemplating it in the present. But it doesn’t really help. The computer’s going to crash at some point too. You’ll get more comfort for no less reality believing Jesus is your savior.
My father was receiving hospice the last few weeks of his life in a nursing home. There was a no-hospitalization understanding, but during a crisis, the duty nurse called an ambulance for him. The hospice nurse said that if she’d been called in a timely fashion, he probably would have died that day. Instead, I got to visit him in the hospital the next day. It was odd thinking in that moment that he was alive right then and could answer my questions, while our agreed plan had been for him to be dead by then. Note, though, that he had not a shred of joy in living and died a few days later anyway. (Yet if given a button to kill himself I doubt he’d have pushed it). Looking back a couple years later, I remember the oddness of that moment, but those few days didn’t really matter very much. They mattered less than some other four days of his life spent in a notably non-optimal fashion, and who of us doesn’t have oodles of such days?
For fictional support, I’d mention two books. First, in the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula LeGuin, Ged’s achievement is being so comfortable with the inevitability of death that he can perform a totally exhausting and painful feat of magic to seal a hole in the world that allows a corrosive form of immortality—sealing it off for him as well as everyone else. And the world rights itself. The second is the Hyperion/Endymion series by Dan Simmons, where the right action is giving up the ‘crucifixes’ that bestow immortality. The brave girl enjoys her last few days of life even knowing she’s going to volunteer to be roasted alive to make the galaxy a better place. The day is worth enjoying even if it is your last.
I say there’s no real way of making sense of death. We’re programmed by evolution to work hard to postpone it, which was adaptive in our environment of evolution. As a nasty side effect, we know we’ll eventually lose no matter what we do. But few of us kill ourselves in despair at that realization, and we still will risk death saving our children—both also adaptive.
I’m sure nothing I’m saying is original either, and others have said it better.