I know some will, but that’s too optimistic and ignores the preferences / experiences of a huge amount of people, because there are categories of people who prefer death over immortality for whom the aging process doesn’t factor in to their choice on that matter. Especially people with strong faith in their religion’s afterlife.
What I mean is that they haven’t really considered it. As I’m sure you’re aware, your mind does not work like most people’s. When most people consider the question of whether they’d like to die someday, they’re not really thinking about it as if it were a real option. Even if they give detailed, logically coherent explanations for why they’d like to die someday, they haven’t considered it in in near mode.
I am very confident of this—once they have the option, they will not choose to die. Right now they see it as just an abstract philosophical conversation, so they’ll just say whatever sounds nice to them. For a variety of reasons, “I’d like to die someday; being immortal doesn’t appeal to me” sounds wise to a lot of people. But once they have the actual option to not die? Who’s going to choose to die? Only people who are suicidally depressed or who are in very extreme cults will choose that.
I wonder what the research area for “finding out whether people with strong beliefs in a religious afterlife of some kind change their minds near death regarding wanting to die vs wanting to go to that afterlife” is called?
I do think you underestimate the strength of religious individual’s convictions and the impact of that on their decisionmaking especially near death if they have significant faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife (assuming it has one). Still...staring imminent death in the face does spur many changes whenever an individual experiences that, so maybe that does shake things up...but, I’m not sure how much hope I place in that idea without seeing some research around the topic.
I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].
I make that claim because of my experiences interacting with individuals who have very strong faith in their religious beliefs, including interacting with such individuals when they are near death.
I need to figure out what kind of research people have already done that points in the direction of that claim and see what others have found, then I can pursue this inquiry further. I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it!
They’ll almost definitely change their minds once we have good treatments for aging.
I know some will, but that’s too optimistic and ignores the preferences / experiences of a huge amount of people, because there are categories of people who prefer death over immortality for whom the aging process doesn’t factor in to their choice on that matter. Especially people with strong faith in their religion’s afterlife.
What I mean is that they haven’t really considered it. As I’m sure you’re aware, your mind does not work like most people’s. When most people consider the question of whether they’d like to die someday, they’re not really thinking about it as if it were a real option. Even if they give detailed, logically coherent explanations for why they’d like to die someday, they haven’t considered it in in near mode.
I am very confident of this—once they have the option, they will not choose to die. Right now they see it as just an abstract philosophical conversation, so they’ll just say whatever sounds nice to them. For a variety of reasons, “I’d like to die someday; being immortal doesn’t appeal to me” sounds wise to a lot of people. But once they have the actual option to not die? Who’s going to choose to die? Only people who are suicidally depressed or who are in very extreme cults will choose that.
I wonder what the research area for “finding out whether people with strong beliefs in a religious afterlife of some kind change their minds near death regarding wanting to die vs wanting to go to that afterlife” is called?
I do think you underestimate the strength of religious individual’s convictions and the impact of that on their decisionmaking especially near death if they have significant faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife (assuming it has one). Still...staring imminent death in the face does spur many changes whenever an individual experiences that, so maybe that does shake things up...but, I’m not sure how much hope I place in that idea without seeing some research around the topic.
I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].
I make that claim because of my experiences interacting with individuals who have very strong faith in their religious beliefs, including interacting with such individuals when they are near death.
I need to figure out what kind of research people have already done that points in the direction of that claim and see what others have found, then I can pursue this inquiry further. I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it!