Very well said. Eliezer Yudkowsky makes similar arguments, most recently in his (outstanding) Harry Potter fanfic: (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harr

Very well said. Eliezer Yudkowsky makes similar arguments, most recently in his (outstanding) Harry Potter fanfic: (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...). "Death is bad," said Harry, discarding wisdom for the sake of clear communication. "Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem." there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum!