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I wish people were more afraid of death. Maybe we'd be doing more about it. Why are we trying so much harder to overcome the fear of death and not death? > No

I wish people were more afraid of death. Maybe we'd be doing more about it. Why are we trying so much harder to overcome the fear of death and not death? > No doubt you don’t fear your prenatal existence and logically speaking, given their equivalence, it follows that you should fear death the exact same amount, as in not at all. Prenatal existence is not symmetrical to death, in my opinion. First off, even if they were, neither can be conceived, which makes the symmetry unknowable. But more importantly I don't fear things that have happened, I fear things that are impending - a pretty key distinction here, which I feel fundamentally breaks the symmetry (ie: time is not symmetrical). > doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that one can reasonably be fearful of because it isn’t anything. Earlier it was described as the greatest deprivation. Of course that's something. This is like saying "why fear starvation? It is only the absence of something - food". It is the absence, the nothingness, that drives that very fear. This is like saying "Why fear loneliness? It is not something that is done to you, it is only the absence of love". Perhaps death is 'nothing', whatever that means. Why is 'nothing' a special 'thing' that I can not fear? It seems just as reasonable to fear 'nothing' as anything else. IDK, I don't find any of it compelling. Fix death please, that's a good way to prevent the fear.

xamuel 6y ago
>I wish people were more afraid of death. Maybe we'd be doing more about it. The line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise logically speaking we ought to force everyone into permanent suspended animation on life support machines. But clearly that would be a very bad thing to do.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  What line? I didn't say anything about "at all costs". I said we should work to prevent death. If I said "we should cure the flu" would you say "Well sure but we can't just cure the flu by murdering everyone" ? Like yes, I guess there's a line there?
  - xamuel 6y ago
    >I said we should work to prevent death. But we already are, in the sense that medical and safety research is constantly being conducted and there are professionals whose job is to rescue people from fires and similar disasters. There's always trade-offs though. A lot of death could be prevented by banning motor vehicles, should we do that? Of course not. In some ways, it could be argued that we're already going too far to prevent death, for example by banning doctor-assisted suicide.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      I think the argument is we aren’t spending enough on anti-aging research.
    - staticassertion 6y ago
      I believe that we are working kinda sorta well against so-called 'premature' death. But I do not believe that death is widely considered to be itself a solvable problem - this article itself starts with this defeatist statement: > Your demise is inevitable. I hope that doesn’t come as too much of a shock. There's a lot less work going into increasing our maximum lifespan that there is going into increasing our average lifespan.
aschismatic 6y ago
I think it really depends on what definition of death we are talking about. If it's the act of dying, I can understand the comparisons to starvation and loneliness, because you are still alive and are actively experiencing death, starvation, and loneliness. However, I think this guide is talking more about death as the state of being dead, i.e. being without life. Without life, you cannot experience starvation or loneliness.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  I was talking about the same definition as the article. Of course, when I am dead, I will not fear death. That is not much consolation.
  - aschismatic 6y ago
    > Of course, when I am dead, I will not fear death. That is not much consolation. I see what you mean. What is it about death you fear? I think for these things, like starvation, loneliness, and dying, I don't fear them inherently, I fear their effects. I will feel physical pain while starving; I will feel emotional pain while lonely; I might feel pain while dying. But while living, I don't fear being dead because principally, I fear pain, and I won't be experiencing pain when I am dead. I understand not everyone will feel the same way about being dead, though.
    - staticassertion 6y ago
      Fear is actually a bad word for it. It's just that I desire to live, and death robs me of that. I really like what the article quoted: > As the philosopher Thomas Nagel observed, death is the great deprivation. That really resonates with me. Death deprives me of all things that I love and want.
      - aschismatic 6y ago
        Thank you for sharing that. I understand completely.
rcpt 6y ago
me: "ug, I think I got the group permissions right but not sure why that user still can't read it. So irritating. I'll sort it out but, ug, maybe it's not so bad to procrastinate a bit on hackernews. " hackernews: "here's some more reasons to fear death" me: man chgrp
- kyuudou 6y ago
  Bounce the login session first or test after "bash --login"
ivalm 6y ago
I agree that the presented view does little to calm me. Yet, while I am an extreme proponent of life extension, death will still come to all. At the tail end there is only so much energy available and I am pessimistic that basic physics, like heat death of the universe, can be overcome. However, we don’t even need to reach this tail end. Extreme events happen all the time and on a long enough time scale they become certainty. Maybe we can conquer aging but we are still physical bodies, which will forever be fragile (on the cosmic scale of supernovae and formation of compact objects, but really even on the scale of planetary calamities like sufficiently energetic asteroids or super volcanoes). Heck, even if we spread everywhere in space, without ftl travel, which I am somewhat comfortable will never happen, we are stuck with the destiny of Milky Way, and that’s a very finite destiny.
gloriousduke 6y ago
> Fix death please, that's a good way to prevent the fear. Even if you were able to postpone your non-existence to some late stage of the Universe, it's all but assured you will have to end eventually in light of postulated Cosmological denouements. In other words, you will not exist forever due to physics. That being said it would be nice to know it's possible to get at least a few hundred years of healthy and happy living in. Yet, would the fear of the end grow even greater then?
- staticassertion 6y ago
  If you redefine "you" and "exist" I'm not so sure. What if "I" am just my conscious being, and what if I "exist" across many systems that have a ~0% chance of failing catastrophically. Anyway, this is going all scifi and silly. My point is really that death sucks, trying to say "oh but you can't fear death because it's not a thing" doesn't seem helpful, and we can probably do massively better than a ~125 year max lifespan.
philwelch 6y ago
> But more importantly I don't fear things that have happened, I fear things that are impending - a pretty key distinction here, which I feel fundamentally breaks the symmetry (ie: time is not symmetrical). Why is time not symmetrical? I don’t mean from your subjective point of view but in terms of objective physical reality. The answer is: entropy increases over time. Which is the same reason that death is inevitable. Perhaps one day people will live for ten thousand years and perhaps that would be nice, but death will still find us all eventually.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  A lot of comments are talking about the inevitability of death due to physical laws as a certainty. 1. I think there's a big difference between 100 years and quadrillions of years. 2. I think that in quadrillions of years our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it, and our knowledge of the physical universe, may shift enough that "death" is not actually inevitable. 3. I'm no physicist but it seems a bit extreme to believe that we can predict quadrillions of years into the future based on an extremely limited view of the existing world and past. Is heat death inevitable? I don't know.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    > I think there's a big difference between 100 years and quadrillions of years. Maybe so. Or maybe this is a defense mechanism borne from denial and the urge to put off the inevitable. You’re talking about outliving the stars themselves when we can barely get piles of rocks to survive a few millennia. > I think that in quadrillions of years our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it, and our knowledge of the physical universe, may shift enough that "death" is not actually inevitable. But it was already thousands of years ago that our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it reached the understanding that death was not to be feared in the first place.
    - staticassertion 6y ago
      >Or maybe this is a defense mechanism borne from denial and the urge to put off the inevitable. Sure, could be. > You’re talking about outliving the stars themselves when we can barely get piles of rocks to survive a few millennia. Maybe so. I won't pretend to understand what would go into such a thing. I don't personally believe our understanding of the universe is sufficient to rule it out. > But it was already thousands of years ago that our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it reached the understanding that death was not to be feared in the first place. I guess I missed that! I mostly see a lot of mental gymnastics or denial in the form of believe in an after-life.
_hzw 6y ago
I consider death as the only absolute fairness. Once it’s fixed, the first batch of people who can afford it must be those in power (you know, Xi, Trump, Kim, etc).
evilsetg 6y ago
The thought that some day I will cease to exist used to terrify me. It still does, but it has lost some of its sharpness since I decided to work against my fear of dying. The fear of death was seriously bothering me and I thought: " You can either try to achieve immortality or try to loose your fear of death within your lifetime." The second one is a solvable problem, the first one, for me personally, not. It gives a strange comfort that one day I might be free of the fear of death even if I know that still I will die.
- hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
  Thanks for this. I know there are benefits of living with awareness of death (like practicing your values more), but I cannot reap them as long as I avoid thinking about death.
jordan801 6y ago
If death scares you, I would certainly not recommend eternal life. That, to me, is far more terrifying.
- 7786655 6y ago
  Well, if you get eternal life, and you don't like it, you can always change your mind.

xamuel 6y ago

>I wish people were more afraid of death. Maybe we'd be doing more about it. The line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise logically speaking we ought to force everyone into permanent suspended animation on life support machines. But clearly that would be a very bad thing to do.

staticassertion 6y ago
What line? I didn't say anything about "at all costs". I said we should work to prevent death. If I said "we should cure the flu" would you say "Well sure but we can't just cure the flu by murdering everyone" ? Like yes, I guess there's a line there?
- xamuel 6y ago
  >I said we should work to prevent death. But we already are, in the sense that medical and safety research is constantly being conducted and there are professionals whose job is to rescue people from fires and similar disasters. There's always trade-offs though. A lot of death could be prevented by banning motor vehicles, should we do that? Of course not. In some ways, it could be argued that we're already going too far to prevent death, for example by banning doctor-assisted suicide.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    I think the argument is we aren’t spending enough on anti-aging research.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    I believe that we are working kinda sorta well against so-called 'premature' death. But I do not believe that death is widely considered to be itself a solvable problem - this article itself starts with this defeatist statement: > Your demise is inevitable. I hope that doesn’t come as too much of a shock. There's a lot less work going into increasing our maximum lifespan that there is going into increasing our average lifespan.

aschismatic 6y ago

I think it really depends on what definition of death we are talking about. If it's the act of dying, I can understand the comparisons to starvation and loneliness, because you are still alive and are actively experiencing death, starvation, and loneliness. However, I think this guide is talking more about death as the state of being dead, i.e. being without life. Without life, you cannot experience starvation or loneliness.

staticassertion 6y ago
I was talking about the same definition as the article. Of course, when I am dead, I will not fear death. That is not much consolation.
- aschismatic 6y ago
  > Of course, when I am dead, I will not fear death. That is not much consolation. I see what you mean. What is it about death you fear? I think for these things, like starvation, loneliness, and dying, I don't fear them inherently, I fear their effects. I will feel physical pain while starving; I will feel emotional pain while lonely; I might feel pain while dying. But while living, I don't fear being dead because principally, I fear pain, and I won't be experiencing pain when I am dead. I understand not everyone will feel the same way about being dead, though.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Fear is actually a bad word for it. It's just that I desire to live, and death robs me of that. I really like what the article quoted: > As the philosopher Thomas Nagel observed, death is the great deprivation. That really resonates with me. Death deprives me of all things that I love and want.
    - aschismatic 6y ago
      Thank you for sharing that. I understand completely.

rcpt 6y ago

me: "ug, I think I got the group permissions right but not sure why that user still can't read it. So irritating. I'll sort it out but, ug, maybe it's not so bad to procrastinate a bit on hackernews. " hackernews: "here's some more reasons to fear death" me: man chgrp

kyuudou 6y ago
Bounce the login session first or test after "bash --login"

ivalm 6y ago

I agree that the presented view does little to calm me. Yet, while I am an extreme proponent of life extension, death will still come to all. At the tail end there is only so much energy available and I am pessimistic that basic physics, like heat death of the universe, can be overcome. However, we don’t even need to reach this tail end. Extreme events happen all the time and on a long enough time scale they become certainty. Maybe we can conquer aging but we are still physical bodies, which will forever be fragile (on the cosmic scale of supernovae and formation of compact objects, but really even on the scale of planetary calamities like sufficiently energetic asteroids or super volcanoes). Heck, even if we spread everywhere in space, without ftl travel, which I am somewhat comfortable will never happen, we are stuck with the destiny of Milky Way, and that’s a very finite destiny.

gloriousduke 6y ago

> Fix death please, that's a good way to prevent the fear. Even if you were able to postpone your non-existence to some late stage of the Universe, it's all but assured you will have to end eventually in light of postulated Cosmological denouements. In other words, you will not exist forever due to physics. That being said it would be nice to know it's possible to get at least a few hundred years of healthy and happy living in. Yet, would the fear of the end grow even greater then?

staticassertion 6y ago
If you redefine "you" and "exist" I'm not so sure. What if "I" am just my conscious being, and what if I "exist" across many systems that have a ~0% chance of failing catastrophically. Anyway, this is going all scifi and silly. My point is really that death sucks, trying to say "oh but you can't fear death because it's not a thing" doesn't seem helpful, and we can probably do massively better than a ~125 year max lifespan.

philwelch 6y ago

> But more importantly I don't fear things that have happened, I fear things that are impending - a pretty key distinction here, which I feel fundamentally breaks the symmetry (ie: time is not symmetrical). Why is time not symmetrical? I don’t mean from your subjective point of view but in terms of objective physical reality. The answer is: entropy increases over time. Which is the same reason that death is inevitable. Perhaps one day people will live for ten thousand years and perhaps that would be nice, but death will still find us all eventually.

staticassertion 6y ago
A lot of comments are talking about the inevitability of death due to physical laws as a certainty. 1. I think there's a big difference between 100 years and quadrillions of years. 2. I think that in quadrillions of years our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it, and our knowledge of the physical universe, may shift enough that "death" is not actually inevitable. 3. I'm no physicist but it seems a bit extreme to believe that we can predict quadrillions of years into the future based on an extremely limited view of the existing world and past. Is heat death inevitable? I don't know.
- philwelch 6y ago
  > I think there's a big difference between 100 years and quadrillions of years. Maybe so. Or maybe this is a defense mechanism borne from denial and the urge to put off the inevitable. You’re talking about outliving the stars themselves when we can barely get piles of rocks to survive a few millennia. > I think that in quadrillions of years our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it, and our knowledge of the physical universe, may shift enough that "death" is not actually inevitable. But it was already thousands of years ago that our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it reached the understanding that death was not to be feared in the first place.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    >Or maybe this is a defense mechanism borne from denial and the urge to put off the inevitable. Sure, could be. > You’re talking about outliving the stars themselves when we can barely get piles of rocks to survive a few millennia. Maybe so. I won't pretend to understand what would go into such a thing. I don't personally believe our understanding of the universe is sufficient to rule it out. > But it was already thousands of years ago that our interpretation of life and the value we derive from it reached the understanding that death was not to be feared in the first place. I guess I missed that! I mostly see a lot of mental gymnastics or denial in the form of believe in an after-life.

_hzw 6y ago

I consider death as the only absolute fairness. Once it’s fixed, the first batch of people who can afford it must be those in power (you know, Xi, Trump, Kim, etc).

evilsetg 6y ago

The thought that some day I will cease to exist used to terrify me. It still does, but it has lost some of its sharpness since I decided to work against my fear of dying. The fear of death was seriously bothering me and I thought: " You can either try to achieve immortality or try to loose your fear of death within your lifetime." The second one is a solvable problem, the first one, for me personally, not. It gives a strange comfort that one day I might be free of the fear of death even if I know that still I will die.

hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
Thanks for this. I know there are benefits of living with awareness of death (like practicing your values more), but I cannot reap them as long as I avoid thinking about death.

jordan801 6y ago

If death scares you, I would certainly not recommend eternal life. That, to me, is far more terrifying.

7786655 6y ago
Well, if you get eternal life, and you don't like it, you can always change your mind.