12 ms·

I don't really fear dying, I also don't fear being dead. But the fact that I won't be anymore, FOREVER: that is what literally gives me the chills everytime I

I don't really fear dying, I also don't fear being dead. But the fact that I won't be anymore, FOREVER: that is what literally gives me the chills everytime I think about it. God, I really hope there's something after death.

thatcodingdude 6y ago
I'm terrified that there would be something after. Imagine always being. I need to rest sooner or later.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
Hope isn't a solution. This is a solvable problem, if enough people work on it and enough resources are directed towards it. Channel those chills into something that contributes towards a solution.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Eternal life?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
freeflight 6y ago
> God, I really hope there's something after death. There is something, it's the same thing that was before your birth, in that sense so you are very much just returning to your natural state: You have been not born for the longest time and you will be dead for the longest time. In that context this rather short experience of existence is actually the thing that's out of the ordinary, making it that much more valuable.
- spfzero 6y ago
  This is also how I think of it. Billions of years go by where you don’t exist, then you do, for a tiny slice of time, maybe 90 years, then more billions of years when you don’t exist.
- prohobo 6y ago
  This is a myth. If you get blackout drunk and don't remember the night before, does that mean you ceased to exist in that time period? How can you prove any conclusion you come to? The idea that being dead is the same as not being born seems like an elegant conclusion until you consider how much our perception of time varies even while we're alive, and it's actually an observation made after you gained your current consciousness; meaning that you truthfully have no idea what happened before you were born, only your current perception of it. What you're really saying is "I don't remember, and no one else remembers, therefore there was nothing". Reality is unintuitive. Modern theoretical physics suggests that time itself is an illusion and that every state of the universe is superimposed into one unifying entity: past, present, and future. What does that mean about our perceptions of life and death? The truth is we don't know much of anything, we can only speculate about it.
- tilolebo 6y ago
  That's exactly what makes it scary to me. It feels so normal to sit there on my couch, writing this message from my smartphone. But in fact life is just a ridiculously short period at the scale of... Of what, actually? How long have I not been born, and how long will I be dead? Trying to make sense of it is what makes me anxious.
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    Yeah, reading about events on cosmological scale (galaxy, blackhole formation, etc.) usually ends up in existential dread feeling for me.
    - RotANobot 6y ago
      Not to take away from your experience, I just wanted to share mine. When I read or think of events on cosmological scale it always gives me feelings of curious bliss.
    - freeflight 6y ago
      I guess it's a matter of perspective. When I look at these things I'm amazed that I'm part of these scales, or as Carl Sagan put it: "We are made of star stuff". Once I'm dead, the elements my body consists of will go back into that eternal cycle, making me once again a part of the whole or maybe even part of evolving into something completely new. While my non-corporeal parts, my consciousness, my character, will hopefully be fondly remembered by family and friends. At least that's how I found a bit of peace of mind after having suffered from anxiety and existential dread for most of my youth.
  - marton78 6y ago
    You were never not born, and you will never be dead. The concept of time is meaningless if it's not experienced, so as far as you're concerned it won't exist, and what doesn't exist can also not be infinite.
- AQuantized 6y ago
  This is the sort of thing that seems like it makes sense, but assigning a time period or ownership to a lack of existence doesn't follow. We can talk about something not existing but it's only a convention.
- lozf 6y ago
  Kinda like you're cosmic lego .. you make something (a life), play a while, then all the pieces go back in the toy-box ready to make something else next time.
burntoutfire 6y ago
For me, sleep (when I'm not dreaming), is pretty much like death - your consciousness is just turned off. The only difference is that, with death, it's permanent. But, given that sleep is no big deal, I don't see why being dead should be.
- tilolebo 6y ago
  Because you know you'll wake up the next day.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    You never know!
- throwaway713 6y ago
  With sleep, I feel like you’re sort of still there since when you wake up you have the perception that time has passed. What’s truly unnerving is going under anesthesia, where it’s like that period of time just never existed at all.
  - juliendorra 6y ago
    complete anesthesia is indeed a very disturbing experience, similar to a cut to a new scene in a movie: you were there and then and you are here and now, without anything in between. You cannot really tell if you are the same conscience that existed before the anesthesia, because you have no feeling of a continuous conscience: it feels like you have been switched off and on.
    - kgwgk 6y ago
      Is it really different from waking up every morning? In particular if you can’t remember precisely how the previous day ended...
    - nlh 6y ago
      I've had that same experience - both with anesthesia and when I briefly blacked out from g-forces at the bottom of a huuuuuuge roller coaster drop. I found the experience strangely comforting - basically the closest approximation to what death is like. One second you're there, and the next you're not. It wasn't bad or scary or painful or anything. It was just existence and then nothingness and then the feeling of coming back online realizing what happened. And when I was coming back online, my thinking was: Well, I'm glad to be back! And if I hadn't come back, would I have even noticed? (The answer is no).
tosser0001 6y ago
While that does freak me out, I'm also somewhat disturbed by the idea of leaving no trace in the universe. In today's world there is a lot of information about us that has been recorded. In some sense we're not completely forgotten because, at least in modern societies, we have birth records, death records and all manner of other details collected about us... mentions in newspapers, pictures, video clips, etc. But there will be some point in the future where all these details will inevitably be lost and all trace of our personal existence will be unrecoverable. In some ways that's sadder than anything I can think of. I think of ancestors who were born before the advent of any sort of record keeping now are nothing more than nameless ghosts. Their only record may be some small fragment of DNA, and even then there's no guarantee that any of it was passed on after enough generations.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  That’s not true- the mere existence of you and the actions you’ve taken were and continue to be woven into the state of the universe since the day you were conceived. You made a direct and irreversible contribution to the increasing entropy of the universe and have helped push us all one step closer to ultimate equilibrium and the heat death of the universe. Be proud of your work, it is no more and no less than any other human or collection of atoms that has existed to date or ever will exist.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If we don't become multi-planetary and outside of this solar system, there's a 100% guarantee that all record of humanity will be erased.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  You're not entirely gone. You are one person in a society who contributed your small to the cultural memes (in the original definition of meme). Even if you bear no children, some part of you will still exist in future generations
the_gipsy 6y ago
> Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Epic of Gilgamesh, first human history
dsego 6y ago
I always find some comfort in those stories of children who remember previous lives or other paranormal phenomena of such nature. There are some pretty assuring accounts.
- nikkwong 6y ago
  In reference to those stories about children remembering past lives, I never know quite what to make of them. For one, their stories seem to be remarkable in the fact that there seems to be no way a child would be able to fabricate the stories that they're piecing together to explain their past lives. But on the other hand, their stories' are often suspiciously close to the plot of the movie "Birth". And, well, children have wild imaginations and I'm sure it's not unlikely that a small percentage of children in any population would have a wild imagination mixed with maybe a mild level of psychosis or other abnormal behavior. Also mainstream science seems to have ignored these children. So I mostly write these stories off, but I would not be closed to them having some paranormal component to them if some more interesting information presents. I also typically completely dismiss all paranormal stories as having physical explanations. Although I'm also open to being exposed to these types of events if they present. One day in college I was sitting in my car just waiting for a friend inside. 12 inches from my face, there was a huge explosion of water, as if a balloon exploded, which left my entire car interior drenched. It was a sunny day, windows were closed, no water, bottles, or other water sources were in my vehicle. I wasn't scared, but never have been able to explain what the causality was there. So.. Idk. If anything, that has always left my perfectly rationalizing brain to accept that we might not always know everything.
groby_b 6y ago
Having seen people die - dying is something that you should if not fear, then consider carefully. We live in a society that actively frowns on allowing a humane exit and would like to prolong life at any cost. Make your decisions up front, and document them. Figure out what you want done in the face of laws that might not agree with you, and how to get it done. As for not being there - you still are. You have touched innumerable lives, for better or worse, as you live. You shape those lives by what you do, and you live on in the effects you had. No more HN or chocolate though. I'll miss chocolate.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >As for not being there - you still are. You have touched innumerable lives, for better or worse, as you live. Okay, just getting real for a second, that is definitely a trick redefinition of "being there" to something other than what was originally being referred to. Kind of like if I stole a kid's lollypop, and when he complained, I told him that as long as he remembered the lollypop, he would still have it.
  - groby_b 6y ago
    I'm not sure it's a "trick definition". We define nature by observable side effects. You are simply your observable side effects. That's the key difference to the lollipop. Remembrance is not an observable side effect of lollipops. That tree I planted is. That person whose career I helped improve still has an improved career. Etc. That's one of the two ways you live. The other one is the experiences you have. Sure, you can optimize for that, but as far as we all know it pretty much stops when you die. So I prefer option 1.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      >Remembrance is not an observable side effect of lollipops. Yes it is, it's manifested in the physical re-arrangement of the kid's neurons.
kgwgk 6y ago
> I also don't fear being dead. > But the fact that I won't be anymore, I think that’s what many people fears about being dead, the not being (alive) anymore aspect of it.
codr7 6y ago
I try to apply what I call the 50/50 principle in matters such as these. It's all up in the air; some claim there is, others the opposite. And there's no way to prove anything. The only thing that makes sense to me is to pick the version that makes you happy and run with it.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > It's all up in the air; some claim there is, others the opposite. And there's no way to prove anything. The fact that those pushing the idea that there is something also depend exclusively on your believing the idea to make a living and gain power and influence over society leads me to believe that the odds are not 50/50.
  - tstewart161 6y ago
    You’re putting the cart before the horse through a pinhole here. Religion has existed long before organizations like, say the Catholic Church, derived their power through its adherents. You’re also making this mistake through a lens that disregards beliefs in the afterlife across nearly all cultures, regardless of whether someone can gain power from pushing it (many eastern religions). In summary: just because some people and organizations promote religion for their purposes does not at all wipe away the various religions across time and cultures that DONT fit those criteria you mentioned.
  - codr7 6y ago
    Goes for anyone pushing anything. It's still 50/50, because you have no proof either way.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      Not really. The guy selling you apples is just selling you apples, but the guy trying to sell you a bridge might just be abusing your naiveness.
      - codr7 6y ago
Aeolun 6y ago
It’s pretty weird to be afraid of that too. After all, if you are not there anymore, you can’t really worry about it either. And if there is something, the worry was misplaced in the first place.

thatcodingdude 6y ago

I'm terrified that there would be something after. Imagine always being. I need to rest sooner or later.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

Hope isn't a solution. This is a solvable problem, if enough people work on it and enough resources are directed towards it. Channel those chills into something that contributes towards a solution.

Aeolun 6y ago
Eternal life?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

freeflight 6y ago

> God, I really hope there's something after death. There is something, it's the same thing that was before your birth, in that sense so you are very much just returning to your natural state: You have been not born for the longest time and you will be dead for the longest time. In that context this rather short experience of existence is actually the thing that's out of the ordinary, making it that much more valuable.

spfzero 6y ago
This is also how I think of it. Billions of years go by where you don’t exist, then you do, for a tiny slice of time, maybe 90 years, then more billions of years when you don’t exist.
prohobo 6y ago
This is a myth. If you get blackout drunk and don't remember the night before, does that mean you ceased to exist in that time period? How can you prove any conclusion you come to? The idea that being dead is the same as not being born seems like an elegant conclusion until you consider how much our perception of time varies even while we're alive, and it's actually an observation made after you gained your current consciousness; meaning that you truthfully have no idea what happened before you were born, only your current perception of it. What you're really saying is "I don't remember, and no one else remembers, therefore there was nothing". Reality is unintuitive. Modern theoretical physics suggests that time itself is an illusion and that every state of the universe is superimposed into one unifying entity: past, present, and future. What does that mean about our perceptions of life and death? The truth is we don't know much of anything, we can only speculate about it.
tilolebo 6y ago
That's exactly what makes it scary to me. It feels so normal to sit there on my couch, writing this message from my smartphone. But in fact life is just a ridiculously short period at the scale of... Of what, actually? How long have I not been born, and how long will I be dead? Trying to make sense of it is what makes me anxious.
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  Yeah, reading about events on cosmological scale (galaxy, blackhole formation, etc.) usually ends up in existential dread feeling for me.
  - RotANobot 6y ago
    Not to take away from your experience, I just wanted to share mine. When I read or think of events on cosmological scale it always gives me feelings of curious bliss.
  - freeflight 6y ago
    I guess it's a matter of perspective. When I look at these things I'm amazed that I'm part of these scales, or as Carl Sagan put it: "We are made of star stuff". Once I'm dead, the elements my body consists of will go back into that eternal cycle, making me once again a part of the whole or maybe even part of evolving into something completely new. While my non-corporeal parts, my consciousness, my character, will hopefully be fondly remembered by family and friends. At least that's how I found a bit of peace of mind after having suffered from anxiety and existential dread for most of my youth.
- marton78 6y ago
  You were never not born, and you will never be dead. The concept of time is meaningless if it's not experienced, so as far as you're concerned it won't exist, and what doesn't exist can also not be infinite.
AQuantized 6y ago
This is the sort of thing that seems like it makes sense, but assigning a time period or ownership to a lack of existence doesn't follow. We can talk about something not existing but it's only a convention.
lozf 6y ago
Kinda like you're cosmic lego .. you make something (a life), play a while, then all the pieces go back in the toy-box ready to make something else next time.

burntoutfire 6y ago

For me, sleep (when I'm not dreaming), is pretty much like death - your consciousness is just turned off. The only difference is that, with death, it's permanent. But, given that sleep is no big deal, I don't see why being dead should be.

tilolebo 6y ago
Because you know you'll wake up the next day.
- kgwgk 6y ago
  You never know!
throwaway713 6y ago
With sleep, I feel like you’re sort of still there since when you wake up you have the perception that time has passed. What’s truly unnerving is going under anesthesia, where it’s like that period of time just never existed at all.
- juliendorra 6y ago
  complete anesthesia is indeed a very disturbing experience, similar to a cut to a new scene in a movie: you were there and then and you are here and now, without anything in between. You cannot really tell if you are the same conscience that existed before the anesthesia, because you have no feeling of a continuous conscience: it feels like you have been switched off and on.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    Is it really different from waking up every morning? In particular if you can’t remember precisely how the previous day ended...
  - nlh 6y ago
    I've had that same experience - both with anesthesia and when I briefly blacked out from g-forces at the bottom of a huuuuuuge roller coaster drop. I found the experience strangely comforting - basically the closest approximation to what death is like. One second you're there, and the next you're not. It wasn't bad or scary or painful or anything. It was just existence and then nothingness and then the feeling of coming back online realizing what happened. And when I was coming back online, my thinking was: Well, I'm glad to be back! And if I hadn't come back, would I have even noticed? (The answer is no).

tosser0001 6y ago

While that does freak me out, I'm also somewhat disturbed by the idea of leaving no trace in the universe. In today's world there is a lot of information about us that has been recorded. In some sense we're not completely forgotten because, at least in modern societies, we have birth records, death records and all manner of other details collected about us... mentions in newspapers, pictures, video clips, etc. But there will be some point in the future where all these details will inevitably be lost and all trace of our personal existence will be unrecoverable. In some ways that's sadder than anything I can think of. I think of ancestors who were born before the advent of any sort of record keeping now are nothing more than nameless ghosts. Their only record may be some small fragment of DNA, and even then there's no guarantee that any of it was passed on after enough generations.

crispyporkbites 6y ago
That’s not true- the mere existence of you and the actions you’ve taken were and continue to be woven into the state of the universe since the day you were conceived. You made a direct and irreversible contribution to the increasing entropy of the universe and have helped push us all one step closer to ultimate equilibrium and the heat death of the universe. Be proud of your work, it is no more and no less than any other human or collection of atoms that has existed to date or ever will exist.
sokoloff 6y ago
If we don't become multi-planetary and outside of this solar system, there's a 100% guarantee that all record of humanity will be erased.
MaximumYComb 6y ago
You're not entirely gone. You are one person in a society who contributed your small to the cultural memes (in the original definition of meme). Even if you bear no children, some part of you will still exist in future generations

the_gipsy 6y ago

> Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Epic of Gilgamesh, first human history

dsego 6y ago

I always find some comfort in those stories of children who remember previous lives or other paranormal phenomena of such nature. There are some pretty assuring accounts.

nikkwong 6y ago
In reference to those stories about children remembering past lives, I never know quite what to make of them. For one, their stories seem to be remarkable in the fact that there seems to be no way a child would be able to fabricate the stories that they're piecing together to explain their past lives. But on the other hand, their stories' are often suspiciously close to the plot of the movie "Birth". And, well, children have wild imaginations and I'm sure it's not unlikely that a small percentage of children in any population would have a wild imagination mixed with maybe a mild level of psychosis or other abnormal behavior. Also mainstream science seems to have ignored these children. So I mostly write these stories off, but I would not be closed to them having some paranormal component to them if some more interesting information presents. I also typically completely dismiss all paranormal stories as having physical explanations. Although I'm also open to being exposed to these types of events if they present. One day in college I was sitting in my car just waiting for a friend inside. 12 inches from my face, there was a huge explosion of water, as if a balloon exploded, which left my entire car interior drenched. It was a sunny day, windows were closed, no water, bottles, or other water sources were in my vehicle. I wasn't scared, but never have been able to explain what the causality was there. So.. Idk. If anything, that has always left my perfectly rationalizing brain to accept that we might not always know everything.

groby_b 6y ago

Having seen people die - dying is something that you should if not fear, then consider carefully. We live in a society that actively frowns on allowing a humane exit and would like to prolong life at any cost. Make your decisions up front, and document them. Figure out what you want done in the face of laws that might not agree with you, and how to get it done. As for not being there - you still are. You have touched innumerable lives, for better or worse, as you live. You shape those lives by what you do, and you live on in the effects you had. No more HN or chocolate though. I'll miss chocolate.

whatshisface 6y ago
>As for not being there - you still are. You have touched innumerable lives, for better or worse, as you live. Okay, just getting real for a second, that is definitely a trick redefinition of "being there" to something other than what was originally being referred to. Kind of like if I stole a kid's lollypop, and when he complained, I told him that as long as he remembered the lollypop, he would still have it.
- groby_b 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's a "trick definition". We define nature by observable side effects. You are simply your observable side effects. That's the key difference to the lollipop. Remembrance is not an observable side effect of lollipops. That tree I planted is. That person whose career I helped improve still has an improved career. Etc. That's one of the two ways you live. The other one is the experiences you have. Sure, you can optimize for that, but as far as we all know it pretty much stops when you die. So I prefer option 1.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >Remembrance is not an observable side effect of lollipops. Yes it is, it's manifested in the physical re-arrangement of the kid's neurons.

kgwgk 6y ago

> I also don't fear being dead. > But the fact that I won't be anymore, I think that’s what many people fears about being dead, the not being (alive) anymore aspect of it.

codr7 6y ago

I try to apply what I call the 50/50 principle in matters such as these. It's all up in the air; some claim there is, others the opposite. And there's no way to prove anything. The only thing that makes sense to me is to pick the version that makes you happy and run with it.

rumanator 6y ago
> It's all up in the air; some claim there is, others the opposite. And there's no way to prove anything. The fact that those pushing the idea that there is something also depend exclusively on your believing the idea to make a living and gain power and influence over society leads me to believe that the odds are not 50/50.
- tstewart161 6y ago
  You’re putting the cart before the horse through a pinhole here. Religion has existed long before organizations like, say the Catholic Church, derived their power through its adherents. You’re also making this mistake through a lens that disregards beliefs in the afterlife across nearly all cultures, regardless of whether someone can gain power from pushing it (many eastern religions). In summary: just because some people and organizations promote religion for their purposes does not at all wipe away the various religions across time and cultures that DONT fit those criteria you mentioned.
- codr7 6y ago
  Goes for anyone pushing anything. It's still 50/50, because you have no proof either way.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    Not really. The guy selling you apples is just selling you apples, but the guy trying to sell you a bridge might just be abusing your naiveness.
    - codr7 6y ago

Aeolun 6y ago

It’s pretty weird to be afraid of that too. After all, if you are not there anymore, you can’t really worry about it either. And if there is something, the worry was misplaced in the first place.