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Yeah, I think deathbed is the part of the issue because it distracts from the goal. Maybe a better exercise might be "Imagine yourself in the (distant?) future,

Yeah, I think deathbed is the part of the issue because it distracts from the goal. Maybe a better exercise might be "Imagine yourself in the (distant?) future, while you're still healthy. What would you want that life to look like?".

buran77 6y ago
Imagining things is never the same as facing a finality that has been ingrained throughout your life in your psyche. You can't accurately imagine being old until you're old. You can't accurately imagine being right at the edge of life until you're there. It's like imagining how you'll feel at the end of a movie that wasn't filmed yet, or what the last block of a blockchain will look like before being close to it. When you're there and have the power of retrospective it's easier to have a final perspective, and even easier to express it since the concept of consequence no longer exists for you. On one hand you have the full experience of your life so it's easy to draw the line of what was important. On the other hand this never takes into account how many of those "bad" decisions got you where you are now. So the deathbed perspective is the individual's assessment on what were the high and low points of their life, after computing the whole equation. Like deciding which block in the blockchain you're most proud of, it's only possible once you went through all of it.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  That's completely missing the point of the exercise. You don't need to accurately imagine it. The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now, by giving you a different perspective.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > That's completely missing the point of the exercise No it's not, you're just too invested in your example to realize there is no point to the exercise you proposed. A model where up to 90% of data (the "unexperienced" part of your life depending on age) is imagined and by definition inaccurate can't be used for any determination. > The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now That's the point of the exercise you proposed, very different from a deathbed perspective, and one I believe couldn't work as described. The deathbed perspective is an exercise of taking your entire life experiences and distilling them to get a concrete core as seen from the "final checkpoint". The key is knowing that there will be no future experiences to alter the result, and that makes the determination as final and as accurate as it can ever reasonably be. It's not a decision making tool, it can't be used to alter the future. It's a conclusion, a punchline. But if you want to see what's important now that's a decision, a seed for your future, and it's open to change and evolution. This cannot be more different from a real deathbed perspective. So taking this decision by imagining one of infinite possibilities of your future up to your distant deathbed makes no sense. Your subjectivity will lead you into imagining a completely different future every time, and getting a different perspective and decision. That girl you like? Deciding she's "what you want now" is just a matter of imagining a future deathbed where she was key to your life happiness. Or maybe it's that job... Or something else entirely. When you're 20 or 30 your "old age" deathbed could have you a billionaire, homeless, or anything you can imagine. An imagined, relatively random, and distant future outcome can't help you decide what's best in the present more than flipping a coin will. At best you can imagine you are now on your deathbed and go through the exercise to take a decision as if it were the conclusion. I still think it's pointless because imagining you're on your deathbed is like imagining a new color.

buran77 6y ago

Imagining things is never the same as facing a finality that has been ingrained throughout your life in your psyche. You can't accurately imagine being old until you're old. You can't accurately imagine being right at the edge of life until you're there. It's like imagining how you'll feel at the end of a movie that wasn't filmed yet, or what the last block of a blockchain will look like before being close to it. When you're there and have the power of retrospective it's easier to have a final perspective, and even easier to express it since the concept of consequence no longer exists for you. On one hand you have the full experience of your life so it's easy to draw the line of what was important. On the other hand this never takes into account how many of those "bad" decisions got you where you are now. So the deathbed perspective is the individual's assessment on what were the high and low points of their life, after computing the whole equation. Like deciding which block in the blockchain you're most proud of, it's only possible once you went through all of it.

wtetzner 6y ago
That's completely missing the point of the exercise. You don't need to accurately imagine it. The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now, by giving you a different perspective.
- buran77 6y ago
  > That's completely missing the point of the exercise No it's not, you're just too invested in your example to realize there is no point to the exercise you proposed. A model where up to 90% of data (the "unexperienced" part of your life depending on age) is imagined and by definition inaccurate can't be used for any determination. > The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now That's the point of the exercise you proposed, very different from a deathbed perspective, and one I believe couldn't work as described. The deathbed perspective is an exercise of taking your entire life experiences and distilling them to get a concrete core as seen from the "final checkpoint". The key is knowing that there will be no future experiences to alter the result, and that makes the determination as final and as accurate as it can ever reasonably be. It's not a decision making tool, it can't be used to alter the future. It's a conclusion, a punchline. But if you want to see what's important now that's a decision, a seed for your future, and it's open to change and evolution. This cannot be more different from a real deathbed perspective. So taking this decision by imagining one of infinite possibilities of your future up to your distant deathbed makes no sense. Your subjectivity will lead you into imagining a completely different future every time, and getting a different perspective and decision. That girl you like? Deciding she's "what you want now" is just a matter of imagining a future deathbed where she was key to your life happiness. Or maybe it's that job... Or something else entirely. When you're 20 or 30 your "old age" deathbed could have you a billionaire, homeless, or anything you can imagine. An imagined, relatively random, and distant future outcome can't help you decide what's best in the present more than flipping a coin will. At best you can imagine you are now on your deathbed and go through the exercise to take a decision as if it were the conclusion. I still think it's pointless because imagining you're on your deathbed is like imagining a new color.