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tanagrabeast comments on Why people want to die - Less Wrong
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I really hate this form of argument but it seems common on less-wrong.
"If you don't want to do something right now you obviously don't want it ever or for it to ever be an option. "
If you apply the same form to anything else it becomes more obvious that it's not logical. Don't want to move away from your parents today? well then you must never want to. Don't want to eat that cake today? well then you must never want to.
Ditto for the fake "proof by induction" I once saw posted in one of these topics where someone claimed that if you want to live today and also will want to live tomorrow and the next etc then you must want to live forever.
It also implicitly assumes that everyone shares the same ethical system. Someone might be utterly against murder but would be quite happy if someone they really really hate gets hit by a train. That doesn't mean they want to kill that person today. Many people view suicide as wrong in it's own right, something to be avoided for the simple reason that they believe taking their own life to have some form of ethical injunction against it.
My assertion is that there's a difference between wanting to die and being apathetic about having death sneak up on you, and that most old people are actually in the latter category. I'm not comfortable calling these people "deathist", preferring instead to reserve the term for those who would oppose the idea that death should be optional.
I hold that the person who merely wouldn't mind not waking up tomorrow is usually just as content to keep living for one more day, and would likely be at least as content to wake up in a younger body.
The guy living in his mom's basement who says he would like to leave is less ambivalent. He would much rather wake up in a place of his own, provided he didn't have to make the continuous effort normally needed to enable this.
If dying took as much effort as getting and holding a job, I doubt it would be so popular.
I would probably say that some very old people are ready to die. I wouldn't call it "wanting to die", it's not an active desire, but I also wouldn't call it "apathetic" because it's more than just not caring.
The question is, how much of this sentiment among the elderly is based on it being improbable that there will be affordable replacement organs or other "anti-aging" technologies in their lifetimes?
Some of us 20-somethings are trying to decide whether to (A) go into YOLO mode or (B) sacrifice utility for the next 60 years in order to maximize expected utility for the next 1,000.