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MrMind comments on Yet More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: NancyLebovitz 08 September 2013 02:18PM

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Comment author: MrMind 19 September 2013 01:40:02PM 0 points [-]

I simply use days, I find they are sufficiently short to be grasped intuitively but not enough to create a huge number. Besides, probably less then 17132 left...

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2013 08:51:45AM 0 points [-]

17132

That number isn't anywhere near small enough to trigger near-mode thinking in me, and days would trigger the “weird choice of units for this” memetic immune defence reaction (though not as much as months).

Comment author: MrMind 23 September 2013 07:01:25AM 0 points [-]

So are you basically unable to think about death in a way that isn't far from you? I wonder how much this is common and/or relates to accepting a transhumanist point of view.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 September 2013 02:03:55PM 0 points [-]

So are you basically unable to think about death in a way that isn't far from you?

Yes, I pretty much am (except when driving or doing something similarly dangerous). At least, not about my death or that of other healthy young people in developed countries.

(Weirdly, though, I do often think about stopping functioning before legal death. It must be a combination of having read the parts of I Am a Strange Loop about Ronald Reagan's late life, my girlfriend working with Alzheimer patients on a daily basis, my grandpa starting to show long-term memory loss too, and, er, my having read the Yvain post I linked to in the previous sentence.)

I wonder how much this is common

I hear that's quite common among teenagers, at least according to the stereotype. (ISTR an EY post mentioning that, but I can't find it off hand.) I'm no longer a teenager myself, though.