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DanielLC comments on Open Thread, Jun. 1 - Jun. 7, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't consider death bad in of itself, but only a problem due to opportunity cost. If you create a new person, that's just as good as extending the life of an old one. I've noticed my instinct on that start to shift due to being on LessWrong, and I'm kind of creeped out by that. I don't want to make it happen more.
That's only following if you follow some intuitive utilitarian ideas to their unintuititve conclusions. I'm curious as to how you arrived at this view as "the truth," and not just "an obvious failure mode of utilitarianism."?
I think it has something to do with intuiting eternalism. If you think that when you're dead you're just gone and nothing matters, then death makes life meaningless. If you think that when you die you still exist in the past, then the only advantage of not dying is that it makes the time you exist longer.
Also, I reject personal identity. Someone who remembers being me isn't fundamentally different from someone who does not. I don't know if that's at quite an intuitive enough level to explain this though.