= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
tanagrabeast comments on Why people want to die - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (174)
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.