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qmotus comments on Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Elo 21 February 2016 09:14PM

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Comment author: entirelyuseless 25 February 2016 04:13:52PM *  1 point [-]

You may be getting at the truth here, but there is a simpler way to think about it.

Quotation from Epicurus:

“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?"

Whether you pick your point of view, or a divine point of view, if you pick any moment in your life, random or not, you are not dead yet. So basically you have a kind of personal plot armor: your life is finite in duration but is an open set of moments, in each of which you are alive, and which does not have an end point. Of course the set has a limit, but the limit is not part of the set. So subjectively, you will always be alive, but you will also always be within that finite period.

Comment author: qmotus 26 February 2016 08:53:24AM 0 points [-]

your life is finite in duration

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. How do we know this?

Comment author: entirelyuseless 26 February 2016 03:16:57PM 0 points [-]

Either it is finite in duration, or mostly finite in duration, as Viliam said. These come approximately to the same thing, even if they are not exactly the same.