So what’s up with “death gives meaning to life”? It seems like a significant obstacle in some of my conversations about cryonics, to getting people to “actually evaluate” (according to me) the likely costs and benefits based on reasoning about the world (rather than e.g. just doing what others do).
Hypothesis: it’s a way of coping with fear of death (of one’s self, and of loved ones), by convincing one’s self (unepistemically) that it wouldn’t actually be good to avoid death. Hypothesis: it’s a distraction from what is, roughly speaking, suicidality stemming from a sense that life is hopeless / intractable / only suffering. Hypothesis: it’s an excuse to not be continually burdened by elders. Hypothesis: it’s a way of saving face; it’s “just something people say in this situation” to make it widely acknowledged that they didn’t act improperly. Hypothesis: it’s a literal belief. If you take someone’s food away, they’ll appreciate more when they have food; likewise with life. Fear of death pushes you to greater heights. (There’s two different things here, really. There’s fear of death; the constant threat of death, which you are forced to continually contend with. And then there’s actual finiteness—everyone dies before age 100.) Hypothesis: it’s a psyop to get people to not criticize Yahweh for allowing pointless death. Hypothesis: it’s a garbled form of a judgement that, given that we’re too technologically far away from preventing involuntary death, we should focus on making the world better for the future while we’re naturally healthy, at the expense of long-shots of life extension. Hypothesis: it’s a garbled form of saying that you like knowing the rough arc of people’s lives, because it creates a social legibility + shared concepts + social fabric (e.g. rituals of birth, marriage, death), and the current arc involves death around age 80-100.
I think the reasonable interpretation is something like: “an important motivation to overcome procrastination is to remember that my time is actually limited (so my intended ‘later’ which feels okay, could easily become ‘never’ which fills me which rage).” And the interpolation that a hypothetical immortal or extremely long-lives species would therefore procrastinate so much that they not only would accomplish/experience less per day, but maybe even in total. Like, if you are supposed to live 1000 years, the first 500 years you do not bother doing anything because there is still an insanely large—from the perspective of the human who is imagining this now—amount of time left, but during the last 500 years your habits of wasting time are already too strong to overcome.
In my imagination… if the average length of human life magically changed to 1000 years… in short term, I believe that our days would be mostly shaped by immediate incentives and social pressures, so we would continue living at current levels of productivity… but in long term, there is a risk that much of the gain would be burned in some horrible Molochian trap (such as spending 200 of those years in some future version of school system where you are forced to waste time) rather than because of individual laziness.
Hypothesis: it’s the “what the hell” effect. I’m going to die. So it’s fine for me to do risky (and fun / meaningful) stuff.
Generally, I’m trying to understand not necessarily what “death gives meaning to life” in any sense “really means”, but rather understand what’s going on with people who say that.
So what’s up with “death gives meaning to life”? It seems like a significant obstacle in some of my conversations about cryonics, to getting people to “actually evaluate” (according to me) the likely costs and benefits based on reasoning about the world (rather than e.g. just doing what others do).
Hypothesis: it’s a way of coping with fear of death (of one’s self, and of loved ones), by convincing one’s self (unepistemically) that it wouldn’t actually be good to avoid death.
Hypothesis: it’s a distraction from what is, roughly speaking, suicidality stemming from a sense that life is hopeless / intractable / only suffering.
Hypothesis: it’s an excuse to not be continually burdened by elders.
Hypothesis: it’s a way of saving face; it’s “just something people say in this situation” to make it widely acknowledged that they didn’t act improperly.
Hypothesis: it’s a literal belief. If you take someone’s food away, they’ll appreciate more when they have food; likewise with life. Fear of death pushes you to greater heights. (There’s two different things here, really. There’s fear of death; the constant threat of death, which you are forced to continually contend with. And then there’s actual finiteness—everyone dies before age 100.)
Hypothesis: it’s a psyop to get people to not criticize Yahweh for allowing pointless death.
Hypothesis: it’s a garbled form of a judgement that, given that we’re too technologically far away from preventing involuntary death, we should focus on making the world better for the future while we’re naturally healthy, at the expense of long-shots of life extension.
Hypothesis: it’s a garbled form of saying that you like knowing the rough arc of people’s lives, because it creates a social legibility + shared concepts + social fabric (e.g. rituals of birth, marriage, death), and the current arc involves death around age 80-100.
I think the reasonable interpretation is something like: “an important motivation to overcome procrastination is to remember that my time is actually limited (so my intended ‘later’ which feels okay, could easily become ‘never’ which fills me which rage).” And the interpolation that a hypothetical immortal or extremely long-lives species would therefore procrastinate so much that they not only would accomplish/experience less per day, but maybe even in total. Like, if you are supposed to live 1000 years, the first 500 years you do not bother doing anything because there is still an insanely large—from the perspective of the human who is imagining this now—amount of time left, but during the last 500 years your habits of wasting time are already too strong to overcome.
In my imagination… if the average length of human life magically changed to 1000 years… in short term, I believe that our days would be mostly shaped by immediate incentives and social pressures, so we would continue living at current levels of productivity… but in long term, there is a risk that much of the gain would be burned in some horrible Molochian trap (such as spending 200 of those years in some future version of school system where you are forced to waste time) rather than because of individual laziness.
Hypothesis: it’s the “what the hell” effect. I’m going to die. So it’s fine for me to do risky (and fun / meaningful) stuff.
Generally, I’m trying to understand not necessarily what “death gives meaning to life” in any sense “really means”, but rather understand what’s going on with people who say that.