
The big sleep - mathgenius
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/interactive/2016/the-big-sleep/
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japhyr
I just turned 43. At times I can't hold in my head the notion that I could die
today, or I could live another 60 years. The only answer is to live fully each
day.

My heroes are people like these. Live a full and active life, and accept death
as part of life. I hope we sort out end of life legalities so more people can
be as involved in their own deaths as they are in the other major decisions in
their lives.

~~~
sdegutis
I'm pretty sure, as a millennial, I'm supposed to agree wholeheartedly with
this sentiment. But this "individuals should be able to do whatever they want"
mentality is harmful to society as a whole. Society is made up of individuals.
The actions of individuals do in fact affect the rest of society, even when
it's not immediately apparent how they do. We don't live in a vacuum.

~~~
japhyr
People making intentional, reasoned end of life decisions is beneficial to
society. Viewing death as something to put off as long as technologically
possible is not a universally good thing.

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slagfart
I am young, and very scared of this 'death' thing. It is so humbling to read
of those who have transcended that fear.

~~~
api
When I had children I experienced a significant drop in fear of death. Now if,
say, someone were pointing a gun at me, my greatest emotion would be fear for
how it would hurt them.

Fear of death is just a piece of hard coded programming to make sure we
successfully reproduce and raise healthy offspring. It's not an intrinsic part
of being sentient or conscious. It's possible that intelligences that
reproduced in some other way would lack it entirely, e.g. AIs that explicitly
create their offspring or hive like aliens. For ants only the queen might fear
death, and we indeed see ants behaving this way.

I think this explains why radical life extension tech is underfunded. Even
being a billionaire doesn't change this. Bill Gates has kids.

~~~
Aleman360
I don't have kids, but I find it curious when parents have that mentality. If
you're kids feel the same about their kids, and so on, then we're not much
different than apples, existing only to spread our seed.

~~~
prawn
Save for the very few who do something significant to advance the species, how
are we that different to apples?

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danr4
Wonderful. I can definitely relate to being more afraid of being an
incompetent old man than actually dying.

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archibaldJ
This is so beautiful. I wish I have the opportunity and courage to make the
same rational decision when the appropriate time has come.

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me_again
I found this book to be a very interesting and affecting discussion of the end
of life. Unfortunately it gives fairly cursory attention to the topic of
suicide, assisted or otherwise. Otherwise highly recommended.
[http://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/](http://atulgawande.com/book/being-
mortal/)

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wtbob
Their downfall was pride: they were so proud of their intelligence and
competence that senility and incompetence seemed to them worse than death (I
wonder if they would have supported killing the young mentally deficient as
well, but that's a different subject).

But I've had relatives who were senile and incompetent, and it's not actually
bad, when one is surrounded by family and friends. We were all born dumb and
helpless, and many of us die that way. A senile, frail old man is no more
worthless than is an infant. Sure, he won't ever grow out of his state (as an
infant will), but he once was otherwise and has hopefully earned some love and
respect.

There are worse things than helplessness. I think hubris is one of them.

~~~
JshWright
Your comment clearly assumes they have lost something by taking the action
they did. Can you articulate what it is you think they lost?

~~~
delluminatus
They lost nothing more or less than some years (or months?) of their lives.

~~~
amelius
But, getting perhaps a bit philosophical, if you don't experience a loss, did
you really "lose" something?

