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Provokateur t1_iz0pmkp wrote

Reply to comment by ting_bu_dong in How Death Can Help Us Live: a philosophical approach to the problem of death by simsquatched

Are you saying death should be eliminated?

That'd be nice, but there's no currently conceivable way that will ever happen. What you're suggesting is that people might live longer. But the difference between dying at 80 vs. dying at 200 is the same as the difference between dying at 40 vs. dying at 80. Death is still inevitable, and still needs to be coped with.

I feel like you either have a massive blindspot or you're just trying verbal gymnastics to trick yourself into an argument you know is wrong.

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ting_bu_dong t1_iz0tq8r wrote

> Death is still inevitable, and still needs to be coped with.

Coped with? Sure, maybe. Accepted? No.

But: If there's a problem with with your car, for example, you can probably cope with it. But that's not the same as trying to fix it.

And saying that "well, eventually, all cars stop working" isn't an excuse to not fix it.

Coping with the machine being broken would be precisely the wrong thing to do.

The point is to always keep in mind that death is a problem.

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[deleted] t1_iz1zo8o wrote

Is dying at 40 the same as dying at 80 though? We rightly view young death i.e. less continuous existence for the person in question as a "wrong" as it takes away the potential for experience.

Then consider death at 20000 years. Is that conceptually the same as dying at 20? Or would we find that over such lengths of time human experience becomes fundamentally different with people, for example, reaching terminal ennui and seeking out death as either an end or an adventure?

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