If you were offered knowledge of exactly when and how you'll die, would you take it? Why or why not?
If you were offered knowledge of exactly when and how you'll die, would you take it? Why or why not?
Causality issues aside, yes I would. Makes a big difference if I found out I had 40+ years left vs 5 years left.
Dude you have like eighteen seconds
Quick, get this man gay sex and drugs
Wouldn't have mattered either way then lol.
Probably, yes. Imagine how superhuman you'd feel skydiving without a parachute outside the day of your death knowing you couldn't die. (plot twist: you spend 10 years in a coma afterwards and still die from doing it :/)
coma would be the universe being nice to you. Imagine a full body paralysis where you're aware of every second passing and the only thing you can do is rot, and maybe hope twitter's head clown puts a dodgy chip in your brain so maybe you could feel the joy of playing solitaire again.
Ok, you're winning at monkey pawing :D lemme see if I can top that...
Yeah. Death doesn't bother me since it's fate. Knowing when would be handy for time management and something I could leverage. It'd be great to party at my own funeral too.
I mean, permanently or temporarily? Apparently my heart has been stopping on and off randomly all year. :(
Get this... I was in the hospital in January. I wake up, check my phone... Nurse comes in.
"Were you asleep about an hour ago?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Your heart stopped for 8 seconds."
". . . Um... 'thank you'? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that information..."
Apparently it happened a few more times in March. I have an implanted heart monitor now, always watching.
Amazing, from your "apparently" I take you were never awake when it happened. I wanted to ask how it feels. I have an arrhythmia that gets my heart either fluttering or skipping a beat but it happens like a couple of times a year. It feels super weird.
I've had a-fib and congestive heart failure, 2 heart attacks, and open heart surgery.
Each of the times my heart has stopped, I was asleep, no awareness of it until the doctors and nurses told me.
With the heart monitor, I can press a button when something feels "off", and report symptoms like being dizzy or passing out. Doc says I've been getting extra heartbeats sometimes. Low blood pressure has been a problem too.
When I pass out from low blood pressure, the first thing is I get super dizzy. Then a ringing in my ears so loud I can't hear anything. Then my vision closes in and turns red and I wake up on the floor.
Yes, so I can probably plan for it.
Is it absolutely certain and nothing I can do to change it?
If so fuck yes I'm pretty much immortal tell that date.
oh just because you know when you'll die doesn't mean you can go yolo on everything. Getting into a horrific accident and becoming bed ridden for the rest of your life doesn't count as dying. Imagine laying in bed, body paralysed, knowing that this is the place you'll spend 30 years in.
You'd still be need to be as careful as usual, just with a painful awareness of how many seconds you have left until the end, and with a curse of not being able to go on your own terms if something terrible happens.
YOLOO!!!.... WAIT, fuck your right. I reject my claim and now will live in a box scared of existing.
You could do fun stuff where if you die, you REALLY die, like testing new submarines.
Plot twist. Going YOLO for this reason is exactly what starts the chain of events leading to your expiration.
Is that a knife you're holding behind you?
Jokes aside this is a philosophical question, would knowing the answer let you change it? Would it be different if you didn't know the answer? How do you know that knowing the answer isn't part of the chain of events that leads to your death in such a situation?
What if the person offering was just scamming you and you lived thinking you'd die in 6 months but then it turns out it doesn't happen?
I think just the fact that the answer could be something like: "2 more years, suicide" is a no-go for me. I'm not a suicidal person so hearing something like this would absolutely fucking terrify me. I think the more time I'd have left the more freaked out I'd get, constantly wonder when will it start? When will the hell that pushes me to take my own life begin?
I mean, on the bright side, only two more years until I can kill myself!
Yes. Be able to choose the right life insurance plan, investments, etc for my beneficiaries.
Also for deciding when to retire or how much money you can/should spend to maximally enjoy your life.
If the prediction cannot be altered I might. Because that way I basically have plot armor until I die.
If that information just reflects the current path I'm on but changes based on my actions I don't want to hear it.
The latter is an obvious smart deal to take. Just make sure to check yourself for cancer, not walking on a red light etc. according to the thing that kills you. Otherwise do the same. Odds are you would gain more time with your loved ones.
I'm still assuming death is inevitable at some point.
If I get "death by plane crash" for example, I don't necessarily have to fly for this to happen.
Yes. I think it would add more value to the time I have now and would help me best prepare for my passing.
I think it would make me procrastinate worse, then become apathetic at the end because "I only have X time left .."
Can I change it?
I got a scan that detected cancer which I was later able to get removed. That cancer would have probably killed me in five years.
If I get told that I'll die of cancer in twenty years, I'm going to deal with it in ten years.
I don't know, if such a thing existed it would imply that free will doesn't exist, if you knew you would die in 10 hours of dehydration, what happens if you drank a bunch of water regularly?
In that scenario you can't die of dehydration but you're going to die of dehydration forcibly. So what's going to happen?
I can't process if I would do it or not because I don't know what it would imply!
You can dehydrate yourself by drinking too much water. You flush the salts out of your system and get water poisoning and die of dehydration anyway.
In that scenario you can't die of dehydration but you're going to die of dehydration forcibly. So what's going to happen?
Youre going to die of dehydration, because you we're simply unaware that drinking too much flushes the sodium out of your body which is what makes you able to retain enough water to function.
Ironically people in hot environments and drinking a ton of water can end up severely dehydrated (mainly if they don't eat anything, as food has a sodium and other electrolytes).
Now if you drank mineral water (or sports drinks but they're rather sugary nowadays) or just added a tiny bit of salt to the water you drink, then it would break the prophecy.
Similarly ironic is that a lot of people who aren't used to cold environments and get lost in the woods or something usually end up suffering heat stroke, as they've only a massively thick puffy jacket and walking still generates heat, which the jacket traps and your body can't cool down and overheats. (Layers and breathing materials underneath the top layers is good, as then you can open or remove a layer as needed to regulate your body temp.)
For the sake of the topic of the thread, I'd like to know what happens if I'm told I die in 50 years from a heart attack while running a marathon, and after hearing that I jump out of a window, try to blow my brains out or shove a block of C4 up my bowels and blow myself up? I should survive, yes? And in condition to (attempt to) run a marathon?
Because if it's not locked like that and can be changed then it's more of a guess than accurate foreknowledge.
I would 100% exploit this (insurance for family).
I would. I could better plan out my life if I knew when and why it would end. If it comes back and says oh you dying 3 years from a brain aneurysm, I can't be stopped... Then why would I be trying to plan out for retirement? I can take everything I have and live happy for 3 years. Without knowing I feel like my last thoughts would be 'fuck, I wasted my life'
I'm already dying of lymphoma but I'd like to know exactly when. The constant up and down of good days and bad days takes an emotional toll. If I knew I could relax completely and actually plan to do things.
Sure. It would make planning for retirement a lot easier; I'd have a pretty good idea of how much I needed to save and invest.
If I know the way that I die, through anything else I will survive.
Yes. Then I'd hire a quantum physicist to study my timeline while I try to create a paradox and kill myself. I'm sure someone could learn some shit about how time works.
No, I don't want to see my expiration date every single time I close my eyes. That would just ruin whatever time I have left because that's all I would ever think about.
I think you'd get over that. I don't think it'd be any worse than normally contemplation of mortality, eventually. There'd be the initial shock, and then again as it nears, but I think it's worth it to know.
You and I clearly work differently
A lot of people definitely would take it. This might be the time to confess their love to a lifelong crush, punch their bully in the face, save up and complete their bucket lists, etc.
Death focuses us on what's actually important and meaningful for each of us.
Why not?
Knowing when means I can do whatever I want until the day it happens.
That's be nice. I could make arrangements early and adjust my life insurance to maximize payout with minimum payments. It'd also be good to know the how so I can be sure not to be home when it happens - or at least wear a diaper so I don't poop all over the sofa.
Yes.
Decide if I want to end it sooner if it’s going to drag on much longer.
Ah, but if you decided to end it sooner after you'd seen that it would be a long ways off, then you'd fail in such a way that made you either unable or unwilling to try again.
Wouldn't you know that, then?
But wouldn't ending it sooner than what you learned BE the details of your death? So you're not dying earlier than your original death date, because that IS your death date.
Uh yeah... So I can fuck some shit up and max my credit cards out
Yeah, I'd go for it. I already know that it's inevitable. Being able to not fuck over my loved ones by having certain things in order would make things easier for them.
Absolutely. Brushes with and actually facing death force people to see their life more purely, more actively and honestly. Why turn down that chance to live your life exactly as you’ve always known you wanted to because you can’t see it any other way? We all know this concept in our minds, but few, if any of us, actually live this way. When that time comes, a lot of us will have regrets for not living life more fully.
Sure it would help me adjust the plan
Of course I would, then I would hate myself for it. But I know I'd hate myself even more if I had the chance to know and not take it
If I knew the reason, chances are it would show "tried to cheat death" with a very close death time. I'd better off not knowing it; because I would definetly try to cheat against it. My lack of knowledge about it will let me live longer.
Definitely. If I'm gonna die in the near future it'd make no sense to continue university.
No. I live to help people and continue making connections. I wouldn’t want to change that.
It's truly a great thing if Death is unable to change your priorities. You got your shit figured out and must pat yourself on your back.
I learned some lessons from elders a long time ago that the one thing they wished they had done differently is spend more time with family and friends. Helping someone is an extension of that and truly makes me happy. Nothing else gives as much meaning.
Knowing the future and changing it are two different things
For sure. Though you can never really know. I look at death statics for my age and area every once in a while to adjust my risk taking or too see what health concerns I should be prepping for.
Knowledge is half the battle and all
I wouldn't want to know that. Imagine even if you get to know only a part of that knowledge, for instance, you get to know that you will die on a Tuesday or within a specific month. With that information in mind you would dread every upcoming Tuesday (or a specific month) and in the end it all may lead up to a self fulfilling prophecy.
No. It's all I would think about
Absolutely. Making sure I have a huge life insurance policy, but getting it far ahead enough to avoid questions of fraud would be worth it.
No, I like surprises
I'd take a 1 year heads up warning
I don’t know bruh, I’m depressed enough already.
Yes so I can prepare.
Let's do this.
Leeeerooooooyyyyyyy. nnnn'Jennnnnnkinsssssssss
Yeah. I come from a family of hoarders, and I'm a little cluttery myself. I always worry that I'll die unexpectedly and they'll be unable to part with god knows what random shit they find in my apartment. If I knew when I was gonna die, I'd schedule someone to come help me trash my belongings the day before. I'd set aside the actually nice stuff for them, but no one needs to convince themselves that a broken USB drive I used to keep porn on or a torn up canvas is super sentimental and they need to hold onto it forever.
Yes. Though I wouldn’t want to know the exact day if I could help that. Knowing the year or month would be enough to plan. To have a will. To say the things I want to say to those I care about. To make peace with the end. To do what I can of a bucket list and to feel a bit more secure up to that point not worrying about death.
No, because as soon as I accept that knowledge, the wave function collapses and my future becomes deterministic.
I'd like to be able to hear it then if I wanted to choose to forget
Probably not. Knowing this would be hard not to be consumed with a countdown.
And besides, it seems like living in a timeline where this kind of knowledge is even possible has so many other implications. Does the knowledge come with the scenario that everything you may try to do to stop it only puts you closer to the outcome?
No. None of the other 100+ billion people had that knowledge, I don't want to be the only one.
If it's possible for you then it was likely possible for a lot of them too