Ask HN: Would you want to know when and how you die?

5 pointsposted 11 hours ago
by JohnDSDev

Item id: 48564191

19 Comments

drakonka

21 minutes ago

Mm if I had to actually see myself dying, probably not. If I could just get a letter with the information, as with a short story I read once, probably yes. Assuming the expiration can't actually be changed. If it's not set in stone, that would probably be too stressful to live with.

andyjohnson0

an hour ago

Knowing when you die != seeing your future self die

There might be some value to some people in knowing how much lifespan they have left. But actually seeing your future self die seems like it would be horribly traumatic, as your present self would carry on living afterwards with that knowledge. And anyway, each of us will experience our own death eventually.

chistev

4 hours ago

I don't see how this would work. If I see that I would die at the age of, say, 75, does that mean living recklessly before then means I won't die? That it's my fate to die exactly at 75? That I can stop taking care of myself?

Being aware of that date would change behavior whether you want to or not, and would those actions of mine not have consequences?

Gooblebrai

3 hours ago

These are the philosophical takes I love as answers to these hypothetical scenarios

abhijat

5 hours ago

Absolutely not, it would ruin life as it is. Maybe it would drive some decisions, but probably badly and panic driven.

kylecazar

11 hours ago

Definitely not. I've learned to live comfortably with the fact that I'll die one day (and really understand/internalize it). Knowing exactly when could potentially disturb the peace that I've found.

bxk76

10 hours ago

Death is only interesting if confronting it causes prime directive shift: how to survive?(which people recite subconciously on loop) changes to, why to survive?

tim-tday

11 hours ago

You can use actuarial math and get pretty damned close. Like within five years with 80% confidence. Not as much romance in that as there is in a Time Machine.

gmreads

4 hours ago

I am very curious how one might do that? What would be the input parameters ? (Zero knowledge about actuarial math)

KomoD

11 hours ago

No, not really. It sounds stressful.

soulbadguy

11 hours ago

Is the information actionable ?

dlcarrier

8 hours ago

Even if you couldn't prevent your death, knowing when it happens makes timing and planning a lot of other things much easier.

JohnDSDev

10 hours ago

No, in this scenario no matter what the death would happen exactly as you see.

mikewarot

10 hours ago

I'd be shown myself being murdered by the operator of the time machine, after asking far too many questions about its theory of operation.

Nope

dlcarrier

8 hours ago

My book club read The Measure, by Nikki Erlick, where one day all adults received a string in a box, with the length of the string perfectly correlating with their total lifespan, and children received them too, as they grew into adults. The box and string were indestructible.

Several members of the book club were going through a memento mori existential crisis, and all I cared about was that no one had done anything interesting with the indestructible materials. Imagine what humanity could accomplish with billions of indestructible boxes and strings.

JohnDSDev

10 hours ago

Ah, lol. Before you edited it I thought you meant you were going to see yourself commit suicide. (I assumed you were the one operating the time machine)

moomoo11

6 hours ago

there are infinite possibilities.

might as well see this one play out because it’s unique