How do you deal with your fear of death?

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I loathe and despise death. It saddens and infuriates me to the point of tears that every living thing has no choice but to cease existing. I don't blame anything or anyone: there is no God and the universe is just what it must be, without malice or compassion. Yet I have almost a personified hatred of the concept of death itself. Oddly, the very power of the emotional reaction is a comfort to me, a reminder that I'm alive and I feel and that is what matters. To be moved to tears by the concept of loss but to still accept it, to stare at nonexistence and decide in my core to be uncowed is my one triumph over death, and that pride helps me keep going untroubled.

Still, the thought of never seeing my wife again is horrifying. I often have semi-lucid nightmares about dying and never seeing her again, and I try to wake, only to end up in a sleep paralysis episode. Fortunately as I try to call out to her from my sleep, she is close enough to hear the muffled moans and disturb me enough to break the episode and I am profoundly grateful to her for being there when I wake. She used to have sex with me to direct my attention away from death during my depressive episodes, to focus me on just being with her now.

As for radical life extension or mind uploading techniques, I have some hope, though I tend to doubt that they will be reliable and readily available for my generation (I'm 27 now). I do have higher hopes that they will be available to my children, though. I'm comforted that perhaps they might be able to outlive the foolish adolescence of our species and see what a world real grownups will build.

[Simplicius]

Procrastination and acceptance. On the one hand I have made sudden, unexpected death as unlikely as my own efforts permit by preserving my good health and avoiding excessively risky behavior, while on the other hand I am not even halfway to the finality imposed by old age. Of course I will die, but it's a ways off and/or totally out of my hands so I'm not going to give it much attention - at the moment, I'm too busy living.

As for life extension or brain uploading or any other such treatments, well, color me pessimistic but even if they do become available I don't expect I'd have access to them, nor my immediate descendants. As to whether I'd use them if possible, I certainly would - unless it merely prolonged my steady decline. If I wouldn't be functionally alive, then why bother? I am also well acquainted with the immortality-of-sorts that comes at the intersection of artifacts and inquisitive minds, and it amuses me to work toward creating some small remainders of my life and times for future curious types to examine.

[Coyote]

As for the life-extension or brain-upload thing, it depends-- does it mean an eternity as a brain in a jar type thing? Like Futurama? In that case, no, I don't think that'd be much fun. No pooty, not even writing or drawing, no hiking my favorite canyons or cave exploring or riding my motorcycle or playing with my dog? That's the stuff that makes life worthwhile.

OTOH, if I can regrow a clone body of myself when I was at my physical best (around the time of my 31st birthday or so) that'd be awesome. Or a artifical body that is in good shape and able to enjoy life. Even a General Grevious style cyborg body might be kickass. But let's face it, the possibilities of that being available to the general public is about nil.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I've no fear of death itself. After all, once I'm dead, I will no longer be. My only fear is of going too soon, but since I can't accurately predict when that truck/blood clot/bullet/pathogen with my name on it will get me, I'm not especially concerned about that either. Even in situations where I've found myself in potentially life-threatening situations, I just shrug, go "Well, that was dumb . . . this would be a really stupid way to die," and then keep right on trucking.

Even if I were the sort to endlessly linger on it, I hold no belief that there shall be a magic bullet that will enable me to live for centuries. Brain uploading? Won't be available in my lifetime. Magic organ replacement, cyberization, or miracle de-aging drugs? Probably won't be covered by my HMO, and unless something truly remarkable happens, I won't be able to afford it on my own. Also, the notion that the above will be available in my lifetime is also suspect. Waiting out death through cryonics? Recoverability is questionable. Nor can I trust the motives of whomever is around when my resurrection becomes possible. Having been born way too soon is annoying, but it doesn't bother me otherwise.

[madd0ct0r]

Blithely assuming it'll happen to someone else. Well, I've a 100% track record of not dying so far...


It's not something I worry about or fear, just something that happens. like gravity.
Since I'm a climber the chances are the two may be conbined someday. so be it.

[Forum Troll]

Up to a point, almost the #1 thing determining how long you live is you. Don't smoke. Don't get obese. Don't drive when sleep-deprived. Monitoring weight and blood pressure, exercising, and other conventional preventive health measures make me probable to live to 2070 even before considering medical advancements.

Even with cancers, often the main thing is whether you detect them early, like a 1 millimeter tumor may give a vastly better survival likelihood than a 3 centimeter tumor that is 30000 times the volume. Beyond the methods of today from self-examination to periodic doctor visits, the future brings more. Example: After it was found that trained dogs can detect cancers early, smelling parts-per-trillion of a difference in compounds, a handheld laser breath-analyzer is already in development.

Even conventional progress against aging-related diseases affecting the brain will be a big deal by 2070. Example: An utter breakthrough potentially mostly eliminating Alzheimer decline, a new super-drug.

While every organ aside from the brain is starting to be able to be replaced already, by 2070, anything from an artificial heart to a kidney replacement ought to be a lot more refined and improved. If everything aside from my brain is replaceable, while I cyborgize myself as much as appropriate and possible by then, that does leave mainly the brain itself as the greatest challenge.

Cold sleep or induced, controlled hypnometabolism prolonging life by decades could also buy time. Neurogenesis treatments might counter the shriveling of the brain from aging, and I'd like to become smarter from an expanded brain even if it meant wearing a permanent helmet.

Like fantasy often depicts sacrifices from delving into dark magic, I find it unfortunate but fitting that there might be multiple prices to be paid for living longer, aiming to have the personal wealth to take measures even beyond whatever more standard life extension drugs or techniques were available to the public by then, as well as contributing financially to helpful R&D.

(In time, advanced cyborgization and nanorobotics gradually upgrading the brain itself might occur, especially if there was a takeoff of recursively self-improving AGI to hasten R&D: "robots" which could think, live, and work on a small-scale like miniature fairies, many times faster than humans, for centuries if not millennia of progress in instead mere years).

So I got a decent chance by then of reaching not just 2070 but the early 22nd century, in which case that level of future technology may in turn give the chance to live still longer, ad infinitum.

Or I could die tomorrow. Nothing's guaranteed. So in the meantime I try to make the most of every year.

[Singular Intellect]

I actually find the prospect of death comforting, actually. Not to be confused with actively desiring death or the process of reaching that state though (especially the more painful scenarios).

It helps me put the rest of my life's problems in perspective, and makes me realize that there are plenty of potential situations that make life far more horrifying than death.

It probably helps that I've had what might be called a near death 'experience', although that is kind of a contradiction. There was no actual 'experience' other than being revived afterwards and later realizing that non existence is the apex of absolute peace, and if that's what awaits me in death, I don't fear it in the slightest.

Edit: I should point out I also entertain the notion that we might be approaching a period of time within my lifetime where people could be gifted (or cursed depending how you look at it) with indefinite or near indefinite lifespans. If we reach this goal in my lifetime, great. If not, I'm not exactly going to worry about it.

[Broomstick]

Err... why would I be afraid of dying? Haven't any family members died around you?

Oddly enough, I can say yes to this. In fact, most recently a close family member died in my presence last Thursday.

Dying of old age means you go relatively peacefully in your sleep.

Um.... not exactly. Frequently there are several days/weeks/years of very unpleasant (even if not overtly painful) bullshit you have to get through. And you're not always asleep when it happens.

Do I fear death? Yes, to some extent. I fear that dying may be painful or distressing. I fear dying before I've lived a full life, or when I could have otherwise have had more good years. I fear loved ones dying. But I don't fear it in the sense of people phobic about it. I sat next to mom and held her hand when she breathed her last and felt her last heart beats. I'm not superstitious about it, but I'm not at all complacent about it, either.

[Rye]

Personally, I just don't give a shit, it's unavoidable, so what point is there being afraid of it? Sure, I get sweaty palms if I dangle over a large drop, and I don't want to smoke myself into a pile of tumours, but the inevitability of death doesn't cause me much concern, it's what happens to people.

There've been times when I've thought that death would be preferable to existence, even in pretty decent material and biological condition, so I fear living shoddily more than I fear death. I'd rather be dead than "locked in," for instance, or neurologically damaged to an infant level. No point in that at all. If that ever happens and I can't even write, I'd rather be dead and some hungry animals be fed my meat.

[Narkis]

There are things I fear far more than death itself. The things that come immediately before it, for example, or my consciousness getting stuck in a "comatose" body. (The "I have no mouth and I must scream" nightmare, only finite.) I'd much prefer death over the latter fate.

Anyway, I'm hoping life expanding technologies will be available in my lifetime. And I'm also hoping I do something memorable enough for my name to be remembered in the years to come, as it's the only form of afterlife I can reasonably expect.

Edit: Damnit, ninjaed by a guy I agree 100% with. Couldn't you have posted a little earlier?

[Stark]

I'm with Rye. It's inevitable and stressing about it isn't going to do any good. The idea of having a panic attack or something just THINKING about dying strikes me as very strange. I'm more concerned about the circumstances of my death; it's unpleasant to think that I would leave my affairs unsettled or cause people distress.

[Junghalli]

I take comfort from the idea that bio-immortality may be invented in my lifetime. Oh, I'm realistic enough to realize it probably won't happen in the next 50 years or so, but I'm pinning my hopes on the hanging-on effect. I.e. I'm hoping that in a couple of decades they'll invent something that'll extend my lifespan a little, and that'll give me time until they figure out how to extend it a little longer etc. until they finally figure out how to prolong it indefinitely. I am realistic enough to realize this may very well not happen, but it's something to hope for.

Other than that, I mostly just try not to think about it too much.

[salm]

salm seems to ignore the problem: knowing that when you ARE dead, you won't know it and thus won't care, seems to me to ignore the problem of fearing a loss of self while you still have a self to lose.

How so? I adressed how to deal with everydays fears and i adressed the problem of having a finite life. I claim that everydays fears are to be ignored because they´re very unlikely and i say that the finite life peoblem can be solved by being dead isn´t as bad as it looks like. How´s that ignoring the problem?

[K. A. Pital]

I don't "deal" with fear of death; I am afraid of death and acknowledge it. That's just something which is irrelevant for daily operations. Until the brain feels immediate danger of destruction, it's pretty relaxed about death.

[Stark]

Frankly it's scary to me that 'wanting to live forever' (ie what I'd describe as childish denial of death) is considered 'normal'. Whenever someone talks about wanting to live forever they sound like a crazy person who can't deal with life.

[Forum Troll]

Frankly it's scary to me that 'wanting to live forever' (ie what I'd describe as childish denial of death) is considered 'normal'. Whenever someone talks about wanting to live forever they sound like a crazy person who can't deal with life.

It takes conscious effort for any adult to be still alive, to never once misplace a foot on stairs and fall to a broken neck, to never fail to turn the steering wheel of a car the right way within seconds. Even you have tried to stay alive thus far.

The only difference between you and somebody trying to live as long as possible is that you may give up fully trying at some particular or arbitrary age or restrict what measures you take.

Nobody here is denying that they could die at any time, even die tomorrow from a variety of potential circumstances, rather just some expressing the will to live as long as possible. I pity those who don't want to always try to live as long as possible, as either their life must suck for them to value it so little or they must be expecting it to suck in the future, for them to be so indifferent to trying for more.

[Coyote]

Frankly it's scary to me that 'wanting to live forever' (ie what I'd describe as childish denial of death) is considered 'normal'. Whenever someone talks about wanting to live forever they sound like a crazy person who can't deal with life.

Depends on the motivation. If it's someone with a white-knuckle fear grip on life sobbing "I don' wanna die!" you're right, but there's also the fascination with what the future holds. On a web board devoted to the potential wonders of futuristic technologies and science, it's not such a stretch to presume that fascination, rather than fear, can be a motivator.

[Lagmonster]

How so? I adressed how to deal with everydays fears and i adressed the problem of having a finite life. I claim that everydays fears are to be ignored because they´re very unlikely and i say that the finite life peoblem can be solved by being dead isn´t as bad as it looks like. How´s that ignoring the problem?

The problem is, how does telling someone that being dead isn't that bad help them if the whole problem is that they don't want to stop existing?

[Lagmonster]

I don't "deal" with fear of death; I am afraid of death and acknowledge it. That's just something which is irrelevant for daily operations. Until the brain feels immediate danger of destruction, it's pretty relaxed about death.

This is a good perspective; up until now I'd been categorizing human responses to mortality as either apathy, ignorance, or fantasy. It might be worth the thought that people don't necessarily need things like an afterlife to get them through the day, merely to get them through days that might kill them or people they love.

[AMT]

I can't stand the thought of nonexistance. I like consciousness, rational thought... the fact that I and the only me out there... and one day it'll be gone, forever. I once got really drunk and thought what it might be like to have non-consciousness... for a second, I think I had a very small inkling of what it felt like, and that small inkling has colored my perceptions of it ever since.

As for ways to cheat it? I don't truly think there are any. A personality copy technology still doesn't transfer my sense of self, so it isn't truly me. It's someone else who thinks it IS me, which, if it is accurate, will realize it truly isn't, and probably go insane from it.

Same thing for cloning and the like... it's not a true transferral. Nor do I ever expect for there to be one. As for immortality medicines? I'm sure life extension will happen, possibly in our lifetime. I know I'll never be on the list for them.

So in other words... I deal with it, day by day. It's something that's going to happen, and something I can't stop. The only time it really gets to me though is late at night when my girlfriend is at work and I'm alone... with my thoughts. It's probably why I constantly try to get outside stimulations. So I don't obsess over it like I do.

[Lagmonster]

Frankly it's scary to me that 'wanting to live forever' (ie what I'd describe as childish denial of death) is considered 'normal'. Whenever someone talks about wanting to live forever they sound like a crazy person who can't deal with life.

Aside from fear and curiosity, people do get attached to themselves and their desire to keep experiencing things and doing things. I've known people who went to their graves at 80 and annoyed that they hadn't seen everything they wanted to see or do everything they wanted to do. Granted, a lot of life ends up wasted and a lot of goals are impossible.

It's easy to see that at least the desire for immortality is fucking huge - basically every religion incorporates some form of life after death, and even pop culture idolizes immortality: see the romanticization of vampires (formerly satanic undead slavering monsters, now attractive people offering great sex and eternal life).

[General Zod]

Aside from fear and curiosity, people do get attached to themselves and their desire to keep experiencing things and doing things. I've known people who went to their graves at 80 and annoyed that they hadn't seen everything they wanted to see or do everything they wanted to do. Granted, a lot of life ends up wasted and a lot of goals are impossible.

It's easy to see that at least the desire for immortality is fucking huge - basically every religion incorporates some form of life after death, and even pop culture idolizes immortality: see the romanticization of vampires (formerly satanic undead slavering monsters, now attractive people offering great sex and eternal life).

On the other hand, it's easy to see how immortality has its massive downsides. What's the point in continuing to live forever once you've done everything possible to achieve that you want to achieve?

[Forum Troll]

I'm sure life extension will happen, possibly in our lifetime. I know I'll never be on the list for them.

Out of your reach?

At least an initial moderate tens-of-percent increase to lifespan may possibly be quite inexpensive. Some examples of current supplements being looked into for moderate effects include melatonin and kinetin. Each of those has become available in recent years for amounts typically like tens of dollars for buying a bottle of 60 pills, for not more than hundreds of dollars a year.

I'm not saying rush out today and order online a bunch of pills of each. Anybody should be cautious about getting medical information from random anonymous dudes on the internet, especially against self-medicating without the supervision of a physician. Exercise due caution. The dosage, the interaction if multiple medicines are taken at once, all has to be ok.

Regardless, the matter is interesting. Examples:

Regarding melatonin:

Experts agree though that the preliminary findings are exciting and promising.

Regarding the question if melatonin can extend lifespan, in tests on both rats and mice, melatonin caused a significant 20 percent increase in their lifespan.

There are, however, no human studies to support this contention, but if a similar effect is present in humans, this could translate into an additional 10 to 14 years of additional lifespan.

Regarding kinetin:

We have reported strong anti-aging effects of kinetin on human skin cells and fruit flies. We have shown that 40 to 80 micromolar (approximately 10- to -20 ppm) kinetin delays the onset of several cellular and biochemical characteristics associated with cellular aging in long-term cultures of human skin fibroblasts. Dermal fibroblasts continuously grown in culture medium supplemented with kinetin did not undergo severe morphological changes such as cell enlargement, vacuolization and irregular flattened appearance. Kinetin-treated cells did not accumulate debris associated with age-pigment lipofuscin and other oxidatively modified macromolecules. <snip>

In order to find out the effects of kinetin on the aging and lifespan of organisms, we have performed studies using fruit flies. We have reported that 25- to 50 ppm kinetin added to the food of fruit flies slowed down their development and aging and prolonged their average and maximum lifespan by 65% and 25%, respectively. Furthermore, the increase in the lifespan of kinetin-fed fruit flies was accompanied by a 55% to- 60% increase in the activity of an antioxidant enzyme catalase, which breaks down hydrogen peroxide in the cells.

Every decade counts, both directly and since approaching the 22nd century closer gives a better chance of more.

This is a very complicated matter. Often relevant animal studies are less than a decade old, and nobody has yet completed studies on how similar is the effect on humans, especially since humans live so much longer than rats that it is time-consuming to do a multi-decade study to fully tell.

As one illustration of how tricky it can be, at least in tests on lab rats, the right dosage of melatonin intake for middle-aged or moderately old rats increased average lifespan by 20%, but melatonin applied too early (in the young when natural levels were higher) had the opposite effect, an overdosage reducing average lifespan by 6%.

Another fairly near-future possibility may be suspended animation. After a lot of work on trying to develop a cryoprotectant against ice crystal formation that isn't too toxic itself, in recent years for the first time, a rabbit kidney was successfully preserved indefinitely at liquid nitrogen temperatures and then restored, still alive and fine afterward (by a startup company called 21st Century Medicine).

Such has not yet been managed with a brain, but the possibility is very high, to in future decades make real the Futurama scenario of waking up alive in the distant future. In that case, it would probably cost tens of thousands of dollars if it eventually got done on a large-scale, affordable to many people if they save some money over their lifetime, cheaper than the amount many blow on a big house.

As for ways to cheat it? I don't truly think there are any. A personality copy technology still doesn't transfer my sense of self, so it isn't truly me. It's someone else who thinks it IS me, which, if it is accurate, will realize it truly isn't, and probably go insane from it.

Workable stimulated neurogenesis, adding new neurons, or gradual artificial replacement of neurons would avoid all those issues, though obviously such isn't available now.

It's something that's going to happen, and something I can't stop.

Everybody has to come to turns with death, but at least can try to maximize both how much one gets accomplished per year and how many years that includes.

[salm]

How so? I adressed how to deal with everydays fears and i adressed the problem of having a finite life. I claim that everydays fears are to be ignored because they´re very unlikely and i say that the finite life peoblem can be solved by being dead isn´t as bad as it looks like. How´s that ignoring the problem?

The problem is, how does telling someone that being dead isn't that bad help them if the whole problem is that they don't want to stop existing?

How does it not help? Everybody knows that they have to stop existing sooner or later. If people believe that the state of not existing isn´t a bad state (even a state that they´ve allready "experienced" before, pre birth) then it´s obviously going to be easier to accept than for somebody who believes that he´s going to burn in the "Fiery Pits Hell (TM)".
Now that´s not as good as the 73 virgins or sitting on a cloud singing and playing the harp (well on second thought it probably is better than playing the harp) but then i don´t think people should be encouraged to off themselves by promising them luxuries and spare time.

[Junghalli]

On the other hand, it's easy to see how immortality has its massive downsides. What's the point in continuing to live forever once you've done everything possible to achieve that you want to achieve?

Well, if you really felt you had nothing left to do you could always off yourself. I support technological immortality because I see it as enabling greater choice. I have no problem with voluntary death if the person is of sound mind and understands what it means; it's involuntary death that I consider a terrible scourge upon human existance.

Personally, there are so many things to experience just on this one planet that I don't think this would become a problem for me for many, many normal lifespans.