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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Cute, but I think there is a substantial difference between not born and dead.

I don't know why you think that. I think the safest assumption is that being dead will be exactly like not being born.

one state is indefinite and the other is not.

It's like saying that the future is exactly like the past. (Which is true when applied to the question of non-existence, because what did not exist will cease to exist or continue to be non-existent.)

But that is only true of things which do not come into existence, no? I can safely say I did not exist a thousand years ago, nor will I exist in a thousand years. Further, I can say that from my point of death on, I am non-existent. Similarly, before my birth, I was non-existent.

However, my state of non-existence ended at my birth. Just as my state of existence will end at my death.

In this regard, the future is not exactly like the past. In the past, there was never a time in which I came into existence. In the future, there was a time where I came into existence. Neither of those statements transfer between past and future.

> In the future, there was a time

This is "memory", or "trace". Their existence take away from your non-existence, making it incomplete (imperfect), which indeed makes one's future different from one's past.

>I can safely say I did not exist a thousand years ago...

I'm not sure of that, yet. We haven't managed to pin down what "I" is or even what "existence" is. I'm thinking in the "we virtualized a copy of your brain" sense - just what is consciousness?

> what "existence" is

Indeed, the very existence (and non-existence) could be relative - just like time and space. For example, in one frame of reference there may exist a magnetic field while in the other there may be none.

Being dead, like not being born, are both not being at all.

> I think the safest assumption is that being dead will be exactly like not being born.

From a purely entropic and information theoretic standpoint, these are very different states and certainly not a safe assumption.

In this Philosophia Non Existentiae you also have to make a distinction between "not born (yet)" and "not born (ever)".

Isn't that implicit, though? By virtue of being able to state that at some point you were not born, you were necessarily at some point born.

Non-existence is complicated. In an obvious (and trivial) sense future itself does not exist, so one cannot tell whether someone in particular (e.g. another Einstein) is not born "yet" or "ever".

On the other hand, one might argue that (for example) wasted sperm and eggs should count as "not born". But even that can be seen as too limiting, because - perhaps, somewhat paradoxically - to be completely objective one should be considering statistical parameters rather than a physical measure.

First, I'll agree that my not existing after death would be similar to my not existing before death. In that, it helps make this a cute saying.

However, that still says nothing of the difference between dying and not being born. Just because things have a large similarity does not mean they are equal, after all.

Your odd argument that "wasted" sperm and such should somehow count towards "born/not born" just seems a non-sequitor. That is quite literally unrelated. The sperm/egg are merely mechanisms and say nothing of the person unless we plan on presupposing a conscious person exists before they exist.

Well, clearly, non-existence after death is different from both types of non-existence mentioned above. (Incidentally, there are many more types of non-existence than just these.)

Isn't that inline with what I was saying?

> Non-existence is complicated.

Doesn't look like anything to me.

It does exist, though.

Re sperm and eggs, this is my go-to argument against anti-womans-choicers: functionally there is no difference between plan A (condoms and birth control), plan B (the morning after pill), and plan C (abortion) - all three result in a baby not being born. If one is going to argue that it's a crime that a fertilized egg is terminated, one must also lament the loss of billions of lives to periods.

Unfortunately this argument doesn't hold water when someone tries to say that their god intervenes and decides to overcome man-made barriers to fertilization, because that particular special snowflake baby needs to be born. Unsure why the soul assigned to that fertilized egg doesn't just find another but that just goes to show how messy the whole damn debate is.

Incidentally, this is also my argument against me having babies - knowing that regardless of the number of babies I have, I will feel unconditional love and gratitude at each and every one's existence, and because I can't possibly compare my comfort or economic well being against the value of a human life, the only logical conclusion I can come to is I should have as many babies as I physically can. Or, I should have none.

> I should have as many babies as I physically can

Consider quantity vs. quality, though. Quoting Lenin, "We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all." 'None' would be the best choice here: you could, instead, adopt a child and by doing so save a life and contribute to keeping the human population within reasonable bounds at the same time!

> Unsure why the soul assigned to that fertilized egg doesn't just find another

That's the thing with free will - if it's free, then it can choose things that will prevent (for example) the woman who will discover a general cure for cancer from being born. Just as a random guy with a knife can prevent that same woman from publishing the cure she figured out last night when he stabs her to death in an alley in Queens. "Free will without consequences" is as nonsensical as "rights without duties".

What is that difference exactly?

Do you need it exactly, to know that it exists? What is the difference between two stars in the sky? Must you know the physical differences exactly to say they are different?

What is the "substantial difference"?

Again, why would I have to be explicit/exact on it? Two stars in the sky have an obvious substantial difference between their existences. Even if I couldn't readily express what those differences are.

I mean, I get that these are fun discussions to have. Likely even meaningful. But the odd friction this is adding to enter the conversation seems overblown.

>Again, why would I have to be explicit/exact on it

Did I ask you to be "explicit/exact"? I'm just curious for you to describe, at all, the supposed "substantial difference" that you apparently know of between being "not yet born" and being "dead".

>Two stars in the sky have an obvious substantial difference between their existences.

In what way are two stars analogous at all to being not yet born and being dead?

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