Ask HN: How do you deal with your mortality? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with your mortality?

26 pointsanonymouse7165 comments

This is very long so it continues in comments below:

I am looking for some advice from someone smarter than me because about a month ago I got hit with intense crippling fear of death. It usually hits me in the evenings and started with just my thoughts wandering thinking about the lives of different people in different parts of the world. Eventually, these thoughts came back to me and my mortality. I started picturing the transition into nothingness. The fear of knowing that I am drawing my last breath. The different ways I could die. This started resulting in panic attack like symptoms that persist late into the night until I tire myself out and fall into short uneasy sleep. It got better for a week but is now getting worse again. I had this same crippling fear of death when I was 4-7 years old. After a while my mind focused on other things and at some point I discovered the concept of not worrying about death while alive because you aren’t dead and after you are dead you don’t know it. That was the thing that kept me not worrying for the past 12 years or so but whatever circumstances has led me to where I am today has shattered that as a comforting thought and actually made it into an actively upsetting one. What I am specifically afraid of is not being. I don’t want to not exist, to not experience life. I want to see the galaxy and the universe. I want to know what it’s like to be a professional athlete. An ship captain. A state leader. A chef. I don’t want this to end.

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I'm Christian and have very deep beliefs in life after this. They bring some comfort to me on this topic. However in reading your words I suspect such a belief would not bring much comfort. I think you may have some anxiety issues that could be worth addressing.

Regardless of your personal beliefs there is next to nothing you can do to preserve this life beyond the brief existence you're currently enjoying. That's a hard pill to swallow but it's also a very freeing one. There is very little value in worrying about things totally out of your control.

If you have the means it might pay to talk to a therapist about this. You don't have to be unwell to see one. They can help guide you into developing new tools to deal with the anxiety and perhaps find some peace. At the very least talking to close friends or family might help.

Edit: just read the follow on in the comments. It looks like you have tried these suggestions. Sorry I don't have much else to suggest. Only this, if you worry to much about your end you could miss out on your now. Good luck figuring this out.

Thank you. Yeah HN didn’t let me put everything I wrote in the post so I see a lot of people are seeing only the third that made it into the post and not the main parts.

Definitely anxiety. Definitely need to address that regardless. Unlikely that I’ll go back to religion as to me it rings false. Not trying to invalidate anyone else, just have enough experience with my brain to know that I can spend my life believing in a god just to question it at the very end in a very uncomfortable way. Plus, sinners have more fun when they aren’t anxious messes is what I was told by my local satanists :)

I am also a christian and went through a phase similar to yourself. If not shorter and possibly less intense. A cloud would come over my head for a time and I worried that one day it would stay.

I think my fear of death stemmed from being part of a loving family for the first time in my life. This churned up emotions inside of me that I had never had before. The fear of being separated from people who loved me was new. It took some time and discussion for me to realise that these feelings were entirely normal. It became a matter of what I chose to do with these thoughts and feelings.

As the response above suggests you should speak to an expert. Hopefully they will help you break out of the rut you are getting yourself into. The common sense part of me recommends you focus on today, then tomorrow, then the day after. At 50 I focus on Jesus's teaching of not unnecessarily worrying about tomorrow. My prayer is often, "God give me the wisdom I need for today". This prayer follows years of trying to anticipate the future and being confused by much of the "be awesome" tat we read online.

Sometimes I also panic when I feel that I start to understand my mortality. However, usually a few thoughts come to my mind...

1. The most obvious is that I shouldn't exist and I'm incredibly lucky to be here. It's a good time to be alive in history. I'm a person that can enjoy life, appreciate music and art, freely pursue my passions, and travel and see the world. Yes, I want to live longer or see what's happening in a million years. However, I need to remind myself that I basically won the lottery a trillion times over to be here, and asking for more at that point is just absurd. I should appreciate what I've been given.

2. There are lots of people I admire in the world today. Sometimes I'm watching a YouTube video or I'm talking with someone and I can't help but think it's cool that I live at the same time as this person, and how they can be a part of my life.

3. As for death, I think about the people I know that have died: family members, good friends, personal heroes or notable people in history. They died, so I find some comfort in going where they went. I don't think I'm above them, so if death was their end, it's an acceptable fate for me too.

4. We don't understand the universe. What are the odds a big bang creates a universe with the forces and elements required to enable life that can ask this very question? It shouldn't happen. I feel like we have such a primitive understanding of the universe and beyond, and that we truly don't understand life, and therefore death. I get a bit of comfort there, because the mysteries of the universe mean I can't be certain what death even means. Yes, my life as I know it will end. But, maybe I've already died millions of times before? Maybe there is an afterlife? Maybe this is a simulation? Maybe I'll live this life again? Maybe I'll live an even better version of this life? We don't know, so perhaps I shouldn't be so pessimistic about what it means to die.

Very well put, and I feel you expressed my views on this subject more articulately than I could have.

Suggest you spend around 20 hours watching this course on death at Yale University. For such a complex subject, HN comments is not the right place to seek wisdom.

https://oyc.yale.edu/death/phil-176

I only concern myself over the things I can control.

I follow the scientists that are working on reversing the age of cells. Currently the human trials are only working on specific body parts, but in a few years it may be applied body wide assuming no major issues come up. The most promising work I am following right now is by Dr. David Sinclair and his team at Harvard. [1] There are many teams in numerous countries working on this and similar techniques.

In the mean time, I avoid things that cause premature aging and do what I can to reverse damage from the western diet I had eaten for so many years.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiojLtiIOy8

Thank you. This is super interesting. And hopeful.

For panic attacks there are meds. They help a lot to feel calm. Panic attacks or constant fear doesn't help you in life, they prevent you from living. Ask for meds, they help a lot if you struggle with anxiety disorder.

The perspective you have may change, I've seen a 105 year old talking he was so tired of life. If you are in constant pain, or horrible situation, life suddenly isn't so great.

Life is great when you are young, so enjoy it. The future doesn't exist yet, so don't overthink it.

I'm an atheist and fear the void, but not a lot.

However I believe strongly that everything has a cause and be it randomness or pseudorandom once it started it made sense how it kept going. If I made a wrong decision it was still the only thing that could have happened. ANd probably it was even the best choice at the time.

I don't know how to change as a person, but for me it's like this:

I'm OK with being average in some ways and I don't have to be remembered either. I enjoy life while it lasts, I don't have big plans, I don't collect many keepsakes. I simply optimize for being a decent being and enjoying life (life of course washes you elsewhere sometimes).

If I die tomorrow it will be a bit short, but I had a good run I guess. I try not to waste thoughts on things I can't influence.

In the end nobody wants to die, it's a always a tragedy and even fear might get to me, but as long as I have no reason to believe my end is near I'll be fine.

About the aging body: I'm fine as long as I don't have too much pain and I'm still sharp in the mind. For pain: I guess morphine will do in the worst case, so that's a solved issue. For a deteriorating mind: I hope there will be a cure against alzheimers, but if it's coming I might plan an exit strategy and try to execute it while I still can.

The only thing that does bother me a lot: pissing a way my life with a full time job. But even that: has to be right now, can change, I'm working towards that.

>I want to see the galaxy and the universe. I want to know what it’s like to be a professional athlete. An ship captain. A state leader. A chef. I don’t want this to end.

I know that feeling. It's like getting invited to a banquet with 5000 dishes from all over and getting to pick 2 or 3.

I was always thinking: wow, if I lived a thousand years, I could spend 50 years on this thing I really like, then 50 on that thing I really like. BUT: we get one of those. And any choice means discarding all the rest. HOW DO YOU PICK?

Since our time is so limited, we need to choose wisely. Realizing that, we have avoided the terrible loss we'd feel later. So you've rediscovered what you've been hiding from and faced it - to your advantage.

A while back I realized that, even if I could buy a jet and throw hundred-dollar bills out the window, I could never visit all the amazing places on Earth for long enough to really absorb them. So hey, I might as well start visiting them on Youtube. That's going well.

Everyone on Earth is in the same boat. In fact, each one of them is very much like another you. Suppose you were reborn without any memory of the self you now call you. Would that be you? Hmmm. Anyway, 'you' would have to ... gather new memories. Make or do or experience new things.

Admitting the truth, we can focus on what's important, making things or doing things or experiencing things. Every artist, nurse, baker, fisherwoman needs an audience. I don't mind just appreciating Nature - the best inventor of them all.

Birds, deer, fish, trees, insects, they're born into a much smaller, less mobile feast. They too die. Did they even have a 'you'? Do they have the luxury of choice?

It could be wrong to say, but at times it seems like some people - even people who 'have everything' - die without having truly lived. What does that mean? We have to decide. What does it mean to live a meaningful life? What's right or wrong, who decides? Enjoy? Raise a family? Help others to a better place? Tend to the sick?

However we ask that question and make that decision and carry through ... then for sure, at the end, we'll know we've made, done, experienced what was within our reach. Time for a new you?

This was tough for me to read. I get panic attacks thinking about this regularly. I’ve heard all sorts of answers to this question, “accept what you can’t control” being the prevailing theme.

The issue for me has been that while that advice is easy to hand out and to some degree I agree with it, it doesn’t say anything about how to reach that point of acceptance.

I’ve tried a lot of things to alleviate these panic attacks, and that’s as successful as I’ve been so far.

The answer: meditation and medication.

I visited a psychiatrist this year after a particularly difficult time and got diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The doctor put me on a program where I started with natural alternatives, I was hesitant to try medication. But eventually, once it was clear that the natural remedies were not working, I put my reservations aside and tried the medication the doctor prescribed. And lo and behold, it’s actually helped. I don’t get the panic attacks as often and when I do they are not as bad.

There is only so much that medication will do for you however. My psychiatrist recommended I a read a book called “10 percent happier”, and this has helped become more aware about what goes on in my mind and what my body is trying to tell me.

P.S. - this has worked for me YMMV.

Stand in front of the ocean alone at night. Look at the horizon. Look at the starry sky. And soak in the realization that you will never know or experience everything. This world is way too big for our human brains. The vastness of the sea itself is already unimaginable. And once you look to the stars, you realize that you will never experience every cubic meter of the universe with the same intensity as the grains of sand beneath your feet.

This is probably the most gut-wrenching realization I ever had. I've gnawed on this for many a night. But it also leads to the fundamental question: What do you want to experience?

It's the choices we make and the options we decide against that define us. You have to choose. And the great part is: You can! It is entirely up to you to turn the brief and glorious period of "I'm alive" between two inconceivably long spans of "I'm not alive" into the best it can be. But that involves making choices against things.

You describe perfectly the experience I had at one point many years ago. I don’t want to experience every cubic meter of the universe. And I lived my life for at least the past decade with the idea that I will chart my own path of what I want to experience and largely succeeded so far.

But what I am after is fundamentally different than experiencing the whole universe as individual pieces. It’s more that I don’t want to be limited. I don’t want to go away because that takes away my choice. If I die at 90, I don’t get to see my great grandkids get married at 120. If I die at 120 I don’t get to fall in love at 150. That’s my problem. I don’t want to become the universe. I want to remain human or as close to it as possible and for death to not be an eventuality forced upon me.

My dog is sentient. But she does not contemplate her end. I am cursed with it and it feels like the only way to beat it is to not die.

> It’s more that I don’t want to be limited.

To me these are two sides of the same coin. If two of your distant grandchildren each get married at the same time, you won't get to see both. There are physical limits governing our lives. One of those involves mortality, but many others impose similarly restrictive limitations.

They aren’t in the same category. You have a choice of which wedding to go to. It may be annoying but your ability to choose something isn’t taken away, you are forced to make a choice. If your life stretched infinitely mathematically, you could assume that you will experience everything at some point.

Remember how the 13.8 billion years before your birth were? No, you don't. It's going to be the same after your death.

I don’t remember it but I am aware of it. After death there is no awareness.

You are not aware of the 13.8 billion years that preceded your birth.

But I am aware of their existence, no? If not, would we be discussing them?

Think about what you were doing an hour ago. Now think about what you were doing 6 million years ago. You will be doing the same thing as then the day after you die.

You are not aware of the 13.8 billion years that preceded your birth. You have some conception of the abstraction of time, that an unknowable past has occurred, but that is not awareness.

You are going to die, just like the rest of us, and all that's waiting for you is the same oblivion that yielded you in the first place. You've been through that once before. There's nothing to worry about.

There is no perfect answer for this. Philosophers have been seeking to answer this since the beginning of time and we will all continue to do so until the end of time.

Personally, I try to make a regular habit of thinking about my mortality. Visualizing my friends and family after I'm gone, and seeing how the world keeps on ticking. It helps me limit my own self-importance in the world but also helps free my mind to focus on the things I really care about.

Like you, I would love to be able to many lifetimes where I get to try all those other paths in the road I didn't end up taking. And perhaps we will, maybe reincarnation is a thing. Or maybe the birth and death of the universe is cyclical and we get to try this all over and over. Sadly we can never know this.

If you haven't seen the show "The Good Place", it has some interesting takes on mortality and what it would be like to live forever.

Thanks. Clearly this is a thing that has motivated at least some subset of our species to try to figure it out. Part of it is that I feel like there is no purpose. Each of us is an accident of one of a few hundred billion sperm produce on a given day meeting one of tens of thousands of eggs that was released near that day, multiplied by all our ancestor’s probabilities of having existed. Philosophy and religion seem to me to be the initial crude attempts to understand. And thinking about this lately I’ve been contemplating how we probably just don’t have the brain structures to contemplate a lot of these concepts in the first place and can only talk about them by analogy (god is like a man that lives in the sky; or an AI that is emergent behavior from machines we can build. That kind of thing.). Maybe that’s why imagining our own death is so terrifying: we can’t understand it. But it also seems so simple because we see it every day in one form or another. I can name a pencil Steve, break it in half and feel loss.

I’ll maybe check out The Good Place when I feel less vulnerable and hope it brings me some measure of comfort.

You don't want to die from something as stupid as aging. Fair enough. Neither do I.

Lots of people advocate trying to make peace, or ignore the train running down to where you're tied on the tracks. Might have been the best move anytime before a few centuries ago. Now, though? We might have medicine good enough to halt aging within the next few generations. You might be too late to save yourself, but you might be able to save your kids. So donate money to anti-aging organisations, or change your job- use your resources in the most efficient way you can figure out to help on the task of solving the problem. Long term, that's the only solution. Even if it's too late to get yourself to 'longevity escape velocity', being one of the million cuts that beats back death seems worthwhile.

You should try reading All men are mortal by Simone de Beauvoir : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Men_Are_Mortal

It is about a man who becomes immortal and experiences a lot of things. Without spoiling you, it turns out not to be as great as expected.

Apart from this there is the somewhat classical : "A famous quote tells us the three things every man should do during his time on earth: Plant a tree, have a son and write a book. The reason behind this quote is generally believed to be that we are only here for a short time and these three things will live on long after we have passed. It’s like leaving a legacy and in a sense achieving a kind of immortality."

This may sound weird, but try to watch and read less NEWS. Also sometimes when you feel this way, your brain trying to tell you something - useally something about your health. So make sure you visit a doctor or at very least talk to one on video chat. And I agree with others here, no point in worrying over something you have no control over. And finally find something that will help you forget about this. Like reading, watching something, working etc. Hope it helps! (EDIT) This is just a tought, but sometimes living in a partical place can cause this too. Especially if you are sensative emotionally and have health problems. Hunted house comes to mind...

I have thought about whether this is my body telling me something. That’s why, as I put in my large comment, I have an appointment with my primary care next week. I have cut out news about two months ago, but I get triggered by a lot of different things: video games, books I’m reading, conversations with people I like, etc. The biggest thing though: it all feels like lying to myself that it will be ok and knowing that it won’t. It will happen and I don’t want it to.

I know this will come off as crazy, but there is something called subjective immortality that causes us to live nearly forever but only from our personal perspective. So you'll see other people die, but you'll continue to experience only a worldline where something prevents your experience from ending.

I've started a forum to discuss the idea with others but haven't got very far. Still if you have any questions or want to find links to more information it's at https://immortalityforum.com/forum/

The bad news is that living forever doesn't necessarily mean living an enjoyable life. Religions have the idea of living forever in hell. Any system that has the possibility of living forever, includes the possibility of hell.

For sure, though I wouldn't call that bad news. In the long run the only hell that matters is the one you make yourself, so it just reinforces the importance of a virtuous life.

External factors can certainly make temporarily hell-like situations. But if it's a personal hell depends on how you think about it; there is always the option to adopt a Buddhist approach to inner peace.

Acceptance. No point worrying over something that will happen no matter what I do, or how much I worry about it. I just hope to die suddenly and unexpectedly, as Julius Caesar supposedly said. Odd, but the older I get the less afraid I feel about dying. I’m 60 now, don’t give it much thought other than thinking about how it might affect my wife and kids.

An eternity elapsed before I was born, and the universe will go on for an eternity after I die. Keep it in perspective.

The problem is that this is the exact perspective I don’t want. I missed out on half the eternity and really don’t want to miss out on the other half.

It could all end tomorrow. True for any of us.

Fact is, we all get some time here. It is not much.

The other hard fact is, barring some reasonable fraction of time possible for us, what we, you, any of us want has very little impact on what we get.

You don't have to accept it. Whether you do, or not, mostly matters to you, and you don't have to tell either.

Maybe one day our understanding will allow us to transcend this state of affairs. I sometimes think about all the lost souls.

Then I think about the ones who will be just this >.< close!

Gotta be rough for them, right?

So, here is how I play it:

While I am here, I can amplify the good, love, laugh, play, do, build and the way I see it, am lucky!

I am here, there is a lot to do, people I love, much to experience.

Was a free ticket to a great ride!

When it ends, I won't be worried any more than I was before getting that ticket.

So far, nobody reports back. When it is over, it's over.

There are other travellers here. Ticket holders. Sure glad for that! We don't have to do it alone, and I found someone! She is the best. That helps a lot.

All told?

Very nice problems to have. No complaints!

I do not think about it much past that.

Travel well. Enjoy the ride. That's what a lot of us do.

...or not.

Works the same either way.

It is oddly comforting to see it written out like this. Probably because this is mostly mirroring my thought process. I also think about the people who didn’t (won’t have? will not?) make it past whatever medical breakthrough allows us to renew our bodies indefinitely. And then those who die on the way to the doctor’s office to have the procedure done. And somehow seeing that written by someone else makes me feel mildly better that I’m not alone thinking about this and maybe someone out there will figure out some of the answers in my lifetime.

And you are right that it’s probably best to enjoy the ride while on it and not worry about what happens when you get off. Just need to realign my brain to not have it remind me every five seconds that falling off the ride sucks. Or that I might get off and the ride will keep going without me and that I might be the one who misses the news and improved ride by like six months or a day or ten years or ten centuries or whatever.

Of the things I’ve read in these comments so far, this and the link to the Harvard researcher working on cell regeneration have been the two things that calmed me down the most. Yeah this one more so, which I found surprising. Thank you.

You are most definitely not alone.

And you reached out unabashedly!

Thought I would keep it real, one traveler to another. You are deserving.

Glad it helped.

Remember, you don't have to accept it. Anything can happen! Maybe it will.

What you want, in this case, makes no difference. Desire is the root of all suffering. Try to make the most of the time you have, stop squandering it with worry and desiring things you can’t have.

My philosophy professor would say exactly that, and then counter it with the fact that without desire you can’t make the most of anything because you can’t do anything that you’ll find meaningful. To desire is a very human thing to do and denying all desire is probably closer to death than not, no?

Your philosophy professor would recognize one of the four noble truths of Buddhism. Life has no meaning or purpose, so you can’t find any. You can try to find contentment, and it’s easier to do that by removing desire and disappointment than striving for the impossible.

You have expressed real fear and unhappiness. And lots of desires that you realize you can’t fulfill. Examine the relationship.

Gratitude and humility.

Concentrate on the multiple wonderful things you've experienced in this life.

Recognise that every single one of your ancestors had their life, then it ended just as yours will. Recognize that you are part of a community of all of those millions of lives.

You need to go see a medical professional. A therapist is a good choice. Don’t let this continue untreated because it will get worse. How do I know? I used to suffer from it myself and almost died from it.

Sounds like you should talk to a therapist.

If you let your fear cripple you, then you can't do anything with your life anyways. So that level of fear is not logical. Just accept your death - we are all going to die.

I don’t really know what to say except this is what I already know and it’s not helping. I know I’m not in a good place Brian chemistry-wise. But even when I feel happy and put together and logical, I don’t want to die on general principle. I know it’s an animal instinct but it’s also an idea and “just accept it” doesn’t seem to work no matter how I spin it.

Oh, I didn't see the part about you seeing a therapist.

I think one problem is that wanting to not die seems fucking logical. No less logical than any other want, anyway. If you don't have to justify pullimg your hand out of a fire, I think you don't have to justify an aversion to non-existence.

All the arguments about it actually being okay make me suspicious that they're a coping mechanism, from people who wouldn't actually choose physical degeneration, pain, and death if they had the choice a priori. (who would?)

I generally agree with what you are saying, but you missed my point about it interfering with living. If you're so afraid of death that you lock yourself in a room instead of doing the things you want, then what's the point of living. The OP says the fear he has is interfering with things he wants to do in life. What's the point of extending life if you don't get to live it?

Yeah, shutting yourself in a padded room isn't a good strategy to maximise your quality-adjusted life years. I think you could make a case for spending a significant amount of time looking into the science of aging/senescence and seeing what you could do personally to contribute to the field, if only money.

I choose not to identify with my body or mind but instead with the consciousness that is aware of both these. Look up Advaita Vedanta for more. Best of luck!

Most people when they get old they find peace and are not afraid to die. I have no idea how they make it or what it takes, but I find it comforting.

I just fantasize and hope we discover a way to make people immortal and by that time I will have enough funds to buy in.

I think it could be worth exploring your spiritual beliefs. A couple years ago I decided to give this a shot and for about 6 months I actively explored questions like:

- Do I believe in god?

- Does the universe exist?

- What is my purpose in life?

I did not, and do not, have definitive answers but going through the rabbit holes trying to answer these questions have led me to adopting specific axioms which I use to help justify my place in this world.

I did this a while ago and came out on the other side feeling like I fully explored this field as an option. I can’t quote you the Bible, but I understand the principle of the thing. Same with other spirituality and different philosophies. Also ideas like we are in a simulation. In the end they all fall short of being logical enough to be believable. Especially since lots of them simply demand blind belief.

This thread basically gave me a mild panic attack so I guess I’m right there with you.

do you go to sleep everyday? do you like to goto sleep? don't you "cease" to exist in sleep everyday? is that an unpleasant experience? if not think of death as sleeping it would stop bothering you.

Sleep is the worst for me. All the ugly, bad dreams that terrify me. If death was anything like that, I am going to hell.

interesting, i was talkig about deep sleep, duration without dream where we sort of cease to exist. In dream state you are again present, so it is more like real life than death.

It's not the sleep that frustrates me, but knowing that I will never wake up. I don't mind "not existing" for some periods of time. But I hate that what I have experienced so far (plus a few more years, depending on how lucky I get) is all I will ever experience.

So many possibilities, so little time, and most of the time is spent doing some kind of maintenance (most of that is making money to pay your bills).

You don’t, it’s a constant, so just factor it out.

Sorry to arrive late in this discussion...

You can give a try to transhumanism.

It does not promise anything, but it hints at the possibility to defeat finiteness either by biological/medical or technological progress, going through a bunch of paradigm-revolutionizing innovations called a Singularity.

Personally I'm atheist and when I seem to begin to have existential dread I climb to this hope of a future Singularity. Even if I know it could very well be that it would never happen at all, only the possibility of it allows my angst to disappear.

Mushrooms and a guide

I am well aware that with the state of the world and the winter’s short days are clearly affecting my reactions to these thoughts. I know that and am taking steps to try to fix my brain chemistry. I have an appointment with my primary care coming up where I plan to discuss changes to my medications that might help make me not panic. But ultimately I am not after simply being calm as I get older and closer to death. The idea that I can just pop some pills and be less afraid of the only thing I as a consciousness should be afraid of is the opposite of comforting. Nevertheless, I realize the first step is to get my head on straight and emotions in check.

Things I have tried to at least slow down the panic:

Talked to my therapist. Her advice was to try to distract myself until coping mechanisms come back and help me protect myself from whatever is triggering me. All true but doesn’t change the fundamental facts. I don’t want to think of this stuff with more clinical detachment. I want to think of it with hope bordering on certainty.

Tried various anti-anxiety medications. This helps temporarily but same as above: doesn’t change fundamental facts. As I said above, going to try to adjust them again with my doctor to try to dial them in better for short term comfort.

Tried distractions like talking to friends and family. This is a mixed bag. When I look at my children I see the intrusive thoughts flash across my mind about their mortality and how I am powerless to change it. With friends it can often take my mind off things for a bit but they aren’t sitting by my bedside telling me distracting stories as I fall asleep the way my mother did when I was 4.

Talking to my partner. They are not nearly as afraid of death and think of it as very much a part of life. They are supportive but I think me explaining my reasons for being suddenly terrified like this take a lot out of them and I don’t want to make this their problem. When I need concrete things they are 100% there but I don’t want to offload this problem on them as they will take it on and if they can’t succeed will likely fall into the same situation while trying.

In distant past I have flirted with spiritualism and religion. My rational mind cannot accept a system that requires blind belief or that has some obvious logical flaws. And besides if I really am just getting a short 60-90 years to exist I don’t want to spend them worshipping something, be it a bearded man in the sky or some eternal light.

Briefly looked into brain upload/brain replacement. This brought me 48 hours of comfort. Some people believe the singularity is coming and that as early as 2045 we might have brain upload technology. This was almost what I want to latch onto as my mental life boat, but in the end these predictions sound a lot like predictions in the 1970s about cold fusion and AI: off by decades or centuries. Besides, who is to say that it would actually work correctly and not just create another copy that thinks it is me but I am not the one seeing through my optic nerves, so to speak. Or that if it’s available that it would be available to me? Or that it would allow me to be even a little bit human afterwards and not some beige box in my grand kids’ basement server rack?

Think about if there is anything I can do. I am not an unintelligent person; is there something I can contribute? Or do I really want to devote my life to pursuing something that five centuries from now will be a footnote in some college textbook? Or do I pursue things like status and monetary gain to be able to buy my and my family’s way into whatever brain upload type solution we as a species might find? Or do I accumulate wealth and invest it into this kind of research? Or medical life extension for myself and my loved ones until such time that a-mortality (if not immortality) is an option.

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I am asking this on HN because this to me is the most accessible community of people who are very smart and a lot are much smarter and more educated than me. It’s like I am hoping to get into a debate with someone where I argue about why death is inevitable, and then lose handily to someone who can show me why I should have hope because concrete solutions are coming. Solutions that aren’t religious or other forms of make-belief, overly-sentimental in the vein of people living on in others’ hearts, or unrealistic from a physics standpoint, or would only be available to the ultra rich/powerful/people deemed worthy. Any help or advice is appreciated. Any questions, happy to answer.

P.S.: I am sorry if this triggers anyone else. This isn’t a good time of year or a good year for this.

P.P.S.: say we manage to upload brains into new bodies with preserving the self and make the process perfect (no accidents at the body factory, no power outages during the procedure), AND solve the resource/environment problem of humans never dying, and manage long distance space travel. Won’t heat death of the universe be our final stop anyways? Or do we get to break out and keep going? What good is it to live a trillion trillion years just to freeze to death while starving?

> cannot accept a system that requires blind belief or that has some obvious logical flaws.

There's a lot of religions out there. Many of them are bunk, and many are not much better than the local chess club. But there are some potent practices out there, it's not all about "blind belief". This crisis you describe is precisely the "religious" impulse (or whatever you want to call it). For some people they end up climbing mountains and that does it for them. It's all the same impulse, is what I am trying to say. And you don't have to believe in some kind of santa clause god to get the juice. Good luck!

Thanks. I sampled a good number of religions and spirituality. I know for a fact I can train my brain to believe that I have an invisible soul that will live on. Or only if I die in battle. Or only if I wear a cross that has been blessed by the Pope. Or only if I smoke the right sacred herbs. Or only if body is preserved a certain way. But I am afraid of self delusion, which is ultimately why I feel like religion is a bit of a cop out.

Been there. It may sound weird but I do think Agnosticism or at least similar thoughts help on fear towards death. Occam's Razor is for better theories and models, but not for actual truth and the essence of existence. Accepting agnosticism-like thinking means that you don't have to worry about the existence of God or after life anymore, because you just have no way to confirm the truth.

So now life will be more like a game. The fact that you don't know if the judge is there indicates that you are somewhat freed from any known rules (I don't recommend you breaking any social rules or laws though). It is you and only you can decide what direction to go. Therefore death, well, any game always ends no matter what it is.

A never-ending game will probably end in some unexpected and unwilling ways. If there is no natural death anymore, then everyone can only die by accident. Other answer mentions reverse aging techniques which I feel quite skeptical of because I don't think you would want to live on a planet where inter-planet transportation is not ready but nobody dies anymore.

Regarding the cloud solution, Gmail outage can happen, why will Gbrain never be? Says 500 hundred years later no physical person can claim your brain are still in use online, why don't they remove you from the database silently? Too many uncertainties there.

Dalai Lama once said, to find joyfulness is to take care of others and be empathy about others' pain. Such imagination helps you to realize that there are painful things and miseries happening and they are far more worse than death.

Anyway, devote yourself to something you passionate about, keep seeking mortality and don't blame yourself for it. You either succeed and last to the end of all the universes, or you do something meaningful to people and die like all others. Both are good.

>What good is it to live a trillion trillion years just to freeze to death while starving?

It's 10 billion trillion times better than living 100 years and then dying while hacking your lungs out delirious in a hosipital bed covered in bedsores. Potentially a lot more, if there's prospects to alter/expand ourselves into being capable of contemplating/experiencing more complicated ideas and scenarios beyond the scope of our current bodies.

It just seems like making the best of a bad situation. If I imagine two futures, one where people get old and decrepit, live in terrible pain, and die at 80, for such a stupid reason as that they're produced by a blind-idiot-god process that doesn't need them as more than a disposable fuck/murderbot. And this keeps happening till an asteroid hits and they all die.

And another where they never have to go away and can explore the furthest reaches of what they can be, until, eventually, after an incredible amount of time, we have a last mournful party and turn off the lights across the cosmos.

The second story's sad! But not as sad and ugly as the first, and it might make life coming into being have been worth it, on balance.

I heard someone say, once, that the growth of humanity could grant us purer, more complete, and more perfect death than nature alone would deign to give us.

I'd rather die with an eon of friends at my side, having lived a few millenia as a walrus, than practically stillborn here and now.

Alan Watts' Out of Your Mind, the Essential Lectures series helped me cope with dear of death, and got me down on a road of meditation, acceptance and appreciation. Highly recommended.

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