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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

People lie. On their deathbeds with the sense of impending finality they will do their damndest to come up with anything at all to feel better. Lie to God (I'll convert! I'll be a better person!), lie to their spouse (I was always faithful, and always loved you!), lie to themselves (It's not that bad! I'll live.)

Pack any situation with emotion and adrenaline, you'll get world-class mental gymnastics. Look at the exceptional efforts even animals put out when mortally threatened. The burst of energy and struggle seems like it would be epic. Including struggling with the truth.

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I don't think getting someone's perspective when they're actually on their deathbed is particularly interesting.

The point of the deathbed perspective is that imagining you're looking back on your life from your deathbed can help you figure out what you find important now.

It's trying to get a different perspective on your future, looking at it from another angle.

I agree that this is the goal. The problem is that the more I think about being on my deathbed (or death, or read obituaries, etc.) the more I realize I won't care how I spent my life. All of which tells me that how I spend my time today is irrelevant. A long run perspective most definitely does not tell you what really matters to you.

Yeah, I think deathbed is the part of the issue because it distracts from the goal. Maybe a better exercise might be "Imagine yourself in the (distant?) future, while you're still healthy. What would you want that life to look like?".

Imagining things is never the same as facing a finality that has been ingrained throughout your life in your psyche.

You can't accurately imagine being old until you're old. You can't accurately imagine being right at the edge of life until you're there. It's like imagining how you'll feel at the end of a movie that wasn't filmed yet, or what the last block of a blockchain will look like before being close to it. When you're there and have the power of retrospective it's easier to have a final perspective, and even easier to express it since the concept of consequence no longer exists for you.

On one hand you have the full experience of your life so it's easy to draw the line of what was important. On the other hand this never takes into account how many of those "bad" decisions got you where you are now. So the deathbed perspective is the individual's assessment on what were the high and low points of their life, after computing the whole equation. Like deciding which block in the blockchain you're most proud of, it's only possible once you went through all of it.

That's completely missing the point of the exercise. You don't need to accurately imagine it. The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now, by giving you a different perspective.

> That's completely missing the point of the exercise

No it's not, you're just too invested in your example to realize there is no point to the exercise you proposed. A model where up to 90% of data (the "unexperienced" part of your life depending on age) is imagined and by definition inaccurate can't be used for any determination.

> The point of the exercise is to figure out what you want in life now

That's the point of the exercise you proposed, very different from a deathbed perspective, and one I believe couldn't work as described.

The deathbed perspective is an exercise of taking your entire life experiences and distilling them to get a concrete core as seen from the "final checkpoint". The key is knowing that there will be no future experiences to alter the result, and that makes the determination as final and as accurate as it can ever reasonably be. It's not a decision making tool, it can't be used to alter the future. It's a conclusion, a punchline.

But if you want to see what's important now that's a decision, a seed for your future, and it's open to change and evolution. This cannot be more different from a real deathbed perspective. So taking this decision by imagining one of infinite possibilities of your future up to your distant deathbed makes no sense. Your subjectivity will lead you into imagining a completely different future every time, and getting a different perspective and decision.

That girl you like? Deciding she's "what you want now" is just a matter of imagining a future deathbed where she was key to your life happiness. Or maybe it's that job... Or something else entirely. When you're 20 or 30 your "old age" deathbed could have you a billionaire, homeless, or anything you can imagine. An imagined, relatively random, and distant future outcome can't help you decide what's best in the present more than flipping a coin will.

At best you can imagine you are now on your deathbed and go through the exercise to take a decision as if it were the conclusion. I still think it's pointless because imagining you're on your deathbed is like imagining a new color.

the more I think about being on my deathbed (or death, or read obituaries, etc.) the more I realize I won't care how I spent my life

It's why the "bus factor" is such a weird concept. If I get hit by a bus then I guarantee that I will not care in the slightest if anyone else knows how to run the TPS reports. Same if I win the lottery!

But you will care if someone else wins the lottery and you're stuck dealing with their project after.

Big one for me is having small children and no one that can look after them I die.

Thought of them going into state care is quite motivating.

There's less and different incentive to lie, which helps make it a potentially interesting perspective. Though there is also less disincentive to lie, as repercussions of being found out won't be experienced. IDK how it nets out except that it's still probably different.

People lie as in "some people lie". That sounds like a narcissist what you are describing there.

Some people lie like they breathe, it’s automatic, and doesn’t have any meaning. It’s not meant to be malicious.

Does the intent really matter?

Of course the intent matters. There’s quite a difference between a mother in a warzone holding their kid and saying “it’s going to be alright” to assuage their fears and Bernie Madoff saying he was going to invest people’s money judiciously.

It matters, in the same way intent matters when you cut somebody with a blade. Was it attempted murder? Self-defense? Carelessness? Accident? Surgery?

Lies, similarly, are fundamentally destructive - a lie is a piece of invalid data that corrupts, to smaller or greater extent, the minds of everyone who come in contact with it. Incorporating a lie in your reasoning moves you further from accurately perceiving reality. Sometimes, very rarely, a lie may be justified - the best of available options, even accounting for second-order effects. Usually, it isn't. But it matters whether the lie was accidental, good-faith, attempt at poisoning someone's mind, or wanton disregard for peoples' ability to grasp reality.

I would hope lies to protect another person from harm are allowable.

We suspect an enemy of the revolution is being harbored in hour house. Are you hiding this person? (forgive the preposterous example, but I hope you get my intent). It could be someone hiding from a jealous lover, someone hiding from loan sharks, etc.

Not being Murdered is one level.

Did you do the dishes is another.

Have kids. Did you eat chocolate bar? No!!!! So how did the chocolate get all over your face?

That's why I mentioned surgery at the end of my comparison with blade cuts. Much like cutting into a body is traumatic for it, but is sometimes require to save it, sometimes the ethical benefits of a lie far outweigh the costs. Yours is a very good example.

There are also more fuzzy ones. Since I mentioned medicine: there's an ongoing discussion in the medical community as to if and when lies by omission are OK - is there a point to informing the patient about something they can do nothing about, when if they learn about it, it would cause them great amount of emotional distress? Caring for health doesn't mean just servicing the body like a mechanic, but also catering for person's emotional well-being.

The point I was trying to make is that lies, by default, are bad things (much like being cut by a blade). Intent, care and consequences are what can make lies very bad, or - sometimes - good.

Growing up in Church, not lying was a big issue. 10 Commandment and all. Caused a lot of heartache for a lot of people. Met lots of missionaries who Preached in extremely bad countries and situations.

Quite annoyed to find out it was a translation issue.

You don’t lie then testify against people. Which is a highly specific and malicious sort of lie.

> Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is it? --to speak the truth and to pay your debts --no more than this? And even to this are there not exceptions? Suppose that a friend when in his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them when he is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one would say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more than they would say that I ought always to speak the truth to one who is in his condition.

Intent very much matters. It's right there at the beginning of the reading on the topic. (The Republic, Book I)

Nice example, I remember that from Ethics back in college. But there's lots of Greeks that would say Yes! Give them their weapons.

See, you have no right to decide another's state of mind is 'not right'. That's taking their agency from them, treating them like an incompetent child. Like trying to 'murder their Self' or some such.

You can say for instance "I know where they are but you're upset. Can we talk about this before you do something you'll regret?"

It can.

If it’s meant to hurt. Then that’s a bad person.

Otherwise it’s a personality flaw that needs to be addressed. Like the “pull my finger uncle”

It’s very troublesome regardless.

I agree and I do know several people like that. It does have the intent of propping up the reality they live in but it is inconsistent and quite laughable to be honest. I find another type of liars a bit more dangerous, the kind that can put a mask of sincerity and when they can take advantage they do lie horribly. My point was that some people lie, others tell the truth and in the face of death where inexistence is next door, only the narcissists would probably lie to leave a grandiose legacy, the rest, I think they have no incentive to do so.

All people lie: deceit is part of being human. Robert L. Trivers has much to say about this. See for example Trivers' book "Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others".

https://www.amazon.com/Deceit-Self-Deception-Fooling-Yoursel...

"All people lie" is such a dangerous mindset. Of course it's true, if you apply the right semantics. But it's simply faux-philosophical when out of qualifying context.

There are many actions which you might call "lying", including self-deception and politeness, but which are pretty far from the deliberate verbal deception which is generally associated with the word. If you want to understand "lying" in a broad sense, then you should definitely clarify that people lie with different motivations, methods and impacts.

It's just such a trope for narcisstic people to say "all people lie, at least I admit it to myself".

Just quoting Dr. House

In contrast to humans, many animals do not put out extraordinary efforts when they are dying of old age or serious disease. Ever see the videos of the sick old Cape Buffalo lying down while lions munch its rear?

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