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Comment by mathgeek | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure whether I would be more surprised by the truth being “no other animal at any point in life understands they will die” or “some animals at some point understand they will die.” I would be pretty confident that not all animals do. Excluding humanity of course. My gut feeling is one or more species can understand.

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> Excluding humanity of course

Only 14.4% of humans on earth [0] don't believe in some religion, meaning the majority feel that you don't actually die, but just go somewhere else.

[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/374704/share-of-global-p...

And how many _actually_ believe it? They may try to believe or hope but their behavior suggests the majority of the believers are not so sure after all.

The point stands: Many people don't understand death. They believe they are just going somewhere else.

I remember that as a kid, another kid explained death to me. At that time I couldn't grasp the full meaning of ceasing to exist.

where were you before the birth ? before the Big Bang? before the time itself? You go to the same place after the death--nothing new.

Literally everyone understands that they'll cease to exist one day, whether religious or non-religious. That some people hope there's something after this life doesn't mean they can't fathom a case where that isn't true.

That’s an example of why I phrased things as I did. At least one human understands they will die. If we prefer to define that as natural death, that’s acceptable for the purposes of this discussion. I was not referring to anything beyond that.

Just because people identify with some religion or other doesn't mean they believe whatever thing that religion says about death.

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