The Fear of Dying Before You Become Yourself | Hacker News Reader

The Fear of Dying Before You Become Yourself

dailicle.com

27 pointsdotcoma20 comments

The blog post is not just beige— it's filled with em dashes, and here's why that matters.

AI can do a surprisingly good job at philosophy. I think that the "knowledge join" LLMs are so good at helps the of philosophical works.

That said, the post is pretty boring.

The blog post does the “It’s not X, it’s Y” pattern a few times. It’s hard not to assume the post is just produced by an LLM.

It’s frustrating not knowing whether I’m reading the musings of a real person, or the output of an LLM.

I've taken the stance that garbage is garbage, whether written by a human or an AI. It's not like the internet wasn't chock full of insipid philosophy and astroturfing before LLMs were around. It seems like people are starting to read everything on the internet with a much more critical eye because of LLMs, and I think that might be a good thing. As someone who's always been cynical, I say: welcome everyone! It sucks over here, but it sucked over there too, you just didn't know it.

But yes, this was almost certainly LLM. In real humans, the quality of thought has a stronger correlation with the quality of writing.

This is the Platonic ideal of an LLM-generated blog post; it's pages long, it uses a lot of flowery language, and communicates almost zero actual information. I can't disagree with the premise, because the premise melts away when you try to pin it down, like cotton candy washed in a stream by a raccoon.

Congratulations, person who wrote the prompt that caused a machine to generate this article, you have truly achieved some sort of perfect something.

Have you ever read a book? Like try reading 'The psychology of money'. You will know they exist in almost every literature... every fiction and non-fiction book... Authors use them a lot in their writings. I hope you will find it useful: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...

This is why, here at GloboCorp, we kill an Excel monkey at the office right after the daily standup. The open office plan makes it so that the whole team hears the screams (and some lucky team members catch a little splatter). Death creates some unexpected synergies. At GloboCorp, our employees learn that death is inexorable. Does one fear the rising of the sun? No. One simply accepts that the sun will rise. So too do our valued team members at GloboCorp simply accept that they will be checking functions until they are reduced during a daily teambuilding exercise.

No one at GloboCorp asks themselves if they will live the rest of their lives as Excel monkeys, because we answer that question for them every day. The answer is Yes, you will fill out the little cells, and then we will kill you. We provide effective solutions to the problem of being. We transform existential dread into acceptance and peace and high performance.

> People say they're afraid of death, but often what they really mean is dying as the wrong person.

Nope, pretty sure it's almost always a mix of a) not knowing what (if anything) is after, b) the way one achieves the state of "being dead", c) high possibility of own consciousness ceasing to exist and d) leaving someone behind.

I don't really care if I'm meant to become the next Luke Skywalker or the pope, I would live just fine if I didn't have to die for something I have no control over and just remain me.

> c) high possibility of own consciousness ceasing to exist

Yeah, death being the subjective end of the universe is kinda high on the list of reasons it bothers people, I think.

I think it depends on the person. I can't say I've worried about any of this since I was a teenager except d. Angst over how I live my life definitely ranks much higher than stressing about nonsensical concerns.

If you're going to dismiss concerns as nonsensical then it generally helps to explain why you think they're nonsensical.

I've experienced the opposite: wishing I were dead so life wouldn't go on with me falling into just another glum existence. That at the emotionally present moment I snapshot it, preventing inevitable dullness that time moves on

Unfortunately here I am, life moves on, now I'm just wasting away on HN

This blog became really active in 2025. I struggle to believe it's written by a human.

I like this article, for me it hits the point. I'm tumbling through live, I barely make choices

Humanity will someday solve death: make everything lifeless by default. No more death.

We may solve it for Humans. Earth will continue living without us.

Or, alternatively, we realize that the best use of our time and the best organizing drive is something that extends beyond us into the far future. A great example would be adopting the principle that sapience and sentience should survive the heat death of the universe.

We are a species driven by memetic thoughts that builds a reality through consensus. Having shared goals helps us in that regard.

You cannot survive heat death of the universe, if you did then the universe hasn’t really died.

You get me.

There is no self.

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