Ask HN: Would you want to know when and how you die?
If you had a time machine, and the only thing you could use it for was to go see yourself in the future die would you use it or not? Why or why not? I don't see how this would work. If I see that I would die at the age of, say, 75, does that mean living recklessly before then means I won't die? That it's my fate to die exactly at 75? That I can stop taking care of myself? Being aware of that date would change behavior whether you want to or not, and would those actions of mine not have consequences? These are the philosophical takes I love as answers to these hypothetical scenarios Knowing when you die != seeing your future self die There might be some value to some people in knowing how much lifespan they have left. But actually seeing your future self die seems like it would be horribly traumatic, as your present self would carry on living afterwards with that knowledge. And anyway, each of us will experience our own death eventually. Mm if I had to actually see myself dying, probably not. If I could just get a letter with the information, as with a short story I read once, probably yes. Assuming the expiration can't actually be changed. If it's not set in stone, that would probably be too stressful to live with. The best I can do now (in absence of this machine) is trying to remember we are already slowly dying day by day, and that we can drop dead in any instant. But even using this machine I think I would easily forget about my own mortality and keep wasting my time with mundane things. Depends - is the future set in stone, H2G2-style (the Stavromueller Beta subplot, specifically)? If I cannot change the future by my actions that means I will be completely safe from dying until the appointed time is near, so... I don't think that's possible, for what i've infered there is a sea of possibility so is just paths we trace and you could get the autofullfill prophecy if that happens. Definitely not. I've learned to live comfortably with the fact that I'll die one day (and really understand/internalize it). Knowing exactly when could potentially disturb the peace that I've found. How reliable is the read? Like what if I see I will die at say 80 and then immediately commit suicide? Maybe the world simply forks whence one touches the past/future? Ooh, I might read that! Thanks. Death is only interesting if confronting it causes prime directive shift: how to survive?(which people recite subconciously on loop) changes to, why to survive? You can use actuarial math and get pretty damned close. Like within five years with 80% confidence. Not as much romance in that as there is in a Time Machine. The problem is that what people care about are the "black swan" causes of death, i.e., the cases the actuarial table is wrong. I am very curious how one might do that? What would be the input parameters ? (Zero knowledge about actuarial math) Absolutely not, it would ruin life as it is. Maybe it would drive some decisions, but probably badly and panic driven. Only if it is fixable ... Take it as a warning sign. If I cannot change it, then all it does is cause anxiety. No, not really. It sounds stressful. Is the information actionable ? Even if you couldn't prevent your death, knowing when it happens makes timing and planning a lot of other things much easier. No, in this scenario no matter what the death would happen exactly as you see. there are infinite possibilities. might as well see this one play out because it’s unique I'd be shown myself being murdered by the operator of the time machine, after asking far too many questions about its theory of operation. Nope My book club read The Measure, by Nikki Erlick, where one day all adults received a string in a box, with the length of the string perfectly correlating with their total lifespan, and children received them too, as they grew into adults. The box and string were indestructible. Several members of the book club were going through a memento mori existential crisis, and all I cared about was that no one had done anything interesting with the indestructible materials. Imagine what humanity could accomplish with billions of indestructible boxes and strings. Ah, lol. Before you edited it I thought you meant you were going to see yourself commit suicide. (I assumed you were the one operating the time machine) It would make no difference. I've had dreams since puberty about how I'll die. The only thing I don't know is when. But the face in the mirror in the dreams looks more and more like the face I have. So, you know, it's coming for us all in the end.