Hacker News Reader

Good arguments? I dunno.

However, I think an argument is that experience and knowledge about your own life is at a maximum (absent degenerative diseases, etc) just as it ends, and therefore taking advice from the person you are on your deathbed is taking advice from someone who knows more than you about everything, and has precisely the same goals for you as you do.

I would imagine because when you're on your deathbed, it's too late to change anything. It brings a little clarity and highlights what is really important vs the stuff that seemed important at the time but turned out to a waste of time.

The end of life perspective still suffers from the same problem as middle of life -- they have no way of knowing what the outcome would have been if they had done things the other way. They might be on their deathbed saying "I wish I'd worked harder and not been broke all my life." There are always going to be paths not taken.

See: Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

Because you're only looking back, not forward.