Death by Thomas Nagel (1970) [pdf]

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Mark Twain

Twain never said that. There's a similar quote in his _Autobiography_ but it doesn't really say the same thing.

> We are so high that we do not have to explain anything to anybody, either in this world or in the next. Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born–a hundred million years–and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.

Look at his Autobiography for more context.

This is a good Internet archeology challenge. I quickly tried on Google [books] and ChatGPT. ChatGPT says that oldest misattribution it finds is from Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" [1].

I retried on Google Books using quotes around a sentence and it finds [2] and [3]. I don't have access to these so I cannot check, if some can we could clarify part of the mistery. Project Gutenberg on Mark Twain [4]?

DDG find the oldest attributed to Mark Twain in 2004 [5].

Trying

[1] https://www.docdroid.net/XGv3aLm/the-god-delusion-pdf

[2] https://www.google.com.ar/books/edition/Mark_Twain_on_Religi... (Mark Twain 1906/2007 based on page results)

[3] https://www.google.com.ar/books/edition/The_Five_Boons_of_Li... (1902) (checked in Kindle search and it is not there, Google failed!).

[4] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53 trying site:gutenberg.org "I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born" doesn't give any result.

[5] https://sorcerers.net/community/threads/high-level-abilities...

I am not convinced that is a significantly different meaning? The true quote certainly has more depth and nuance around the hardship of living. But GP feels like a tolerable para-phrase to me

As Nagel points out, this is Lucretius’s argument.

He’s not buying it because death is loss for the subject of the potential good experiences they would have had in life, which must postdate being born. If I understand him correctly, that is.

I’m not buying that argument either, because the subject is not able to experience loss - only anticipation of loss - whereas non-dead friends and family get the real thing. Death is only bad for those who love or need us.

PS Happy New Year

If we accept Nagel's perspective that death may not inherently be harmful to the individual who dies, how might this philosophy alter our societal or personal rituals around death, such as funerals or memorials?

That's not his perspective.

damnit. i though this was about TCP algorithms...

Death is only scary because of its potential impermanence corroborated by the probability of existing in the first place. Being afraid of permanent death makes about as much sense as being afraid of going to sleep. Lots of words here for very little insight.

Explain a little more. I'm not understanding why the "potential impermanence" of death is a factor at all, much less why that potential impermanence is corroborated by the probability of existing in the first place.

To me it sounds like you're claiming that it makes us nervous that death might not last, and somehow realizing that being alive in the first place being improbable makes that nervousness worse. How in the world that would be the case escapes me, so asserting it as obvious seems like...too few words here to achieve any insight.

I could be misunderstanding, so more words to clarify would be appreciated.

Explain a little more. I'm not understanding why the "potential impermanence" of death is a factor at all, much less why that potential impermanence is corroborated by the probability of existing in the first place.

To me it sounds like you're claiming that it makes us nervous that death might not last, and somehow realizing that being alive in the first place being improbable makes that nervousness worse. How in the world that would be the case escapes me, so asserting it as obvious seems like...too few words here to achieve any insight.

I could be misunderstanding, so more words to clarify would be appreciated.

The concept of infinite rebirth and suffering at varying degrees of consciousness is much more threatening than the concept of having a single conscious existence bookended by stable nothingness.

Stable nothingness is just modern-day materialist heaven. It's a coping mechanism that relies on your currently inexplicable conscious node of existence being the first and last across infinity/eternity.

Like most if not all emotions, fear of death makes a lot of sense evolutionarily. That’s why it’s an integral part of us humans. It’s an interesting question if that would be different if death wasn’t necessarily permanent.

I'll wake up tomorrow. If I die, I will never wake up for the resto of history of the universe and everything.

But there will be nobody to realize that at that point. And besides, of the countless living human beings that _do_ wake up there must be some with very similar circumstances and a similar state of mind. How is it really different to be them?