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Ask HN: Would you want to know when and how you die?

5•JohnDSDev•4h ago
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?

Comments

tim-tday•4h ago
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.
kylecazar•4h ago
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.
KomoD•3h ago
No, not really. It sounds stressful.
soulbadguy•3h ago
Is the information actionable ?
JohnDSDev•3h ago
No, in this scenario no matter what the death would happen exactly as you see.
dlcarrier•1h ago
Even if you couldn't prevent your death, knowing when it happens makes timing and planning a lot of other things much easier.
mikewarot•3h ago
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

JohnDSDev•3h ago
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)
dlcarrier•54m ago
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.

bxk76•2h ago
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?
rationalist•2h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashforward_(novel)

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