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Would you want to know when you were going to die?
see317
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Partially inspired by the would you want to know that you were a robot? thread, and partially by staying awake too long after taking some NyQuil I thought I'd ask.
Suppose a new technology came into existence that could, with 100% accuracy, predict the exact time and date of death for any person. The test is nearly painless, a small skin scraping or blood sample or mouth swab or something, and in 24 hours the results are mailed to you.
Would you take the test?
Some notes/addendums/caveats etc...:
The test is 100% accurate. If you try to avoid dying on that day(maybe by staying in your basement all day instead of going out) you still die. The results are still accurate regardless of the means of death.
The test results are based on brain death, so if you're in a coma with brain activity, you're still considered alive.
Taking the test is entirely voluntary, no person can be coerced or forced into it. No, I don't know how you'd enforce that, but it's just the way things are.
The results of the test are available, but not as general knowledge. Similar to a credit score, a company can be authorized to review for your information once you've taken the test and make decisions regarding you based on the information.
So, with that information, would you choose to take the test?
Alternatively, discuss how the world would be different in this case. I'd imagine Life Insurance as an industry would be pretty well dead inside a week, but health insurance? The credit industry?
On the other hand, can you imagine the party you'd throw if you knew you where going to be dead tomorrow and this is your last chance to say goodbye?
Suppose a new technology came into existence that could, with 100% accuracy, predict the exact time and date of death for any person. The test is nearly painless, a small skin scraping or blood sample or mouth swab or something, and in 24 hours the results are mailed to you.
Would you take the test?
Some notes/addendums/caveats etc...:
The test is 100% accurate. If you try to avoid dying on that day(maybe by staying in your basement all day instead of going out) you still die. The results are still accurate regardless of the means of death.
The test results are based on brain death, so if you're in a coma with brain activity, you're still considered alive.
Taking the test is entirely voluntary, no person can be coerced or forced into it. No, I don't know how you'd enforce that, but it's just the way things are.
The results of the test are available, but not as general knowledge. Similar to a credit score, a company can be authorized to review for your information once you've taken the test and make decisions regarding you based on the information.
So, with that information, would you choose to take the test?
Alternatively, discuss how the world would be different in this case. I'd imagine Life Insurance as an industry would be pretty well dead inside a week, but health insurance? The credit industry?
On the other hand, can you imagine the party you'd throw if you knew you where going to be dead tomorrow and this is your last chance to say goodbye?
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This right here put me in the NOPE camp.
You might want to specify who authorizes viewing your DoD and for what reasons, for the purpose of our hypothetical. I'm not sure the credit reporting model is a good one, since basically anyone with enough money can look up anyone else's credit info.
However, you bet your ass that if it was treated like a credit report, you wouldn't be able to do anything until you got the test. Everyone's credit score drops to 400 until they get a DoD after their DoB.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
And I think there would still be a credit industry and a life insurance industry and everything, it would just be for the people who declined the test.
And I would totally take the test. Knowing that would allow you to live your life to the fullest. As it is, I have to put away a ton of money for retirement, when there's only a two out of three chance I'll ever actually see retirement, and far less of a chance I'll be able to enjoy it.
The movie Big Fish puts a spin on this big time. A little kid finds out how he is going to die, and learn the trick that if it's the one and only way he will die, he can do anything else he wants knowing he wont die, and spends the rest of his life performing great feats and helping others. If this held true, I would consider it a benefit.
That movie deserved awards, all it got was nominations
Well, the test just determines brain death, not the quality of life up to brain death, so there's every possibility you could be injured in said warzone and become paralyzed.
I mean, do you really need a test to tell you you'll live to be a hundred or so barring illness, catastrophic accident or other disaster?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
that's not what he's talking about. he's saying it's a magic test that can tell you when you will die no matter what the cause.
It's similar I think to the idea of telling people with genetic diseases such as Huntingdon chorea whether they have the disease or. If it turns out you do you spend the rest of your life acting with that end in mind. I think this thought experiment would work better if the date of death was highly accurate, but not precise, and doesn't acknowledge accidental deaths.
well, then the whole going off to war thing works out. if I know I'm not dying for 50 years it's much easier to (say) go off and play audie murphy.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I mean, people would be horrified it if turned out knowledge of some life-shortening disease was withheld from people suffering from it. Likewise, asking your doctor to just not tell you if you have cystic fibrosis or something seems profoundly dumb.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Without knowing the cause, I kinda feel that knowing the time is pointless. If I can find out I'll live 200 years, but 150 of that might be in a coma, then it just somehow feels like it defeats itself. I just don't care, because there's no context to that moment. Knowing the cause could change my view on life, on everything. Knowing I'll die muddling away at a desk job, of some heart attack at 60, with no one caring, could be devastating. Then again, that could be reversed. Knowing I'll die pointlessly might spur me to live greatly until whatever inevitable crash comes to seat me at the desk. Either way, without the context, I'd probably just live as I do.
Of course, now I feel silly. Of course I'd take the test. How could I resist? That's a piece of knowledge sitting there. That's something to know. I can know that. I should know that. It wouldn't be because I have any feelings regarding death, just because I could.
I know of someone who refused to get tested for cystic fibrosis because they didn't want to know--that's what I was thinking of in particular. You're right, though, that a doctor withholding her diagnosis from a patient, without consulting with them beforehand, would be a gross violation of medical ethics. I also agree that the behavior described is profoundly dumb.
Thought experiments only work, however, if the scenario you described is self-consistent and plausible. Much like a real physical science experiment, if your test environment doesn't limit variables to a point where you can actually learn something from the data, it's useless. The "kill yourself early" loophole is just like experimenting the percentage of body heat radiated from your head. . . while wearing military-grade insulators everywhere else. And even if you say, "The test is magical and forces you to live til the date," then you've got two problems: A) Would you still die on the date that the test would predict if you took the test, even if you never did take it? And (more importantly)
Gotr of Vatik
Scholar by day, rogue by night.
"If all I ever got was one shot, I'd still never blame fate."
"No, I'm serious, I only have a day to live. Look at the paperwork"
On a totally unrelated topic it'd be great excuse to pick up professional counterfeiting.
Here's the free PDF (don't worry, it's official!) but I recommend buying it too because it's fuckawesome.
http://machineofdeath.net/ebook
As for my own answer, I would try to avoid it but I'd really just have to break down and find out at some point. The problem is depending on the answer you could develop some life-crippling irrational fears, and I wouldn't want to compromise my life just to try to avoid something that will happen anyway.
Edit for oh, I just realized the topic was WHEN and not HOW. Well, I suppose if it's 100% accurate then there's no harm in learning. Lack of fear of death for all days leading up to that one would be pretty interesting.
I can only become more decrepit and crippled with age, but functionally I am immortal without any associated eternal youth, vitality, or special regenerative properties,
I know that it only counts brain death, but does that mean it'd be illegal/impossible to have a DNR clause? What if you went out into international water and tried to kill yourself (say, with a huge overdose of pills), with a friend and instructions that if you should somehow end up a vegetable, he was do do something completely crazy and unerringly fatal to you? Would the gun always jam? The match always fail to light? The Shark always be full?
I'd imagine a cult would pop up around the "earlies," people determined to leave this earth at some point prior to when they were predicted, cataloging all the insane ways they failed to die.
There'd also be a marked acceleration in superheroism, I think, because hey... if you know you're not going to die today...
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
I do think the probability of mortality thing from Gattaca is at least based in some sense of reality, even if we don't know all of our genetically-based diseases and such. Many women who are genetically prone to breast cancer take that test to determine whether they have the "breast cancer gene," and then make decisions accordingly.
The question to me is less "knowing exactly when you'll die" to "determining at what point I'm functionally dead" - i.e. my cognition has degraded so far as to no longer meaningfully represent me. That's when things really get murky - since were there a clear answer to that question (and hell, does "degraded me" deserve the same right to life he seems to believe he has?) then the whole euthanasia debate might be simpler (though it's not complex because of that: it's complex because fuck the church).
Per usual, I find that MrMister says what I'm thinking.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's funny you said that, Audie took the test.
I dunno what I'd do (especially given that other people could look at my test results), I do know that if I did take it and got a high score I would make a killing off of selling my own urine, just like the drug tests we administer now!