X-Message-Number: 12992
From: Keith Rene Dugue <>
Subject: The Death Advantage Fallacy (DAF)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 22:31:42 -0800

Dr Ettinger wrote in Message #12766

"The psychology of death has many strange elements. For example, many people 
actually make decisions based on "what (s)he would have wanted." Obviously, 
nothing you do or don't do matters in the least to someone who is buried and 
decayed and non-existent. "Loyalty" to a destroyed person is just a neurosis 
or a means of maintaining your own illusions, living in make-believe."


Even from cryonicists I sometimes hear that they would rather die than continue 
to live if presented with interminable suffering.  I call this the Death 
Advantage Fallacy or (DAF). It is the fallacious argument that one can gain any 
advantage by one's own death. 

Death as used in the above sentence is not clinical death but the permanent 
destruction of one's identity such that it can not be recovered by any 
technology. This is equivalent to permanent nonexistence. There can be no death 
advantage simply because once one does not exist one can no longer appreciate 
the purported advantage. Moreover ,one can not even appreciate that there is a 
difference. In fact, one can not appreciate anything at all. For example, if one
claims that death will end one's suffering one is claiming that  nonexistence 
is equivalent to a mental state free of suffering. This can not be true because 
it is impossible to determine the state of that which does not exist. Therefore,
it is impossible to say whether the nonexistent are  suffering or not. So one 
would ,in fact at best , be comparing a state of suffering to an indeterminable 
state. These two thing are incomparable. So, to state that one would be free 
from suffering or even that one would be suffering less after death is complete 
nonsense. One's nonexistence precludes it. To claim that one escapes suffering 
through death is like claiming that one was happier 200 hundred years ago than 
one is today. 


There are two unstated premises in the argument for escaping suffering through 
death. 

They are ,one that an afterlife exists and two that this after life is one 
without equivalent suffering. No evidence has ever been shown that supports 
these premises and as such must remain mere assertions. By afterlife ,it is 
meant that one has some form of consciousness and memory. I suspect that at the 
heart of the DAF is a meme at work. The DAF ,like loyalty to the non-existent, 
is also a neurosis.

Happy holidays, 
Keith R. Dugu 

NO SPAM
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