X-Message-Number: 12997
From: 
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 22:47:39 EST
Subject: "better off dead"

Keith Rene Dugue (#12992) raises an interesting point about whether you can 
ever be "better off dead." 

He says no, you are never better off dead, because if you are truly 
(permanently) dead--i.e., non-existent--you cannot be well off, or badly off, 
or any other kind of off. You can't be anything except gone.

>There can be no death advantage simply because once one does not exist one 
can >no longer appreciate the purported advantage. 

I agree with his conclusion--that you are never better off dead--but not with 
his reason. The question is whether it could ever be reasonable to choose 
oblivion, and it seems pretty clear it could. If you were SURE your continued 
existence would entail nothing but suffering, I believe the choice of 
oblivion would be reasonable. It is not a question of how your future self 
would feel (there would be no future self), but how you feel now and how you 
would feel in the future if you chose to continue. 

The common trap, however, is that most people in bad situations just do not 
understand the potential of future rescue and improvement. There is simply no 
way--as far as I know--that anyone can reasonably conclude that future 
existence (in the cryonics/immortalist context) would entail a preponderance 
of pain over pleasure, or dissatisfaction over satisfaction. Hence it never 
makes sense to choose oblivion, under any circumstances of which I am aware.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonic.org 

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