@zyansheep

1 year ago

I think I have a few issues with the arguments about death in this video, so I'm gonna list them here in chronological order, feel free to click Show more if you are interested :) 3:20 - Technically not everyone has to "face" death (so long as you define "face" as "thinking about the imminant occurance of death"). Only very sick or very old people really "face" death in this way. I suppose though if you define "face" as "have to eventually experience" than I suppose that applies to everyone so long as you believe people who are unconscious can experience things... (i.e. babies, people dying in their sleep) 3:40 - I'm not sure how much I like the use of the word "eternally" here. Us alive humans have this perception of things being the same forever as boring or undesirable, however, this is not the case in death since you aren't actually experiencing this "eternity" (as far as we know, greek mythology may disagree xD). Anyway, our definition of eternity is kinda rooted in our sense of "experiencing sensory deprivation for a really long time". This is not the case with death as you do not experience it. Here's a quote that sums up my thoughts about the matter: "Close your eyes, count to one. Thats how long forever feels". So I don't think its too "harsh" a thing to be reminded of, at least so long as you think about it a bit... 3:50 - Yes, yes... the analogy here is that Puss in Boots is literally confronting Death, but looking at the situation literally, I would argue Puss in Boots did not go into a panic attack from some kind of intellectual pondering of Death, I think it is just a fight-or-flight response to frightening external stimuli (i.e. a wolf 10x your size trying to kill you with a scythe). 4:06 - Ok, now here is my biggest issue with the video. The idea that death is a good thing because it gives life meaning. You see, I question the idea that there is any kind of "meaning" to life in the first place. In my mind, meaning is just some concept that we've defined. Life does not stop just because we haven't defined its meaning. Defining your personal raison d'etre might make you feel more comfortable, and that reason might become even more meaningful to you because of your appreciation that life is not forever, but nowhere here is there any logical justification that _death is what gives life meaning_. That is an opinion (I'll come back to this later in my comment) 4:20 - No, because the individual is who defines what makes their individual life meaningful. They can choose whether or not they believe that their meaning would be made insignificant if they lived forever. The belief that life itself is insignificant is another such personal judgement. The existence of Death has no inherent logical connection to such a judgement. 4:34 - No, to be a YouTuber, you need to upload a video to YouTube xD. Just the skill of "having an internet connection" required! 4:53 - The belief that "life is in some odd way one big competition" is subjective. You choose to view the world as a big competition where the "best" gets raised to the top and the worst gets forgotten about. This may be a somewhat clean way to look at the world, but I think it has some major issues, the biggest of which is that the people judging the content have different tastes and what is an insightful video for one person is likely uninteresting or incomprehensible for another. A counterargument to this might be "well if everyone has infinite time to consume all knowledge there is and eventually everyone judges everything the same won't there be a true hierarchy of quality?" And to that I say: That's not compatible with the way human brains work. We tend to bias favor and enjoyment towards things we've experienced in our youth, when our neurons were less hard-wired and more open to experiencing new things. 5:10, for example: not everyone likes Leonardo Davinci, in fact I might say that most people would rate Leonardo Davinci as below average compared to everything else they like). 5:25 - There is no "one perfect video", only videos that some set of people will enjoy. 5:50 - What about impressing yourself? 6:10 - Einstein was always just a scientist, what made him special is that he was in the right place at the right time to be the first to discover the theories of special and general relativity. If it wasn't Einstein it would have likely been someone else... 6:43 - Yes, it becomes standard in the sea of so many other great videos, but I doubt it becomes boring. It would only become boring if you watched it a 10 times over on repeat all at once... The enjoyment of a single video is not a function of how many other good videos there are out there, it dependent on how much dopamine your brain releases while watching the video. (Which is dependent on soo many other factors like your emotional state before watching the video or whether or not you already know what the video is talking about, or many other factors...) 7:04 - No, just because you got better at something doesn't mean your work is more appreciated. Just look at all the artists throughout history who weren't famous until after their death! 7:06 - 8:34 - This section of how "life is like a wave" sorta makes sense up until the end, where (iiuc) the argument is basically: a perfect life with access to the best there is to experience is equivalent to a life with no ups and down which is equivalent to Death. 1. A perfect life with no ups and downs doesn't exist even if people live forever because humans aren't just dopamine monkeys. Experiencing the best possbile foods, videos, experiences, etc. forever doesn't make life boring because we don't just live to experience these things constantly (delayed gratification is a thing, working towards goals for arbitrary reasons is still fun, thats why people play videogames!). And 2. Even if this "forever life" was as terrible as you're making it out to be, that doesn't necessarily equate it with Death. (arguably what you're discribing is unchanging sensory input, which sounds worse imo than no experience at all, which is what death is). 9:04 - This sounds like an advertisement for masochism xD. "Only when you've experienced near-death can you truly appreciate the highs of life!". Anyway, I disagree with the notion that you need to experience / contemplate death to enjoy life. I think life is enjoyable just as it is with the day-to-day ups and downs, I see no reason why an horrible experience is needed to create contrast with everything that comes after. Anyway, to wrap this up, if I understood the video correctly, the main argument is basically: you should appreciate death because of its contrasting effect with the rest of your life. As someone who has experienced many happy and sad things in life I can definitely say that I did not enjoy the sad experiences and probably wouldn't mind not experiencing them so long as I still learned the same lessons without the painful emotions. 9:09 - The movie looks really cool though, I'll definitely watch it sometime! Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. I'll probably wake up in the morning and re-read this comment and see like a million different things wrong with it, but hey thats what happens when you write when you're tired.

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