Say you have to know one (and only one) of the following things about your death:
You will not be able to change your death by knowing this one thing.
Which would you choose and why?
Number 5. It’s not much different from saying “you’ll die one day” which I already know. I wouldn’t get panicked at 8.56 every morning, particularly if I felt OK. After a while I’d stop even noticing when 8.57am came around. Knowing the exact year would be dreadful - a real “death sentence”. The other options, somewhere in between.
Number 1. Planning purposes. Knowing the year you are going to die makes being able to plan to retire much easier. I could more accurately estimate just how much I’m going to need and when the best year to start would be.
I’ll take knowing the year as well–I have bad associations with the 15th of October and I know how depressing and creepy it feels to have a sense of foreboding hanging about during a certain time period. Knowing the year is useful, as stated above for planning purposes as well as for ameliorating worry the rest of the time.
Of course, me being the way I am I’d probably kill myself December 31st of the year BEFORE my target year, just to be a bitch. I’m a bit of a control freak… :smack:
The time of day. It’s the least specific piece of information. I prefer pretending I have more time left than I probably do.
I would want to know the year so that I could start taking care of the things on my Bucket List. It would also let me know what kind of commitments I might want to make or avoid. If I found out that I was going to die in 2041 I would be able to plan to get married and possibly raise a family but if I am slated to go in 2009 I might want to avoid buying a house or getting engaged.
Year. It would kind of be nice to know, actually. Planning purposes.
I’m going to die someday?
The year so I can get all my affairs in order, travel like a king beforehand, etc.
Certainly not the time. I don’t want to freak out every morning at 8:57. Jeez, that could give a guy a heart attack.
:: toying with controls of Cast-Victim-Bodily-into-Tartarus-o-Mat ::
Well… define “die.”
Well, if you mean I have to know, meaning I must be told, then I’ll take the year. It would help me… pace myself, if you will. But I’d rather know nothing of the sort.
In Ursula K. LeGuin’s very good sci fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness, an alien ruler asks an oracle when he’ll die. The oracle says the equivalent of “July 3rd,” but omits the year. The ruler becomes very paranoid and shuts himself up in a fortress every year at that time. He gradually extends the time he stays there, fearing poison; he loses his grip on his kingdom and his senses, goes nuts, is eventually forced from power and dies in an asylum, having lost all track of time. Date of death? You guessed it.
If one of the options above, I choose door number 1.
Definitely 1. There’s a bunch of things I want to do in my life, and it would be helpful to know how long I’ve got to shoehorn them in.
2-4 would just create unpleasant repetitive paranoia, with no good outcome.
Oh. My. God. Fucking brilliant! I’ve never even thought about it, but I couldn’t agree with you more and I don’t know why!
No 1. It will make retirement planning much easier.
The year, without hesitation. I’m very bothered by the fact that death can happen at any moment without warning.
Plus, as some mentioned, it would help considerably in planning my life. That’s an huge advantage. And as others stated, I don’t want to wonder every day at 8:56 or every Monday, or every year during the month of April whether or not I will be dead the next minute, day, etc… And I suspect I would.
Also…contrarily to another poster, if I was given the choice between knowing and not knowing, I would want to know. I can’t see the drawback. Anyway, in this hypothetical, I’m going to die at this date, so I’ve nothing to lose. And I’m offered a feeling of safety until said date plus the possibility to plan my life in accordance with the time left to me. Why would I refuse?
Like most people above, I’ll take the year. Knowing any of the others just sets you up for repeated stress when that date/month/time rolls around. If you’re going to know anything at all, the year seems to make the most sense. Anything else is really the same as now, with the added burden of the periodic stress.
If I’m told the year I will die and I can’t do anything to change that, does that mean I’m indestructible until that year?
And this is how you should deal with oracles who predict your death
It’s well known that you must never try to mess up with prophecies. You’ll always end up causing your own demise doing so, and preferably in the worst possible way.
For instance if you jump from a plane without a chute, you’ll end up unconscious and on life support and will die from complications at the planned date. Alternately, you could be saved because you landed right on the person you love the most, killing him/her. Or both.