Would you use the Machine of Death?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This poll is based on the anthology Machine of Death that I just finished reading (and I recommend it).

Basically the premise is this box that takes a sample of your blood and tells you how you’re going to die. It doesn’t tell you when, just how. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that it just describes how you die. For example, getting Old Age can be anything from dying in your bed surrounded by family to being shot by an old

No matter how many different machines you use they will all say the same thing. And that’s it, there is nothing, whatsoever you can do to avoid it. Let’s say you get Buried Alive so you say “fuck it” and take up skydiving, knowing that skydiving won’t kill you. And yet, your chute could not fully open one jump and you fall into a gravel pit and get buried alive.

Suicide could mean killing yourself or being taken out by a suicide bomber.

So Dopers, do you use the machine?

2

Yeah. Why not? And if I know I’m going to die a certain way I take reasonable precautions to avoid it.

3

But that’s the kicker though, there is no way you can avoid it. Getting heart attack can mean anything from you getting a heart attack, to you dying of a heart attack while you’re bleeding out from a gunshot wound to you getting hit by a car because the driver had an attack and stopped focusing on the road.

4

I clicked no, because based on your description of the massive ambiguity/vagueness/interpretability of the answers given by the machine, it sounds like a colossal waste of time.

5

No, I’m not overly preoccupied with my death, so I’ve little to gain if I find out I die peacefully in bed. But finding out I had a unpleasant end and knowing it was unavoidable, that could be a serious cloud over the rest of my life.

So, no. I wouldn’t use the machine.

6

Right, but I can’t fight the latter – that’ll happen either way. But, if I get ridiculously fat I’ll probably just drop dead anyway. So I eat right and stay healthy, take reasonably normal precautions.

I’m not going to go out of my way… A lot.

For instance, if it says “plane crash” I’ll book plane tickets on my 143 birthday, and avoid flying and tall buildings. If a plane crashes onto my house? 'dems da breaks.

7

So someone ripped off Heinlein for an anthology?

8

No. If tells me something particularly unpleasant, I might obsess over it.

9

I would. Why not? You ALREADY know you’re quite probably going to die of heart disease, infectious disease, or cancer anyway. I don’t think it would be any more disturbing to know exactly which of the three it is.

10

Oops, missed the edit window, but I wanted to add that even if it’s NOT one of the three, I wouldn’t mind knowing…if it’s something heinous like “drowned with a boulder tied to your leg,” it would make me a lot less afraid to take risks in life.

11

No, because it sounds like it’s so incredibly vague as to be useless, but it’d make me fret anyway.

12

Yes. Because there is the possibility that foreknowledge will extend my lifespan. Yes, the cancer may still get me in the end, but if I can tackle it from the very start I might add two, three or seven years to my life, at least some of which will be worth it.

13

I voted yes, just to be like Arthur Dent for the rest of my life. Also, Heinlein’s great story dealt with knowing the exact day you would die, not how it would happen. Hence the savings on life insurance. :wink:

So they stole ideas from Adams, too. Sort of.

I’d just never go to a planet named Stavro Beta.
:eek:

14

Stavro…mula… Beta

15

Clyde Bruckman: You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can’t think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.

16

I voted Yes in the poll before I read the OP again :frowning: Oh well, I still would vote yes. If it said something specific, like a piano falling on my head, I’d be able to watch out for it. But if it said “head trauma” then it’s so horribly vague I’d probably just forget about it.

17

No. The concept of the machine is nonsense anyway, unless it is responsible for killing people.

18

An old what? An old man!? An old musket!? I’ve got to know!

19

That’s the thing, you won’t know until you’re dead. Can be the old age of a ski lift cable snaps.

20

With the stipulation in the OP, there’s not really any point. It sounds sort of like a literal genie, like the joke where a guy wishes to be irresistable to women and gets turned into chocolate. If it’s absolutely how you’ll die, but without specific details, what if going out of your way to try to stop it ends up making it happen (sort of like in Minority Report), or what if you think it means one thing and trying to stop that one thing forces an alternate meaning to happen, or you think it means that one thing and don’t even realize one of the alternate meanings and die that way? If it’s absolutely certain how you’re going to die, then there’s nothing you can do to avoid it, so why bother even knowing, because you’ll just end up wasting time knowing about it.

And as a point, I have an amusing anecdote that’s not too dissimilar. I have a friend who, apparently when he was young, was told by a fortune teller the date he would die, IIRC September 26, but not the year. Every year on that date, he does everything he possibly can to take zero risks, like not going to work, not visiting with friends, not going driving unless it’s an emergency and, if it is, he goes really slow. Of course, being the wonderful friends that we are, we’d always tease him about it… what if he stays home and his house catches fire while he’s sleeping or he has a stroke or it may not happen for 50 years. If it’s one of those things, that he’s taking that extra precaution could very well CAUSE his death. Interestingly enough, also because he knows this, he’ll engage in a bit more risky behavior on other days. Who’s to say he won’t hurt himself and then linger in agony for weeks or months before daying on that day?

So, the point is, even if that information he got is 100% true, it does nothing to make his life any better, and wastes one whole day a year… well, now two, since we told him it couldn’t possibly be true since we were gonna kill him on the 25th one year. :smiley: So, no, nothing to gain, something to lose, not interested.