Would you rather know... A) the year that you will die or B) the manner in which you will die* *Consider that knowing how you would die would be limited to broad categories (disease, old age, murder, accident, etc.) as opposed to a detailed description that would cause you to specifically avoid certain activities.
I'd go with the year. If I knew how much time I had left exactly I'd be living a very different life.
Definitely need to know when. What if you picked B and you knew you would be hit by a car. But what you didn't know is that you would be hit by a car next week.
When. Definitely. I would try to do as many drugs and contract as many diseases as possible that last year. I would also test it as well. What happens if I jump off a 30 stroy building but I still have 15 years left? It would be pretty tite to be invincible.
Don't believe in fate or predetermined destiny, so I don't think the question is answerable. Further, anyone that would rather know how than when has questionable judgement in my opinion, unless you believe that it's possible to both know your destiny/fate as well as change/avoid it.
You're crazy, Dave. I don't think anything is predetermined either, but it's just a hypothetical question. I also think there is a psychological benefit to not knowing when something is going to come to an end. In this case, I feel that knowing when might be much more a burden than knowing how. For example, if I choose to know how I'll die and I find out it's from disease, I can more or less go on living my life normally. But if I found out I'm going to die in 2020, that could really screw with my head. I really don't know which one I'd choose.
What if you read the disclaimer I put on option B? :grin: Besides, it's the year not the month, week, or day.
when. that way if i were healthy a year or so before my final date, i would know that i didn't die of natural causes (meaning a pretty schity death... meaning time to party it up).
Well, hopefully my being crazy will prevent you from getting upset when I say your judgement is questionable, unless you believe you could both know your fate and change it, as I stated before.
If you know when, you spend the rest of your life counting down to that moment with increasing dread. The entire remainder of your life would be planning for your death. If you know how, it can liberate you in some respects. For instance, if you know you will die from a car accident, if you are so inclined, you can drink, smoke, eat nothing but fat, do drugs, and have unprotected sex with impunity. If you know you are going to die from coronary artery disease, you can take up skydiving, jumping cars on motorcycles, and play Russian roulette like a boss. So much of modern behavior revolves around minimizing your risk to potential threats to your life.
I can't see any good in knowing B. I'll be murdered/or die of a disease/ or accident -- but I don't know when? Yikes. Talk about a recipe for a paranoid life. A, I suppose, might be practical. But I'd have to read the fine print. If they say I'll die in 2030 can I just live recklessly until then? And what if I spend all my money, and moon my boss, but then I don't die. Not sure if that would suck or not?
Most of the threats I minimize also help me to get laid, which to me is more important than not dying. I'm still taking when.
I would want to know how I'm going to die out of curiosity only, not as a tool with which to "cheat" death or change my fate (which I don't believe in).
You can still get severely injured from those activities or end up living a crappy life (due to drugs, contract painful STD's, etc.) until you die in your accident. Speaking of which, notice I said accident and not car accident. I think some people missed the intentional ambiguity of that. An accident could be falling off a ladder and impaling yourself on a wrought iron fence, or something equally random and uncommon.
