• FlaccidDoor
    132
    I recently made a discussion post about what you would leave behind at death. It reminded me of a question I asked people: If you can set up everything perfectly, how would you die?

    Some notable answers I got were: Jumping into a volcano doing flips and tricks, strapping yourself to a giant firework and exploding (that's mine), piloting a missile to kamikaze into a terrorist bunker, and getting murdered with a katana in a murder mystery where the room is locked from the inside.
  • Book273
    768
    Defending my family from an angry grizzly always had appeal to me. Sure I am likely gonna lose, but somewhere after there will be a big ass bear packing a scar I gave him. That'll work for me.
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    Ideal death: As a mindfile in a 'matrix-like' Matrioshka brain which is falling into a supermassive blackhole.
  • Pinprick
    950
    Spontaneous combustion seems fun. But seriously, I’d prefer to just die cancer or something like that. I know it seems morbid, but part of me really wants to know what death feels like, which obviously means I have to actually experience it, which means instantaneous ways of dying are out. On the other hand, I’m very averse to pain and feel like the knowledge that you’re dying would be unbearable.
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    The worst way to die that I can imagine is any way of dying that torments me so unbearably that I'm begging to die immediately, incapacitated to the point where I cannot euthanize myself, and the dying just goes on and on and fuckin' on ... :grimace:
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    I feel like slowly dying from cancer would be somewhat painful, although I have no clue. Chemotherapy at the very least looks pretty uncomfortable.
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    Yeah I agree. That's why I want to die in a firework where flying up would be scary, but I get a good view before instantaneously being blown apart into a good view.
  • Ying
    397
    If you can set up everything perfectly, how would you die?FlaccidDoor

    Ascension, obviously. I'm an agnostic btw.
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    Ascension, as in, to heaven? So given that heaven exists, you would choose ascension as compared to descent (to hell). But then that doesn't deal with how you die at all, unless you mean to say die in a way that God would approve your entry.

    Or am I misunderstanding and you want to be shot up miles into the sky?
  • Ying
    397
    I'm talking about ascending to a higher plane of existence... It was meant as a joke btw. :wink:
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    If you can set up everything perfectly, how would you die?FlaccidDoor

    What if we didn't have to die? I believe that this doubt is preferable to the fact of death.
  • praxis
    6.2k
    Alone, in pain, and miserable. I only say that because that's how I imagine it will be, and I don't want to be disappointed when the time comes.
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    Yes, I think many people would agree with you, but that kind of defeats the philosophical point of the question.
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    That makes a lot more sense.

    Knowing you can control everything, you would still try to keep it as bad as you can make it because you don't want to be disappointed? It sounds like a very sad case of a self fulfilling prophecy.
  • Maw
    2.7k
    Choked to death by an extremely attractive woman
  • Maw
    2.7k
    Or knifed by one
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    @Maw

    The OP asks about the ideal, not the erotic, death. :smirk:


    Btw, how extremely do you mean by "extremely attractive"?
  • Saphsin
    383
    I'm more simple, I just want to go to bed after having a fun day and the next morning just happens to be the time I no longer wake up.
  • Maw
    2.7k
    Btw, how extremely do you mean by "extremely attractive"?180 Proof

    Think a young Monica Vitti, Anna Karina, or Bibi Andersson
  • praxis
    6.2k
    Knowing you can control everything, you would still try to keep it as bad as you can make it because you don't want to be disappointed? It sounds like a very sad case of a self fulfilling prophecy.FlaccidDoor

    Some believe that what we can control is quite limited so it is as though you are endorsing a happy fantasy, from that vantage point. If we have no expectations, or low expectations, we can't be disappointed, and as a wiseman once said...

    There is no worse death than a death in disappointment, thus we should seek the death of disappointment. — Wiseman
  • FlaccidDoor
    132
    So you don't want to consider an ideal death because then that would raise your expectation? I feel like we refer to an ideal as an ideal partly because we consider it an impossible prospect. As in, an ideal shouldn't be associated that closely with something as real as expectations.

    If you don't want to be disappointed, would your ideal death be where you expect the most painful death, but the actual experience was like a flip of a light switch?
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