Thanks so much for writing this: it’s well written and thoughtful and frank. I am a psychologist, a writer and a “survivor” of shepherding my late husband through ten years of early Alzheimer’s disease. I wrote a memoir about the experience, “The Present Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Discovery.” The discovery part is how much I learned from the illness, the defeats, the vulnerabilities and also the hilarity (yes) of human decline. There are many ways to laugh at the absurdity of what we are all caught in: the great adventure of birth and death. I also took care of my first husband, 15 years my senior, for five years during the ten years of my second husband’s decline. My son, whose father was my first husband, brought his dad to my home while my ill husband was in the care center 25 miles up the road. First husband — who introduced me way back there to Zen Buddhism — suffered from mild cognitive impairment. I was at first angry and overwhelmed and then I became interested in whether I could take on the whole project (with a full time clinical practice and grown children and grandchildren). I could and I did and I learned a lot from it all. Why am I recounting this? Well, simply to say that these experiences were surprisingly fascinating. I am also a Zen practitioner. My attitude towards what happens seems to matter more than the actual happenings and circumstances. And I am no saint. In fact, I cringed and winced and was terrified as much as the next person. And yet, I retained an alert curiosity about what was happening. For this reason, I don’t want to check out prematurely. I do not know what it will be like precisely like for me to fail in life or physical activity. Thus far, I am doing ok, but I am interested in the adventure of failing as much as succeeding each day. Perhaps different from you, I value the complexity of illness and decline as much as the pleasure of health and risk-taking. We are all, in fact, different in our approaches to mortality and health, as your essay points out. I simply want to vote for the whole package — both the healthy and the unhealthy parts. None of it is fair or just, but it’s all interesting.
This is a wonderful thoughtful article about the fear of death and the value that we place on life. However, I want to ask about something else. I have presented terror management theory as credible in an article, so I was alarmed by your assertion that the support for the theory was a "hot mess" and your link to a failure to replicate study. It seems to me that I don't yet need to update my essay with a note about the replication failure, as it seems that this failure to replicate is not devastating to TMT, which has been found valid in a large 2010 meta-analysis. I wanted your thoughts about how bad failure to replicate needs to get before you abandon belief in a theory. I am not a professional psychologist by the way, and my training in statistics and research methodology is pretty minimal.
I'm no expert on Terror Management Theory, but it has long been suspected of being based on non-replicable findings. And meta-analyses won't save it because of the garbage-in-garbage-out problem of meta-analyses (if you meta-analyze 200 crappy, p-hacked studies, the results will flatter the actual evidence). Here is one meta-analyss that used bias-corrections and when this was done, the effect was either very small or disappeared altogether: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35950528/#:~:text=Abstract,social%20norms;%20terror%20management%20theory. You can find plenty of other failed replications as well. In any case, the philosophical ideas behind the theory, generated by Ernest Becker, are interesting...and with better studies perhaps one day they will be discovered to be true!
I agree with you. It was touch & go for me at birth. I was a breach baby. And almost died several times as a kid, so my philosophy is: Look forward to death. Welcome it. If you are afraid to die, you will be afraid to live…really live. Don’t be afraid to take chances... not stupid risks, but explore life and everything it has to offer. When it is your time to die, and you will, you will die happy knowing you have lived a full life. As an artist, I have always wanted to get beyond surfaces appearances. I volunteered for Vietnam because I wanted to find the underbelly of existence--cutting through incredible jungles and wading through still waters -- facing life feeding on death. I was mortared, shot and bombed but it just wasn't my time. (I wrote about it: A Haunting Beauty) That is the way I have lived. Now in my 80s, I am healthy and happy with a wonderful wife and large family. I think I will want to live as long as I can think. I can't be afraid to face decline--that is just the end phase of living. I want to experience that too.
Great piece Mickey, and a nice excuse for me to reminisce on the decisions I made in my early 20s by "think[ing] of the story". My friends and I would often convince each other to do borderline idiotic things because we knew it'd make for a great yarn in hindsight.
Nothing pains me more than seeing a generation squander potential memories they'll forever cherish (or at least stories their friends will find hilarious) in favour of 4am wake-ups, ice baths, and all the other Huberman endorsed bullshit. Staying fit and healthy is great—I mostly lay off the drink, run 5 days a week, and eat a vegetarian diet—but the neo-teetotallers, in my view, take it much too far.
"I live a genuinely, ridiculously charmed life. Nonetheless, I think I view existence differently than many people I know. Nonexistence just doesn't terrify me."
It's not despite your life being "ridiculously charmed" but BECAUSE OF IT. The same thing applies (possibly more so -- I have no idea of his private life) to Kahneman. He has had enough, not in as in "enough of the bad stuff" but as in "he was done, completed, fulfilled" (what a life indeed!).
My personal feelings about all this have changed since my life and my brain broke as a result of unexpected loss few years ago. Before, I had been ok with the idea of dying, even not necessarily in advanced old age: my life was, on some deeper level, complete -- or fulfilled enough for this. Now, I feel "this trainwreck can't be IT, I really want another chance". I don't think I deserve another chance (I don't think anyone deserves anything and have absolutely no ideas of just world) but emotionally I do feel more clingy-to-life now: paradoxically because the life I have now is less satisfying (even tho it's more peaceful/less volatile than it used to be), more pointless, much more meaningless.
good piece. but my model is different and unmentioned, so I'll detail my view.
I'm seeing it all from a pretty utility maximization angle, which covers everything and changes it all.
Motorcycle? expected negative utility from death (should not existing be an issue? good complication! but most damage from accidents is lifelong reduction is quality of life). the expected average cost of this is just too high. and in living where motorcycle is the regular way to get around. I gave it up once I calculated it's not far from cigarette smoking in terms of life expectancy reduction.
longevity stuff. dumb if you suffer 6 hours a day to maybe live 10 more years. and ofc questionable advice etc.
but normally longevity correlates with more optimal vitality and health. so efficient longevity ideas can be utility positive! provided the agony isn't excessive too!
and avoiding risks / excitement ≠ maximizing life utility. the Copenhagen decision seems very rational. "being calculated and safe" isn't being rational, but more of a grandfatherly life attitude.
Kahneman was great. happy to have met him. and I convinced him to jump with him in the car when he drove alone for an hour. was good fun for all.
it's amazing how many outsiders who didn't even know him "know" his utility calculation to judge them! he definitely knew his numbers.
This is an honest piece, Michael, and I am not in disagreement. Thank you for writing it. I think I have another perspective which I hope is worth considering. I used to frame the argument like you have – living a good life, not necessarily a long one (and I think this is still the case, but with caveats). And then I became seriously ill. I had previously thought the worst thing about suffering severe illness was the suffering itself. But when it happened to me, the actual worst thing was the injustice of it all.
The main reason I am alive today is not because I was somehow stronger than those who didn’t make it – I was more fortunate. I had the education, financial security and family support most people didn’t. I also learned that even if you could magically cure someone with the most horrendous disease instantly, the injustice doesn’t end. Trying to build a social life from scratch, find a job with a massive hole in the CV, just simply relating to other people weighs heavily on an individual. And a sick person trying to be healthy is sort of left to their own devices on this front (well, all fronts to a degree, but this one especially).
An understanding of the injustices has provoked a deep emotion within me, one which does not fade while suffering (in fact grows stronger). This is where the motivation of longevity has come from within me. I want to live a long time to have the greatest impact possible in trying to help correct these injustices.
I hope this is perceived as adding to your view rather than contradicting it. That is my intention. I have a place for enjoyment in my life, but also an urge to tackle injustice. And I don’t know whether you have suffered a serious illness as well (I really hope you haven’t!) and came away feeling different.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Alex. I have fortunately not suffered with a serious illness so perhaps my perspective would change if I did. Thanks for helping me see your side...
Thanks a lot for this post! I feel very similar; particularly about the quantity vs. quality aspect. You briefly mention one thing that is also important for me: Whether or how much others depend on me: Especially my kids and - to a lesser degree - people in my team at work (eg., Ph.D. students). What matters to me in this regard is whether or to what degree I can support the people around versus me being/becoming (more of) a burden.
Thanks so much for writing this: it’s well written and thoughtful and frank. I am a psychologist, a writer and a “survivor” of shepherding my late husband through ten years of early Alzheimer’s disease. I wrote a memoir about the experience, “The Present Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Discovery.” The discovery part is how much I learned from the illness, the defeats, the vulnerabilities and also the hilarity (yes) of human decline. There are many ways to laugh at the absurdity of what we are all caught in: the great adventure of birth and death. I also took care of my first husband, 15 years my senior, for five years during the ten years of my second husband’s decline. My son, whose father was my first husband, brought his dad to my home while my ill husband was in the care center 25 miles up the road. First husband — who introduced me way back there to Zen Buddhism — suffered from mild cognitive impairment. I was at first angry and overwhelmed and then I became interested in whether I could take on the whole project (with a full time clinical practice and grown children and grandchildren). I could and I did and I learned a lot from it all. Why am I recounting this? Well, simply to say that these experiences were surprisingly fascinating. I am also a Zen practitioner. My attitude towards what happens seems to matter more than the actual happenings and circumstances. And I am no saint. In fact, I cringed and winced and was terrified as much as the next person. And yet, I retained an alert curiosity about what was happening. For this reason, I don’t want to check out prematurely. I do not know what it will be like precisely like for me to fail in life or physical activity. Thus far, I am doing ok, but I am interested in the adventure of failing as much as succeeding each day. Perhaps different from you, I value the complexity of illness and decline as much as the pleasure of health and risk-taking. We are all, in fact, different in our approaches to mortality and health, as your essay points out. I simply want to vote for the whole package — both the healthy and the unhealthy parts. None of it is fair or just, but it’s all interesting.
Love this...
I believe that many of the people who fight to live as long as possible can't bear the chance that they'll lose their identity and ego.
This is a wonderful thoughtful article about the fear of death and the value that we place on life. However, I want to ask about something else. I have presented terror management theory as credible in an article, so I was alarmed by your assertion that the support for the theory was a "hot mess" and your link to a failure to replicate study. It seems to me that I don't yet need to update my essay with a note about the replication failure, as it seems that this failure to replicate is not devastating to TMT, which has been found valid in a large 2010 meta-analysis. I wanted your thoughts about how bad failure to replicate needs to get before you abandon belief in a theory. I am not a professional psychologist by the way, and my training in statistics and research methodology is pretty minimal.
The meta-analysis: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=0b4d99844cb43edcccbee0ef665b0511455fc0fb
My article: https://open.substack.com/pub/eclecticinquiries/p/terror-and-human-weirdness?r=4952v2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I'm no expert on Terror Management Theory, but it has long been suspected of being based on non-replicable findings. And meta-analyses won't save it because of the garbage-in-garbage-out problem of meta-analyses (if you meta-analyze 200 crappy, p-hacked studies, the results will flatter the actual evidence). Here is one meta-analyss that used bias-corrections and when this was done, the effect was either very small or disappeared altogether: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35950528/#:~:text=Abstract,social%20norms;%20terror%20management%20theory. You can find plenty of other failed replications as well. In any case, the philosophical ideas behind the theory, generated by Ernest Becker, are interesting...and with better studies perhaps one day they will be discovered to be true!
I’m one hot meal away from doing terrible things!
I agree with you. It was touch & go for me at birth. I was a breach baby. And almost died several times as a kid, so my philosophy is: Look forward to death. Welcome it. If you are afraid to die, you will be afraid to live…really live. Don’t be afraid to take chances... not stupid risks, but explore life and everything it has to offer. When it is your time to die, and you will, you will die happy knowing you have lived a full life. As an artist, I have always wanted to get beyond surfaces appearances. I volunteered for Vietnam because I wanted to find the underbelly of existence--cutting through incredible jungles and wading through still waters -- facing life feeding on death. I was mortared, shot and bombed but it just wasn't my time. (I wrote about it: A Haunting Beauty) That is the way I have lived. Now in my 80s, I am healthy and happy with a wonderful wife and large family. I think I will want to live as long as I can think. I can't be afraid to face decline--that is just the end phase of living. I want to experience that too.
Great piece Mickey, and a nice excuse for me to reminisce on the decisions I made in my early 20s by "think[ing] of the story". My friends and I would often convince each other to do borderline idiotic things because we knew it'd make for a great yarn in hindsight.
Nothing pains me more than seeing a generation squander potential memories they'll forever cherish (or at least stories their friends will find hilarious) in favour of 4am wake-ups, ice baths, and all the other Huberman endorsed bullshit. Staying fit and healthy is great—I mostly lay off the drink, run 5 days a week, and eat a vegetarian diet—but the neo-teetotallers, in my view, take it much too far.
I propose a seemingly paradoxical answer.
"I live a genuinely, ridiculously charmed life. Nonetheless, I think I view existence differently than many people I know. Nonexistence just doesn't terrify me."
It's not despite your life being "ridiculously charmed" but BECAUSE OF IT. The same thing applies (possibly more so -- I have no idea of his private life) to Kahneman. He has had enough, not in as in "enough of the bad stuff" but as in "he was done, completed, fulfilled" (what a life indeed!).
My personal feelings about all this have changed since my life and my brain broke as a result of unexpected loss few years ago. Before, I had been ok with the idea of dying, even not necessarily in advanced old age: my life was, on some deeper level, complete -- or fulfilled enough for this. Now, I feel "this trainwreck can't be IT, I really want another chance". I don't think I deserve another chance (I don't think anyone deserves anything and have absolutely no ideas of just world) but emotionally I do feel more clingy-to-life now: paradoxically because the life I have now is less satisfying (even tho it's more peaceful/less volatile than it used to be), more pointless, much more meaningless.
Thanks for sharing this really interesting perspective. That had not occured to me at all...
good piece. but my model is different and unmentioned, so I'll detail my view.
I'm seeing it all from a pretty utility maximization angle, which covers everything and changes it all.
Motorcycle? expected negative utility from death (should not existing be an issue? good complication! but most damage from accidents is lifelong reduction is quality of life). the expected average cost of this is just too high. and in living where motorcycle is the regular way to get around. I gave it up once I calculated it's not far from cigarette smoking in terms of life expectancy reduction.
longevity stuff. dumb if you suffer 6 hours a day to maybe live 10 more years. and ofc questionable advice etc.
but normally longevity correlates with more optimal vitality and health. so efficient longevity ideas can be utility positive! provided the agony isn't excessive too!
and avoiding risks / excitement ≠ maximizing life utility. the Copenhagen decision seems very rational. "being calculated and safe" isn't being rational, but more of a grandfatherly life attitude.
Kahneman was great. happy to have met him. and I convinced him to jump with him in the car when he drove alone for an hour. was good fun for all.
it's amazing how many outsiders who didn't even know him "know" his utility calculation to judge them! he definitely knew his numbers.
Thanks for sharing!
This is an honest piece, Michael, and I am not in disagreement. Thank you for writing it. I think I have another perspective which I hope is worth considering. I used to frame the argument like you have – living a good life, not necessarily a long one (and I think this is still the case, but with caveats). And then I became seriously ill. I had previously thought the worst thing about suffering severe illness was the suffering itself. But when it happened to me, the actual worst thing was the injustice of it all.
The main reason I am alive today is not because I was somehow stronger than those who didn’t make it – I was more fortunate. I had the education, financial security and family support most people didn’t. I also learned that even if you could magically cure someone with the most horrendous disease instantly, the injustice doesn’t end. Trying to build a social life from scratch, find a job with a massive hole in the CV, just simply relating to other people weighs heavily on an individual. And a sick person trying to be healthy is sort of left to their own devices on this front (well, all fronts to a degree, but this one especially).
An understanding of the injustices has provoked a deep emotion within me, one which does not fade while suffering (in fact grows stronger). This is where the motivation of longevity has come from within me. I want to live a long time to have the greatest impact possible in trying to help correct these injustices.
I hope this is perceived as adding to your view rather than contradicting it. That is my intention. I have a place for enjoyment in my life, but also an urge to tackle injustice. And I don’t know whether you have suffered a serious illness as well (I really hope you haven’t!) and came away feeling different.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Alex. I have fortunately not suffered with a serious illness so perhaps my perspective would change if I did. Thanks for helping me see your side...
Thanks a lot for this post! I feel very similar; particularly about the quantity vs. quality aspect. You briefly mention one thing that is also important for me: Whether or how much others depend on me: Especially my kids and - to a lesser degree - people in my team at work (eg., Ph.D. students). What matters to me in this regard is whether or to what degree I can support the people around versus me being/becoming (more of) a burden.