If you could push a button to fast-forward yourself to the last day of your life, would you?

Are you ok? I’m not asking that to be glib, I just want to make sure this isn’t coming from a dark place.

yeah this is a weird question maybe more interesting is if you could push that button, live your last day, then go back to the present (with no memory of your last day obviously, for reasons that are best explained in Back to the Future), would you do that

no bc experience is overall cool despite the horrors

is this just a new version of this thread

If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

Unless I get to travel back with the memory intact, no. Pointless otherwise, whatever that last day is, it's going to suck - based on every known relative I've got a 30% chance of stroking out working a menial job, 25% some horrible disease finally wins, 24% car wreck, 20% dying on the operating table during heart surgery, 1% other horrible fate.

The horrible disease is probably Alzheimer's so future jumping just to enjoy my last day of dementia, hard hard hard pass. If I get to travel forward and experience that day and come back knowing that's my fate at least I can choose a point and, uh, take care of things in advance.

If I just got to find out the exact day and time I'd die, absolutely yes to that. I look up spoilers to movies while I'm watching them and read the last few pages of books first. Spoil my death, hell yeah. Knowing I've somehow got 30 more years of this bullshit would definitely make it easier some days - "what's the worst that can happen, I die? Nope!"

wtf lol

Also curious to know what you are thinking of with that question.

Is it the end logic of a sci-fi scenario where you can skip moments in your life ? Is it about watching your own life drama unfold as if you were a character in a film ? (Not necessarily with great suspense if your agony is slow, and I guess we skip the paradoxes about trying to escape an inevitable end).

I'm thinking in terms of simulated experience and hypothetical projections, but your question sounds more like determinism and "your actual real death", in which case, I can't say I'm eager to have knowledge about what happens on that day, and the button pushing sounds like a weird suicide.

Of note that I'm currently stuck in Paris waiting for a flight that I had to reschedule 24h later, with nothing much to do other than work, so I'm exactly in that limbo moment where skipping time makes plenty of sense.

oh lord not this one again

do I want to commit suicide? no.

i would instead push a button where I could freeze/unfreeze time and do all the things I want to do in the limited time available

is this just a new version of this thread

If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Sunday, November 12, 2023 12:03 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh kind of! Sorry, I didn't know about that thread. I think my version of the button is better specified!

look up spoilers to movies while I'm watching them and read the last few pages of books first.

Yeah this is a good comparison -- I mean, like you're reading a book, the book is good, but nonetheless you just skip to the end to find out what happened (and I don't mean skip to the end and then finish reading the book -- no going back! -- I mean skip to the end instead of reading the book.)

Is it about watching your own life drama unfold

No, you don't watch, you just go to bed one night and the next day (for you) you've arrived at the end. In my mental setup you don't have memories of what happened in between, people just tell you how things turned out, but I am open to flexibility on this point

Who am I kidding, I'm not even fast-forwarding to the end of "Heart of the Sunrise"

guns or butter? you have to dress up as one and beat a pig to death

― have a nice Blog (imago), Thursday, 2 May 2013 21:19 (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I worry about how things are going to turn out in the near-term future of my life, and I worry about making good decisions in general, but I don't find that I'm that desperately curious to know how my life as a whole is going to turn out. That almost seems too big to fit the scope of what I'm able to care about in the present.

My answer: absolutely. I am not actively suicidal at this stage of my life, thank goodness, but there is not a day that goes by that I wish I hadn’t succeeded in my first attempt.

I’m personally SO HAPPY that medically assisted death exists in Canada now. I had a relative access this resource after an ALS diagnosis and it was great for everyone. I can’t really express enough the beauty and grace of such a way of dying, being able to choose the date, inform friends and family, and celebrate life before the event, rather than after

fwiw, I don't consider medically-assisted suicide to fit the analogy of 'pushing a fast forward button to the end of one's life', but as a personal decision that is thoughtfully incorporated into the whole fabric of one's life. You still end up living that life right through to the last day. Based on that understanding of the choices, I voted 'never'.

Oh, I guess I didn’t describe the synapse between the points there… I feel as if I’m fairly assured of how my life will end, barring any sudden accident, and that gives me daily comfort

probably not but you never know and would love to have this device in my back pocket just in case

No because it'd be like skipping through 3 seasons of Sopranos, I'd be asking who 25% of the people near my bedside were and confused about half the new technology

yeah but you would have been spared Ralph Cifaretto

milo otm. lol fucken nailed it.

(sidebar: i spoiled an entire fucking agatha christie book in seventh grade english doing this. we were reading it together aloud as a class and it drug out for a week or more, me sitting there having to feign shock at the end of every chapter like i didn't already know who the murderer was. in this scenario i'd go around on the day of my death, asking anyone who made eye contact, all mockingly, "what're ya gonna do, kill me lol?" ofc this all revolves around my death being a murder, which i hope it isn't holy shit this is a dark topic. remember the death clock on futurama? same energy.)

to the op: that's a no from me.

i would instead push a button where I could freeze/unfreeze time and do all the things I want to do in the limited time available

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 12 November 2023 7:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was rueing life without this button recently with a friend, but I’ve realised this would make living such a boring exercise.

I would never press any button that makes life anything other than what it is. I’ll wait for horrible misery to befall me before that opinion changes.

^^that statement needs further elaborating in light of recent (and ever present) world events. I don’t mean nothing in this world should ever change. I mean I think taking agency over time/space/life itself in any of these meta-changethefabricofreality ways could only lead to regret in the long run. I would like to change the political/financial/personal world for many, but within the confines of what we have been given

I’m sorry for all who feel otherwise. I wish this world was kinder

xp ohhhhh!

ignore that H.P. was for a different post

I hope to make other lives better and that is enough reason to keep living
but I don't think I'll personally ever enjoy life. Press the button.

H.P at 5:09 13 Nov 23

i would instead push a button where I could freeze/unfreeze time and do all the things I want to do in the limited time available

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 12 November 2023 7:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was rueing life without this button recently with a friend, but I’ve realised this would make living such a boring exercise

i kinda get the feeling that instead of all these big imaginary buttons you might discover theres several small buttons a day you could actually press for a lot of this stuff lads

Seems odd to have a single button and not a dashboard dashboard, eg: a pause button, a rewind button, a slow down button, a button to jump into someone else’s life and take it over from that point onwards, a button for changing incarnation entirely (eg tree, dolphin, blue whale) etc

I'm a busy man, I don't have time to imagine any more buttons.

dmac otm

The proviso was the entirety of the premise my friend and I were discussing. But without the march of time, without death, all those things seem without a point, thus infused with boredom.

I would press a button that allowed me to write on a message board without using words like "proviso" "premise" "march of time" "thus" or "infused" tbh.

I would like a button that could pause other peoples lives, so they could consider what they've done while I give them enough time to careful meter out the apologies I so dearly deserve

Taking “Have you ever been cancelled?” to a whole new level!

In the future, everyone will be cancelled for 15 minutes

I would push that button purely out of my morbid curiosity.

but shit, imagine pressing that button AND NOTHING HAPPENS!

nice

"I just see the back of my own head?"

code sent to your gmail to confirm you want to push the button

https://media.tenor.com/7hqb5OAdkbEAAAAC/daigo-fgc.gif

but shit, imagine pressing that button AND NOTHING HAPPENS!

I'm wondering what happens to the version of me that goes on living in the interim after I push the button (if by stipulation, "pushing the button changes nothing about what happens in your life.") Does it remember having just pushed the button and nothing happening to it? Maybe the memory of pushing the button gets zapped out, idk.

ah my point was that the day you push that button just happens to be the day you die

but that's a good point about what does version of you go through, as that person has to live your normal life until the final day, but they will have pushed that button too.

what if you push the button and you go backward in time and realize you've been dead for the last five years

That's the sequel movie

The proviso was the entirety of the premise my friend and I were discussing. But without the march of time, without death, all those things seem without a point, thus infused with boredom.

If my friend, while I was spending time with them, wanted to center the conversation on how time itself is pointless and infused with boredom, I would find it hard not to take that a little personally. Like geez bud, fine I can take a hint.

good point well made

My point is the opposite! Time spent (emphasis on “spent”) is what makes things not boring. I could have done anything with this time which is a limited resource; deciding to spend it with a friend tautologically gives that time with a friend value. Time is the primary resource we’ve been dealt to work with in this life

i get you, idk how i misread that. a fried brain from a lifetime of poorly-used time.

I enjoy spending time with friends, but I also enjoy music, films and books, also piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.

I enjoy spending my time posting on message boards about imaginary buttons

i spend my time having a bunch of people who think they're looking out for me drive me to my wit's end. but...still not fast-forwarding through that so I get to actually yell at them first

xxp but would you push a button to fast-forward yourself to midnight on the dunes of the cape?

Would I press that button?
Probably end up at O'Malleys

if you push that button
your ass gotta go

as long as we leavin thievin

The proviso is of course that while the world is frozen I can listen to music / watch films / read books / write as much as I want. if that gets boring you can always unfreeze, but think I would be a heavy button user.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

c'mon, i read that nicholson baker book, i know what a lot of us are gonna do when we hit that freeze time button

Do you keep aging during the frozen time? Because I've got a feeling I'd eventually be 98 years old and maybe three months have passed in the real world.

No you don't age at all, it doesn't really make sense in terms of physics.

At this point in my life, late 50s, I would take immortality if offered. I often wish vampirism were a thing.

c'mon, i read that nicholson baker book, i know what a lot of us are gonna do when we hit that freeze time button

― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 15 November 2023 22:06 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hadn't even heard of it! TBH I have very little energy for that, especially since I hit my mid 40s, but I appreciate it's a popular hobby.

lol I read that one summer in college. I was not prepared.

Isn't it true that any frozen-time scenario means you have entered "Hammer Time", a limbo in which all your pants have become sparkly and spacious trip-hazards?

I prefer entering "Summer Time" where the living is breezy.

Marcus Aurelius has some quote like "Think often of the last day of your life" and I wonder if he means *yesterday* or if he means your final day

Of course, he's dead now.

xp do you really wonder that tho because it seems pretty obvious

My first thought would be to imagine pressing this button and the big day being tomorrow...

Of course, he's dead now.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 15 November 2023 23:28 (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was he vaxxed?!

was he vaxxed?!

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

i don't know, but lucius verus probably wasn't...

(is that a deep cut? am i spoiling the joke by talking about the Antonine Plague, the devastating epidemic that defined the reigns of marcus aurelius and his co-emperor lucius verus, an epidemic that was literally named after them?)

The Emperor's advisors said, Our Lord, we have a disease with your name all over it.

As people have said, and I've seen with my parents and palliative care patients, it's a real toss-up just how lucid one will be on the final day. You might have no idea "how it ends" whether you press a button or not.

medically assisted death exists in Canada now

Yes, but in a related issue, you have to be lucid enough to consent to it at the time of death. You can't ask them to wait until you might consider yourself doing really badly.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I really want to know what the specified date/event is for those three posters.

was thinking today about what happened on my half-mark day. In my 50's, so it's very likely I'm past the halfway mark... only after I'm gone will anyone be able to say what my 50% day was like; a boring, mundane day at the office? A glorious walk through the forest with a cherished ex? A day of travel? Who fucking knows

only after I'm gone will anyone be able to say what my 50% day was like

Just looking at that remark reminds me that we humans have a very strange relationship with numbers, counting things, adding them up, etc. Include myself in that 100%. F'rinstance when I glance at a digital time display that reads 12:34 I always experience a brief feeling of satisfaction.

Sorry for the thread drift. Carry on imagining ways to customize your deaths.