Here are two completely different ways of looking at death. One is a completely objective, coldly beautiful perspective. The other is deeply personal and troubling. Both are worth reading.
Here’s the scientific view:
Your probability of dying during a given year doubles every 8 years. For me, a 25-year-old American, the probability of dying during the next year is a fairly minuscule 0.03% — about 1 in 3,000. When I’m 33 it will be about 1 in 1,500, when I’m 42 it will be about 1 in 750, and so on. By the time I reach age 100 (and I do plan on it) the probability of living to 101 will only be about 50%. This is seriously fast growth — my mortality rate is increasing exponentially with age.
This is from the blog Gravity and Levity written by a young physicist, Brian Skinner….
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A very different view of death comes from the novelist Margaret Drabble. Writing in the Guardian, she writes about the implications of “artificially prolonged old age”:
As we move into our unwanted last decade, we will, entirely predictably, become lonelier and lonelier and more and more likely to suffer from dementia and more and more expensive to maintain.
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Click here to read the full post on Forbes.
Scientists only think without expectations but novelist write with expectations or sorrow