Should we Fear Death?

By Madeleine Kando

Here is a layman’s attempt at understanding

Thomas Nagel’s argument that Death is a bad thing.

Talking about death in a rational, unemotional way is the domain of philosophers. As long as it is not their death, that is. That is why I find what Thomas Nagel has to say about the Grim Reaper fascinating. Should we see death as a bad thing, a good thing, or neither?

Nagel argues that death is not bad in itself, but since death deprives you of life, it means that it is indirectly bad. Even if a life is full of misery? Yes, because even misery is an experience. Death is devoid of experience, so even a life full of misery is preferable to death.

Some philosophers in the past have argued that the fear of death is irrational since there won’t be any post-death experiences. You cannot be afraid of something that doesn’t exist. As Epicurus put it: 'Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.'

Another argument put forth against the fear of death is that it doesn’t matter whether you die young or old, since you will be dead forever either way.

A third point is that your nonexistence after death is just a mirror image of your nonexistence before your birth. Why should you fear one more than the other?

Unfortunately, Thomas Nagel criticizes all three arguments against the fear of death, in his essay ‘Death’. ‘Suppose’, Nagel says, ‘an intelligent person has a brain injury that reduces him to the mental condition of a contented baby. Certainly, this would be a grave misfortune for the person. Then is not the same true for death, where the loss is still more severe?’

The second argument, that dying young is not worse than living long, is just as poor. Being alive and having experiences is what is good about life. If a person dies prematurely, she is deprived of those experiences. Being dead is neither good nor bad since it is devoid of experiences. Therefore, what is evil about death is not the state of being dead, but the loss of life. More of life is better than less. Bach had more of it than Schubert because he lived longer.

Beautiful Kauai

Madeleine Kando

Of the many places I've traveled to in my long life, Kauai remains my favorite. I've had a decades-long love affair with this beautiful island. The moment the plane lands on this tiny speck of land in the vast Pacific Ocean, I feel at home. Every night, the soothing surf lulls me to sleep, and during the day, the trade winds caress my skin like a silken glove. The lush green of Kauai’s mountains and valleys contrasts perfectly with the red ochre of its soil. As the oldest of five sisters, Kauai, in my opinion, is also the most beautiful.

Kauai is rainbows and white foam, blue waters and soaring tropical birds. Bursting with life in May, it exudes an intoxicating fragrance. Her tree barks streaked with red and purple seem as if a child secretly finger-painted them.

Watching the sun slowly rise out of the sea, I spot two red-crested cardinals landing on the railing of my lanai. Their tiny, perfect forms with candy-colored crests hop along as I place crumbs for them. Timid mynas keep watch on the roof, resembling professors with yellow glasses. Their calls, unlike the high-pitched whistle of my little red-crested friends, are not exactly music to the ear.

Despite its serene beauty, Kauai's geologic history is a volcanic inferno. Mount Waialeale began erupting 10 million years ago, and the island itself is 5 million years old. Kauai spent half of its life submerged in the Pacific, until enough volcanic activity brought it above water. Erosion has since sculpted the island's breathtaking landscapes.

Constantly battered by waves, Kauai’s shoreline is marked by large caves, like bite marks from an angry ocean. The deep valleys and razor-sharp ridges of the Waimea Canyon leave an indelible impression. Steep cliffs jut out into the ocean like a giant hand dipping its fingers into the foamy waves. Nature’s artistry needs no enhancement.

Gambler's Fallacy vs. Law of Large Numbers

Tom Kando

Here is a baffling mathematical problem which I have pondered for years: The "Gambler’s Fallacy” and the “Law of Large Numbers" seem to contradict each other:

Consider two statements: 

(1) “Previous outcomes do not affect the probabilities of the next (similar) event.” Take coin tosses for example, each having a fifty-fifty probability of head or tail, right? 

(2) The larger the number of coin tosses, the more likely you are to approach a fifty-fifty distribution of heads and tails, right? 

Statement number #2 implies that if you have just tossed a coin twelve times, and ALL twelve of those have resulted in heads (a probability of 1 in 4,096) as you proceed to toss the coin for the thirteenth time, you expect it to come out a tail, and you bet accordingly, as some gamblers sometimes do. 

But actually, the smart gambler might be better off betting on head because, given the outcome of the first twelve tosses, there is a chance that the coin was tampered with and is loaded towards “head.” 

Statisticians try to explain the irreconcilability of the two statements above by quoting the “law of large numbers.” In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a mathematical theorem which states that the average of the results obtained from a large number of independent and identical random samples converges to the true value, if it exists. More formally, the LLN states that given a sample of independent and identically distributed values, the sample mean converges to the true mean (Wikipedia).