Silicon Valley's Latest Lifehack: Death

The notion that death is optional has long been a particular obsession for the ultra-rich, most recently taking hold of those who have made their fortunes from technology.

It is by consciously confronting the certainty of death, and what follows from the certainty of death, that we finally become truly present for our lives. This is the kernel of wisdom in the cliché of the celebrity who claims that a brush with cancer was “the best thing that ever happened” to them: it pitches them into a more authentic mode of bein... See more

• Death is the human physical machine failing 


• There is no law of nature that says the machine must fail 


• Tim Urban is excited for the time when the person can decide when their machine fails 


• He thinks that people will look back on death, as it happens today, as barbaric 


• The ultimate achievement is humans dying when they are read

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