Overview

The "Modal Rationalist Anti-Death Stance" goes something like this:

Since time immemorial, people have told comforting stories about the afterlife to avoid confronting the unpleasant truth that death is oblivion. With modern science, we have come to understand that none of these stories are true. Knowing this, we can now see the urgency and importance of fighting against death by technological means. Once the rest of humanity shakes off their religious illusions and realizes that there is no afterlife, they will join us in support of this project.

(Examples: Eliezer's lament for his brother; The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant)

Let me be straightforward with my motivation here - I don't like this narrative because it self-conceives as somehow fundamentally alien to human nature and human history, as if before LessWrong came along we were all wretched and benighted creatures little better than animals, and as if the same could be said of our contemporaries who hear the good news of LessWrong but reject it. I would prefer this not to be the case. I would instead like to think of small-r-rationality as merely the latest version of the perennial project of trying to understand the world and ourselves, and that the "normies" and the people of the past are not so different from you and me.

That being said, I could very well be wrong about that premise, to my dismay. But I would at least like to try it on for size.

As for death and the afterlife, I will therefore make two claims:

• Historical thesis: Stories about a "good" afterlife (at least, of something better than non-existence) are not universal, but are a fairly late innovation dating to the Axial Age (roughly, mid 1st millennium BC).
• Psychological thesis: Stories about the afterlife have no motivating power; rather they are epiphenomenal emanations (confabulations, if you will) of the sub-rational attitudes that people already have. Therefore, convincing people through scientific evidence of the non-existence of the afterlife will generally have no effect on their behavior.

The historical thesis lends support to the psychological thesis. Combing through ancient literature might seem irrelevant in a discussion about the long-term future of humanity; however, if we want to make sweeping claims about "human nature" (such that we can form a picture of a "human-aligned AI/singularity") then we need to consult a wide variety of sources to gain an understanding of what human nature actually is. It is my contention that the Modal Rationalist Anti-Death Stance is a reaction against a cultural tendency which is highly specific to the current historical moment, and that only to a small subset of the people in it, and thus carries with it certain assumptions about human nature which a wider survey of history will challenge.

Second, even setting aside the question of what people were like 3,000+ years ago, we can also see support for the psychological thesis by observing people's revealed preferences in the present.

Survey of ancient afterlife ideas

In each ancient tradition examined below, we can find references to the afterlife in the very earliest sources. But the question is, at what point do we start seeing an "Axial" concept of the afterlife? That is: an afterlife that looms large in the imagination of the living, where the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished despite this not happening here on earth.

I claim that we can identify a specific point in the evolution of each tradition at which this idea is introduced. This is sometimes wrapped up in the broader notion of the "Axial Age" although that term is somewhat misleading because it wasn't necessarily at the same time in each place, and even if it was, it seems more likely that this was a result of parallel civilizational developments than by horizontal transmission.

Secondary sources

• IAAM: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Frankfort et al., 1946)
• HAH: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Bart Ehrman, 2020)

Egypt

In Egypt we clearly see the idea of such a "judgemental afterlife" by the New Kingdom period (c. 1550-1069 BC), quite a bit earlier than in other civilizations. This is famously depicted in the "weighing of the heart" scene in the Book of the Dead:

The feather on the other side of the scale represents Maat, i.e. "truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice". Now while this is certainly suggestive, it alone is not enough to prove an Axial understanding of the afterlife, since there's a tendency for concepts like "Maat" to shift in meaning over time as the society's morality changes, and for earlier texts to be interpreted anachronistically using a later meaning. But here at least we have more to go on, since the Book of the Dead also includes the 42 negative confessions that go into a lot more detail:

I have not committed sin.... I have not committed robbery with violence.... I have not stolen.... I have not slain men and women....

So, it's pretty clear that this is what we modern people would recognize as a code of morality being enforced in the afterlife.

But according to IAAM, this is not representative of the earlier thinking of the Old (c. 2700-2200 BC) and Middle (2055-1650 BC) Kingdom periods.

The spirit [during the Middle Kingdom] was still an encouragement to fill this life with activity, and each man was given an opportunity to realize the bustling, practical, important life here. Consequently, they continued to love this life and defy death. The definition of success may have shifted slightly, but it was still true that a successful life carried over and repeated itself happily in the next world. Consequently, the tombs, which were the bridges between two existences, continued to stress the abundance of life. The scenes of hunting, shipbuilding, and merrymaking were as vigorous as ever. Only an increased attention to scenes of the burial and a few representations of religious feasts suggest to us a new sobriety. It was still the case that the greatest good lay in the good life here and not an escape from this life to a different future life or a resigned submission to the gods. Individual man still enjoyed himself. [IAAM p. 109-110]

When the revolution was complete, we find that the goals of life had shifted from a vigorous, individualistic existence in this world, which would be rewarded by repetition in the next world, to a conforming and formalistic life in this world. [IAAM p. 113]

The popular image of the ancient Egyptians as being "obsessed with death" is probably derived from the New Kingdom period (during which the Book of the Dead was composed). In earlier periods, clearly, there was some notion of the afterlife, but it did not loom large in the imagination; i.e. people did not think of the earthly life as a "mere" prelude to the more important afterlife. The afterlife was just more of the same. Therefore, in utilitarian terms, the old Egyptian afterlife was simply a scalar multiple of the utility of the earthly life, and so it could not influence one's decisions. The old Egyptians built pyramids not so they could rest easy in the afterlife, but so that they could keep building pyramids forever. (Compare the Nietzschean doctrine of "eternal return", as in Thus Spake Zarathustra ch. 57.)

Mesopotamia

In Mesopotamia we first find a theme that will later recur elsewhere - that there may be an "afterlife" of some sort, but only a uniformly bleak and marginal existence which pales in comparison to "real" life. All human beings are headed there, regardless of their deeds in life.

The main strands of Sumero-Akkadian thought held no prospect of an afterlife, at any rate of a kind that anyone might look forward to. In the Gilgamesh epic, the aging folk hero, haunted by the prospect of his own death, sets off to visit Utnapishtim, who, with his wife, was the only mortal to have achieved immortality. He meets Siduri, the wine maiden, who exhorts him to make the most of the present for "the life which thou seekest thou wilt not find." There was no judgment after death, a common fate awaiting the good and the bad alike. Death was conceived of in terms of appalling grimness, unrelieved by any hope of salvation through human effort or divine compassion. [Britannica]

The sustained Egyptian preoccupation with death and the hereafter, however, found no equivalent in Mesopotamia. On the contrary, death was understood there as an almost complete destruction of personality; and man's chief desires were for a worthy life and freedom from disease, with a good reputation and descendants to survive him [IAAM p. 365]

Interestingly, even in later writings we don't find any mention of judgement in the afterlife. The closest we get (according to IAAM) is the Ludlul bēl nēmeqi ("Poem of the Righteous Sufferer", dated c. 1307-1282 BC) where the narrator bemoans the misfortunes that have befallen him for seemingly no reason. He comes close to death, but Marduk restores him to health, also with no explanation.

Greece and Rome

Homer describes the Underworld similarly - the people there are mere shades, lacking vigor and vitality and envying the living. Again there is no "justice" there, since all humans receive the same fate. Even the great hero Achilles has nothing good to say about it:

When they meet, Odysseus pronounces that Achilles is more blessed than anyone who has ever lived: because of his military prowess, the Greeks honor him “as a god.” And now, Odysseus exclaims, “you “lord it over the dead in all your power” (Odyssey, Book 11, line 552). He tells the valiant hero he has no reason to grieve at having died. Achilles protests with the most memorable and moving words of the entire chapter:

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” (Odyssey, Book 11, lines 555–58) [HAH ch. 3]

However, many centuries later, in Plato's Apology and Phaedo, we find Socrates espousing a more optimistic view.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, [...] I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. [Apology]

...[T]hese must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil, who are compelled to wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life; and they continue to wander until the desire which haunts them is satisfied and they are imprisoned in another body. [...] But he who is a philosopher or lover of learning, and is entirely pure at departing, is alone permitted to reach the gods. [Phaedo]

Some time later the idea of "Elysium" as a well-deserved afterlife reward finds more clear elucidation, as in Virgil's Aeneid:

Some six or seven centuries after the Homeric epics, Virgil does not populate Hades with shades that all experience the same boring and pleasure-free existence. He writes of hellish torments for some and heavenly glories for others. Most have to be punished for their sins before being given a second chance at life. [HAH ch. 3]

Above, however, see the Epicurean Epitaph, found widely on ancient Roman graves in a time roughly contemperaneous with Virgil: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (NFFNSNC). I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. Apparently belief in annihilation is not such a new thing!

India

Inasmuch as the Vedas say anything about the afterlife, there does not seem to be any moralistic aspect to it. As in the Mesopotamian and Homeric view, the most important thing to ensuring a good afterlife is the proper performance of rituals.

(Caveat: It is difficult to find unbiased explications of the Vedic texts. Later Axial writers have a strong motivation to read their preferred interpretations into the Vedas.)

The concept most associated with the Dharmic religions, i.e. that the accumulation of positive or negative karma would influence one's rebirth, is not found until the mid 1st millennium BC, i.e. several centuries after the Vedas, in the time of the Buddha and the Upanishads. Of course, the teachings of the Buddha are well known. But also, around the same time we have the Bhagavad Gita saying:

The Supreme Personality of Godhead [Krishna] said: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead. ... For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. ... O Pārtha [Arjuna], how can a person who knows that the soul is indestructible, eternal, unborn and immutable kill anyone or cause anyone to kill? ... It is said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable and immutable. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body. If, however, you think that the soul is always born and dies forever, you still have no reason to lament, O mighty-armed [Arjuna]. One who has taken his birth is sure to die, and after death one is sure to take birth again. Therefore, in the unavoidable discharge of your duty, you should not lament. All created beings are unmanifest in their beginning, manifest in their interim state, and unmanifest again when annihilated. So what need is there for lamentation?

The similarities with Socrates and Epicurus are striking. However, one aspect of the Bhagavad Gita is easily overlooked: When the god Krishna addresses the man Arjuna, it is not to help Arjuna come to terms with his own death. Rather, Krishna is trying to help Arjuna feel less guilty about slaying his kinsmen-turned-enemies on the battlefield. Whether Arjuna himself was ready to face death in battle was never in question.

Israel

Modern-day Jews and especially Christians might be surprised to learn that the Hebrew Bible has very little to say about the afterlife. The later interpretations from Christianity and rabbinic Judaism definitely seem like forced readings, at least to me.

Whether Sheol was a place or, as seems more likely to me, simply in most instances the grave, the Hebrew poets say a good deal about it, and none of it very good. It clearly was not a place of reward for the righteous. On the contrary, Sheol was the realm of death, to be avoided as long as possible. It is not that it was boring; it was that it was a complete diminution of life, to the point of virtual nonexistence. ... Thus the terms used to describe Sheol are bleak, not because there is any pain involved, but because there is nothing involved. It is a realm of "forgetfulness" (Psalm 88:12); "silence" (Psalm 115:17), and "darkness" (Job 17:13). God is not even present there and, since the deceased are dead, none of them can worship him: "The dead do not praise the LORD, / nor do any that go down in silence" (Psalm 115:17). [HAH ch. 5]

For Israel, through the greater part of the Old Testament period, man's destiny, then, was a mundane affair. His personal good was to be found in this life, and his achievement, whatever it might be, related only to this world. He found a sort of survival, however, in his family. So it was that children were prized even more than is common in human society. The tribe and nation also were vehicles to carry his significance into far-distant times and, as such, commanded his loyalty. The idea is not strange to us, unless in its formulation; for it is essentially the motivation that in our age impels hosts of men to give themselves freely on the battlefield: they do so for an idea, for the survival of human freedom, that is, for the persistence of our culture with its possibilities and promise of a much better culture arising therefrom. But apart from such hopes, the Israelite sought meaning and satisfaction within the days of his own years. [IAAM p. 264]

It is only much later, in the Hellenistic period, that the Jews started talking about the coming resurrection and day of judgement. (Of course, Christianity is directly descended from this line of thinking.)

(One thing that's somewhat puzzling is: Why was early Judaism seemingly not influenced by contemporary Egyptian ideas of the afterlife? Even the earliest hypothesized dates for the composition of the Pentateuch postdate the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And yet, the line of transmission seems to go from Egypt first to Greece, and only later (after Alexander's conquests) to Israel. This doesn't make sense geographically.)

Scandinavia

The Old Norse records date from well after Axial Age as usually understood, although one might argue that the associated ideas didn't reach Scandinavia until the Christian period and so their pagan beliefs were essentially pre-Axial.

In Norse mythology, brave warriors who die go to Valhalla, where they spend their days feasting and battling each other, and are miraculously healed again every day. (This resembles the early Egyptian concept, i.e. where the afterlife is spent doing the same things one did in life, only more so.) Valhalla is described in Gylfaginning as follows:

Then said Gangleri: "Thou sayest that all those men who have fallen in battle from the beginning of the world are now come to Odin in Valhall. What has he to give them for food? I should think that a very great host must be there." Then Hárr answered: "That which thou sayest is true: a very mighty multitude is there, but many more shall be, notwithstanding which it will seem all too small, in the time when the Wolf shall come."

The "Wolf" refers to Fenrir, who will attack the gods at the end of time and against whom all the warriors in Valhalla will be needed to fight.

Furthermore, in Eiríksmál (a poem composed in tribute to Erik Bloodaxe, who died c. 954):

BRAGI: Why do you expect Erik, rather than others?
ODIN: For in many lands has he reddened the blade / and borne a bloody sword.
BRAGI: Why did you then deprive him of victory, when you thought him so brave?
ODIN: For it is uncertain to know when the grey-coated wolf / attacks the seat of the gods.

This neatly sidesteps the baby-murdering issue discussed below. People go to Valhalla not as desert, compensation, incentive, justice, etc., but because Odin will need their services at some unknown time in the future that even he can't predict. And reading between the lines, he keeps them well-fed and constantly exercising so that they'll be in tiptop shape when that time comes. Therefore, there is no implication that the earthly life is inferior to the afterlife; dying is still regarded as regrettable. The afterlife is justified positively ("You are needed somewhere else") not negatively ("Life would be unfair otherwise").

Psychological thesis

Why bother with all this ancient history? Is it automatically discrediting to an idea that its origin can be historically dated? It's complicated. The way I see it, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"; i.e. the historical development of ideas is a parallel to the psychological structure of the individual human mind. At the earliest, most fundamental level, there is an instinctive passion for life, but also an equally visceral urge towards living a "good" life, and in extremis towards self-sacrifice for some greater goal. Contra the Modal Rationalist narrative, this latter impulse is not a self-interested consequence of a promised afterlife reward, but is temporally and logically prior to any such notions. Therefore, even after 2500 years, the Axial conception of the afterlife is still only assimilated into the human psyche on a superficial level. Just below the surface, the real animating passions of humanity are those represented in the pre-Axial writings.

On this view, the "Modal Rationalists" do not speak for humanity. They are rather the heirs of the small minority of over-scrupulous self-flagellating fanatics who actually took the myths seriously, rather than shrugging "Whatever" and getting on with their lives.

"Killing children is the most Christian thing you can do"

Religious folks may rationalize that death is really something good
(Something Good? Something GOOD? Eh?)
I think they’d change their minds if Singularity were understood
(I Am the Very Model of a Singularitarian)

Here is what I gathered when I first learned what Christians think about the afterlife: bad people go to hell, good people go to heaven. OK, simple enough. So then, I immediately thought, doesn't this mean that the best thing you can do for someone is to kill them before they've had a chance to commit sins, ideally as young children? Of course, you'd probably go to jail if you did this, maybe even be executed. But "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake", right? So surely God will reward your self-sacrifice by taking you to heaven also. What, you're saying that killing is expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments? Well, so much the worse for the Ten Commandments. The cost of you going to hell is still massively outweighed by the benefit of all those children going to heaven. Better pump those numbers up, just to be sure!

Clearly, no Christians actually accept this argument. And yet, given that it follows seemingly straightforwardly from the basic premises of Christianity, you would think that refuting it would be a top priority in any course of catechetical instruction. You would think that Sunday school teachers would have a well-rehearsed answer - "Ah yes little one, I'm glad you asked. In fact this was addressed by the first-century theologian Saint Foobar of Baz, who said..." But (speaking not from firsthand experience since I never went to Sunday school, but based on what I've heard) the reaction to kids who ask this question is just to look at them funny. And maybe to check in on them later to make sure they're not torturing squirrels in the backyard or something. (Well, not to worry, we turned out all right. We all found our way to LessWrong eventually!)

Likewise, you would think that such an important issue would feature prominently in theological debates in Christianity. But when I search online, all I can find are some random Reddit and Quora posts shouting into the void. Meanwhile, endless reams of parchment have been spent discussing such pressing concerns as transubstantiation, the procession of the Holy Ghost, etc.

All of this suggests that the Modal Rationalist mindset is profoundly at odds with the typical human condition. For most people, "Maybe we shouldn't kill innocent children, actually" is just intuitively obvious. This is a robust conclusion; no sophisticated theological argumentation is needed. But the Modal Rationalist view of human nature would hold that we are all just barely on the brink of being mass-child-murderers, and it is only through extensive scientific and philosophical investigation that we can convince ourselves otherwise.

Maybe you think this is an absurd and irrelevant strawman. But, counterpoint: aren't the following three statements logically equivalent, and therefore must all be accepted or rejected together?:

1. Consistent Christians really should support child murder; the only reason why they don't is because it's against the law or because they're secretly atheists.
2. The 9/11 terrorists committed those acts only because they believed they would be rewarded in the afterlife with 72 virgins.
3. If only they could see the error of their ways and realize that there is no afterlife, people who haven't signed up for cryonics would readily do so.

Ecological pro-deathism

It's hard to find any strain of thought that says death is good per se. "They're in a better place now" doesn't count, because an afterlife is by definition not actually death. There's the argument "Death brings meaning to life because it forces us to live interesting lives now rather than procrastinating indefinitely", but I've only ever heard that as a strawman as in e.g. Bostrom's tale, never as something said with sincerity. But there is a certain line of thinking that has some cachet. It goes something like this: "We humans are not merely disembodied minds, but are flesh-and-blood animals who partake in a material continuity with the rest of earthly life. This materiality is essential to who we are. Therefore, an uploaded digital consciousness is not really 'me', but is a fate worse than death. We should not aspire to personal immortality, but instead to return to the earth and thus continue the circle of life." See e.g. Val Plumwood, Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death.

Or see also the burial scene from Chernobyl. Many of the commenters on the video seem to find the fate of the Chernobyl firefighters viscerally horrifying in a way that goes beyond their own suffering and death: "At least the rest of us can take comfort that our bodies will nourish the life that comes after; but for them, even that was denied." Maybe it's just the evocative effect of the music, but I have to admit, this does resonate with me. (After all, aren't I allowed to care about things outside my own consciousness, e.g. things that happen after I die? Isn't that the whole point of altruism?)

The point is, none of these sentiments are based on any factual mistakes - nobody is saying that the soul lives on in the great Earth-consciousness, or whatever. The aversion to being separated from the biosphere seems to be primal and sub-rational.

But I don't know, I'm torn two ways about this. I would like to think that we can colonize space without losing our humanity in the process. Maybe a few generations of subsisting on lab-grown nutrient sludge will be necessary, but eventually we'll be able to establish new ecosystems on other planets and learn to appreciate them as well.