Most people, I imagine, don't really know what they should be regretting. For instance, it is possible one could regret not keeping up with old friends, while in reality it would have been a detriment to happiness. Humans are known to look at the past with rose colored glasses.
Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
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Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#32[deleted]
Why can't they be opposed? All the regrets don't come from the same person. Also, there's no rule that says they have to make sense. Regrets that people have on their death-bed are not necessarily imbued with a supernatural clarity.
I'm glad you pointed this out. We all know how easy it is to come up with ambitious New Year resolutions and not stick to them, even though they made complete sense at the time.
People on their death beds say stuff that belongs to the realm of New Year resolutions. It sounds easy to say that you wished you didn't work so hard, but when you get the opportunity to work a bit harder and get a nice cottage close to a lake where you can spend 1 month per year, it seems like working harder for 10 years is a good trade-off.
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#33Why is the framing of looking back on your life from your deathbed seen as more valid than any other point in your life? Are there good arguments for its validity?
The end of life perspective still suffers from the same problem as middle of life -- they have no way of knowing what the outcome would have been if they had done things the other way. They might be on their deathbed saying "I wish I'd worked harder and not been broke all my life." There are always going to be paths not taken.
See: Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#34isn't there a kind of statistical / informational bias here?
you can simplify the trade-off between work and pleasure as one where you need to work enough, earlier in life, to survive for some some unpredictable amount, later in life.
so when you're making the decision about how much to work, and how much to play, you have incomplete data - you don't know when you will die.
but when you are dying, you do have that data. with hindsight, you can decide exactly how much work was necessary. then it's easy to say "damn, i still have x dollars left that the kids will enjoy instead of me". but only with the hindsight you don't have when you're making the decision.
now you can argue that what this means is that we should shift the balance beforehand. so that less people are regretting some money in the bank, and more are dying from neglect / starvation / lack of care because they don't have money late in life. but if i had a choice, i think i'd rather have worked a little too much, than face that.
so this regret seems like a natural, predictable outcome, based on the lack of information (about the time of our own deaths) and asymmetry of outcomes that we face.
[of course, you can argue that (1) the above is a very simple model and (2) we can still adapt - for example, to try find more interesting work - while alive. i am not arguing with those points, only pointing out regret may be the optimal solution to at least one simple model]
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#35[deleted]
Why can't they be opposed? All the regrets don't come from the same person. Also, there's no rule that says they have to make sense. Regrets that people have on their death-bed are not necessarily imbued with a supernatural clarity.
Also, I'm lazy. I can work less hard and be true to myself without any problem at all.
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#36I'd always wonder if I'd seen enough tits.
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#37isn't there a kind of statistical / informational bias here? you can simplify the trade-off between work and pleasure as one where you need to work enough, earlier in life, to survive for some some unpredictable amount, later in life. so when you're making the decision about how much to work, and how much to play, you have incomplete data - you don't know when you will die. but when you are dying, you do have that da…
Also, the bias of somebody who would like to pass along pithy nuggets of wisdom from her work with the dying.
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#38Is this any more relevant than the top 5 things that people say when they get fired?
People say that they want lots of things but what matters is what they're willing to actually do.
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#39Interesting read, which also says I'm doing most things wrong. Original (kind of disingenuous to just copy / paste the whole thing with a link at the end): http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
Yeah. Shenanigans. Flagged.
This HN poster has a single post to HN. This one. Posted an hour ago.
This is a post to a Tumblr with a single post. This one. Posted an hour ago.
This is ripped off, word-for-word, from the original at inspirationandchai.com. It's linked, yes, but there's absolutely no reason for this Tumblr to exist, and the fact that this HN poster has no submission history besides this one suggests this is some kind of Googlejuicing.
It's a nice story and all, but this is the wrong way to go about getting it on HN, if it even belongs here to begin with (which, probably, it doesn't).
Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed
#40>4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
You could say Facebook is fulfilling the top 4 of people life regrets.