I see this logic a lot, and it doesn't quite sit right with me because it doesn't really address the actual problem, which is:

I'm not as afraid of being dead, so much as I am most afraid of the short time before. Knowing that I'm dying, that soon I will be dead.

And also the finality of it. Pre-birth ended with my birth. Death will never end.

That's not quite right. If you can't be afraid of actually being dead because you won't be experiencing anything, then you in fact won't be afraid in the moments before, so there would be no reason to be afraid of the moments before either.

But you actually can be afraid of death, even though death doesn't come with any negative experiences, because you can and do care about things besides anticipated experiences. It's a common misconception that you can only care about experiences, but the counter to any conceptual argument that purports to prove that is that you do in fact care about some things that aren't experiences, death being a great example.

My friend Ronny discusses this at some length in this podcast https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/?ep=032

> Death will never end.

As far as we know. It seems logical based on our existing knowledge, but really, anything can happen.

Certainly we’ve never seen someone come back from the dead in recent history.

I don’t know why, but your comment seems pretty profound. Especially if you’ve ever looked at those timelines of the far future on Wikipedia where something like 10^10^10^10...........^10 quadrillion years will pass but a there’s a probability that a quantum fluctuation could create a new universe in that time.

I've heard of an actor who got so into role-playing, he forgot he was an actor playing a role.

He was meant to slay dragons, but terribly afraid of getting eaten in the process.

It kept him up at night, he asked people how to cope with the stress and got plenty of advice, to which he replied the suggestions don't address his actual problem.

The only thing we have in life is the present moment. So, the only thing we lose in death is the present moment.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

—Philip Larkin, Aubade

(italics original)

Not existing doesn't hurt, of course. But humanity is probably going to get up to a lot of cool shit we will miss out on.

We've experienced a lot of cool shit that our grandparents missed out on. It's not like progress ever stops.