Determinism and death
In section 5.4 of my book, I take the lesson that reality is a package deal and apply it to the topic of death. There I argue that determinism, together with the relevant physics, makes the very existence of humanity depend on the exact time and manner of everyone’s death.
To wish that a loved one hadn’t died prematurely or otherwise tragically is to wish the deletion of a specific event from the actual history of the universe (and its replacement by some unspecified other event). But, given determinism, if we delete the original event and evolve the change backward in time according to the laws of motion, the result is almost certainly a remote past so different from the actual past that it never gives rise to any humans at all. As always, when I say “almost certainly,” I mean that the odds against it are zero to more decimal places than you could ever write.
Determinism and physics deliver the news that our loved ones’ deaths, exactly when and as they occur, are almost certainly essential to their and our ever existing in the first place. That news can’t of course replace our lost loved ones, but reflecting on it can bring us some consolation.
