I do not fear non-existence. For most of the history of the universe, I did not exist. I have considerable experience with that. Dying appears to be unpleasant, though.
In the context of your existing self, non-existing before and after existing are quite different thoughts.
The first one is like you don’t remember it, like you don’t remember a lot in your life that you know happened. With the second one you’ll never have the experience of feeling you don’t remember it and you know that.
It’s akin to the difference between one day you realising you forgot most of your life, and you now discovering you have Alzheimer’s and will never again hold a moment in memory. To your present self the former is not scary, but the latter is.
> For most of the history of the universe, I did not exist. I have considerable experience with that.
On the contrary, you have zero experience with not existing because experience implies an impression was made, even if you don’t consciously realise it. Not existing has made (and will make) no difference to you whatsoever, and as such provides no experience, preparation, or comfort.
It is the thought of not existing that makes a difference. It won’t by the time I don’t exist, but it does now.
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As a side note, if someone can recommend some good philosophy books on this, I’d appreciate it. I thought the branch that studies it might’ve been ontology, but I’ve read a bit of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and realised what he’s talking about it not exactly what I’m looking for.
I have a lecture to recommend: Shelly Kagan on Death by Yale. It's amazing and probably the most important course for anyone willing to open up to ideas around the notion of self and existence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2J7wSuFRl8&list=PLEA18FAF1A...
For most of the universe’s history you did exist, but were dead, scattered into atoms all across space.
The thing is, after a mere billions of years, you managed to consolidate into a form and became alive. Not a bad deal.
But to be dead, is to wait a trillion years for something to happen, only for it to turn out at the end you have to wait a trillion years more, and then you have to continue this forever.
Are we talking about atoms when we are talking about ourselves? I don't think so. I am not the same collection of atoms from moment to moment. There may not be an atom in my entire body that is original to my body; and there are vastly more atoms in my body now than then. When I say "me" I don't really mean my body or even my brain, even if that's where "me" is. We are really talking about our consciousness.
It's been awhile since I read it, but ... In The Zen of Physics, David J. Darling argues that if some other collection of atoms has a consciousness like our own, that is no different than ourselves. (His idea of consciousness is something like patterns in the brain, which is distinct, if reliant, from a collection of atoms.) We would have no memory of our past experiences, but in a real sense we would be alive again. His arguments are a bit more elegant than I have presented here. And there is some question to whether an identical consciousness with different memories is really you or me, but it would mean that waiting for trillions of years isn't necessarily the case.
This, of course, assumes that consciousness is an emergent phenomena. It is possible that consciousness is not emergent from brain processes, but is a fundamental property of the universe that the brain has somehow harnessed because it is an evolutionary advantage. (Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life by Evan Harris Walker is a fun read on this idea.) In which case, in some form you would exist as long as the universe exists, and always have.
As an aside, for those without consciousness (i.e. the dead and the unborn) time does not exist, so both "to wait" and "forever" are impossible. :)
> Darling argues that if some other collection of atoms has a consciousness like our own, that is no different than ourselves.
So if I cloned you, you would fully consider the other clone as "yourself" and "me"? I doubt it. The metaphysics are really complex here. A better attempt (if any can be made) is that the 'self' is both an evolving bodily mass AND an evolving sense of memories and perceptions. Ultimately there's good rational that self/me is just a non-real tool that allows you to operate in the world. You can not 'not believe' in self as you're human brain requires it, and animals do just fine without thinking of self (driven by nature). A better strategy is to minimize the view of self in order to reduce confusions caused by 'staring too intently in the mirror', but yet it's also useful to evaluate oneself as a separate actor.
Also I think you can have Consciousness without having a notion of defined self though, like a collective consciousness or a dolphin/octopus/crow form of awareness.
Regarding your first paragraph, I don't think that necessarily implies consciousness as an additional thing (not that consciousness doesn't require some explanation that is not forthcoming). You could be talking about a configuration of matter. Not an exact configuration, but one that would be recognizable to a powerful pattern matcher.
This is a common sentiment that fails to take into account the fact that, once you DO exist, you have a desire to continue existing which you did not have prior to your existence.
