
Welcome
Welcome to Oblivion With Bells! If you’re new here, the Introduction is a good place to start: https://oblivionwithbells.com/introduction/
Welcome to Oblivion With Bells! If you’re new here, the Introduction is a good place to start: https://oblivionwithbells.com/introduction/
Bard is Google’s AI you can chat with. So like before, I asked it what the best relief from death anxiety is.
Some notes:
Here is Bard’s response in full:
Following on from ChatGPT being made available to the public in 2022, the same technology is now being offered commercially by Microsoft as Bing AI, or as it prefers to call itself:”chat mode for Bing”.
There are some differences to how this version answers the same question I asked previously: “What is the best relief from death anxiety?”. The first obvious difference is that this version communicates in the first person including using emojis. Microsoft are still trying different versions of the service including how personal or impersonal Bing AI should be. Possibly the first person approach works better in this context given a lot of people may be in a vulnerable place when searching for death anxiety answers.
I personally liked how Bing AI didn’t include religion in its answer. But it also didn’t include spirituality and maybe that’s an oversight? I suppose a risk for a commercial venture is they don’t want to end up recommending people do things on the risky end of the spirituality spectrum which might make them legally responsible?
I appreciated how Bing AI encouraged me to ‘meditate on death or practice mindfulness to accept the reality of death’. But I felt its answer was actually weaker for not including ChatGPT’s point of ‘educating oneself about death and the natural process of dying, in order to alleviate some of the fear and uncertainty associated with it’. Here, and this may be the legal side of things again influencing the answer, Bing AI directs people towards professionals as opposed to self-education.
It’s interesting to anticipate the near-future where a certain level of response or medical health advice will be handled by chat bots. I think I’m ok with it as long as the public & private sectors are mandated by law to let you know you’re chatting with a program as opposed to a real person.
Here’s Bing AI’s answer in full…
Question: What is the best relief from death anxiety?
Answer:
Some possible ways to overcome your fear of death are¹⁴⁶:
- Exercise regularly to reduce stress and improve your physical and mental health.
- Meditate on death or practice mindfulness to accept the reality of death and appreciate the present moment.
- Talk to a therapist, a counselor, a friend or a support group about your feelings and thoughts about death.
- Change your habits that may trigger your anxiety, such as watching too much news, avoiding social interactions or dwelling on negative thoughts.
- Learn to spot when you are getting anxious and use relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation or visualization.
- Try exposure therapy with the help of a professional, where you gradually face your fears in a safe and controlled environment.
- Seek professional support if your anxiety interferes with your daily functioning or causes you significant distress.
I hope this helps. Remember that you are not alone in this and there is always hope for healing.🙏
Source: Conversation with Bing, 28/02/2023(1) Death Anxiety: 9 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Death | hims. https://www.forhims.com/blog/death-anxiety Accessed 28/02/2023.
Source: Bing AI, 2023
(2) Thanatophobia (death anxiety): Symptoms and overcoming it. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321939 Accessed 28/02/2023.
(3) 17 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Death and Death Anxiety – Nick Wignall. https://nickwignall.com/fear-of-death-and-death-anxiety/ Accessed 28/02/2023.
(4) How to Cope with Anxiety About Death: 11 Steps (with Pictures) – wikiHow. https://www.wikihow.com/Cope-with-Anxiety-About-Death Accessed 28/02/2023.
(5) Death Anxiety: 9 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Death | hims. https://www.forhims.com/blog/death-anxiety Accessed 28/02/2023.
(6) 8 Healthy Coping Skills for Death Anxiety | Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/202008/8-healthy-coping-skills-death-anxiety Accessed 28/02/2023.
Source: ‘Life On The Rocks’ by George Pretty, https://vimeo.com/376345749
Source: Office for National Statistics (UK) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/totalwealthwealthingreatbritain
A list of academic criticism of Terror Management Theory (TMT), and also efforts to replicate original studies
(ordered chronologically by date first published)
1997. David M. Buss – ‘Human Social Motivation in Evolutionary Perspective: Grounding Terror Management Theory’, Psychological Enquiry, January 1997. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246399872_Human_Social_Motivation_in_Evolutionary_Perspective_Grounding_Terror_Management_Theory.
2002. Mark R. Leary and Lisa S. Schreindorfer – ‘Unresolved Issues With Terror Management Theory’, EBSCO Publishing, 2002. http://plaza.ufl.edu/phallman/terror%20management%20theory/7390252.pdf.
2005. Carlos David Navarrete and Daniel M.T. Fessler – ‘Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory’, Evolutionary Psychology, 2005. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490500300121.
2006. Lee A. Kirkpatrick & Carlos David Navarrette – ‘Reports of My Death Anxiety Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: A Critique of Terror Management Theory from an Evolutionary Perspective’, Psychological Enquiry, 2006. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10478400701366969.
2008. Wissink et al. – ‘Replication of “Terror management and adults’ attachment to their parents: The safe haven remains” by CR Cox, J Arndt, T Pyszczynski, J Greenberg, A Abdollahi, S Solomon’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008. https://osf.io/5tbxf/.
2011. Zachary P. Hohman, Michael A. Hogg – ‘Fear and uncertainty in the face of death: The role of life after death in group identification’, European Journal of Social Psychology, June 2011. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.818.
2014. Lambert et al. – ‘Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation: revisiting the “affect-free” claim of terror management research’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2014. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24749817/.
2019. Bjørn Sætrevik & Hallgeir Sjåstad – ‘Mortality salience effects fail to replicate in traditional and novel measures’, May 2019. https://psyarxiv.com/dkg53.
2019. Javier Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al. – ‘Are we truly special and unique? A replication of Goldenberg et al. (2001)’, Royal Society Open Science, November 2019. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.191114.
2019. Klein et al. – ‘Many Labs 4: Failure to Replicate Mortality Salience Effect With and Without Original Author Involvement’, December 2019. https://psyarxiv.com/vef2c.
BONUS
And just for completeness really, here are a couple of the early foundational TMT studies:
1986. Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon – ‘The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory’, Springer Series in Social Psychology, January 1986. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313613028_The_causes_and_consequences_of_a_need_for_self-esteem_a_terror_management_theory.
1994. Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, Linda Simon, and Michael Breus – ‘Role of Consciousness and Accessibility of Death-Related Thoughts in Mortality Salience Effects’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, November 1994. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15232849_Role_of_Consciousness_and_Accessibility_of_Death-Related_Thoughts_in_Mortality_Salience_Effects.
If I’ve missed any obvious academic criticism up to 2022, or any obvious foundational TMT studies, please let me know, and I will make sure to add them.
‘At the mouth of the Firth of Forth sits an ancient volcanic island, home to the world’s largest colony of Gannets; The Bass Rock. For three years from 1960, June Nelson and her late husband Bryan called it their home, intimately studying the birds and their behaviours. June reflects on their time together and the catastrophic loss of global seabird populations in the years since‘:
For followers of QAnon, Inauguration Day was never supposed to happen. There was going to be an uprising, assassinations, and Donald Trump was supposed to remain in office, victorious. On January 20, as Joe Biden was being sworn in as the 46th president, Shannon Foley Martinez sat down to make a video that spoke directly to followers of Q as the transfer of power peacefully occurred. “Many of you are grappling with a sense of confusion, betrayal, shame, embarrassment, and anger. That you’ve been led astray and lied to,” she says in a calm, patient voice. “I want to urge you to stay alive.”
Martinez is a former white supremacist who helps empower individuals to leave violence-based lifestyles and ideologies. Over the past year, QAnon has become one of the most powerful conspiracy theories in the county, fueled by people trapped at home, scared and uncertain, with a troll-in-chief fanning the flames of disinformation.
Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, recently spoke with Martinez about what can be done in this disorienting, transitional moment to reach out to followers of QAnon and begin the long, tenuous process of drawing loved ones away from conspiracy theories.
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