&gt;Life and death are complementary<p>Hm, I hear people say this a lot, but I genuinely can&#x27;t empathize with where they are coming from. This is a blank spot in my map. Could you say more about the intuition behind this statement, and why this makes death seems desirable or less bad?<p>To illustrate how I emotionally parse the statement &quot;Life and death are complementary&quot;, I want to make a possibly distressing analogy, so apologies in advance, and:<p>TRIGGER WARNING...<p>...<p>...<p>TRIGGER WARNING: abstract discussion of rape<p>...<p>...<p>That statement reads to me like:<p>&quot;Being raped and not being raped are complementary. Members of higher animal species rape each other in the natural course of life, and humans have committed rape throughout history. Rape is a part of nature, so it is foolish to think that we humans could or should eliminate rape forever.&quot;<p>This is an obviously abhorrent position, and I genuinely don&#x27;t see much of a difference talking about death instead. Clearly horrible thing is clearly horrible.<p>Again, I am <i>absolutely not</i> trying to imply you are evil, or thinking inside my head that you are evil, or anything remotely like that; I am just trying to convey how I kneejerk-emotionally react to your statement about life and death, in case it helps you say things to me that will cause me to understand where you are coming from.