In response to questions about whether people should generally expect to be immortal, Max Tegmark stated that is flawed reasoning because dying is not an instantaneous event, and "fully dead" and "fully alive" are not the only possible outcomes, as in the thought experiment. Rather, it is a progressive process, with a continuous series of states of decreasing consciousness. In most real causes of death, one's self-awareness fades out gradually. It is only within this specific imaginary scenario that a person finds themselves surviving.