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Junior Member (Idle past 4860 days) Posts: 6 From: Grand River, Iowa, United States Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Existence After Death | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
Most people who are alive have a healthy appreciation for staying that way, so I find it unsurprising that they would express a desire to make it permanent. I have to disagree with your use of "most". By most do you mean 51%? Do you mean 75%? A lot of people I know have no desire for eternal life. When you present them with the ideas like boredom and a rationale look at what eternity truly means I think people will have a different outlook.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3991 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
And I was just making jokes instead of painting the soffits.
...but we would change our attitudes about risk a lot if we lived forever, barring accidents. Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?! -Gogol Bordello Real things always push back.-William James
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
hooah212002 writes: But what age would you eternally be? Do you get to pick? I suspect the desire isn't that well developed, and is instead just a general desire to be alive.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 7.4 |
quote: I have to disagree with your use of "most". By most do you mean 51%? Do you mean 75%? A lot of people I know have no desire for eternal life. When you present them with the ideas like boredom and a rationale look at what eternity truly means I think people will have a different outlook. Your disagreement is absurd. The vast majority of people on Earth believe in and actively desire eternal life after the death of the physical body. Most people do want to live forever - they'd just rather do it in a paradise rather than here on Earth, and I don't think anyone can fault a person for preferring an eternal existence without any of the concerns and stresses of the real world. Aside from that there is the simple fact that today, you want to live another day. Tomorrow, you will still want to live yet another day. Unless and until you suffer such injury or illness that your quality of life degrades to the point where you would prefer nonexistence, you will still want to continue to live every day henceforth. The entire notion of "who wants to live forever" is a coping mechanism for a species constrained by the bounds of the human life span. Everyone fears death. Everyone would prefer not to die. If you grew up in a post-death society, where nobody ever died and true immortality abounded, and someone suggested to you that "hey, let's give up this eternal existence and just go die," you'd think they were crazy. Nonsense like "well, after an eternity of living, you'd get bored" is an excuse, a made-up "positive" to death so that we feel better about the inevitable. It's proven by the fact that the vast majority of people, as I said above, do believe in and desire eternal life.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
Everyone fears death. Everyone would prefer not to die. Why the need to speak in absolutes? The above is patently untrue. I do not "fear" death. I know lots of people that do not "fear" death. I do not welcome it at this time but I do not fear it. There are many people that want to die. if your comment were true there would be no suicides.
Aside from that there is the simple fact that today, you want to live another day. Tomorrow, you will still want to live yet another day. Unless and until you suffer such injury or illness that your quality of life degrades to the point where you would prefer nonexistence, you will still want to continue to live every day henceforth. You do not know that and I do not know that. No one has or will experience this blissful existence you posit, so making an definitive conclusion is ludicrous to say the least.Check out Eternal Life (thanks, but no thanks) you will see many comments from people expressing no desire for eternal life.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 7.4 |
The conclusion I have come to is that our reality is made of energy and matter. If everything is energy and matter then thought and memory would have to be a form of energy. Now, I like to think that in death these energies just change form (energy cannot be created or destroyed) and one simply enters a different state of mind so to speak. More recently I have began to dissect this conclusion and believe there are some flaws with it but would like to see some facts on it (for or against) or different logical approaches. While your conclusion follows from your premise, your premise is unfortunately false. Thought and memory are not forms of energy like heat or light. Thought is a series of electrochemical reactions in your brain; memory is physically-stored patterns in teh brain that can be recalled. In both cases, the energy is not the relevant portion - it's the specific pattern of energy and matter as it processes in your brain that is thought and memory. Disruption of that pattern results in alteration or cessation of one or both. Your thoughts, memory, and identity do not persist after the destruction of your brain for the same reason that a computer no longer processes or stored information after it's been dismantled. The energy and matter currently processing your thoughts and memories will indeed continue to exist eternally, but the patterns will be disrupted, your thoughts and memories terminated. A post-death consciousness would require that consciousness not be solely located in the physical brain. That's quite thoroughly disproven by the facts of brain damage - damage or alteration of the brain causes immediate corresponding change in personality, memory, etc. If personal identity, thought, and memory were independent of the brain, then those changes would not occur; brain damage would not cause amnesia, frontal lobotomies would not alter personalities, etc. Reality is rather uncaring about our own preferences. That said, some form of immortality is not necessarily an impossibility. Researchers are investigating the causes of aging and how to diminish their effect or stop aging altogether - whether such a thing is possible given human biology is still unknown. Personally, if we go far out into the realm of science fiction, I'd prefer to have my brain patterns uploaded into a computer, preferably through a slow process of iterative augmentation and replacement of brain tissue such that my consciousness is not interrupted, and eventually allowing me to rewrite my own thought processes to eliminate the inherent flaws in human cognition. Yes, a clone body with downloaded consciousness or a copy of my brain patterns into a computer would satisfy the immortality of my identity in that a distinction without a difference makes no difference; however, I would prefer not to experience death, and so I would prefer solutions where the original "me" doesn't experience such a thing. I don't fear immortality, and I don't think I'd ever really get bored. I don't necessarily "fear" the cessation of existence; I would prefer to continue to exist and will avoid death as long as possible, but non-existence isn't painful, emotionally or physically, so it's not so scary. I do fear the process of death itself, as it doesn't seem to be very pleasant, particularly violent death; and I fear the death of those I care for, because I remain to miss them. I would much rather live in a world without death, so that none of us ever have to say goodbye.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 7.4 |
Do you want to die today, Theodoric? Did you want to die yesterday? The day before? Do you anticipate wanting to die tomorrow? Perhaps next Tuesday? Next year? When do you anticipate that you will want to die, assuming that chance and entropy don't make that decision for you?
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
Do you want to die today, Theodoric? Did you want to die yesterday? The day before? Do you anticipate wanting to die tomorrow? Perhaps next Tuesday? Next year? When do you anticipate that you will want to die, assuming that chance and entropy don't make that decision for you?
None of this has any relevance to what I have been stating. Also, it is not in any way a response to the points I made. Maybe if you actually read what I posted and responded to that we may have a decent conversation. One thing you should remember is that neither I or you are everyone. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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Jon Inactive Member |
I think the topic is drifting from the original point. I'd be happy with someone starting a new topic on what constitutes the self, identity, and individualism, but right now we're not giving the topic started enough of our attention, and that's no way to welcome a new member!
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer "Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3991 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
Rahvin writes: Aside from that there is the simple fact that today, you want to live another day. Tomorrow, you will still want to live yet another day. Unless and until you suffer such injury or illness that your quality of life degrades to the point where you would prefer nonexistence, you will still want to continue to live every day henceforth. The entire notion of "who wants to live forever" is a coping mechanism for a species constrained by the bounds of the human life span. Everyone fears death. Everyone would prefer not to die. People do weary of life: it is not only injury or illness that lead some to prefer nonexistence. Many millions of people practice not only nonattachment to their own lives but to life itself, seeking to avoid reincarnation. I find my mortality a great comfort; it is, to paraphrase one scholar, the one thing about us that the gods envy. Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?! -Gogol Bordello Real things always push back.-William James
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3672 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined: |
Personally my answer is 'no' - I have no preference. Really? I find such sentiments in others ample evidence that there are indeed zombies
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AricVader Junior Member (Idle past 4860 days) Posts: 6 From: Grand River, Iowa, United States Joined: |
Well said, and the analogy to a computer is the reason I have come to doubt that my conclusion was false. I did realize that maybe thought wasn't energy, but wanted to see others views on it before giving up on the logic.
I agree with much of what you said about not fearing immortality and not getting bored. I would also like the preserve the original me and not just a copy. But I do not think I would mind a post-death clone that has all my memories up until death. It would be a deception for my clone thinking it was the original that way, more like a reincarnation.
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AricVader Junior Member (Idle past 4860 days) Posts: 6 From: Grand River, Iowa, United States Joined: |
I appreciate the gesture to try and get things closer to my opening statement. All I really want now is to see some experiments that may have been done on the possibility of existence after death.
I do know that nothing will be conclusively true because it cannot fully be verified, but any links to some good scientific sites on the issue would be appreciated. I already look at many possible religious ones and they are interesting but based fully on faith.
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Phage0070 Inactive Member |
As far as I am aware, there is absolutely zero evidence of the preservation of consciousness after death. Every attempt to quantify a soul or something that might carry on after death has failed, leading to the conclusion that the soul some believe *must* exist is immaterial and undetectable. In other words it has been pushed back into the "god of the gaps" position.
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frako Member (Idle past 334 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
well i for one dont want to live forever, it would be grate to live to a 1000 years but if one is immortal the drive force of what we do would be gone, no need to have kids, no need to get married, no need to go to a rock concert on the weekend cause they will be back at a nother point in time so why should you go now. lets say you like to travel that joy would be gone once you would see all there is to see, whit out an end there is no drive to do things now rather then later and a lot of things to do you would do so many times they would lose their appeal
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