[QUOTE=Exigent;43596602]My belief towards that has been said by someone else, but when you die, basically the things that allow you to have consciousness, sight, touch, etc., etc., are dying along with you. It just confuses me how your spirit, or something of the sort would be able to see, hear, or even comprehend an afterlife without eyes, ears, or a brain. Obviously, this vague terms are just a short example, but hopefully you're getting the bigger picture of what I'm trying to get at.[/QUOTE]
First off, we need to pin down what we mean by an after-life. Ultimately 'we' as you guys would like to describe it, is a collection of information which constitutes our identity, be it physical or epistemic. Ultimately what you are saying, that an after-life is 'logically' impossible is to say that it is impossible for someone to recreate the things which cause you to be you. I frankly disagree. While the grounds of a direct after-life from death to a non-physical plane is debatable, the idea that the constituent parts of a person could not be recreated, so as to cause a life-after-death, is not. It seems to me in no way clear why it should be logically impossible. Perhaps physically impossible under the conception of a soul floating out somewhere, but not under the concept of recreation.
[editline]19th January 2014[/editline]
Resurrection
But that doesn't mean anything.
What are you basing off the possibility of non physical existence to? How are you going to have your mind without what creates your mind?
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43600323]But that doesn't mean anything.
What are you basing off the possibility of non physical existence to? How are you going to have your mind without what creates your mind?[/QUOTE]
Did you read my post? I didn't say that was necessary. Your after-life can be a physical reconstruction of yourself, the day of, three days after, or even 1000 years after your death. It needn't be non-physical.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43601156]Did you read my post? I didn't say that was necessary. Your after-life can be a physical reconstruction of yourself, the day of, three days after, or even 1000 years after your death. It needn't be non-physical.[/QUOTE]
Well that may be possible one day but currently no and without the ability to prepare your body in the right method to save what needs to be saved you may not be able to ever have that.
we have no evidence of it happening through a natural means, no logical reason to believe it happens in nature
Sure it could happen but I don't see how or why unless we resort to either supernatural means which again, I have no logical reason or evidence to believe in, or it's a man made technology sometime in the future.
I'm agnostic. I really do think it's possible we have an after-life, I just can't see it possible though.
But I think the design of this universe is more than what we give credit to.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43602393]Well that may be possible one day but currently no and without the ability to prepare your body in the right method to save what needs to be saved you may not be able to ever have that.
we have no evidence of it happening through a natural means, no logical reason to believe it happens in nature
Sure it could happen but I don't see how or why unless we resort to either supernatural means which again, I have no logical reason or evidence to believe in, or it's a man made technology sometime in the future.[/QUOTE]
And again you are attacking the wrong argument and forgetting some of my counter-points.
I was attacking the claim that 'Life-After-Death is logically impossible'. I think I have shown it to be false by way of appeal to what it actually means to live after death. Your hinging on the word "Super-natural" seems to show that you are only concentrated on something that breaks the laws of physics in order to achieve its aims, a 'miracle' in the conventional sense. I am not hinging upon that notion as I am saying that life-after-death wouldn't necessarily entail it.
All in all life-after-death is logically possible given the correct access to relevant information.
[QUOTE=Satane;43608798]
Someone might run a 100% accurate computer simulation of our brain or 3D print it atom per atom. Even if it was possible in the far future, [B]it still wouldn't be the same person[/B] no matter what.
[/QUOTE]
Why? I suppose you take the stance that using one of those 'atom teleporters' would create a new person as well.
[editline]20th January 2014[/editline]
And if so, what makes them a different person?
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43608962]Why? I suppose you take the stance that using one of those 'atom teleporters' would create a new person as well.
[editline]20th January 2014[/editline]
And if so, what makes them a different person?[/QUOTE]
yes it would
the person that comes out the other side is you, but it's not the same you that went in the machine on the other side. you didn't come out as the exact same person.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43609259]yes it would
the person that comes out the other side is you, but it's not the same you that went in the machine on the other side. you didn't come out as the exact same person.[/QUOTE]
Why is that? Is it the physical body that makes someone you?
If I were to build a machine that replaced your atoms one at a time so that you did not die or get hurt, and you went through the process such that the new product is entirely atomically different than the original. Is a new person created?
[editline]20th January 2014[/editline]
Who is the 'you' that you are talking about exactly?
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43609598]Why is that? Is it the physical body that makes someone you?
If I were to build a machine that replaced your atoms one at a time so that you did not die or get hurt, and you went through the process such that the new product is entirely atomically different than the original. Is a new person created?
[editline]20th January 2014[/editline]
Who is the 'you' that you are talking about exactly?[/QUOTE]
This is an age old conundrum
If I have a ship, and I replace one plank of that ship at a time until no original plank is there, what is it? If I took all those planks and built a new ship out of the old planks, what is that?
You'd say that it's the same as the first one but this isn't accurate, correct, or logical.
What it is is an entity that is made out of the same things as the first entity, but it is NOT the first entity. Why isn't it? Well, why would it be? It's made of the same pieces, but it isn't constructed in the same fashion, the bonds may be different, the organization of the structure itself may be slightly different, but it is not identical to before.
Every 7 years, your body has NO cells that are the same as 7 years ago. In fact, you don't even have an atom in your body that's the same. You've recycled and replaced every part of you. I don't believe that you are the "You" you were 10 years ago. You're a different person. You share memories, you share convenient features, but you are not that person.
You're a dualist. I'm a monist. I don't believe there is a "you" that isn't part of your physical form. That IS you. There is nothing BUT that to you. You is a shifting term that changes based on a lot of things, but the easiest thing I can figure out is that even if there is an identical version of something as far as I can tell, but I don't think that makes it exactly the same thing as it's original. Especailly not when we're talking about the chemical interactions of neurons in ones brain. I don't feel you could reconstruct that atom by atom without flaw.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43609833]
Every 7 years, your body has NO cells that are the same as 7 years ago. In fact, you don't even have an atom in your body that's the same. You've recycled and replaced every part of you. I don't believe that you are the "You" you were 10 years ago. You're a different person. You share memories, you share convenient features, but you are not that person.[/QUOTE]
I think the only cells that don't replicate are one's neurons, though I can't recall exactly where I heard that.
i do not believe in life-after-death
i am pretty convinced that death is pretty much an eternal bleak unconsciousness and i am ok with that
While I don't hold any certainty about it, I suppose I do believe in life after death (or rather immortality of the subjective self). I prefer the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of plausibility, so every time a non-deterministic event causes your death there would be two branches of the universe leading from that point; one where you are alive, and one where you are dead.
Since you can't ever observe a universe where you are dead (you don't exist to observe it), you are only ever subjectively aware of a universe where you have yet to have died. Objectively the proportion of universes where you are still alive is always decreasing over time, but as long as your death in these universes is causes by a string of non-deterministic events there will always be universes where you still exist. This doesn't seem particularly pleasant however, as for the majority of the universes you survive in after a long period of time you will perpetually be on the verge of death. You will only be dead in all universes after no amount of non-determinism can save you, and the moment before would be the last instance of your subjective experience.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality[/url]
[QUOTE=Ganix565;43651803]i do not believe in life-after-death
i am pretty convinced that death is pretty much an eternal bleak unconsciousness and i am ok with that[/QUOTE]
doesn't leave you much choice
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43596174]Why do you believe the after-life is logically impossible? How do you justify that claim?[/QUOTE]
Because we have a fairly clear understanding that damage to the brain affects the person's perception and personality, and when a person dies their brain rots.
I believe the after-life is logically impossible simply because we've made it up completely by ourselves for whatever (arbitrary) reasons.
I don't believe there is any more for humans after death than there is for any of the other species that inhabit this planet. It's a construction of the mind wanting purpose and lasting function in cognitive dissonance with a world where life is in reality relatively short.
To know that you were born and will die before Pluto completes an orbit of our sun is a hard reality to face. That you won't see what your children's children grow up to be goes against everything that we want. Because of this, believing that you will transcend your body to another plane where you can view your living family and meet your dead ancestors is a far more comforting conclusion than to acknowledge that you are merely an animal on a continent on a relatively rare type of planet orbiting a star, and that your life will end before anything really changes in how humans live and act. A few countries may rise, a few may fall, but ultimately humanity will be in the same place that it was before you were born when you have nothing but incomplete dreams, distant memories, and the imminent end of everything you value: your opinions, your thoughts, and your dreams will be gone except from the minds of those who remember you and the legacy and possessions you leave behind.
[QUOTE=FreakyMe;43706055]I don't believe there is any more for humans after death than there is for any of the other species that inhabit this planet. It's a construction of the mind wanting purpose and lasting function in cognitive dissonance with a world where life is in reality relatively short.
To know that you were born and will die before Pluto completes an orbit of our sun is a hard reality to face. That you won't see what your children's children grow up to be goes against everything that we want. Because of this, believing that you will transcend your body to another plane where you can view your living family and meet your dead ancestors is a far more comforting conclusion than to acknowledge that you are merely an animal on a continent on a relatively rare type of planet orbiting a star, and that your life will end before anything really changes in how humans live and act. A few countries may rise, a few may fall, but ultimately humanity will be in the same place that it was before you were born when you have nothing but incomplete dreams, distant memories, and the imminent end of everything you value: your opinions, your thoughts, and your dreams will be gone except from the minds of those who remember you and the legacy and possessions you leave behind.[/QUOTE]
This need not be the case. The fact that our minds are material is a blessing in disguise; while it is improbable that a supernatural afterlife exists, we can create our own artificial one.
One day we will be able to store all the necessary components of the human brain in a simulation, and have the an adequately parallel computer to iterate the virtual model over time. The last piece of technology we need is a method for exactly capturing the neural connections and excited states of the neurons in a living brain, to be transferred to a virtual medium which then continues the process of consciousness. If this duplication of the mind is done while the subject is unconscious, the original allowed to pass before regaining awareness, it would be to the individual that wakes up within the machine as if they are the same person as the original, and the original person would no longer exist to disagree.
We could construct any conceivable reality to feed to inhabitants of this virtual afterlife, even design an existence without suffering for them to interact with each other within. This existence would endure for as long as the hosting system receives maintenance and power, perhaps being serviced by non-sentient bots (this is the future anyway). Perhaps, in time, existence outside of this perfect reality would be deemed unnecessarily cruel and pointless.
The thing that hurts me the most is thinking that I may be too early to experience an afterlife, or that such an afterlife will never be achieved by humanity.
[QUOTE=Ziks;43706213]This need not be the case. The fact that our minds are material is a blessing in disguise; while it is improbable that a supernatural afterlife exists, we can create our own artificial one.
One day we will be able to store all the necessary components of the human brain in a simulation, and have the an adequately parallel computer to iterate the virtual model over time. The last piece of technology we need is a method for exactly capturing the neural connections and excited states of the neurons in a living brain, to be transferred to a virtual medium which then continues the process of consciousness. If this duplication of the mind is done while the subject is unconscious, the original allowed to pass before regaining awareness, it would be to the individual that wakes up within the machine as if they are the same person as the original, and the original person would no longer exist to disagree.
We could construct any conceivable reality to feed to inhabitants of this virtual afterlife, even design an existence without suffering for them to interact with each other within. This existence would endure for as long as the hosting system receives maintenance and power, perhaps being serviced by non-sentient bots (this is the future anyway). Perhaps, in time, existence outside of this perfect reality would be deemed unnecessarily cruel and pointless.
The thing that hurts me the most is thinking that I may be too early to experience an afterlife, or that such an afterlife will never be achieved by humanity.[/QUOTE]
And what makes you believe this is what (majority of?) people will want, to happen? I'm not sure if I would want that. And I don't think that needs to be the case either.
Also it wouldn't be afterlife, would it now? It would be some futuristic life-support if I read that right, constructed by people like any other simulation we've made. And it probably wouldn't last forever, like you said requiring maintenance and/or power, so..
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;43707562]And what makes you believe this is what (majority of?) people will want, to happen? I'm not sure if I would want that. And I don't think that needs to be the case either.
Also it wouldn't be afterlife, would it now? It would be some futuristic life-support if I read that right, constructed by people like any other simulation we've made. And it probably wouldn't last forever, like you said requiring maintenance and/or power, so..[/QUOTE]
Your point is valid, but so is his. He is saying that "life-after-death" is possible by way of reconstructing something which can give residence to your consciousness, and you are saying that that isn't immortality if done by humans due to energy requirements etc.
I think there is nothing stopping from the 'resurrection' version of after-life being logically feasible. Whether by humans, or by divine intervention.
I think if we could save our brain waves now, maybe we could be reconstructed again.
But without preparation I doubt it
[QUOTE=Ziks;43706213]This need not be the case. The fact that our minds are material is a blessing in disguise; while it is improbable that a supernatural afterlife exists, we can create our own artificial one.
One day we will be able to store all the necessary components of the human brain in a simulation, and have the an adequately parallel computer to iterate the virtual model over time. The last piece of technology we need is a method for exactly capturing the neural connections and excited states of the neurons in a living brain, to be transferred to a virtual medium which then continues the process of consciousness. If this duplication of the mind is done while the subject is unconscious, the original allowed to pass before regaining awareness, it would be to the individual that wakes up within the machine as if they are the same person as the original, and the original person would no longer exist to disagree.
We could construct any conceivable reality to feed to inhabitants of this virtual afterlife, even design an existence without suffering for them to interact with each other within. This existence would endure for as long as the hosting system receives maintenance and power, perhaps being serviced by non-sentient bots (this is the future anyway). Perhaps, in time, existence outside of this perfect reality would be deemed unnecessarily cruel and pointless.
The thing that hurts me the most is thinking that I may be too early to experience an afterlife, or that such an afterlife will never be achieved by humanity.[/QUOTE]
While that is an interesting idea, it isn't exactly what I was talking about. I was responding to the question the OP posits, which is whether or not I believe there is an already existing place that my consciousness will or can be transported to upon death.
As it was stated above, you are talking about a futuristic life support that would be reliant on your working or newly dead and undamaged brain being stored and interfaced with in a complex procedure. That's hardly an afterlife. Afterlife implies that it exists after life has ceased. It implies that there is something intangible in human life that survives and retains the characteristics of the person who died. If the system is reliant on your brain being kept alive it is merely a way of trapping your consciousness in a simulation for as long as it can be kept alive.
In my original post I talked about the concept of legacy, that the value and purpose of life can be found in the positive lasting impact caused by our actions.
[QUOTE=FreakyMe;43708362]While that is an interesting idea, it isn't exactly what I was talking about. I was responding to the question the OP posits, which is whether or not I believe there is an already existing place that my consciousness will or can be transported to upon death.[/QUOTE]
Well if you look at it in a 4 dimensional way, that next residence, the resurrected body IS the pre-existing thing that your consciousness will be transported to upon death.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43708403]Well if you look at it in a 4 dimensional way, that next residence, the resurrected body IS the pre-existing thing that your consciousness will be transported to upon death.[/QUOTE]
What do you mean 'look at it in a four dimensional way'?
In line with modern theory, the fourth dimension of an object is an undulating form that endures from its origin to it's demise. You in the fourth dimension (in my best interpretation) are a long snake that begins with the fertilized egg in your mother's fallopian tube (or possibly with your first developed cells that won't be replaced in your lifetime) that travels everywhere she went up until your birth, growing and taking form as you did. As you grow up, the "snake" spans your entire life where you live, as a long, intersecting object that travels every where you do, existing at the intersections in the same place at different points in time. It eventually ends in your coffin. Humans (and other living things) are interesting to think about in the fourth dimension because it implies that there is an unconscious final end result that is being selected towards, off of a large number of possibilities.
If you die in a car accident on the way to work, after forgetting to set the alarm the night before and waking up late, you are dead. The line or shape in the fourth dimension may continue to follow the matter that is your body as it is transported to be cremated or buried, but your consciousness is gone.
Could you please clarify what you meant?
[QUOTE=FreakyMe;43708505]What do you mean 'look at it in a four dimensional way'?
In line with modern theory, the fourth dimension of an object is an undulating form that endures from its origin to it's demise. You in the fourth dimension (in my best interpretation) are a long snake that begins with the fertilized egg in your mother's fallopian tube (or possibly with your first developed cells that won't be replaced in your lifetime) that travels everywhere she went up until your birth, growing and taking form as you did. As you grow up, the "snake" spans your entire life where you live, as a long, intersecting object that travels every where you do, existing at the intersections in the same place at different points in time. It eventually ends in your coffin. Humans (and other living things) are interesting to think about in the fourth dimension because it implies that there is an unconscious final end result that is being selected towards, off of a large number of possibilities.
If you die in a car accident on the way to work, after forgetting to set the alarm the night before and waking up late, you are dead. The line or shape in the fourth dimension may continue to follow the matter that is your body as it is transported to be cremated or buried, but your consciousness is gone.
Could you please clarify what you meant?[/QUOTE]
I was referring to if you were able to see that long undulating snake that is us then you wouldn't make the distinction. As far as conscious continuity it sticks.
Lets say you have two snakes. Snake A and Snake B. Snake B is seperated from Snake A by time, but consciously the end of snake A is the same as the start of Snake B.
Snake A + Snake B = Snake C which would be 'Your' whole life.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA[/media]
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/14jszgp.jpg[/IMG]
[editline]28th January 2014[/editline]
A 2 dimensional being sees 1 dimensional cross sections. A 3 dimensional being (us) sees two dimensional cross-sections (our pov). A 4 dimensional being would see 3 dimensional cross-sections. So I guess I was refering to a 5 dimensional being? :pwn:
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43708739]I was referring to if you were able to see that long undulating snake that is us then you wouldn't make the distinction. As far as conscious continuity it sticks.
Lets say you have two snakes. Snake A and Snake B. Snake B is seperated from Snake A by time, but consciously the end of snake A is the same as the start of Snake B.
Snake A + Snake B = Snake C which would be 'Your' whole life.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA[/media]
[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/14jszgp.jpg[/IMG]
[editline]28th January 2014[/editline]
A 2 dimensional being sees 1 dimensional cross sections. A 3 dimensional being (us) sees two dimensional cross-sections (our pov). A 4 dimensional being would see 3 dimensional cross-sections. So I guess I was refering to a 5 dimensional being? :pwn:[/QUOTE]
The 5th dimensional self in theory merely is the 4th dimensional self including every possible outcome and course of action. It'd be like a fractal root system originating from your point of conception to your infinite possible deaths and lives as opposed to the single snaking line that one would see viewing the 4th dimension. I theorize that the line grows as time moves forwards, and doesn't yet exist ahead of it's current point in time in the 4th dimension.
It still doesn't have much to do with the afterlife or the existence of one.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43708739][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA[/media][/QUOTE]
That video is [I]horrifically[/I] bad and misleading, for future reference. It's not [I]all[/I] wrong, but everything after dimension 4 is complete gibberish, and a lot of it before that is inaccurate. The creator of the video has basically retreated into saying "This is just one conception of how dimensions could work!" in response to scientists and mathematicians criticizing the video. I couldn't even tell you if it's a self-consistent way of looking at dimensions, but at the very least it's completely divorced from their common use in mathematics and physics.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;43708970]That video is [I]horrifically[/I] bad and misleading, for future reference. It's not [I]all[/I] wrong, but everything after dimension 4 is complete gibberish, and a lot of it before that is inaccurate. The creator of the video has basically retreated into saying "This is just one conception of how dimensions could work!" in response to scientists and mathematicians criticizing the video. I couldn't even tell you if it's a self-consistent way of looking at dimensions, but at the very least it's completely divorced from their common use in mathematics and physics.[/QUOTE]
Could you please elaborate, I've heard this concern before but usually not more than just denying him.
I understand this isn't the mathematical conception of dimensions. But it seems internally consistent to me, and I've watched most of his videos. He relies on something called the point line plane postulate.
Basically he starts with a point, goes to a line, makes a plane. And then the next dimension is essentially the space you would have to travel through in order to travel to a different point in the plane without passing through any of the in between points (the points on the plane). This is basically analogous to other planes above it which share grid positions except for height.
The dotted line represents the "Next dimension" within the three diagrams
[IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/2z8qc5z.jpg[/IMG]
The third dimension is turned into a point, and the process repeats.
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;43709072]Could you please elaborate, I've heard this concern before but usually not more than just denying him.
I understand this isn't the mathematical conception of dimensions. But it seems internally consistent to me, and I've watched most of his videos. He relies on something called the point line plane postulate.
Basically he starts with a point, goes to a line, makes a plane. And then the next dimension is essentially the space you would have to travel through in order to travel to a different point in the plane without passing through any of the in between points (the points on the plane). This is basically analogous to other planes above it which share grid positions except for height.
The dotted line represents the "Next dimension" within the three diagrams
The third dimension is turned into a point, and the process repeats.[/QUOTE]
Why would you turn the third dimension into a point? How does that make any sense in relation to what we think of as "the third dimension?" A point has dimension zero. Dimensions don't repeat in any meaningful way in physics or mathematics so I don't know why he has this cyclic process going on. When I watched the video, I remember him talking about a point, then a line, a branch, and a fold, but this doesn't make any sense. A branch doesn't change the dimensionality of a line. A fold doesn't change dimensionality either. I can kind of understand the analogy with branching being like coming "off" the line into a 3D space, but the fold idea makes no sense. It's really a bunch of pseudoscience latching onto the idea of 10 dimensions in string theory, and he makes it up as he goes along. He co-opted the "point-line-plane postulate," in an attempt to sound credible, but his whole construction has nothing to do with the point-line-plane postulates (which are really just axioms for Euclidean geometry).
But the worst issue of all is why would we care about any of this if he admits it doesn't correspond to reality? He's trying to make it seem like it does. I've never seen it work as a useful model for anything else, so why would we listen to this guy instead of modern physics and mathematics?
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;43709161]Why would you turn the third dimension into a point? How does that make any sense in relation to what we think of as "the third dimension?" A point has dimension zero. Dimensions don't repeat in any meaningful way in physics or mathematics so I don't know why he has this cyclic process going on. When I watched the video, I remember him talking about a point, then a line, a branch, and a fold, but this doesn't make any sense. A branch doesn't change the dimensionality of a line. A fold doesn't change dimensionality either. I can kind of understand the analogy with branching being like coming "off" the line into a 3D space, but the fold idea makes no sense. It's really a bunch of pseudoscience latching onto the idea of 10 dimensions in string theory, and he makes it up as he goes along. He co-opted the "point-line-plane postulate," in an attempt to sound credible, but his whole construction has nothing to do with the point-line-plane postulates (which are really just axioms for Euclidean geometry).
But the worst issue of all is why would we care about any of this if he admits it doesn't correspond to reality? He's trying to make it seem like it does. I've never seen it work as a useful model for anything else, so why would we listen to this guy instead of modern physics and mathematics?[/QUOTE]
I honestly think this is just an issue of your understanding.
Go back to your understanding of the branch needing to "come off" the line in a 3d space. The concept of folding is the same. It is coming off the plane in a '3d' space in order to reach a different point in the plane without going through the intermediate points.
As far as compacting the 3rd dimension into a point.
There is no reason you cannot do this analytically.
If you assign to a point all of the features and states of the universe at a given (planck?) frame, you will end up with something which can be refered to. It isn't to say that the entirety of the universe is actually a point with no dimensions, it's just to say that once you have 3 dimensions there is no 'direction' to go to, and so instead we role with the idea of the 'direction of time' which is thought of as the "Change between two [b]points[/b] in time.
Why should we listen to this guy? Because he is being thoughtful, he is internally consistent and if nothing else he provides an interesting mental tool for talking about places, times possibilities and universes. Furthermore, no-where does he claim it to be 'science', but rather a conceptual model.
It's like criticizing venn diagrams because facts couldn't possibly be organized by circles in real life.
[editline]28th January 2014[/editline]
Oh and the reason it is "Folding" and not just switching planes is because at any given moment you theoretically occupy some position on that 2d plane, even if you are above it. This will take some mental acrobatics to picture.
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