While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end. People tell me life is about the journey, but the journey is fun because the memories are retained and can be reflected upon. I just hope that there is something more, if not then there isn't much point in continuing in my opinion.
I concluded that, with high probability, there is life after death. Simple:
1. Current life is clearly possible (cogito ergo sum etc).
2. When this one ends, statistically it's inevitable there will be another one. See e.g. Boltzmann brain [1].
The pickle is that the timespan between 1 and 2 could be very long. But since you're not aware of it that doesn't matter. Also, the other pickle is you won't remember it, and that one really burns.
Another (competing) conception of “consciousness after death” is that (perhaps depending on the manner of death) consciousness continues but degrades further and further into an obscene, wretched stupidity. See https://thelocalyarn.com/article/death-decay-and-the-haunted...
That's just a copy of you though. It's not you. If I offered to teleport you to work every morning, super convenient and free, but the teleporter destroys your body and creates a new identical copy at the other end every time, would you use it?
There's an SF story where someone invents a teleporter, and it becomes very popular, but then one of them goes wrong and doesn't destroy the original body.
The copy would keep all your memories and would experience qualia, the question is, is it you? After all, your body was torn apart to extract the information to build the new one. Bear in mind qualia are instantaneous, you don't keep them, only memories of them.
Sorry, I added the example of the SF story while you were replying to my post. In that story now there's two of the same person walking about, both of whom think they are 'him'.
The really disturbing this is, this might be what our lives are actually like. After all, our brains frequently stop being conscious and then summon consciousness back into being. Is it really the same consciousness though? Or is it a fresh newly synthesised process that just has memories from the last time your were conscious?
If we persume that life is completely based on the physical world, then yes consciousness is based on memory and you can somehow replicate the same consciousness which will continue with different experiences.
But if consciousness is based on what is percieved from physical world, then the consciousness can really take different forms, be parallel, be one single consciousness, and even not be dependant on time at all.
I think more interesting concept, than comparing death with being partially unconscious, is losing your complete memory. If consciousness is related on having past memories and experiences, how can we say a person can be conscious and function without having any single recollection of anything that ever happened.
My take on this is that potentially this is true, but we don't understand the nature of consciousness yet.
I prefer to think that there is something beyond a specific configuration of molecules that creates consciousness, but I am unable to understand how that would be able to exist within an individual.
However, I can envision a 'plane' - not a plane of individual consciousnesses, but a field, similar to gravity and electromagnetism etc., and where it is concentrated densely, it creates an individual 'well' of consciousness. When an individual dies, it is my belief that the 'well' ceases to exist, and whatever made up that individual continues to exist as part of the field.
I've got absolutely nothing to support this idea beyond speculation, but it brings me comfort to think that just as though the matter and energy that formed myself and my loved ones exists only as part of a much larger ecosystem of matter and energy, and once our bodies are nothing more than cold soil, our consciousness also becomes part of a much larger ecosystem.
They say that a million atoms that are currently in my body today were also part of Jesus' body. Similarly, I imagine that in 2000 years, parts of my consciousness will also be part of others' consciousnesses.
I would like to hear more on this. Am somewhat playing a devil's advocate, but am genuinely unclear too.
What's the higher importance of the impact left on the world. As per the comment you replied to, it will ultimately be multiplied to zero for each one of us. That the impact may sustain in the 'living' world feels somewhat like a propagating wave, or may be even a Ponzi scheme.
Looking from a grander scheme of things, life on earth is more like moss on a stone. If our solar system gets destroyed today, our nearest galaxy would not experience the slightest thing for over a million years, and an astronomically miniscule change even after.
What's the true importance of the impact left over the world?
That is a great way of describing that situation. Thank you for that.
The answer to a lot of these questions seems to be "we don't know". In our age, there's a cultural trend of pretending we know things, or that everything is knowable. Of course, a lot of things aren't knowable. In actual reality, we function while not knowing. Uncertainty is the nature of existence. Practically every decision and experience is loaded with uncertainty. Just as there's no absolute-reference-point (relativity), there's no absolute-knowledge-point, and that's normal.
In this thread, we are making guesses about the purpose of...well, anything. But the reality is we will never know. Or more: We don't even know whether we will ever know.
Not knowing, for me, is comforting. I like the mystery of the universe. There are so many unknowns; many unimaginable, even magical, things are possible. That's the experience a child has. It carries a sense of wonder.
This should be seen as an observation about our universe, not as some kind of law. Existence could have been without uncertainty also. Some of the debates during the older times were like that, as the laws of classical physics have been deterministic. Some people still argue that volition / consciousness links to the non-determinism of Quantum Mechanics.
That's a useless hypothetical in my book, we have no reason to believe it will be destroyed any time soon and at the rate we're going, assuming we don't destroy ourselves, in another 1000 years we'll have long escaped the potential destruction of our planet or even our solar system. And a thousand years is a very short time "in the grander scheme of things"
I believe the vast majority of people can not really influence events like nuclear wars or any such extinction events so it's pointless to fear or even take into account. So focus on what you can do better, be kinder to your fellow colleagues, neighbours etc. and find problems and try to fix them in a sustainable way. Those things might seem small but they're important too
Yes, I take it's a hypothetical scenario, at least practically, if not theoretically also. My point with that hypothetical scenario, which I should have more explicitly stated, is to counter points of views I often hear on importance of life to the universe, etc.
In my understanding, it's not about the universe as a whole; only about the impact left predominantly on the lives on the earth.
The only true immortality lies in the heads of others. We remember Caesar, Shakespeare, but not Elmer Demonolopos: the chimney sweep. One role of said ripple is to extend your influence from beyond the grave. affecting other's greatly (+/-) extends your influence in life and the space you take in other's heads... take enough space and you can sort of live in the mind's of humanity for as long as humanity exists.
The importance depends on how you value some of our impact in the world. Some people say that life makes no sense if in the end you will be destroyed and disappear forever. I can see that in this scenario, individualism, egotism, and things like these are senseless. But not necessarily life. Humanity as a whole is writing a history in the world. As long as this story continues, we have an impact and our legacies will persist. Memories about us will also persist, specially if you define "memory" as information stored somewhere, not necessarily in a brain, and not necessarily intact and imutable.
About the nihilism that in the end everything will be destroyed... Well, there is a part in the bible where someone says that there are never something new under the sun. Our struggles are equal the struggles that someone before had. Our problems are equal the problems that someone already had in the past. And everything that we do is irrelevant in the end. Which is false, and for us that have access to studies in history, we can easily see that is false. We have new problems in modern times. Our development also turned us less irrelevant. While still astronomically minuscule, we are not anymore worldly minuscule. We have power to change the climate in the entire planet, we can even destroy most life and even ourselves with our technology, we are beginning to explore other worlds. What is the limit? It is unknown. If in the antique world it was easy to be mistaken thinking that the limits that they had were the definitive human limits, why wouldn't be also easy for us being wrong thinking that the limits that we currently have are definitive? Yes, now we have limits on how could we deal with the destruction of our solar system. But we could in the future learn how to survive this. We do not know and never will know what is the limit for what we can achieve. Therefore, believing that all is senseless because our limits will trap us in a dead end is a not very useful unbased claim. This is a case where Pascal's wager makes sense: if indeed we will be unavoidably trapped in a dead end, you lose nothing thinking that there is a way to avoid this, but if we are able to escape the dead end and extinction, it is deleterious to believe that the extinction is unavoidable.
Not the guy you were replying to. Why are we assuming any of the impact would be a drive to live and should be of importance to anyone?
Isn't the reason why we live just steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next. Some do more and some do less to affect it, but people usually just wonder what will happen tommorow, what will be in a year, some what will be in 50 years.
We only want to do something impactful when we want to experience the consequences in the future.
I think the not-knowing is what drives us to live. The same thing why we await death so peacefully. It's really the gate we don't know anything about and we just await to sail in.
>> Isn't the reason why we live just steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next.
That's the question the comment I replied to asked. What will (ultimately) happen next is that it will (may) all get multiplied by zero. What's exactly the point of steering through the unknown and finding what will happen next, when we know what's ultimately the next.
FWIW, a framing I like is: Each person wields their taste, skills, character, communities, resources, etc, in the crafting of three great improv art projects: themselves, their life, and their ripples spreading through others and the world.
Well, no matter how rational you are, it is still your conscious self that is perceiving the physical world and is just trying to makes sense of it. What happens to "you" after the death is really not related to understanding physical world, or at least not strictly dependant on the physical world. Which, at least for me, it means anything is more possible than just oblivion.
The not-knowing factor (of what happens in your life) is what drives most people to live, so why wouldn't give one a positive drive to actually live life and find out the same thing about death. You just don't skip high school to find out things what life in 40s will be like. :)
Edit: I hope I did't invoke illusion of being religious in any way. It's a purely philosophical way of questioning something you cannot possibly know.
Edit2: Also, other repliers (that obviously read more books than me) explain some really great theories
Memories are retained. If not in your brain, then in the history, in other people's minds, in the humanity's development, and in the legacies that you created. Which is better, your memory can be destroyed by Alzheimer, but these other memories can be more resistant and could survive for a longer time. :-)
Some would argue the exact opposite - that the ephemeral nature of existence makes being alive that much more special. That our finite existence here is a gift to treasure and enjoy and not just something you tolerate while you wait for the "real thing"(eternal existence in heaven or whatever)
I don't necessarily view life as a toleration of living and waiting until death, o hope for a "real thing" after death. I'm more hoping for something along of the lines of a "next phase" like transition from school life to working life. The idea the equation of experiences and knowledge if your life ends with an ...)*0 is just depressing. I'd like to continue to build on my life experiences and reconnect with loved ones, at least in some sense in relation to my individual experience, not a metaphorical one - if that makes sense.
Yeah death sucks and most people aren't ready for it. We can't really know if "afterlife" exists but imo, it's not wise to live life assuming that that is the case. It might be better to do your best assuming you can't tell if there is an afterlife. If there's no afterlife, you did your best and if there is one then it's a bonus.
It's not that life ends in a *0 - it's more that we don't get to know what effect our life has. The not-knowing is the hard part. But a little imagination is all it takes to see that life could have some undiscovered long term effect.
I mean 0 in terms of yourself. If nothing exists after death, the way I view it is that upon your death, from your perspective, time ceases to exist and everything essentially dies, sure the world may continue existing around you but, but from you're perspective, it has effectively ended thus 0. The "greater effect" thing is off less concern to me and just seems to sidestep the fact that the objective you ceases to exist.
you exist as a entity in other's minds: which is arguably a larger pool of 'you' than the you in your mind.
which explains the drive to influence others: when someone does something out of 'remembrance' or a tribute, metaphorically they are 'running your code'. extorting influence through these proxy 'you' in other's minds is the goal of some people...
if you solidify yourself in other's minds you might survive as an idea throughout the years - that's the part of you that lives forever... so update and modify your image in other's minds while you still can.
This means what exactly in the grand scheme of things. Hormones circulating in the body, creating some perceptions for the mind, where both may cease when the finite existence ends?
And how does life being infinite suddenly make it meaningful for you?
Life means nothing in the "grand scheme of things". It just is. You exist because of a long sequence of random events and then it just sort of ends. There's no deeper meaning, it's just how our universe works. In this brief moment when you get to exist, you can choose to do things which make you feel good.
>> And how does life being infinite suddenly make it meaningful for you?
Good point.
Not about me though, many people derive meaning out of life being infinite, which is what I guess underlies even the conceptualization of reincarnation.
I personally am more inclined towards it being finite, like you said. Under that scenario, the question comes, what do "enjoyment", "happiness", etc. really mean?
>> Life means nothing in the "grand scheme of things". It just is. You exist because of a long sequence of random events and then it just sort of ends. There's no deeper meaning, it's just how our universe works. In this brief moment when you get to exist, you can choose to do things which make you feel good.
I agree in general.
And then I disagree with people viewing suicide negatively. If it just is, just ends, has no deeper meaning, and all the more so is about 'feeling good', then there is (a) nothing negative about someone not feeling good choosing to end it, and (b) nothing negative about choosing to end with a realization that even feeling good ultimately remains meaningless only.
I think you can find stories of patients who have had out of body experiences when there was no brain activity. Not sure how valid those are, but still gives me pause.
I find solace in nothingness after death. We go to bed every night and wake up every morning yet we hate the thought of oblivion or nothingness. The desire for meaning seems like food for ego to me, personally.
endeavor to create somthing beyond your mortality, something that persists in peoples minds and exists in reality, something that proves you were more than just a story.
