Well, except for the fact that it’s not a secret and it’s not an identical twin but it’s basically you…yeah. That’s it in a nut shell. Thanks for condensing it so well though. 
XT, you’re not offering a significant argument here. Even if there are duplicates in other worlds, that matters not at all for what your life is after you die.
If I duplicate you with a magic wand, and shoot the original. The other “you” is a copy. and may be close enough for your wife and children to love, but the fact is that the original you shut off and ended when the bullet punctured his noodle.
The original you is utterly unaffected by there being any number of copies. Especially if those copies live in another universe that can’t be interacted with.
If in any sense you go on in another universe after you die, another you in a universe where you have already died clearly goes on in you. Therefore, this is the afterlife for that version.
Hope that makes you feel better.
If I have an “afterlife”, I was really hoping I would be there to enjoy it.
Know what I mean?
You can’t enjoy your afterlife, but you can enjoy someone elses
But I don’t see any angels around here.
Or virgins.
[QUOTE=x-ray vision]
Yeah, again, it basically is. Much more so than you calling a duplicate of me that is a little different than me “me.”
[/QUOTE]
Again, no…it’s not a clone.
Why? I flipped the coin. You haven’t even ever physically met me. How does me flipping a coin hundreds or thousands of miles (or mere feet) from you affect you in any way?
I didn’t tell you the outcome. You have no idea…you have no idea if I even flipped the coin. Nor does the alternative you in another universe.
At that point that there is a divergence you are correct. So, another you with exactly the same memories, relationships and life that doesn’t choke on a burger and die will live on, but it won’t be you because it won’t have those last memories of choking on a burger in rage over this discussion. And you figure that means that ‘you’ won’t live on, even though all your memories and experiences up to that point are exactly equal. Well, ok then.
If you say so. If you really feel that the alternative x-ray vision’s living in myriad alternative universes to ours where I flipped a coin, didn’t flip a coin or decided to go out for pizza instead of tacos today are different than you are because of that, well, not much I can say about that. You believe what you believe. Assuming the theory/speculation on all of this is correct though, they ARE you at the most fundamental level, and my coin flip (or, some other guys coin flip that we are never aware of) isn’t going to change that.
Only if you believe all that science stuff has no more validity than fairies in middle earth I guess.
I disagree. If there is a parallel universe exactly like this one except for one small difference (a butterfly flapped it’s wings in China instead of taking a nap today) then you are in both, and both of you are you. It’s a valid point of debate though, I grant, and the whole thing is purely speculative to be sure.
And I honestly don’t see how it’s not relevant to the question asked in the OP. It’s merely a different way of looking at the question…and a difference in opinion as to the implications. I think those other copies of you (or me, or even Czarcasm) ARE us in the universes that are closest to our own. A me that is living in another universe that has just died does not render all of my memories moot because I don’t have the final memory of that death…all MY memories and experiences are still here, so I go on even though that other me is now dead.
Fair enough then. At least you seriously thought about it, which is all I was asking for.
You are asking me to explain quantum physics and the many worlds interpretation of that, something I doubt more than a handful of humans on the earth really understand. My no doubt flawed understanding is that in an infinite universe (or infinite multi-verse I guess), all choices are not only possible or probable but happen. So, flipping a coin means that both heads AND tails are not just possible but happen. When you flip that coin it spawns another universe where whatever outcome didn’t happen in your universe happens in the other (and, hell, probably infinite other branchings of other possibilities). You could, perhaps, make a case that if YOU flipped the coin that the result would make some fundamental difference between the you that got a heads and the you that got a tails, I guess (though that’s a pretty minor difference), but not if I flipped the coin…or if someone else on the earth did.
Because I’m not talking about the myriad you’s that live slightly different lives. Those are still ‘you’, IMHO, but you are right…their lives are slightly different. I’m talking about a ‘you’ that is living in this universe where I flipped a coin and got heads and one where I flipped a coin and got tails…and ones where I didn’t flip a coin, or used the coin to by a gum ball, or countless other things that you have no idea what the outcome is or was or would be. Those you’s are exactly you on every level…same exact memories, same exact experiences down to the sub-atomic level. They are you in every meaningful way. I don’t know how to explain it differently than that, to be honest, as I don’t have the math or the theoretical physics background, or probably the intelligence needed (like I said, I got a B in my college 3rd year physics, and that was as far as I went since that’s all that was required for my degree).
Obviously at the divergence they will be different with different experiences. An infinite number of you’s are now dead in an infinite number of ways, while an infinite number of you’s live on in various ways. They are all you, though, even if some of them have slightly different memories.
Well, nothing new about me not offering a significant argument.
I disagree with your assessment here, of course. If you create a duplicate of me down to the last atom, it IS me. It’s the same argument as using the Star Trek transporter. Kirk et al get destroyed, copies and then the bits put back together. It’s still them. Honestly, the only way this wouldn’t be the case, IMHO anyway, is if that soul thingy were real, which I don’t believe in and see no evidence for.
If you don’t see it that way, that’s fine. I seem to be in the minority here (no change there either), but I think it’s interesting.
That’s the third time you omitted “basically” that I put before it.
I used the word as I was responding to what you wrote which was:
“They speculate that they are essentially exact copies of ‘you’. Maybe one of ‘you’ decides to text while driving and gets his just rewards, while others don’t and continue on. They are all still ‘you’, basically,”
If we’re not exactly the same, we’re different. Our memories and experiences will be different. That makes us different. That makes your argument fall apart (among other claims that make it fall apart).
If one decides to do something different than me, his brain is different than mine, regardless of how small that difference is. But it’s still irrelevant to the discussion the OP started. Either something happens to both of us when we die or it doesn’t.
An exact duplicate getting to live, have different experiences and brain changes and dying as a unique individual (which he will be if he lives even one nanosecond more) has zero to do with anything.
I must have misunderstood you. I thought my duplicate and I both witness the coin flips but the outcomes are different.
Which means that this has nothing to do with the OP. One being is dead. The other isn’t. The OP is in reference to what happens to the being that dies.
The OP didn’t ask what happens to our memories when we die. An almost exact being having almost all of the exact memories but getting to live because for some reason only one of his choices was different is irrelevant.
If he makes a different choice, then his brain is not identical. It makes no sense to say every other little thing he’s done in his life has been identical if his brain and universe are the same and claim that you are somehow talking about a valid scientific theory.
No, I am me and he is he. Alone I weigh what I do and together we weigh twice as much. We are made of different atoms regardless of out protons, neutrons, and electrons being exactly alike. If everything in the two universes are exactly alike, then either nothing happens to us, we both have a souls arise or some other thing. This doesn’t answer the OP. If one chokes to death on a cheeseburger and the other doesn’t, then the two universes aren’t exactly alike and the two people will die at different times and the OP is still not addressed. What happens to the one that died? I have “almost” the same memories and then will have many more, but what happened to “him”? I won’t have “his” memories, I will have similar memories in my brain. His memories will cease to exist as “his” brain is no longer functioning.
Then can you show me where a scientist has provided evidence that a coin flip (or some other small event) being different in another universe can cause another universe to come into existence? Not that it would make two separate beings the same person or be relevant to the OP, but I’m curious to see the claim.
If people came back from beyond the dead to tell us whether there was an afterlife or not, then that would be evidence.
More to the point, given that your view appears to be shared by no other participants of this thread, it is wandering well into hijack territory.
Feel free to open a new thread to discuss your views, but drop it in this thread.
EVERYONE ELSE! Do not bring up “rebuttals” to XT’s views in this thread.
If he is not permitted to respond, you are not permitted to harp on the topic.
[ /Moderating ]
And that’s the really nice outcome I mentioned previously : you miraculously keep living after 7 strokes, 5 cancers, a double amputation, being ran over by two cars, going blind and deaf by age 130, and so on.
Assuming multiverses, it makes complete sense. All the potential you surviving should have a sense of continuity, so you would somehow survive until the heat death of the universe. But if true, it’s an unadulterated nightmare.
The thing is : you don’t die in this scenario. All the possible versions of you are still you. Yes, in some universes, you die, but it doesn’t matter since there are still many identical copies of you, remembering they are you and still living. So, it’s you still living.
If you don’t accept this premice, then it means that you “die”, disappear, at each instant, being replaced by a large number a identical copies that aren’t you (similar to the teleportation issue).
If you accept it, then it means that you keep living, because there’s always one of the branches were you survived against all odds. But then in what shape after, say, the first 200 years or so?
Both prospects are very unpleasant IMO.
See post #190.
In this hypothesis, you’re making all possible choices at every instant (and all possible things happen at every instant). So at the instant you’re reading this sentence, a massive number of universe is created. An untold number where you keep reading, and an untold number where you stop reading. In some you keep reading and pick your nose, in some you keep reading and don’t pick your nose, in some you keep reading, pick your nose and the ceiling suddenly collapses on your head, in some you keep reading, pick your nose and the ceiling doesn’t collapses. In some you keep reading, pick your nose, the ceiling collapses and you die, in some you keep reading, you pick your nose, the ceiling collapses and you survive. And you’ll keep surviving, branches after branches, because there’s always a “you” to ensure continuity.
Note that besides guaranteeing you eternal life, this hypothesis also guarantees that you have absolutely no free will, since you will do absolutely everything that you possibly can, every conceivable arrangement of the universe having its own branch. For instance, there’s one where you’re so happy to have read my post that you send me a 50 000 check. In others, some particles in your brain will behave a bit differently, your neurons will fire in a slightly different way, and you'll send me a check of only 49 000.
Wait a minute…WTF? Guaranteed survival in the multi world hypothesis is a perfectly well known idea, and which has been mentioned many times on this board. Since when are we banned from mentioning something that is perfctly relevant to the thread just because only one of the participants supports it? :dubious:
There is a bit of circular reasoning in the OP and other posts, not on what happens after death, but what is ‘life’ & consciousness, which should be definable, provable, observable, and understandable if it is entirely within the electrochemical body, but we have not done that yet. This if done could prove the OP’s conjecture ‘when you die that is it’.
So yeah if you define life & consciousness as what is in the body, and the body ceases to function then life ceases to function, so when you die that is it, but that is only because you defined what life is by a unproven belief as a starting point.
The definitions stem from the evidence collected so far, not from an unproven belief.
And also fails on that very premise, the evidence collected so far does not support the claim. But if the claim is true it should:
Here’s the thing with this line, if the ‘life and consciousness’ is entirely within the biological ‘unit’ then it is highly likely is it provable and understandable (for the very reason that it is totally within the biological unit - i.e. no spiritual or other component).
Since that has not yet been proven, but if the OP statement happens to be correct, it is highly likely provable and therefore needs to be proven as fact before the OP’s conjecture is taken as anything more then a belief.
Then it would be a error to state that ‘when you die that’s it’ because knowing that would mean that we have proven what ‘life and consciousness’ is. And again if, and only if, the OP is correct that is very likely provable due to the conditions of what life needs to be to fit the conjecture put forth.
So the OP’s really statement falls to ‘We don’t know what happens after death’ because the statement he made is self contradictory.
Or simplified (the contradictory nature of the OP’s premise):
1: If a statement is known to be provable, it should not be taken (nor stated) as fact till it is proven.
2: The OP’s statement if correct should be provable.
So the OP is not stating a fact because he does not know.
Can you support this declarative statement? In what way does the verifiable evidence collected so far not support the claim?