But you just got through asserting that it would be different. You’re contradicting yourself.
Time does not stop because you die. People die every day, yet time continues. And even if time did stop, you couldn’t experience “being stranded”, because there would be no passage of time in which to experience such a state.
I still don’t understand why you would assume that it would be. What evidence do you have to suggest that it would?
And the obvious answer is that our consciousness simply ceases to be when we die.
Sentient Meat started a really good thread about that awhile back. We’ve had quite a few threads that talk about that. You should try doing a search. The very short answer is that the universe does not have a boundary, in the same sense that a circle does not have an end.
It’s ironic that you would say that, because you seem to be the one who is “perfectly satisfied” with your answers. As near as I can figure from your cryptic writing style, you believe that your consciousness somehow continues after you die, or picks up again, or some such thing, but not in the traditional ascent to heaven sense. This odd belief of yours seems to be wholly fabricated from your imagination; you don’t appear to have any evidence to back it up. Yet it seems impossible to dissuade you.
Incorrect. A wish does not have to be for something pleasant. One could just as easily wish for an unpleasant thing. The point is that merely thinking (or imagining, or ‘wishing’) a thing does not make that thing true. I’m asking on what evidence you base the belief. Understand?
I suppose I do possess a certain zealousness to pursue the truth. Which is why I questioned Ugly Beech as to what the reason is for this belief. Just because you write something doesn’t make it true. I could write that I will turn into Barney the Purple Dinosaur when I die. Is there any particular reason to believe that statement, just because I wrote it? I could grouse that you are closed-minded for not believing that I will turn into Barney, and I could employ ad-hominem, saying you are a ‘zealous atheist’, but neither of those things is evidence for the belief.
Why should the experience of becoming as non-conscious as we were for the 13.7 billion years before our consciousness be affected by a future variable (ie. whether we remain so for evermore, or not)?
If there is no difference, what is paradoxical, or even interesting, about that? Surely it is only like inputting one final image into the memory of a hard disk before throwing it on a fire?
No, dammit! How many times do I have to explain? There IS no fire! That section of time-space is NOT destroyed. Time is NOT a meat-grinder that transforms the present into the past.
But the equivalent in that case is that the hard drive still exists in that period of spacetime between its manufacture in Korea and its destruction in that fire, yes?
I’m not sure that the metaphor really clarifies anything.
It really comes down to the memory chain, though. Someone could be a vegetable or totally lose their memory/sense and still be alive. Same deal.
The problem doesn’t arise because of a quickly flipped switch. The process of fading could be gradual.
The paradox is really quite simple: we depend on a memory chain that eventually will end. But the memory chain/speculation system is not built to comprehend that. So we tell little stories about how ourselves and others will fare once we’re dead, but these stories never seem quite right (or are in fact not right) as we are still in them as remberers/processors, despite the fact that we are trying to write ourselves out of the story.
This is really a lot simpler (yet more subtle) than people here are trying to make it. It has nothing to do with “belief” or “wishful thinking.”
I’m thinking it might be fun to capture Aeschines and torture him. After a few hours, if he asks us to stop, we could point out that it doesn’t matter if we do or not, that section of space-time is not destroyed. I haven’t decided about killing him, though.
Sorry to butt in, but didn’t blowero clinch the argument just a few posts back? He pointed out that one’s consciousness could not be ‘stranded’ in one moment, as one needs to perceive time passing (in a series of ‘moments’ if you like) to perceive of anything at all.
Say I come to my bodily death falling from a balcony of a hotel (and lets hope it’s not some Holiday Inn or such). My last conscious moment will probably be one of discomfort as my skull shatters. If, despite my brain’s demise, I carry on for eternity experiencing that discomfort, wouldn’t my mind wander? I’d be stuck thinking ‘god, it feels like bloody years since I dashed my brains out…what was my room number again?’
I’ve heard the one about experiencing your dying moment for eternity before, but usually as some form of secular hell i.e. ‘bad’ people are left regretting their scumbag lives for ever more. But I don’t see how it would work, or why it would happen.
Aeschines, just don’t respond to this stuff. (BTW, these were directed at both you and me). Certain people either have LARGE bugs up their butt or are trying to provoke you. They’ll especially do it when they know they’re comfortably in the majority and you have an unpopular viewpoint.
Just ignore him and he’ll go away and find some puppy to kick.
Hoodoo’s post is beneath contempt. It would be inappropriate even for the pit.
Yup, I agree. Mostly I think it’s a lazy imagination. It’s very easy to argue the pedestrian view because you dont have to explain anything. The bar is much higher if you have a slightly novel/interesting view (mine) and frankly exceedingly high if you have a very novel/interesting view (which is why you’re getting beat up more than me).
You’ve obviously thought about it a LOT and have done everything I think you could conceivably have done to put it across. A warm reception was never going to happen. But this level of hostility is - well actually interesting, isn’t it?
I just dragged a whole sack full of warnings out here from the Mod’s locker, and now I’m too tired to hang them on individual posters.
STOP IT.
Either show some courtesy to your opponents or simply stay out of this thread.
There have been sufficient nasty remarks from both sides of the chasm that I am not about to play the “Who started it?” game.
I am ending it. The next snide remark, catty observation, comment on tone instead of substance, or any thing else that irritates me gets an official warning.
Tomndebb, I hate Smilies, I’m sorry. Maybe I should Just change may username to Smiley. Uglybeech, I’m enjoying this thread, I don’t dislike you or** Aeschines**, my post illustrated a metaphysical point about your perceptions of space-time, and really did not mean to express ANY ill will.
I do believe we ‘wake up’ as babies (or 2 year olds to be more precise…when I believe consciousness kicks in), but not in the same time-space. I believe consciousness is recycled in a sense, but subsequent lives are unrelated and unaffected by each other in any way. It kind of bugs me a bit because I’m afraid I’m gonna come back as one of these nut-jobs I see daily.
