I believe it was suggested that it wouldn’t exactly be a perfect afterlife if the inhabitants ever became dissatisfied. If I had the ability to suck at things in this paradise, I might just end up sucking at them pretty much forever, which might be quite demoralizing. So the game must be rigged so I win. And once you notice that (which you eventually would if your brain wasn’t nerfed) the game would cease to be fun to play.
Eh, free will is fine, so long as you don’t try to use some weird definition of it where it has to mean being literally unpredictable, which is sort of the opposite of having a “will”. That’s the kind of free will that’s nonsensical. Reasonable definitions work just fine.
And sure, watching Netflix forever is fine - but how many different possible variations of TV shows can there be? Given enough time you’ll literally have seen every possible combination of sights and sounds that can be presented in a two-year period. So you’ll be watching Netflix on repeat. Double yay!
I think that’s a fairly narrow reading of the OP. Being satisfied doesn’t mean immediately getting everything you wish for. If you have the attitude that satisfaction must be earned, then a proper heaven isn’t going to just rig things.
Now, one might also suppose that some challenges are so difficult that you really can’t accomplish them. If your afterlife body is an exact model of your real one, but your physical dexterity is such that it’s genuinely impossible for you to accomplish your tightrope trick, then it’s reasonable for the afterlife to enhance you just to the point where the trick is possible, and no farther. That would still be satisfying to most, I think.
Of course, eternity is a long time and eventually you’ll run out of things to do. Just erase your memories and start over. Could be we’ve all been through this process a bunch of times already…
Speaking as a person who has tried to write fiction, one thing I might reasonably attempt to do given literally all the free time in the universe would be to write a good book. That’s going to be hard to cheat - it’s not about giving you better finger muscles to more strongly punch the keys of the keyboard you’re tapping on to pass the time as you mentally will hardbound volumes into existence. It’s about the capabilities of your own mind and creativity, and that’s not something that God can fix without changing who you are. So a person could reasonably try over and over and over and over and never feel satisfied with what they’re trying to accomplish, forever. And with only sycophantic constructs to read your work and give it meaningless rave reviews, you will only have yourself as a judge. Good lord, I think I just described hell.
Also I must say, cavalierly suggesting that annihilating portions of one’s memory would be a good go-to method for achieving endless happiness doesn’t read to me as a refutation of my position that the only effective ways of achieving unending happiness are mental manipulation or brainwashing. Though if you’re okay with your memories being reset, why not just reset them to an instant you were having a happy thought, over and over again, on a loop? Groundhog day on a one-second timer. You don’t even need to have new experiences; the single one will serve you until the end of time and you’ll never know the difference.
Many of my opinions have already been shared by others but since this is IMHO, I’ll go ahead and put in my 2 cents worth in my own words.
Murder is still wrong. It non-consensual and can’t be undone. and Even if you think you are doing them a favor, that’s for them to decide they don’t want to die that’s there choice. Besides they are going to get there eventually what’s your hurry.
Euthanasia should in general follow the patient’s advance directive, but in this universe it could arguably make sense euthanasia as the default for those without an advance directive that are in a state in which they are unable to make their own decisions, the reverse of what. But again, given that death is irreversible and they are going to get their eventually the what’s your hurry clause may still apply,
Suicide is understandable and not seriously immoral, but may be selfish (see below).
Unselfish for not committing suicide:
Those you leave behind may depend on you either emotionally or materially and even though this is only a temporary state it still causes pain.
As I understand the OP, procreation only happens in the mortal world, so if you want more people to experience eternal happiness you have to stay around the mortal realm long enough to bring them up so that they too can procreate.
Selfish reason for not committing suicide:
You have all of eternity to enjoy the afterlife but only a few decades in the mortal realm, and once its over that’s that. So while paradise might be objectively better than the old world, for the sake of variety I’d probably want to stick around as long as possible.
But that’s not a static thing. You might simply be given the capability to develop your mind and creativity. it would then be up to you to develop it.
In fact, it might be sufficient to be told, by a reliable source, that you are in fact capable of the feat. Words of encouragement by friends and family are nice and all, but ultimately we all know that such things are said without evidence. But even a modestly powerful being with insight into our mind can say such things reliably.
If that is not sufficient, certain light touches may still be. Psychotropic drugs available today can (sometimes) make unmotivated people motivated, or otherwise let them use their existing capabilities. The drugs are broad-spectrum, have all kinds of side effects, and yet for the most part we don’t say they change what a person is. You don’t have to imagine an omnipotent being to imagine drugs that work a whole lot better than the ones we have, with smaller-ranging effects–and consequently alter “who you are” less than what we have today.
I continue to pity anyone that can’t derive internal satisfaction from a feat, and must depend on the adulation of others. Though I might suggest such a person is so shallow that artificial adulators might work just as well as the real thing.
Is it your position that we could/would be altered to all be the same in potential, capability, imagination, thought processes, and personality? Because if that is not the case then there will still be some with inferior capabilities in some ways, or varying ways of seeing or understanding things that will result in feelings of inadequacy in some people. This would become worse without real people to interact with; you will lose all sense of perspective, while the only other entity to compare yourself with is that God who is picking through your brain like it’s a frog spread out on a dissection platter. Who, of course, is not a reliable source of information. How can we tell the thing is telling the truth? Why is it trustworthy? Is it forcing us to believe it? If it were lying, how would we know?
If I take a magic pill that makes me capable of writing a great book, then I’m not writing the book, the pill is. I’m not interested in mind-altering substances - I can think of no better way to prove to myself that I am incapable than to find myself forced to rely on drugs or other methods to forcibly change me into something else to get the job done. Especially since maybe they only make me better in the way alcohol makes people more clever and better dancers - my perceptions would then be in doubt. Not that they weren’t already in doubt with the fluidity of the world around me; nothing is certain. Good grief, oblivion is sounding better all the time.
If you desired. But why stop at normal human limits? I’m acutely aware of my own limitations and I’d certainly like to exceed them.
Some might like to go the other way; experiencing a “smaller” consciousness, such as an animal’s. A benevolent god might allow this for a time, to gain the experience, but allowing it to go on indefinitely seems cruel even if the participant desires it.
Exactly. Your critiques largely apply to the world we already live in. I certainly don’t think life is hell, despite the lack of free will or the inadequacy of our brains or our limited senses or the lack of real identity or the various contradictions in our existence. Still seems pretty good to me.
I was tailoring my critiques pretty closely to the specific details of the scenario in question, actually, but whichever. In mortal life we do have free will (of the compatiblist variety, which is the only good kind of free will) and we have identity in that we are what we are (which doesn’t apply in a heaven where anything can be changed with a wish) and I’m honestly not sure what contradictions you’re talking about.
One thing that mortality and the theorized afterlife have in common is that in each of them there is no specific goal. You can invent goals of your own based on your own preferences, but if you conclude that there is nothing to be gained by getting off your ass, you can sit forever. Well, in heaven. On earth there are bills to pay.
It’s something like a parent letting their child do nothing but play video games or feeding them nothing but McDonalds. It’s perfectly fine, to a degree, but a parent has an obligation to encourage personal growth.
Let me try something simpler. Let’s say you have a personal goal of becoming funnier in social situations, but anxiety is holding you back. And suppose you find that moderate alcohol consumption allows you to achieve that–or at least let’s you think you’ve achieved that.
Has the alcohol changed you as a person? Does the fact that you can’t tell if people are laughing with your or at the alcohol make life worse than oblivion?
One of many: despite it very much seeming like we have a decent grasp of the universe around us, we very much don’t. In fact we don’t live in the universe at all; we live in a simulation, created by our own brains, which is a predictive model of the universe constrained by our senses. On the other hand, what else could it be? Direct access to the universe is impossible. And it is our brains creating this simulation, even if we don’t quite have conscious control. Is there any resolution to this disparity? Does it matter? Probably not. It’s just something to think about when you’re trying to fall asleep at night.
So the deity feels compelled to encourage personal growth, huh? Wonder what it’d think of my plan to ignore the meaningless challengeless ‘challenges’ and the fake people and just watch TV all day. Do you suppose I’d be forced to do growthy things?
I do hope you’re not trying to ground your argument in the idea that nonexistence is a bad thing, when it’s clearly entirely free of comparative value; it is neither better or worse than anything.
And clearly the alcohol has changed you as a person, at least temporarily - if somebody was rendered permanently drunk that would definitely be a change to their personality and cognition. And it’s hard to speak of the value of a supposed accomplishment when it’s explicitly stated that your methods render you incapable of determining whether you’ve achieved it. The fact that you’re presenting this level of confusion and delusion as a good thing, though, raises the question - what’s the relative merit of just rendering a person incapable of comprehending anything, provided that in their blank incomprehension they are also injected with a euphoria with no discernible cause? Would that be a good thing? It seems to be the logical conclusion of the position you’re presenting.
Hmm? There’s clearly something generating a significant level of consistency to our sensory input. It’s quite clear that the ‘something’ out there is not as we perceive it - it’s made of atoms and molecules and other weird things we can’t see. However it or something that operates similarly to it clearly exists so as to generate the consistency of perception. The fact that we perceive this objective reality via the information-gathering pathways we have is straightforward enough and our information processing is also mechanical in nature. Certainly not a contradiction, in any case.
This afterlife need not be pointless and goal-less; given an omnipotent or near-omnipotent entity in charge, the dwellers in paradise could be given a task - something engrossing and challenging like the creation of a new universe.
The one thing that makes no sense is the brief period of ‘real’ existence in our own world, when the individuals concerned have the opportunity to suffer and die. Why not dispense with this short period altogether, and go straight to an empowering heaven? Is the omnipotent or near-omnipotent entity in charge a sadist of some sort?