I’ll tell Leonardo what you think. As soon as I find him. And learn Italian. I have all the time in the world.
Ghosts that continue to exist with freedom of movement, and thought, let alone if they have the ability to still manipulate matter, violate the conservation of energy, and the law of entropy. I’ll get all the greatest (deceased) physicists, philosophers and others together in one great big symposium, where we can solve the issue and figure out the meaning of life.
Like, if ghosts can see and hear, are they affecting light and sound waves? Can enough ghosts together block light from reaching the still living? How do ghosts see each other? Can they?
I’d first spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I can walk around, even climb stairs but also go thru walls. What sort of nonsense Physics is this? And how can I exploit it to communicate or something with the real world. If I stomp my foot on a drum on the ground, what happens? Does my foot go thru it? Does my body go up? If so, how does Newton’s 3rd law work here?
And then there’s the stuff Just_Asking_Questions gets into. The sound wave stuff is especially interesting.
I don’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or the afterlife. When you’re dead it’s blackness forever, and there is no reason to believe that’s not the case. Just like it is for a dog or any other living creature on our planet.
Let’s say you leave your TV on and never turn it off. When the power goes out the TV goes black. You can’t see or hear anything until you restore the power. Similarly, after you’re dead for a certain amount of time, nobody can restore your power. For example, someone trapped in a freezing river snagged by an underwater branch, can be resuscitated after a relatively long period of time, because they haven’t technically died yet.
Someone please prove to me otherwise that doesn’t require an unseen and undetectable supernatural power.
Nothing requires you to accept the premise of the thread – except if you are posting in it. This is a threadshit. Please don’t contribute to the thread if it’s not for you.
You know what really scares me? Not that I become an eternal ghost, able to see but unable to interact with the living, doomed to be a ghost for the life of the universe.
No, what scares me is being a ghost that is consciousness but being unable to see hear or interact with ANYTHING. Because light and sound and matter have no impact on the ghost, you become a consciousness, able to think but do nothing. Like being in a featureless black void. Alone. Forever.
And that is what reality is actually like. All the 107 billion dead, stuck in their own featureless voids, with no way to tell us. Slowly going mad. And death isn’t even a release.
Same. If there is an afterlife, it is clear to me that the Universe is bigger than what we can imagine. If one becomes a ghost, it is very unlikely that anyone will hang around on this pale blue dot.
Nitpick: you have all the time in the afterworld. No! Not that after! It’s not so bad!
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Congratulations! You have just proven that you and me have no immortal soul, that Godott does not exist and that this is just a fun thread masquerading as a thought experiment. Could be worse, couldn’t it?
I bet he speaks English by now. And he may be reading over your shoulder.
I hate to break this to you, but no, they can’t. They are completely transparent, they can’t be seen, they don’t interact with electromagnetic radiation at all. Which, as a corollary, means they are blind. And deaf and all the rest too. Actually, they are dead.
But as I just wrote: this a Gedankenexperiment, and as such quite fun. I’m enjoying it!
Ha! As a boy I was a very good accordionist, and still enjoyed playing it (once in a while) all my life until I went deaf at 70. If my corporal hearing has been restored after death, Hell wouldn’t be so bad. I could even entertain all the other inmates!
I definitely won’t hang around my family. I’d be all for my wife getting remarried, but I don’t want to see it. And I’d rather not walk in on my kids.
Walking in on someone else might be fun, but what’s my libido like?
Circumnavigating the world and visiting all the countries and museums could be fun. Can I walk on top of the water? Why not - not much different from walking on the floor.
And I’d definitely pay a visit to the ISS.
The “Physics” of ghostliness would be severely tested with a rocket flight.
Would the rocket take off and just leave you hanging in mid air?
Once in space, there is no “down” so how does the classic ghost movement trope work? Which sides of the capsule are “solid” so you can stand on them, which sides can you go thru?
What if there’s a course correction and the ship goes one way while you go another? Etc.
I just thought that people studying human behavior would have a field day as a ghost. So many things are known only by not very reliable surveys. Think how Dr. Kinsey would love circulating through the bedrooms of a neighborhood to see what is really going on. First thing I’d do is to apply for an NSF (National Spook Foundation) grant.
I looked up vestigial, and it says “forming a small remnant of something that was much larger.” My 12 year old is plenty large 60 years after I was one, thanks.
