The other threads point to other examples of trying to pull the territory out of the map. The maths may appear reconciled on paper, but without them quantifying an observed phenomenon they remain theoretic and like most in this area of speculation practically arbitrary hypothesis.
Besides I think you are confusing the giva with the atman 
If there is anyone here who thinks that they personally are not going to die, I invite you to wake up and reignite a thing most primitive in humans which is a fundamental object of their love, of your love: truth. You are going do die. Depend on it. You are not only not going be productive to age 150, you and I, like Socrates and Rand, are going to die probably before age 100. I mean we shall stop existing and not exist through all future time beyond our death. (We shall not pass through any time beyond our death because we shall not exist.) That we lived and what that life consisted of is part of the past through all future time. I mean the fact of our interval of existence. I don’t mean that recognition of the fact will continue through all future time. One of God’s jobs was to remember you through all time, but God failed to exist.
The full explicit acceptance of the fact that you will be falling apart into nonexistence forever can be refreshing and cleansing, rather like figuring out that God does not exist, even though God had been the thing you loved most up until your realization that It did not exist.
Most of us will be entirely forgotten by eight decades after death. It’s OK. That we lived can be enough satisfaction. One’s finite life was its own purpose and significance. Only in human lives are there any long purposes, and any significance in the universe is in such living things. One lived and was a being that made its own existence and perhaps made likenesses of one’s kind (children), made one’s own essence and distinctive principles, one’s own kind of necessity and unity because: one was life itself and life become highly conscious.
The thought that one will reach a last day of life and cease to exist can be terrifying, and I think keeping that terror at bay (in a psychotic way) is a main reason for some major religions, as well as sci-fi projections of never having that day come to one. It will come, and I have a third poem in this vicinty I’d like to also share in this thread:
Once
Against all hours, days, devisings,
radiant axe and warming fire:
Pulse and grasp cease you. You stillness
gone from streams of light, space and time,
gone to snow once touched your flushed face,
to crester-stone once glanced the pond,
to pond, its laps of shore, their sum,
to ice ceiling once you stood upon,
to sky once above all your loves.
1 hour ago, tadmjones said:
“..sameness of conscience” could be analogous to musical notes, middle C played on various instruments , or even the same instrument at different occasions, is the same note, yes? The production , or circumstances that bring the occasion or happening of the note can be anywhere or anywhen, but the location or duration of the note may be limited to circumstances of a defined where or when.
Wouldn’t the notes be similar even though its the same note?
So it would be similar and not “sameness”
16 minutes ago, Solvreven said:
Wouldn’t the notes be similar even though its the same note?
So it would be similar and not “sameness”
I think I’d rather abandon that analogy.
Stephen
I don’t think those here think they are not not going to die, they do seem though open to the idea that biologic death isn’t the ‘end’ of awareness.
5 hours ago, DavidOdden said:
At this technological point, we have no reason to make any assertion on that issue regarding transporters and similar sci-fi notions one way or the other.
Actually this goes all the way back to the Ship of Theseus. Also, one of the ancient Greeks said that you never step in the same river twice…
On 8/15/2024 at 1:56 PM, EC said:
The same person in a cloned, synthetic, or quantum computer. When I say “mind transfer”, I mean with the same continuation of consciousness. True, mind/body is not a dichotomy, but one starts in the new “body” with the same mind/continuation of consciousness that one had in the last Plank Time moment that existed prior to the mind transfer. For same continuation of consciousness that is what is required.
So he’s still the same guy. He/she owns a new body. (For the sake of argument, I accept the med-tech feasibility of the project).
Yet you are still left with this:
“Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations—like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly assessing his relationship to reality”…
That subconscious emotional - sensitive guardian - “adding up his desires”…etc.
I don’t argue that consciousness won’t continue with life extension, anything but. I argue that time and experience has a causal relationship with values. I argue there will come a point when that subconscious “sensitive guardian” will ‘ask’ through one’s emotional state:
“Is this worth it?”
And the pains and losses of ~ extended ~ living (with, don’t forget, one’s rational anticipation of much more life and loss to come) will supersede the pleasure.
With all the volition/free will and reason one can and should bring to bear upon reality, one has never full control over the instantaneously responsive actions and content of one’s subconscious mind. Rationalistic to consider otherwise.
Rather I think, you have dropped the context of the “psychological” which I’ve no problem naming, “the spiritual” (Rand also did) - that makes life worth living - in favor of the physical. They are in unity.
The ultimate cruel joke, it’s said. Men find life vastly enjoyable - AND - know it will be taken away. A seeming paradox answered by the subjective cynics: I choose to find living horribly unpleasant in order to spite death. I will (unconsciously or deliberately) refuse to enjoy my life.
Answered objectively, life and value are inseparable for all living creatures. (What’s evil is that which threatens their life - etc.)
For man - who knows - being alive entails the foreknowledge of someday not being alive, thereby amplifying its worth, not degrading it. One’s unrepeatable end-in-itself life requires one cherishes it, not by simply staying alive and surviving longer, but by the standard, “man’s life”.
20 hours ago, whYNOT said:
The ultimate cruel joke, it’s said. Men find life vastly enjoyable - AND - know it will be taken away. A seeming paradox answered by the subjective cynics: I choose to find living horribly unpleasant in order to spite death. I will (unconsciously or deliberately) refuse to enjoy my life.
Answered objectively, life and value are inseparable for all living creatures. (What’s evil is that which threatens their life - etc.)
For man - who knows - being alive entails the foreknowledge of someday not being alive, thereby amplifying its worth, not degrading it. One’s unrepeatable end-in-itself life requires one cherishes it, not by simply staying alive and surviving longer, but by the standard, “man’s life”.
Never argued against any of this or disagree. I’m saying that time scales can be vastly increased and that doesn’t change Man’s life qua Man and value attainment and creation that makes life worth living and the highest of possible values. People once had a life expectancy of 20, and now it is in the 70’s. Increasing life span (even up to potentially eternal) does not eliminate any of that but increases the time to live the best and happiest life possible instead. Once a mind is uploaded one is essentially an eternal being anyway even if the mind isn’t turned back on in a new “body”. As our “localverse” and everything in it (including each of us) is a result of quantum gravitational computation on the event horizon of its containing black hole in the wider “Universe” this already is a fact for each of us until that black hole evaporates via Hawking radiation into its containing “Universe” anyway, but each of these exists as broken symmetry “localverses” within its own parent “Universe” in a finite but unbound number until the Supersymmetrical full actual Universe that exists as a single whole in one Plank Time is “reached”. That is in scare quotes because it that one Plank Time full Universe exists everywhere eternally. Our “localverse”, ourselves, and everything “in it” and the sum of all of these *is* the Universe qua existence.
I’m never one to fault “the endeavor” EC. Any who push the boundaries test the limits of what can be done or can’t.
On 8/13/2024 at 12:47 PM, tadmjones said:
An indestructible form of being would not act ‘out of reason’ , perhaps psychologically whim worship is rooted in an implicit idea of immortality, consequence-less actions have no effects and none meaningfully deleterious.
Yeah, that’s exactly what the thought experiment was about. The purpose was the same as the immortal robot. Somehow Biddle was unable to point out that morality being objective depends on conditionality of one’s existence. If somebody is literally indestructible, not even in terms of “ageless”, then no moral facts apply to them. The conversation would either go towards discussing the meaning of the word objective (“how can something be objective if it depends on other criteria?”), or discussing the choice to live.
I thought I basically said just that , twice, Biddle isn’t the only one unable to get clear of a rationalistic frame when confronted with a question of ‘orthodoxy’. Not that O’ism can only be taken dogmatically , but adherents of all stripes tend toward rationalism. Even given the weight Rand gives to integration and hierarchy.
On 8/11/2024 at 10:52 AM, EC said:
Well when mind transfer technology becomes fully available to mankind and everyone utilizes it their will be a majority of kids who will commit suicide out of this “boredom” before they reach even their first googleplex year
Whatever technology we develop, entropy will eventually make the universe a place where it is impossible for any kind of life to function, and thus do us in.
Also, before that, wouldn’t there still be ways to die?
12 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
Whatever technology we develop, entropy will eventually make the universe a place where it is impossible for any kind of life to function, and thus do us in.
Also, before that, wouldn’t there still be ways to die?
No, you aren’t understanding the full scope of the entire actual Universe, but are using the limited present theory. You are a great poster but I’m not going to explain the actual true nature of the entire Universe over and over in every discussion.
On 8/30/2024 at 10:44 PM, Mthomas9s said:
Craig actually uploaded a few commentaries on his debate with Alex O’Connor. Has anyone watched them yet?
Yeah, I think they are interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcMpHtAH6RM
On 8/10/2024 at 5:50 PM, Boydstun said:
Hi, guy.
Pretty good.
No. If you cannot die, you are not “still people.”
And by the way, both those guys are going to die, just like you and I, and one should get on with consciousness of that enduring condition of one’s entire interval of living. One is going to stop existing. That’s the deal. Time in the ongoing world will continue, but not oneself continuing further. All one’s loved ones who have died ended at that moment. Completely. Absolutely. Modern-day secular imaginings of continuing forever or continuing without a living body are the same old failure—as with Plato and Plotinus—to tie fully one’s light, free-gliding mind with physical body, specifically, one’s corruptible living body. There is no excuse for that today: Principles of Neuroscience; Conscious Mind – Resonant
See that is exactly what draws me to Vedanta , they directly tie the mind to the body or at least severe both from awareness/consciousness.
Neural correlates just don’t get me there as an explanation of My taste of chocolate, on this mortal plane sure when my tongue stops working upon death Tad’s taste for chocolate will be no more , but the squishy stuff doesn’t explain just what is doing the experience(experiencing) of Tad’s taste of chocolate, and if it is separate from what gives rise to mind , it may not necessarily follow the same rules , mortality possibly being one of them.
I think in this age it is becoming scientifically evident that physicalist reductionism isn’t the path to follow , unless you disavow the path.