What is death like?

[dafydd]

Just for fun I'll join in the game of infinity/let's pretend. If I do come back an infinite number of times, what difference will that make to me now? What difference will it make to anything?

 

[Croc411]

This cannot be true because of the hierarchy of infinites required. For you to exist as you do now, the entire universe (at least in our light cone) would have to be duplicated, and so on, and on. The same logic can be used to say, "If I exist twice, then I must exist four times and an infinite number of times." And the same argument, if it were valid, could be made for all of time and space and all the rearrangements of the same. Will you also ask that the whole charade be played out, in the same sequence, an infinite number of times?

You could set it up al la Godel with a dash of Cantor to see why this doesn't work.

"Infinity" is being misused here as a kind of hand waving, mystical, "don't take me seriously."

You confuse me a bit here.

Tegmark once calculated that, given a big enough and homogeneous universe (galaxies wherever you go, same laws of nature everywhere), the next exact copy of our own hubble volume should be no more than 10 ^ (10 ^ 115) metres (roughly a googolplex light years) away. No infinities required, just very large numbers.

Assuming his numbers are correct (I didn't check), would you agree with him or not? If not, why not?

 

[phunk]

You confuse me a bit here.

Tegmark once calculated that, given a big enough and homogeneous universe (galaxies wherever you go, same laws of nature everywhere), the next exact copy of our own hubble volume should be no more than 10 ^ (10 ^ 115) metres (roughly a googolplex light years) away. No infinities required, just very large numbers.

Assuming his numbers are correct (I didn't check), would you agree with him or not? If not, why not?

If everything is quantized, and the distribution of mass roughly homogenous, then he's right. There will be a finite (but huge) numer of ways the mass/energy can be arranged in any given hubble sphere, so a big enough universe will necessarily have duplicates.

 

[phunk]

I am interested in what you think about death.

In your mind what it is like to be dead?
Can you imagine it?
Can you justify your position?
Are you looking forward to it?
Or are you scared, and hoping it won't happen for some time?
How often do you think about it seriously?

I was watching you tube footage after the Houla massacre in Syria. Which caused me to wonder about the answers to the above questions that would be given by people who live there.

Your mind won't exist, so it's not like anything. You can't imagine it, because imagining is a process of the mind, and the mind will be gone.

Think back to what it was like for the 13.7 billion years before you were born. Do you remember not existing? Was it boring? Death will be the same. You won't care.

 

[Croc411]

If I do come back an infinite number of times, what difference will that make to me now? What difference will it make to anything?

None. Would be meaningless and totally equivalent to you existing only once.

But for every "you-existence" proceeding exactly like your current one, there would be a huge number of very similar, but slightly different ones ...

 

[dafydd]

None. Would be meaningless and totally equivalent to you existing only once.

But for every "you-existence" proceeding exactly like your current one, there would be a huge number of very similar, but slightly different ones ...

Including one who married Karen Alderson?

 

[Croc411]

Including one who married Karen Alderson?

Yes, but also one where some loony kidnaps you, keeps you alive artificially and forces you to listen to Slim Whitman for a billion years.

 

[dafydd]

Yes, but also one where some loony kidnaps you, keeps you alive artificially and forces you to listen to Slim Whitman for a billion years.

Being married to her once might actually make up for that. And you never know, there may be a me that lives in a world which is free of mystical beliefs.

 

[marplots]

You confuse me a bit here.

Tegmark once calculated that, given a big enough and homogeneous universe (galaxies wherever you go, same laws of nature everywhere), the next exact copy of our own hubble volume should be no more than 10 ^ (10 ^ 115) metres (roughly a googolplex light years) away. No infinities required, just very large numbers.

Assuming his numbers are correct (I didn't check), would you agree with him or not? If not, why not?

I disagree for the following reason.
For this to work, you would need duplicates of every universe that not only happened as we know it, but all the universes that were spawned by the variations possible because of random factors. Symmetry requires duplicates of duplicates of duplicates. The numbers are swamped, not only by Planck timescales of variation, but by combinations of variations in a factorial way.

So, to make it plain, let us suppose he is right at some time t. Will he still be right at time t+1? or 2? Remember, it isn't a set combination of matter either; radioactivity for decay and matter formation are ongoing as well. This could be argued against by not stating a fixed radius, but a function that increases at the rate in which the variation increases. However, increases in such a radius will introduce more "space" which introduces more variation by way of background quantum fluctuation, so I don't think that does it either.

Another escape would be if you assume some sort of convergence, so that universes tend to some mean state. But there is still a problem with borderline definitions. Would a universe have to be next to the same set of universes to be the same universe? There is an explosion across these scales as well.

The root of my argument would rely on being able to frame the universe in some non-discreet fashion, like the continuity on a number line, not just creating a very large number. I'm not sure I've justified that yet.

 

[marplots]

An article making Tegmark's point in SciAm can be found here:
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

It indeed uses a discrete framing based on protons, to which I've already objected.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

My wife.

.
Buncha ants this morning.. that ant killer does not work all the time!

I watched my wife's cat kill a baby bird a couple of weeks ago. He didn't even eat it. He just killed it because he could.

the lion sheds no tears over the fawn it's eating.

I have killed a few things, usually to eat them. Once it was for pity. I've killed animals with guns, knives, traps and my bare hands. I have also chosen not to kill when killing would have been easy. Everyone seems to be talking about AFTER death. I can't say there's anything after death. I can't say what it's like to die, except for how I have seen it happen to others. That experience varies greatly. I'm not that concerned about dying. It will happen soon enough. I'm more concerned with living and doing that the best I can.

 

[punshhh]

This cannot be true because of the hierarchy of infinites required. For you to exist as you do now, the entire universe (at least in our light cone) would have to be duplicated, and so on, and on. The same logic can be used to say, "If I exist twice, then I must exist four times and an infinite number of times." And the same argument, if it were valid, could be made for all of time and space and all the rearrangements of the same. Will you also ask that the whole charade be played out, in the same sequence, an infinite number of times?

You could set it up al la Godel with a dash of Cantor to see why this doesn't work.

"Infinity" is being misused here as a kind of hand waving, mystical, "don't take me seriously."

This is not a mystical position, in my experience mysticism regards the notion of an infinity in anything that exists as a nonsense.

This is a hypothetical, an idea I was grappling with as a child (of about 6 or 7yrs), in an attempt to understand the existential nature of death.

 

[punshhh]

An article making Tegmark's point in SciAm can be found here:
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

It indeed uses a discrete framing based on protons, to which I've already objected.

I haven't had time to read the whole article yet, however I doubt that it addresses an infinity in spacetime. If one views reality as a monism which is infinite then I can see no alternative to an infinity in scale or quantity in the forms or combinations of the one substance. Each of which manifests in infinite quantity. With the caveat that forms which are impossible given the circumstances of the existence would not be present.

 

[Xulld]

I imagine it to be identical to how it felt prior to your birth.

 

[I Ratant]

I watched my wife's cat kill a baby bird a couple of weeks ago. He didn't even eat it. He just killed it because he could.



I have killed a few things, usually to eat them. Once it was for pity. I've killed animals with guns, knives, traps and my bare hands. I have also chosen not to kill when killing would have been easy. Everyone seems to be talking about AFTER death. I can't say there's anything after death. I can't say what it's like to die, except for how I have seen it happen to others. That experience varies greatly. I'm not that concerned about dying. It will happen soon enough. I'm more concerned with living and doing that the best I can.

.
I used to hunt and was quite good at it.
Gave up killing for photographing.. better memories, and the target gets to live a little bit longer.
Running over suicidal squirrels that have to cross the road as I approach in the car is just one of those things. Can't be safely avoided.

 

[I Ratant]

I haven't had time to read the whole article yet, however I doubt that it addresses an infinity in spacetime. If one views reality as a monism which is infinite then I can see no alternative to an infinity in scale or quantity in the forms or combinations of the one substance. Each of which manifests in infinite quantity. With the caveat that forms which are impossible given the circumstances of the existence would not be present.

.
But with no communication between these existences, it's all just more wishful hoping that magnificent you will be somewhere, and not extinct.
Might as well be extinct.

 

[Brian-M]

I have proof that the combination of atoms which form myself at birth, can form in this existence. Hence it may occur infinite times.

But you are not the combination of atoms that existed at your birth, the arrangement has changed considerably since then, and your mind (the bit that makes you you) has been shaped by your experiences through life.

To reproduce you, not only would your birth have to be reproduced, but all your experiences and environmental influences that you've ever had. Essentially, the whole world (or the bits of it that have affected you either directly or indirectly) would have to be reproduced.

Yes I am not going to dispute this. My assumption is that the right conditions for you to be born again in the precise form you were last time, would result in a continuation of the same life.

But that wouldn't be a continuation, merely a repetition. You'd effectively exist simultaneously at two separate locations in spacetime. Not the same thing as returning to life.

ETA: Unless you mean that at the point of death something in the world of this alternate you will differ so that he survives whatever caused you to die? But in that case the scenario would be equivalent to creating an exact duplicate of you and killing you off while your duplicate lives on.

But if immortality is not a possibility (eg, aging can't be halted or circumvented), then all of your presumably infinite duplicates would die off at some point of their lives, so even if we take this highly questionably hypothesis as accurate, then at best the result would be to effectively extend "your" lifespan by a few decades.

 

[punshhh]

.
But with no communication between these existences, it's all just more wishful hoping that magnificent you will be somewhere, and not extinct.
Might as well be extinct.

Yes from the materialist view point. I no longer consider such a line of reasoning of much use other than as an intellectual exercise.

However the view point described by many in this thread cannot be tested and remains a hypothetical. Personally I consider a number of hypotheticals.

 

[Soapy Sam]

In that case why did existence even bother to exist, if its only to condemn the forms which fleetingly exist to an eternity of oblivion.

No reason.
It just did.

This can (I expect) be expressed in complex mathematics relating to quantum fluctuations.
But "No reason." seems to cover it.

Your question, "Why..." seems to be seeking a reason. There need not be a reason.
It's possible there need not even have been a cause.

"How..." questions are usually more profitable, to be honest.

 

[punshhh]

But you are not the combination of atoms that existed at your birth, the arrangement has changed considerably since then, and your mind (the bit that makes you you) has been shaped by your experiences through life.

Yes I realise this, but I was me as a baby and being born as me will result in me. Albeit with a different course of experience.

When I say "me" in this context I am referring to whatever it is that results in me being consciously present in this world, or any other world. Alternatively if I am not present in a world then I am non existent.

This me is not my mind, it is my being.

To reproduce you, not only would your birth have to be reproduced, but all your experiences and environmental influences that you've ever had. Essentially, the whole world (or the bits of it that have affected you either directly or indirectly) would have to be reproduced.

Yes and perhaps the whole universe.

But that wouldn't be a continuation, merely a repetition. You'd effectively exist simultaneously at two separate locations in spacetime. Not the same thing as returning to life.

It would depend on the natural mechanism involved, of which we are ignorant. I see no reason why two spacetimes would be simultaneous.

ETA: Unless you mean that at the point of death something in the world of this alternate you will differ so that he survives whatever caused you to die? But in that case the scenario would be equivalent to creating an exact duplicate of you and killing you off while your duplicate lives on.

I was thinking more of a newly born life in an entirely separate spacetime. Certainly not local to ours, although perhaps superimposed.

I should perhaps point out here that I do consider that effectively infinite spacetimes may be superimposed in some sense both spatially and/or temporally. Infact I go further than that, that infinite realms are essentially one point and that spacetimes are partial expressions of that one point.

But if immortality is not a possibility (eg, aging can't be halted or circumvented), then all of your presumably infinite duplicates would die off at some point of their lives, so even if we take this highly questionably hypothesis as accurate, then at best the result would be to effectively extend "your" lifespan by a few decades.

Yes, my thought was more like what is traditionally described in reincarnation, ie after death you are reborn as a baby. The particular baby being determined by some as yet unknown natural process, (I realise that I have departed from the random chance event here, to describe what I am thinking).