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immortality: the argument

reverebison said:
5. when you combine the effects of infinite time and finite matter, amazing almost magical things happen. Among other things you get a phenomenon that occurs called exact recurrence.
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Wrong. There is no logical reason to believe that things must recur.

Absolutely the only thing even slightly appealing about your poorly-reasoned philosophy is that it makes the final episode of Battlestar Galactica suck a tiny bit less.
 
I'm pretty sure that our consciousness never leaves the time in which we are allotted. What I don't know is whether consciousness, like memory follows time in one direction forward. How can we know? Time could only be an illusion created by memory. We may be merely jumping around to different periods in our lives randomly, all the while having no memory of anything but the actual "past" at each stopping point. How could we even know that the "past" doesn't change regularly, and our memories along with it?

Anyway, there's my bizarre thoughts on the subject of immortality. I have no proof that any of what I said is real, but nor do I know it is not. I just hope that what I said is not complete gibberish to any mind but my own.
 
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reverebison said:
There is absolutely no doubt in this posters mind that immortality has to exist.
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No.

Even if you were right - which I think you are not - it would not make you immortal. You would still die. That eventually a replica of yourself would exist doesn't change the fact that you'd still be dead.

At the basis, it is about as absurd as claiming that one dead twin didn't actually die because their sibling is still alive.

And that leaves out the fact that either your replication would have to lead a different life with different experiences, or - if we'd assume that an entire solar system or more could be replicated - your life would just be reset.

Either way, the "new you" would have no memory or knowledge of the "old you", there is no continuity between the two individuals. How is that "immortal"? (Again, it's like saying a twin gets to live twice as long ...)
 
I hate infinity arguments.

There is nothing impossible about an infinite number of fruits, only one of which is an orange. And none of which is a banana.

Infinity, in time or space, does not imply that all possibilities are present, or that any possibility is necessarily repeated.

So besides the other arguments, your premise fails to stand up on it's own merits. The point that your consciousness must be recreated is not supported by the other premises.
 
You are not immortal. I am immortal. I have inside me blood of kings. I have no rival, no man can be my equal.
 
Mortality has to do with life not existence. Immortality is permanent life not permanent existence.

Infinity is not a size.
 
Sledge said:
You are not immortal. I am immortal. I have inside me blood of kings. I have no rival, no man can be my equal.
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Scroll up a few posts. For a change I totally beat you to the punchline.

(calling your cell phone, to mumble "Kestighir is dead! Only you and I remain...")
 
...um, is it just me, or does entropy just pretty much knock your entire premise on its ass?

So there's no point in even arguing the other points that make no sense...like the idea that a baby born in a far far future would be "me" just because it was made up of exactly the same atoms that currently make me up (or is it the same atoms that make me up NOW? or the ones that make me up NOW?)
 
There are a number of suppositions in the opening statement that may or may not be true, particularly the belief that our universe is infinite. For all we know, we just think it is because we have no way ( at present ) to determine otherwise. Certainly we always come to the recursivity problem with respect to the entire picture, but even then the opening statement can be used to support exactly the opposite. Things are more likely to recurr in a closed non-infinite universe, wheras in an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities, therefore it is entirely possible that the same thing will never happen twice. Of course even if we accept that it could, it doesn't mean that an identical arrangement of matter and energy that appears in some other location or time is in fact the same "you".
 
One of the coolest things about this site is that people don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Less cool is that they don't seem to admit it.

(Moral high-ground; 5 points for quarky)

yeah

i bad.

(To the bone)
 
elipse said:
...um, is it just me, or does entropy just pretty much knock your entire premise on its ass?
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While the premise if the OP is worthless in and of itself, I don't think entropy is that big of a problem. There are plenty of sources of energy in a finite universe for the next several dozen billion years to add to a system like a planet, allowing order to develop.

Entropy will eventually undo everything. But, it doesn't make it impossible for, say, creatures identical to humans to evolve elsewhere 4 billion years from now.
 
The nice thing about OPs like this is that is never necessary to read past "We are immortal"
 
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