immortality: the argument

[Robin]

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.

Since the premiss of the OP requires an identical planet with an identical set of events then 4 billion years would be woefully inadequate.

A billion billion years would also be woefully inadequate. So entropy kills the idea of any recurrence in this universe.

So for the idea even to have any legs at all we have to conjecture on the possibility of an infinite set of universes with randomly distributed initial conditions.

So suppose there were an infinite set of universes and - infinity clobbering improbability - there was an exact twin of our world with an exact twin of me with exactly parallel events.

But that would not be immortality since my exact twin would also die and have no memory of this existence. Even an infinte number of copies of me would not be immortality since there would be no experience of immortality.

In order for immortality to occur there would have to be a set of universes in which there appeared beings which had, by chance, exact memories of some other being in another universe at the time of their death, but which continued to exist.

Obviously we cannot invoke recurrence to claim that this will happen.

So unfortunately, even with an infinity of universes with randomly distributed initial conditions - dead is still dead.

 

[Robin]

Did you read my concept in the occams razor thread recently? I use a concept similar to your billiard ball analogy there.
Basically given infinite timespace, every combination of balls(particles) will occur, while it logically seems impossible.

Perhaps you should read the post you are responding to.

 

[dafydd]

Perhaps you should read the post you are responding to.

You might as well do this

 

[elipse]

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.

yeah, but then they'll eventually die, so "we" won't be immortal...even if it happens again in another 4 billion years, 'cause THEY'LL eventually die...

if the point is immortality, seems like entropy will eventually be a problem. Not the only problem, by any means...but in a thought experiment in which we have the chance of being "immortal" via being "re-evolved" in exactly the same atoms some time in the far far future, the concept of "immortal" will eventually butt up against the concept of entropy, yes?

 

[elipse]

or, you know, what Robin said. 'Cause she (?) said it way better than I did.

 

[Croc411]

So for the idea even to have any legs at all we have to conjecture on the possibility of an infinite set of universes with randomly distributed initial conditions.

Not necessarily. Our universe being infinitely big (or sufficiently big) or being oscillatory in nature would also do.

So suppose there were an infinite set of universes and - infinity clobbering improbability - there was an exact twin of our world with an exact twin of me with exactly parallel events.

But that would not be immortality since my exact twin would also die and have no memory of this existence. Even an infinte number of copies of me would not be immortality since there would be no experience of immortality.

No. You forgot that for every exact twin of you there would be a multitude of not exact but very similar "twins" of you. A fraction of them (still infinitely many) would always continue to exist, even against all odds.

I agree though that immortality is the wrong word. "Permanent subjective existence" might be a better term. Immortality (at least until the universe ends) could be achieved by technical means at one point though, if one lives long enough.