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Would You Opt for Immortality?

#11
elte Offline
Indeed. And the glass broke and gave a nasty cut.  

Secular Sanity, consciousness is an artifact of the particular arrangement of matter in the brain.  Once that arrangement is gone, the mind and personal existence is gone.  Meanwhile living things consume other living things to survive, and self-awareness and high level sentience make people aware of it.  Life is horrific.  Suffering is common and widespread.   Life is a continual struggle to avoid suffering and to seek pleasure. No deep meaning can be found.  It can only be only imagined.

Phil Collins wrote that after a divorce.   I think he said that on NPR.
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#12
C C Offline
(Mar 7, 2018 10:32 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Mar 7, 2018 07:15 PM)C C Wrote: Actually, since I'm heavily doubtful about presentism, I'm left with being inclined that we're already immortal anyway. Just not in the sense of lacking boundaries to our being, in a similar way that continually walking along a dead-end road in the applicable direction will eventually take one to just that: its end (but the road doesn't magically cease to exist upon arriving at its limit).


What do you mean, C C? Do you just mean that we won’t experience death or something altogether different?


Hermann Weyl took up the approach of 19th-century mathematicians, scholars, and philosophers in referring to one's cognition or consciousness as if it was flowing along the 4D "worm" or worldline of one's body or life. (Till, of course, it eventually reaches the end.)

Hermann Weyl: The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time. --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

Corey S Powell: Other late-19th-century mathematicians began to imagine the fourth dimension as something far more familiar: the passage of time. The pages of Nature and other scientific journals featured speculations about a four-dimensional amalgam of the three-dimensions of space along with an additional dimension of time. These notions eventually received a concrete mathematical treatment in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which enabled physicists to reclaim higher dimensions from the spiritualists. Long before then, though, they left their own imprint on popular culture.

H G Wells took note of the idea of a temporal fourth dimension when setting the stage for the Time Traveller’s journey in his novella *The Time Machine* (1895). Before setting off on his voyage into the distant future, the Time Traveller explains to his friends that time is simply another dimension. As he elucidates:

"There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives." The Occult Roots Of Higher Dimensional Research In Physics


But I don't see the above "crawling along" the framework as necessary anymore -- especially since it's actually retaining the problematic "flow" by just switching it from the incoherence of time itself "flowing" to subjective experience doing the flowing (as if the latter was some kind of moving substance). But I still usually dispense that viewpoint (as I did in the prior post) since it is much easier to intuitively "get".

The opposite view which I actually entertain took a long time for me to settle into fully understanding or accepting, despite it afterwards seeming quite simple or blatantly obvious after mulling over it for ages.

Each chunk-sequence of co-existing brain states is going to unavoidably have a milliseconds-long interval of consciousness correlating to it. There's no special privilege of their taking turns in order of going from some blank p-zombie status to having a brief experience and then returning to being a blank placeholder again. There is also (as sported in some mysticism contexts) no single neural configuration of activity for corresponding to awareness / experience of one's entire life from beginning to end ("all at once", so to speciously speak). Since each chunk-sequence can only have awareness of itself, the illusion of a "flow" taking place arises.

It's actually just the nature of consciousness for the whole "4D-worm" structure of one's lifetime (if one so desires the abstraction to be converted into such a picture) to be cognitively discriminated into distinct yet still integrated "slices" of events. Since, again, that is part of what each chunk sequence of brain states is generating -- awareness only of itself and the sensory information it holds, and not awareness or manifestation of the entire lifetime of other co-existing neural changes.

- - -
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#13
Secular Sanity Offline
(Mar 7, 2018 11:16 PM)elte Wrote: Indeed. And the glass broke and gave a nasty cut.  

Secular Sanity, consciousness is an artifact of the particular arrangement of matter in the brain.  Once that arrangement is gone, the mind and personal existence is gone.  Meanwhile living things consume other living things to survive, and self-awareness and high level sentience make people aware of it.  Life is horrific.  Suffering is common and widespread.   Life is a continual struggle to avoid suffering and to seek pleasure.  No deep meaning can be found.  It can only be only imagined.

I know that, silly boy, but how is that necessarily a bad thing?

"Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point.  It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.  Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in."

Septimus: "When we have found all of the mysteries and lost all of the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore."
Thomasina: "Then we will dance."

Maybe C2 is right.  

(Mar 6, 2018 02:10 AM)confused2 Wrote: Gulls just want to have fun?

elte Wrote:Phil Collins wrote that after a divorce.   I think he said that on NPR.

Yep, but I think of it as self-recognition, moment to moment, and the choices we make.

(Mar 8, 2018 12:44 AM)C C Wrote: Hermann Weyl took up the approach of 19th-century mathematicians, scholars, and philosophers in referring to one's cognition or consciousness as if it was flowing along the 4D "worm" or worldline of one's body or life. (Till, of course, it eventually reaches the end.)

Hermann Weyl: The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time. --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

Corey S Powell: Other late-19th-century mathematicians began to imagine the fourth dimension as something far more familiar: the passage of time. The pages of Nature and other scientific journals featured speculations about a four-dimensional amalgam of the three-dimensions of space along with an additional dimension of time. These notions eventually received a concrete mathematical treatment in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which enabled physicists to reclaim higher dimensions from the spiritualists. Long before then, though, they left their own imprint on popular culture.

H G Wells took note of the idea of a temporal fourth dimension when setting the stage for the Time Traveller’s journey in his novella *The Time Machine* (1895). Before setting off on his voyage into the distant future, the Time Traveller explains to his friends that time is simply another dimension. As he elucidates:

"There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives." The Occult Roots Of Higher Dimensional Research In Physics


But I don't see the above "crawling along" the framework as necessary anymore -- especially since it's actually retaining the problematic "flow" by just switching it from the incoherence of time itself "flowing" to subjective experience doing the flowing (as if the latter was some kind of moving substance). But I still usually dispense that viewpoint (as I did in the prior post) since it is much easier to intuitively "get".

The opposite view which I actually entertain took a long time for me to settle into fully understanding or accepting, despite it afterwards seeming quite simple or blatantly obvious after mulling over it for ages.

Each chunk-sequence of co-existing brain states is going to unavoidably have a milliseconds-long interval of consciousness correlating to it. There's no special privilege of their taking turns in order of going from some blank p-zombie status to having a brief experience and then returning to being a blank placeholder again. There is also (as sported in some mysticism contexts) no single neural configuration of activity for corresponding to awareness / experience of one's entire life from beginning to end ("all at once", so to speciously speak). Since each chunk-sequence can only have awareness of itself, the illusion of a "flow" taking place arises.

It's actually just the nature of consciousness for the whole "4D-worm" structure of one's lifetime (if one so desires the abstraction to be converted into such a picture) to be cognitively discriminated into distinct yet still integrated "slices" of events. Since, again, that is part of what each chunk sequence of brain states is generating -- awareness only of itself and the sensory information it holds, and not awareness or manifestation of the entire lifetime of other co-existing neural changes.

- - -

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."~Einstein

The block universe, C C?
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#14
elte Offline
Quote:
elte Wrote: Wrote:Phil Collins wrote that after a divorce.   I think he said that on NPR.
It just occurred to me that it must have been "Take a look at me now" that he wrote then.
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#15
C C Offline
(Mar 8, 2018 01:26 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."~Einstein

The block universe, C C?

"It seems that Einstein's view of the life of an individual was as follows. If the difference between past, present, and the future is an illusion, i.e., the four-dimensional spacetime is a 'block Universe' without motion or change, then each individual is a collection of a myriad of selves, distributed along his history, each occurrence persisting on the world line, experiencing indefinitely the particular event of that moment. Each of these momentary persons, according to our experience, would possess memory of the previous ones, and would therefore believe himself identical with them; yet they would all exist separately, as single pictures in a film. Placing the past, present, and future on the same footing this way, destroys the notion of the unity of the self, rendering it a mere illusion as well."--"On the Two Aspects of Time: The Distinction and Its Implications“ in Foundations of Physics ... (1988), Horowitz, Arshansky, & Elitzur


I disagree with the conclusion in the quote above that it would destroy the unity of self, since via their co-existence it would actually integrate all the brain changes of one's life together as far as the 4D worm-like depiction goes. If anything renders self into an illusion it would be commonsense presentism, via obliterating both everything under the specious label of "past" and everything under the specious label of "future" for the sake of only this specious "present instant" existing. (Which would actually have to be at least a mere yoctosecond in duration so as to accommodate subatomic events, rather than the milliseconds-long elephant of a moment of human cognition taken to be an excuse for a global and objective "present").

The block-universe still pops up a lot because it's one of the oldest, most common, and arguably friendly models for exhibiting an example of eternalism to the public.

Julian Barbour goes beyond block-universe conceptions by eliminating time. His stratified manifold -- with its "all possible configurations of the universe" might initially appear to be some kind of space/time amenable to the multiverse interpretation. But that's not the case since those configurations don't constitute any temporal framework (or so he puts it, anyway).

McTaggart's initial philosophical argument against time doesn't even offer a replacement ontology. It simply nukes time.

There are other potential alternatives out there that are so new/green, alien, and lacking familiar or ordinary description yet that I wouldn't have a handle to grasp for remarking anything about them.

So since some of the projects resist being categorized even under eternalism, it might be best to just generalize the variety of activities as "not presentism" -- away from the ridiculousness of presentism. Or possibilism, too, for that matter. Which seems to magically conjure additions from nothing to add to a growing version of the block-universe (wherein only moments popularly construed as past co-exist, not those of the future).

~
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#16
elte Offline
Something that might be an opt(ion) that could help put off answering the weighty question involves a kind of one-day-at-a time approach.  In that vein apply measures that add up to an effect to give a result in easy bites.  Like enhancing systems in the anatomy that promote youthful physiology.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...7-86590233
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#17
C C Offline
(Mar 8, 2018 02:25 PM)elte Wrote: Something that might be an opt(ion) that could help put off answering the weighty question involves a kind of one-day-at-a time approach.  In that vein apply measures that add up to an effect to give a result in easy bites.  Like enhancing systems in the anatomy that promote youthful physiology.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...7-86590233


That's an interesting angle you've derived from the research, Elte.

Quote:Human embryonic stem cells are considered to be immortal

As seems the case with cancer cells. In terms of microscopic persistence, Henrietta Lacks is immortal or will eventually be around longer than anybody in history. (Actually they've mutated so much that probably the only remaining relationship to Lacks is their historical origin.)

From that recent article on Lacks, there's a fine example below of a scientist who in his personal views seems to have subconsciously embraced the spirit of scientism. Via not being affected by non-scientific "other branches of learning and culture" and social / "ought" trends outside the domain of science. Of determinedly ignoring those foreign, folk-theory preconditions trying to regulate his thinking. One could almost hear him shouting an anachronistic "Booya!" to all the other deluded "-isms" of the world back in those days. (Nah, probably nothing so mad-scientist dramatic. He was just another entrepreneurial guy in the biomedical field trying to keep his head above water in some "pioneer or perish" game.)

There were some morally reprehensible uses of HeLa cells as well. Sloan Kettering immunologist Chester Southam wanted to see if the cells could infect other humans. He started with patients who already had cancer, injecting HeLa cells in their arms. The cells grew into tumors. The tumors were removed, but in several cases, they grew back. In one case Henrietta’s cancer metastasized to the patient’s lymph nodes. The same experiment was tried with volunteers from an Ohio prison. Once again, tumors grew in the prisoner’s arms. In this case, though, the prisoner’s healthy immune systems eventually fought off and rejected the HeLa cells. By the end of his research, Southam had injected over 600 people with HeLa. Many of these people were gynecological surgery patients at hospitals where he worked. The patients had never given consent to be injected. For this, he was eventually brought up on charges of fraud, deceit, and unprofessional conduct. In 1963, The Regents of the University of the State of New York found him guilty, and he was placed on medical probation for one year.

- - -

In the 1950s, [Chester] Southam also tested the West Nile Virus as a potential virotherapy; he injected it into over 100 cancer patients who had terminal cancer and few treatment options. This work had some good results and was also reported in The New York Times, but some people he injected got severe cases of West Nile fever; he went on to do further research to see if he could "train" the virus to kill cancer without the common side effects of chemotherapy.


~
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#18
Secular Sanity Offline
(Mar 8, 2018 03:23 AM)elte Wrote: It just occurred to me that it must have been "Take a look at me now" that he wrote then.

No, you were right.  Both of them were written around the same time in 1981 after his divorce. According to Wikipedia, he used "Take a Look at Me now" when he was approached to record a soundtrack for "Against All Odds".  He had written it 3 years earlier but didn’t include it on his Album "Face Value".  It was originally titled "How Can You Just Sit There?"

Against All Odds • Take a Look at Me Now • Phil Collins

(Mar 8, 2018 06:57 PM)C C Wrote: There were some morally reprehensible uses of HeLa cells as well.

Wow!  I didn't know that.  That's messed up.

I read this article years ago.  It was pretty interesting. 

Immortality and Sentencing Law

"Exactly how a dramatically increased life span will change the legal system and society as we know it is a topic that will test even the most grandiose imagination."

I wonder how it would affect land tenure.
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#19
elte Offline
I recall that  "In the Air Tonight" was a favorite of mine, Secular Sanity.  The answer to that question is it's because I always had a longing for a real heaven instead of being totally gone.  
--
I remember how I heard Rebecca Skloot  interviewed on NPR, C C.  The Hackaday article adds more to that.

As aging goes one day at a time right now, I'd like to have youthing be like that like if when getting gene therapy that enhances genes in the body starting to make more healthy protein.
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#20
Leigha Offline
If I could remain in great health, yes! It would be cool to live forever like a vampire, without the blood-sucking part.
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